by John Lynch
I want you to be my God. I believe you stayed on that cross for me, John Lynch. Somehow what you did was enough to make me clean if I believe it.
Today, I believe it.
Forgive me now. Jesus, for everything. It feels so wrong to ask you this. But you say that’s what you want me to ask. I believe you were put on a cross and you allowed it, for me. You died for all my sedition; all my selfishness, all my rebellion and sickness. … Yes, I finally now believe you were raised from the dead.
I don’t know what else to say.
… Except this. Why would you do this for me? Why would you let me care, why would you accept me after all I have done against you?
I don’t want to become someone fake or pretend. But I’ll do anything, go anywhere you want me. All I know is I want you, Jesus Christ. Wherever you are, you’re the one I want. No one else. I’m calling this out loud for everyone in the universe to hear. This is John Lynch.
It probably wasn’t as eloquent or well thought through. It was probably only a few sentences. But that’s the best I can remember it.
John, pretty much that’s how I remember it also.
December 1979
For weeks, I could barely catch my breath—as though I was could feel the synapses being rewired throughout my very being. Every moment felt supernatural and filled with endless, spiritual meaning. I was electric, pulsing with the experience of new life. I felt like I could walk up to someone in a department store and say, “You sir, fall down on your knees and trust Jesus!”
… and he would.
Over Christmas vacation, I now devoured the Bible, nearly every waking hour.
I wish there were some way to go back and experience all of it again. But I can’t. No one can step into the same river twice. No one can feel brand new again. No one can repeat the first moment of worship. No one can enter from death into new life but once.
I know it doesn’t happen that way for everyone. I wonder if God knew I needed a jolt to show me he was greater, more powerful than the drugs I’d taken, to overwhelm me. What God was doing for those days turned into weeks, made acid trips seem watered down.
I was so innocently looking for him in every moment, every verse, every promise. I read the section in Matthew about the rich young ruler. Jesus tested his sincerity by asking him to give up all his possessions to those in need.
So I did it.
I gave away my car to one of my students. I got rid of all my possessions except for a few clothes, books, cooking utensils, and several other basics. I sent checks to anyone I could remember borrowing money from. I nearly returned a dictionary and some masking tape I’d packed from my classroom when I left teaching.
I was naïve. For sure I was immature. I was probably butchering Scripture and yanking it into whatever I wanted it to say. But there was something so incredibly liberating about not yet knowing better. To run to obey God, not because I feared I would get in trouble, or because I was trying to assuage something, but because I would not miss any part of receiving God’s love in full, wide open obedience. That was no mistake.
John, it was in those moments you knew you had believed. You were done holding onto anything. You weren’t trying to prove anything to me. You only wanted everything with me. You didn’t want to miss a thing. Yes, you were, say, a bit loose with the Scriptures. But I’m not complaining.
1980
So, what happened? I wish I could isolate the moment. All I know is this: nobody did it to me. I pulled the bait and switch.
I think I presumed every day would be that intense, that jaw-dropping. I imagined I was one of the last humans to be rescued and now the end would come. The boat door was about to close. All I wanted to do was ride across the country on a ten-speed, with a sleeping bag and a daypack, to coffee shops, telling everyone to get on board, because the show was about to end. John Lynch had become a Christian!
But weeks passed and I was still here. Slowly I realized I could still be sad, and I was not impervious to people cutting me off in traffic. I discovered my reactions and wrong affections had not been healed. I was experiencing stupidly immoral thoughts.
I would tell Jesus, “Don’t listen to that thought. Please, I didn’t mean it.”
Then my thinking moved to this:
Of course! I knew I’d screw this up. God goes to all the work of bringing me to him and now I’ve got him disappointed. I do this to everyone. They all eventually leave. It’s who I am. Damn!
… See, now I’m swearing!
But I knew I could not live without what I had found. I would not lose it. In that moment, like smoke under a door, it crept back in. Shame.
Awakening: Increased devotion and diligence will not make me feel close to God again. Believing his never-changing affection will renew my joy.
I guess I thought to get back feeling close to God it would take the same methods which once gave me applause and success: increased willpower, diligence, ought, berating myself to care more. That lie would spread its tentacles through my soul for many, many years.
It took so little time from first trusting him to arrive here: “The second part of my life I spent trying to make myself worthy of the love I had found.”
I guess I could have challenged the lie.
Hey wait. Hold on. I didn’t earn this love from God. I didn’t figure this thing out. I didn’t do anything heroic to get it. It was entirely one way. He invaded my destruction. Nothing I’m experiencing suggests he’s one to bless me with happiness or withhold it by the constancy of my devotion. He knows me. He knew I was smoking three packs a day, dropping cheap acid and lying on my resume that I’d done standup comedy in L.A.
I wonder what would have happened if I’d simply called out to God:
Hey, I’m scared. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m messing things up. I’ve spent the entire last week hiding from you, trying to figure out some formula to make it right—to make you happy with me again. I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’m confused. … And maybe disappointed. Is it all right to tell you that? I wanted it to always be like those first few weeks. Anyway, I’m freaked out and feeling this old familiar sense—like someone is about to leave me again. Don’t go away from me. I’ve waited for you all my life. Please. I have nowhere else to go now.
If I can know you’re there, that you’re not angry or disgusted and this is the way it’s going to be, I’m totally good. I just need to know I haven’t screwed this whole thing up. I’d like a sign or something right now. But I have an idea you probably don’t often do magic when you’re trying to form faith. That sounded like I know what I’m talking about. I don’t. It’s something I heard someone say. Then I repeat it and make it sound like me. I do that. I make crap up. Anyway, I love you so much. I can’t make it go away if I wanted to. Help.
Love,
John
… But I didn’t do that.
My fear of losing this ecstatic experience of him drowned out such logic. I almost didn’t care whether he operated out of peevish, manipulative jealousy or not. I wanted the feeling back.
When compelled, I don’t know many humans more self-restrictively disciplined towards a goal than me. So I reared back and spent my best effort trying to find a way to get God to be pleased with me.
Awakening: Nothing deadens us more than learning to perform from duty and ought, what we once did as the natural response of a new heart.
… And my joy walked back into the shadows.
I didn’t talk to anyone about it. Nobody told me they were doing a similar thing. But I soon found it was an unspoken way of life in most faith communities. No matter how much we sang of his unconditional love and sovereign power, we trusted more in our ability to keep ourselves in good stead. We were becoming religiously self-righteous and increasingly miserable.
1981
After several months, it became increasingly apparent Jesus was not going to time his return to my new faith. A friend, who’d been watching me devour the Bible, t
old me,
“There’s this place where people talk about God and the Scriptures all day long, every day.”
“You’re kidding me! Where is this place?”
“They call it seminary.”
“I must go to this seminary place you speak of.”
So I left my teaching job and headed to Talbot seminary in California, driving another VW Bug. My boss gave it to me. I spent a thousand of my three-thousand-dollar teaching retirement to get it running. I poured a quart of oil into her almost twice a week.
I left Arizona with enough money to cover part of a semester of classes. How did I think I was going to pay for four years of full-time classes in a Masters program for which I had zero background? I guess I hadn’t yet experienced a time yet where God had not met my needs the way I thought he should. I thought it was part of this new supernatural life. If I I’m attempting something right, why wouldn’t he absolutely provide?
Arriving at seminary, I was a longhaired hippie with very little understanding of any Christian language or culture. I spent the first few nights in the parking lot studying my Hebrew declensions with a flashlight in my car. Learning a new language, especially one that reads backwards, was overwhelming and otherworldly, after a decade of aggressively burning brain cells.
Within several weeks I found a part-time job at a private Christian afterschool program. It paid me enough to afford a dumpy shared apartment, where Campus Crusade wrestlers routinely left lasagna-covered frying pans in the shower. I fished a mattress out of the apartment’s storage. It had a large hole in one corner. Cockroaches were emerging from it. This was definitely a low point in my housing timeline.
After several weeks, the owner of the school took me to lunch.
“John, we’re so pleased with the work you’re doing at our school. Would you consider coming on as a fulltime teacher?”
“I’m honored, but I don’t think I should. I came out here to go to seminary. I left my world back in Phoenix. I’m convinced God wants me in seminary. I know me. If I start working full time I’d never get through seminary. I left teaching to do something with God’s Word. It doesn’t feel right to have moved out here to do what I already left. I’m so sorry. It’s a kind and generous offer.”
I lived with the faith, and probably some presumption, God would get the money figured out somehow. I think God kindly chose to cover the absurdly grandiose checks I was writing.
A week later the owner of the school took me to lunch again.
“So, how are you paying for your seminary degree?”
“I’m using money left from my teaching retirement.”
“How much?”
“All of it. Enough to pay for this first quarter.”
“How are you paying for next quarter? It comes up in about two weeks, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. I don’t quite yet know what will happen. I’m guess I’m trusting God will take care of me.”
He got quiet for a while, soaking his fries in the au jus from his French Dip sandwich.
“Well, I also think God has you here to be in seminary. If you’d let us, my wife and I would like to pay for your entire time in seminary. Your books, insurance and all of your tuition. I’d only hope you’d consider working in the afternoon program as long as your studies allow you to.”
I remember being incredibly grateful and excited beyond words that God had revealed how I was going to do seminary. But I was not astonished.
… This section was not supposed to spill out this way. Writing it is convicting me of a way of life I once knew and now teach about knowing.
Trust.
It wasn’t presumption. I’d sensed real conviction from a real, actively communicating God that I should go to seminary. He knew all along how he was going to do it. I was convinced he knew. I can’t remember the last time I knew with such conviction.
I’m sorry. I want to present a steady, gradually maturing man, released by the truths of grace. The truth is I often believed better back then than I do now. I can live now in much clutching fear of the future. I can think about positioning and covering bases more than trusting. I’m not quite sure what to do with this. It doesn’t fit a clean narrative arch. It doesn’t build a compelling argument. If I’m truthful, much of my life conflicts with what I know to be true.
John, you are not nearly as confident that I’ll come through as you were back then. In fairness, I have done many things, allowed many things, did not stop many things you thought I should, would, must. It has rocked your world. It is hard for me to watch you scuff at the pavement, trying to figure me out, trying to reconcile my goodness with your pain and broken expectations.
I cannot let you write and speak continually about me without your authenticity being tested. Otherwise, your words will degenerate into untested and powerless slogans.
What you are teaching is largely true. But you do not always live it or believe it magnificently. Humans don’t mature in a straight line. You and I are in a love relationship. These days, you’ve been hurt, confused, and devastated at what I would allow into your world. You are grieving. I know you do not always trust me. I am not angry or disappointed with you when you doubt my ways. I am only proud you would admit it here. If you want validation your life is working splendidly, you’ll find it in your admission two paragraphs back. You’re not nearly as good a liar as you once were. …
1982
I am now living with two married couples in Santa Fe Springs. They are friends from my church back in Phoenix.
One spring evening, for the first time, I see it. Who I risk becoming—a higher-educated, striving, religious Pharisee. I see the life I’m forming, living out the implications of trying to please God by enough fervent effort and self-denial.
I’m in my bedroom, trying to pray. They are in the living room watching an inane television show. It’s turned up too loud. Sitcom television sounds even more garish from another room.
My friends sound like drunks in a roomful of drunks. … They are wheezing in laughter. I will one day wish I could be back with them in that moment, wheezing along with them. But at this time I am trying so hard to prove I am cut from different cloth. That I am more sold out, more passionate, more faithful, more attentive to God. Godly people do not fritter their time away in noisy and cheap laughter.
Only later will I discover I’m only attempting to disprove what my shame wants to convince me—that I’m not enough. I’m tied up tight in chains of performance. I’m judging my friends in the other room as halfhearted Laodiceans, not caring enough to be fully used by God.
Whatever I’m doing over the next hour is anything but prayer. I’m filled with seething, arrogant, religiosity. I’m babbling through a list I know I should care about, but don’t.
God is out watching television, laughing with my friends.
At some point, I whisper out in a muffled scream: “I don’t get you. I’m trying so hard to do things right and you don’t show up! Those people are out there not caring about the things of
God and they’re having a great time. Listen to them! Me, I’m miserable. I hate this. I’m watching the clock, every minute, trying to put in an hour, like those famous saints who said if they didn’t get in two hours of prayer, the day was wasted.”
Many of us face a time where we are tempted to blame God for not doing enough in us, fast enough, impressively enough. We become weary from doing all the things to impress him, expecting more return. “I’m trying, God. I’m trying! Help me. Tell me what you want me to do. I want to be a godly man. I want to do great things. I want to get over the garbage in me. Why don’t you make it happen? I’m doing everything I know how to do.”
This is actually a very good moment; when pride can turn into humility.
John, I wish you could walk out there and be with your friends. At this moment, they are throwing cornbread at each other and watching reruns of Mannix. I was out there with them, moments ago. So, this is an important moment. You are growing we
ary of trying to figure out how to please me. You’ve been trying so hard for so long. There is endless difference between straining for my favor by doing enough right and allowing my Spirit to draw out the good you now actually want to do. You are using your same old willpower and discipline to do behaviors you think I would want. Tonight you are witnessing the sham of your own performing. You’re less than three years into your faith and completely miserable. I never wanted that for you. Have you forgotten how astonishing those first few months were? You were free, alive, and we talked like lifelong friends. Then you got religious on me.
So, you had to wear yourself out. Now you’re becoming open to a new living out this faith in me. This is where it will start to get fun.
Awakening: Many try so hard to become godly instead of trusting they already are.
1983
“I’ve heard all about you. It just seems like a guy like you and girl like me should go out.”
She’s flirting with me! No one has flirted with me in a long, long time. I’m in Phoenix for a friend’s wedding. And this unguarded, funny, attractive woman is playing me like a cheap banjo!
Stacey Marie Pilger.
I’ve seen her before. I’ve stared at her during services at Open Door, where my high-school students brought me when I first risked to enter a church. She’s captivating. She’s beautiful.
She will have little memory of that evening. I’m only a guy she doesn’t know. What does she have to lose? She’s so full of spontaneous, unrehearsed, unfettered fun. I leave her presence undone. Whatever smitten is, I am—stumbling to my car like a smiling, drunken man.
The next day I’m at a reception for close friends and relatives of the bride and groom. I’m in the backyard talking to the groom’s grandmother. Not out of kindness, but because she’s not getting up anytime soon. She is a safe place for me to hide out among strangers.
