As my time gets closer to my new life as a seminarian, at Pacific School of Religion, and knowing that I have been some kind of a drop out in my Christian faith the past few years. I have been reflecting a lot about the Christian faith and myself as a Christian. Overall, I hope that being at PSR will transform how I think now as a Christian and even more so from the past. Because in the past as a Christian all I worried about was being more religious than my fellow brothers and sisters in the faith.
In the past I was always worried about being the best Christian. I knew that in order to be somebody in my church and with other Christians around me. I needed to know as much as possible about the bible. I needed to gain more and more Bible lore. I always wanted to be ready to have answers to any questions or comment on anything that had to relate in the Bible. No matter if it were a person or a place I needed to make sure I knew what part of biblical history it was from and why it was important to know what I had to say. But, knowing the bible for me was never enough. I needed to know more complexities of theology. Especially because my previous church was about dispensationalism, and that in itself brought a lot of complexities that dealt with detailed charts, time lines, arguments, and counter arguments.
On top of being able to argue well about what I believed, I needed to know and understand what others believed in. Enough so I can proof them wrong. Which usually meant misunderstanding those other systems of beliefs enough to exaggerate and belittle them.
There is no question that I applied myself diligently, but a few problems took place with all these complexities in my life. One, the more and more I mastered what I wanted to believe that more I was fatigued. I don’t think I saw any spirituality in any of this. There was no Christlikeness or fruitfulness in my life or in the life of others. In fact a lot of the members in my past church and Christians I met, the more they knew the meaner they got. It seemed that all of their knowledge was just to use it as ammunition, which made them dangerous and not pleasant to be around with.
In conclusion, I pray and hope that as a Christian I can overcome my Pharisee way of life. I hope, and God willing PSR may equip me so I can reach out and minister to the prisoners of this world as an honest and spiritual Christian. Jesus words come to mind when he speaks to the crowds, “Woe, to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert , and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.” (Matt. 23:15 NRSV) This is not exactly the religious Christian I want to be and spend my life as. I pray that this time back in America and my start as a Seminarian will be a time being awake to God and his aliveness, and to be at home in the universe connected and at peace with everything.
