The Hope We Have
What we Believe
WAYNE KILBURN - Story Submitted June 2007
My Story
I
grew up in a tiny town on the coast of Washington state. My family
didn’t know Jesus. My parents didn’t believe in “forcing
religion” onto anyone – including me, so we never talked about
God. In fact, just about the only time I heard the word “Jesus”
was as a curse. The only exposure I had to Christianity were a few
Sunday morning radio broadcasts. Each had a very “nice” sounding
preacher talking about “nice” things and plea for money at the
end of the program.
One time, in third grade, we were making
Easter cards for our families. (This was back in the days when Spring
Break was known as Easter Vacation, and you could make Easter cards
in school). I dutifully drew colorful bunnies and eggs, but the girl
next to me wrote something odd on her card. “Remember Jesus died
for you.” Her card read. “What the heck does that mean?’ I
thought. I had no idea why Jesus would do that, much less why it was
necessary for him to die for me. I just brushed it off and went about
coloring my card.
Then – when I was in fifth grade a
preacher moved to town with his family to start a new church. He
crossed paths with my father, and before long we started to attend
the tiny, new church. We met every Sunday morning, Sunday evening and
Wednesday evening in the old post office building. I had no idea what
he was preaching about, or what the songs meant. But one thing was
clear – I was supposed to walk down the aisle and recite a prayer at
the alter. So, I did. Afterwards I didn’t feel any different –
nothing really seemed to change. Soon afterwards I was baptized.
Again, nothing really seemed different. There were a lot of rules,
though. Rules about what to say, what not to say, what not to wear,
how to act, and how much to put into the offering plate. It seemed
that the objective was to be a good person. That was all fine and
good – I’d always been good at playing by the rules.
The
church continued to slowly grow. There were about 20 people in the
congregation when Max, his wife and step kids started to attend. Max
had been in prison – at that time I didn’t know why. Soon he was
a Sunday school teacher. By the time I was in seventh grade, my
family started to slip away from the church. I don’t know why for
sure – time has clouded my memory.
It was that summer that
a local 10-year old girl went missing. Her mother let her go to
Sunday school at the church. There was a huge search for her. I heard
all kinds of rumors – stories about a strange man that had been
seen around town, and how he must have abducted her. Or that the
mother’s boyfriend had a hand in the disappearance. Kids weren’t
supposed to go anywhere alone. It was a very scary time to be a
kid.
I don’t remember exactly how much time passed between
her disappearance and the day that they found her body along a
logging road a few miles outside of town. She had been strangled, and
her body placed into a plastic trash bag. I didn’t go to the
funeral, but my mom did. She told me that Max, the Sunday school
teacher had given a fine eulogy.
A few days after the funeral,
things got really bad. The police arrested Max for the murder. It
didn’t take long for him to confess. As you may have already
guessed, he was a pedophile. The prison time he had served was for
crimes against children. He had tried to victimize the young girl,
but she resisted.
Max was quickly convicted of the crime and
sentenced to prison. Only, he died a short time later – from
pneumonia.
Watching all of this occur had a profound impact on
me. How could the church let a convicted pedophile teach Sunday
school? How could one of the “good” people do such a horrible
thing? What good were all these rules? It seemed to me that
Christians were only out to manipulate me and take my money.
If
they wanted to see a “good” person, I’d show them how it was
done –without God, and certainly without Christians. I set about to
be the best person possible. And I was doing a mighty fine job of
it.
From eighth grade until my sophomore year in college, I never
got a grade lower than an “A”. I didn’t drink, smoke or chew. I
went on to play football in college. When four guys in my high
school got into a serious car wreck, I sent money to their families.
I was the kid that every parent wished their child would be. And I
did it all without church, youth group or anything related to God.
And the stress of doing all this “good stuff” was making
me miserable. I was wound so tight that I was
about to pop. I was
a hyper-competitive egomaniac. Everything was about me, and my
goodness. I didn’t have much of a social life – I was too busy
acting “good”.
Then toward the end of my Junior year in collage I met
someone. She was beautiful, outgoing and great to be
around, and she’s now my wife. It seemed that we were
always running into each other on campus. We lived a
couple hundred miles apart, so over the summer we
wrote letters back and forth. Before long, we had a
long-distance romance going. In the Fall she started
her student teaching while I returned to campus to
finish my degree. In the spring I landed an internship
not far from her hometown, so we were able to see each
other on weekends and holidays.
Of course, she asked me to go
to church with her family. I was REALLY nervous about that. I was
ready for more manipulation from the pulpit. But it wasn’t that way
at all. The pastor was a warm, genuine man. And I saw real, genuine
people there. People who weren’t trying to make me conform to a
list of rules. People who were doing their best to live out God’s
love. And it touched something in me. I didn’t have to walk down
the aisle in front of everyone and recite a prayer. All I had to do
was open up to God’s love – to accept what he has done to make me
his. I began to realize that Christianity isn’t at all about being
a “good person”. It’s about how God so loved us that he sent
his Son, Jesus, to die – so that you and I can come to the Father.
I could never be good enough to earn what God wanted to give me for
free.
I’d love to say that now my life is all sweetness and
light, that no matter what happens I have a smile on my face and a
song in my heart. But then I’d be manipulating you. It’s still
hard for me to trust people – especially people in the church. I
still struggle with feeling like I’m not good enough. But I know
that God loves me. Even when I screw things up. Even when I beat
myself up for not living up to my ideal of “good”. Even when I
can’t sleep at night because I’m full of self-doubt. Even in
those times, God loves me. And that makes all the difference.
_____________________________
Find out more about Jesus and how He can change your life HERE.
Read other stories of people whose lives He has changed HERE.
Crosspurposes note: As in all stories on this website, Crosspurposes has striven to permit the writer to express his personal perspective on his relationship with Christ. Because many of us come to Christ from very different religious backgrounds, we often have different perspectives on the working of God in our lives. But we believe that the basic message of salvation through faith in Christ, and the resulting work of grace in our lives transcends religion. Where you grew up in church, and how you talk about it, is irrelevant to the issue of whether you have a real relationship with Jesus. The only thing that determines whether you have a true relationhip with God is whether you have a place you can point to in your life at which God called you to repentance and to acceptance of Jesus, and whether you responded "I believe" in spirit and in truth.
A noted follower of Jesus, Paul, wrote:
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."
Ephesians 2:8-10