Chosen

Excerpt from Out of Exile (Available on Amazon)

My past is unremarkable in its typicalness. Like so many others, I grew up in the church. I grew up as an active part of church youth groups. I listened to Christian music, and my family prayed before meals. Like me, others raised in church can surely remember times when our hearts were deeply touched. When we were so profoundly moved, that light glistened in the trail of tears flowing from our eyes. Passionately, we cried out to Heaven with heartfelt and fervent prayers. We knew moments of silent wonder at the hand and wonder of the almighty God—inspiring moments of awe. Yet, though our lives once centered around Christ, those impassioned and unforgettable moments were somehow soon forgotten.

Having moved out of our parent’s house to begin our adult lives, we now languish in the not-so-distant future. As we all ventured on to college or work, the moments we once cherished, moments that once defined us, were forgotten and left behind. The most profound moments of our young lives were reduced to nothing more than vague memories of silly passing fancies.

We fell away.

No longer children but now fledgling adults, our exploration of the world was admired in a new light. The freedom of adulthood provided the avenue for newfound enlightenment, and this freedom taunted us, convincing us that the Bible is archaic and silly. Education taught us that the Bible was backward, oppressive, and contradictory. The days of old weren’t politically correct and lacked the rightness of our new progressive society. Our ears picked up the sounds of the world, declaring that our parents’ thoughts and ideas were ignorant. It decried their lack of education and understanding. Truth, we learned, is relative anyway. My truth is not your truth.

To live “our own truth” became our quest.

But our complete abandonment of faith didn’t happen overnight. For a while, we maintained some resolve. After all, our parents weren’t wrong; they just lacked understanding and education.  We told ourselves that the Bible was misapplied and misunderstood, so we reapplied our biblical knowledge. We tried to make it fit into our new enlightened worldview. Education and experience showed us how foolish and narrow our parents’ and ancestors’ views were. Education and experience granted us a more enlightened perspective to interpret the nuance in the words.

For many of us, it went on that way until we denounced it altogether.

It’s said that these are times of rebellion. These are times when we’ve wandered from the path. For those of us who are very lucky, we return. In some ways, that is true, but that's no longer how I see it. While growing up in a Christian home, we live with the grace and salvation given to our parents through their belief (1 Corinthians 7:14/Malachi 2:15). As children, we are sanctified by our parent’s belief. Understanding of freedom through Christ is imparted to us as it's taught to us by our parents, but at some point, we're old enough to decide for ourselves. When the moment comes that we are old enough to choose, our place in the Body of Christ is no longer set for us by their belief.

We have to find it ourselves.

I’ve come to understand that my rescue in 2020 wasn’t because I’d strayed from the path. I was lost in the wilderness, but because I had never chosen the path at all. I wasn't returning to an old faith. I was deciding for myself to believe. I knew about faith in my parent’s home. My prayers were sincere, and my understanding grew as I got older, but I knew it only as a child knew things. Out in the wilderness of life as a young adult, I had to find the path. I had to discover Christ for myself.

Stretching out His hand, Jesus pulled me to the path for the first time because, finally, I had chosen it.

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