I’ve been hearing the term “Bad Christian”
being thrown around a lot lately. There is even a website with a blog
and podcast that is run by members of the band Emery, in which Toby
Morrell and Matt Carter discuss the idea of being a “bad Christian”. The
thought of being a bad Christian doesn’t sound right to most people but
the truth is we are all “bad” according to God. Romans 3:22-24 says
“This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who
believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely
by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
When I was young my mother brought us to Church every Sunday, but she
never really explained why or ever talked about what we learned in
Sunday school, so I never really understood why Jesus had to die or even
what his death meant. I grew up and drifted away from Church and
started making some very bad decisions as a teen. I became involved in
what I’ll call the “4 no no’s”, smoking cigarettes, alcohol, drugs and
sex, as a result, I got myself in some very “bad” situations, I was
pregnant at the age of 19 and again at 20 ( you would have thought I’d
learned my lesson the first time, but I obviously didn’t) and had two
abortions. I had them not because I didn’t want children, but because I
was scared and believed a lie.
There are a lot of lies out there in the world and if we are not
careful, we can easily fall prey to them. Now one of the lies I believed
at that time was that life did not start at conception, but that up
until a certain point in the pregnancy it was just a bunch of cells and
not much more. So to shield myself and others, I believed this lie and
went ahead with the abortions. It wasn’t until long after them that I
discovered this lie. I actually saw fetuses that were as young as 3 to 4
weeks, which is the recommend time frame for the procedure and they
looked like little humans with all their body parts formed! So that’s
when I decided I wasn’t going to let it happen again, so I took
precautions.
Much later when I was almost 29, I had met my future husband and we were
talking marriage, I got this brilliant idea, that maybe I should take
out my IUD, the precaution I was using at that time, so my body would be
ready to have children when we got married. Another bad decision, I got
pregnant again, but this time I was planning to get married, so we
would just have to speed it up a little! Well, God had other plans and I
had a miscarriage before we were even married! After I was married I
had another miscarriage before I finally had my first child and again in
between my second and third, I went on to have two other children, plus
I raised one of my nieces who came to live with me just before she
turned two.
After I had had my first two, a girl and a boy, I had this sense or
feeling that I needed to return to the Church. I had continued to go to
my mother’s church once in awhile, on special holidays, like Christmas
and Easter. Through my sister-in-law, who was a Christian, I found a
church near my home, which I still attend. At first I wasn’t sure I’d
like it there, I picked it because I knew two people who went there so I
wouldn’t feel so out of place and also because it had a nursery for my
son and a pre-school Sunday school class for my daughter.
I had been raised a Protestant in my early years and then as a Methodist from about 4th
grade on, until I finished high school. I had even tried teaching
Sunday school at one point in my early adulthood. That’s a really scary
thought, how can someone who doesn’t really know the Lord teach kids
about him! I had 3rd and 4th graders, I tried to
follow the lessen books and I thought things went well until I realized
one Sunday that a girl in my class was a bully and her mother was worse!
I finally gave up teaching Sunday school and soon after stopped going
to church, except on special occasions, like Christmas and Easter. I was
so put off by this woman’s behavior that I didn’t want any part of
religion!
After living this dreadful life in the past, I had settled down, married
and started a family, I felt myself being drawn to the Church again,
but this time it was a church that used the Bible as its main
foundation. The more I went, the more I learned about God and Jesus; I
also realized I was a sinner like everyone else! That was something I
had never considered, I just figured if I followed the rules for the
most part I was ok. You know, just go by the 10 Commandments, even if it
was rather loosely to say the least.
But I have now realized it was God’s plan for me to go through these
lessons in life to bring me to Him. I think you have to learn to see
yourself in the same way God sees you, that we are not perfect beings,
but sinners in need of His help. This is the reason Christ came to
earth, to take the “bad” in people and make it “good” like Him, that’s
where the word Christian comes from. So yes Christians start out as
“bad”, but they have learned to let Christ teach them how to be “good”
Christians! I believe God wanted to show me, how He grieved when I
aborted my two babies, by letting me feel how it felt by the loss of my
three pregnancies to miscarriages. God is a just and loving God,
merciful and forgiving, but He lets us go through trials and
tribulations in life in order to draw us closer to Him! We need to start
believing more in His truth and less in the lies of this world!
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