by Trish Ryan
But here God was, suggesting exactly that: that if I’d take Jesus seriously, He could help me—here, and now. And in that moment, it seemed (oddly) like a spectacular idea—good, right, and entirely possible. So despite the odd message of some of His earthly sales reps, I agreed to God’s proposal.
I had no idea what taking Jesus seriously might entail, although I had a few guesses: I suspected that a fluffy bouffant hairdo loomed in my future, and I’d probably have to give up my lifelong dream of dancing in a Janet Jackson video. I’d have to cancel my subscription to the New Yorker, purchase all nineteen volumes of the Left Behind series, and attach an aluminum fish to my car. (I didn’t have a car, but I thought that sticking the fish to my purse or the back pocket of my jeans might suffice. Would that be inappropriate? I wondered briefly.) I might even be overtaken by an irresistible compulsion to vote for Pat Robertson in the next presidential election. And my live-in, doesn’t-want-to-get-married boyfriend Mark? Well, he’d probably have to go.
But what if it works? I thought, curiosity overcoming my dismay. The bottom line was, I needed something. And if this voice could come through where every other promise had failed, it would be worth it, even the big hair.
“I’ll do anything you ask, God,” I said a few moments later. “I’ll take Jesus seriously. Just please, please make my life better.”
You realize, don’t you, God replied, this means no more sex until you get married? I am the only person I know whose salvation story begins with a direct request to stop fornicating.
OVER THE NEXT few weeks, I was surprisingly calm as I calculated the cost of accepting this offer. Strangely, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to tell Mark how God had told me that I needed to change the course of my life, and while I could refuse, it was worth it to say yes—even if my yes to God meant no to Mark, effective immediately. Secretly, I was certain that faced with the prospect of losing me, Mark would beg me to marry him. This was God’s way of prompting me to stop the free milk supply, I reasoned, so that Mark would buy the cow. So I wasn’t surprised when Mark acquiesced to my announcement that our relationship would no longer be sexual. I was flummoxed, however, by his utter refusal to consider marriage.
“You knew this about me when we started dating,” he reminded me, obviously frustrated. “You’re the one who prompted our seven thousand ‘why we should never marry’ conversations. Why are you changing everything now?”
“Because I changed my mind. I do want to get married,” I said, hating how pathetic it sounded. “I think it’s important—you know, legally.”
“Legally?” Mark asked. “You mean like joint checking accounts and stuff? Is that what this is about?”
“No. Yes. Sort of. I don’t know. There are benefits to being married,” I insisted. “Like, if I’m ever in a coma, you know I don’t want them doing weird things to me to keep me alive. But if you’re not my husband, they won’t listen to you!” This wasn’t quite how I’d expected this conversation to go.
“You want to marry me so I can pull the plug if you get run over by a bus?” he asked, incredulous. “They have forms for that kind of thing; it’s not a reason to get married.”
He was right. This was crazy; my arguments were preposterous. And yet. Something inside me was awake now, insisting that marriage mattered, even if I couldn’t explain why. On the surface, I knew Mark was right—there were no tangible, provable benefits of marriage; we could keep on as we were, merging finances and signing documents about how we’d like things handled in the event of a catastrophe. But that wasn’t enough; I wanted more. And since that day in Buffalo, it seemed like that more would come through Jesus, if I could just figure out what that meant.
ONE MORNING AFTER that conversation, I turned on the television, looking for one of those decorating shows where people hijack rooms in their neighbor’s houses and paint them shades like eggplant and cerulean that make the rest of the house look dingy and plain. Surfing through the channels, I paused at the sight of a woman in a bright pink dress, standing behind a lectern in the middle of a huge stage.
“Now let me tell you this,” she said. “If your circumstances today are hopeless, if you don’t know what to do with your life or how things can ever get any better, Jesus is the answer you’ve been looking for.”
Mark wandered in and I flipped to CNN, pretending to be immersed in the market predictions for the day. But when he left, I flipped back, enthralled by the idea that this woman might know something about taking Jesus seriously.
Looking out at the audience, she asked, “Do you have everything the Bible says you can have?” It had never occurred to me that the Bible said I could have anything; I thought it was more a list of what I couldn’t have. The truth was, for all my spiritual searching, I’d never really looked at the Bible. I’d been told it was a patriarchal, misogynistic book, written by early church leaders to repress women. Accordingly, I’d never bothered to read it for myself. (Contempt prior to investigation, I believe that’s called.) But suddenly, I couldn’t stop watching this woman who talked about the book like it was the key to life itself. Her name was Joyce Meyer. She was, I learned later, a big deal in Christian circles, traveling around the world with her husband and family, talking to crowds of thousands. “You need to decide that whatever the very best is that God has to give to anybody, you’re going to have it!” she declared. “Press into Jesus—that’s where the miracles are!” Joyce Meyer was the first person I ever heard use the Bible like a self-help book. Her version of self-help was different, though. There were standards to following Jesus, negative things we’d have to walk away from (“I had to give up my belief that I had the right to be bitter, or the right to nag my husband,” she shared.) in order to get God’s very best. Her show was like a half-hour infomercial for Jesus, touting his features and benefits and making outlandish claims about how he’d helped other satisfied Bible customers. All that was missing was a 1-800 number to call to have my six-month supply of Jesus shipped straight to my front door.
I liked what she said in her broadcast, or at least I thought I did; I wasn’t altogether sure what to make of it. At first, her message seemed pretty straightforward, as she told us, “I get along so much better with my husband since I loosened up and decided to enjoy my marriage.” But then she attributed this shift to incomprehensible sources, such as “Jesus’ finished work on the Cross,” and being “set free from the sins of bitterness and unforgiveness.” Despite my various run-ins with Christians over the years, I still had no idea what to make of statements like this, or why Christians focused so determinedly on Jesus’ murder when really, the only “good news” I could find in the story was that three days later the guy came back to life. I wasn’t sure bitterness and unforgiveness were sins, per se, although they were frowned upon in spiritual circles. “Transcend,” we were told. “Embrace your oneness with your brother.” But Joyce wasn’t talking about transcendence. Whatever it was Jesus did for her on that Cross, it changed her, somehow. It made her into a more easygoing, happier person. That seemed like a miracle. She’s kind of like Jayme, I noticed. Except that her life is better.
Could this be true? I wondered. It wasn’t so much that I doubted her, but rather that I couldn’t fathom how, in twelve years of spiritual searching, I had never heard anyone else suggest the Bible as a viable guide for daily life. If what Joyce said was real, wouldn’t someone else have picked up on it by now?
I dug out a copy of the Bible I’d received once from a friend who’d heard I was “spiritual” and flipped through its whisper-thin pages, looking for evidence that Joyce was changing things or taking them out of context to come up with this preposterous idea that Jesus could do the things she claimed: make marriages work, stave off depression, give people the power to overcome past failure and change their lives, just to name a few. I was stunned by Joyce’s compelling stories of how Jesus helped her recover from terrible things from her past (including, I noted, a bad first marriage). The
y encouraged me that I might not have made up this whole “God promised me a husband” thing. If Joyce was telling the truth, God had saved her from a disastrous heap of a life and then given her a wonderful husband, children, and a purpose for living.
That’s what got me. When I looked at Joyce, and the other “Christians” I saw on television (in my mind, “Christians” were always lumped together with quotation marks, convinced as I was of their collective disingenuousness), it was hard to deny that they—much more than the spirituality/self-help crowd I’d frequented—had the type of relationships I wanted. Most of them were married—and enthusiastically committed to staying that way. They didn’t have “open” wedding vows laden with language about “journeying together until we’re called our separate ways,” but rather talked about lifelong covenants. They didn’t assume marriage was a place where God partners you with someone unlikely in order to shave off your sharp edges, but rather a place where God chooses your partner for you, then knits you together and makes you one. According to the Bible, they said, I was created to be part of something bigger than myself, for true love with an awesome man and a marriage that lasted for life. Commitment was assumed, and measures taken to help the men and women making these vows live up to them. Joyce Meyer was walking proof that God could make good on such a promise.
I wanted what those “Christians” had, but I didn’t want to tell anybody; I didn’t want to be forced into something I didn’t believe in. I wanted to edge up on Jesus, to see what he might have to say.
Edging up on Jesus was kind of like what happens when you’re thinking about buying a new car: suddenly, that car is everywhere. You see it in every color, on every highway, in every commercial break. When I considered the possibility that I might be in the market for a new spiritual leader, Jesus popped up everywhere, introducing himself from a safe distance that allowed me to weigh my options, rather than prodding me into an impulse buy.
I secretly purchased more Christian CDs and listened to them alone in my room. I liked the lyrics about how much is possible in life and how much God loves me. They didn’t make me feel hopeless and pathetic the way the songs on the radio did. But I skipped the songs about Jesus’ blood or his “wonderful” death on the Cross. I didn’t want to be covered in anybody’s blood, and I didn’t feel like God required it of me. I sang along happily with the others, blissfully unaware that most of the words came straight from the Bible. (Hearing the Bible quoted at a later point, I thought it was plagiarizing Christian recording artist Stephen Curtis Chapman.)
As I explored—watching Joyce, listening to my new CDs, circling Jesus to see what he was about—I uncovered incredible information no one else ever mentioned. No one told me that the Bible had way more to say about life and love and romance and happiness than just “keep your clothes on until after the wedding.” No one told me about Jesus’ offer of redemption for all my mistakes, or his promise to turn the ashes of my life into something beautiful, or how he could give me wisdom and confidence to make better choices. Amazed, I circled closer and closer to this Jesus, drawn by his teaching, his healing, his hope. Then one day, I felt like he said, Trish, I have the keys to the relationship and the life you dream of. What is impossible for you is possible for me . . . and I don’t need you to move the furniture or chart the stars. I wasn’t sure what he meant, or how I was supposed to respond.
Some days, at the end of her show, Joyce offered those of us watching at home the chance to accept Jesus’ gift of salvation. She prayed a prayer, inviting us to pray along—confessing that she was a sinner, and that she believed Jesus’ death on the Cross set her free. She claimed the healing power of his blood, and asked him to rule her life. This was where she lost me. Her words about sin and blood didn’t apply to me, or to anyone else I knew; we were all doing the best we could, trying to be good people, picking ourselves up and starting over every time we fell. The last thing we needed was some negative perspective about how we were all hopeless sinners. I could accept, in a metaphysical sort of way, that the answer to my problems might be Jesus, but it didn’t make sense that such help required the blood from a two thousand-year-old murder. That sounded more like a spell than a prayer, so I opted out.
Over the next few weeks I didn’t do much with what Joyce said, but I thought about it a lot. Even that small step seemed to make a difference, like Jesus was loosening the hard-packed soil around my brain, pulling out the weedy half-truths that had grown there for so long. Gradually, in a hundred different subtle ways, I changed. I felt better—calmer, more hopeful. Even Mark commented on how much nicer I was after I had my “time with Joyce.” Which helped, given our questionable relationship status, suspended between my insistence that the next time I had sex would be with my husband, and Mark’s firm conviction that he didn’t want that job.
Through all of this—listening to Christian music, watching Christian television—it somehow never occurred to me that God might want me to become a Christian. Despite their enviable perspective on marriage, “Christians” still struck me as a somewhat peculiar and oppressed people, with bad outfits, dull sex lives, and a strange preoccupation with Jesus’ brutal death. There seemed to be a few normal ones—the singers in Avalon, Joyce. Still, I was pretty sure that becoming a Christian just wasn’t something that happened here in the Northeast.
And yet I wondered about them—“the Christians.” What did they do all day? What were their lives like? I went to the bookstore and pored over Christian books the way anthropologists study aboriginal tribes, searching for clues about this strange people group and how its members functioned. I knew some basics: they read the Bible every day and didn’t have much sex. They didn’t smoke, or drink, or (if the movie Footloose was to be believed) dance. It sounded like a rocking good time. But in the midst of all this not doing, I wondered, what, exactly, did they do? I wanted to understand why they were so afraid of everything—alcohol, astrology, secular music, Hillary Clinton. I wasn’t sure how they built lives around all the things they weren’t doing—if they got up each day and didn’t drink, didn’t check their horoscope, didn’t listen to the latest Jay-Z song or admire the new swimsuit line from Tommy Hilfiger, what did they do? Pray?
Chapter Twelve
Welcome to Wine Country
Over brunch one morning, my friend Julie, a recent graduate of Harvard Divinity School and a spiritual-explorer type like me, told me about a church she’d heard about called the Vineyard.
“They’re Christian,” she said, her blue eyes wide with awe. “You know, really Christian—no sex, confess your sins—the whole bit. But they have hundreds of people there every week meeting in a school gym. I don’t know how they do it.”
Propelled by a surge of curiosity, I decided to find out. I quivered at the prospect of seeing live Christians right here in Cambridge; it was like learning that the circus had come to town. Julie and I had often talked about starting our own church (All of the God, none of the guilt would be our slogan). We were curious—and concerned—that this upstart church might capture all the spiritually inclined Cantabrigians. “I hear they bribe people with bagels,” she said. “That’s not playing fair.” I decided to stop by the next Sunday to see if carbohydrates alone could connect me to Jesus.
I ARRIVED AT the Vineyard fifteen minutes before the second service, eager to discover how God’s message of guilt and judgment was playing in our liberal city. I was surprised to see so many normal-looking people streaming into the elementary school. There were college students in cargo pants and T-shirts, jeans-clad married couples wrestling kids into strollers, people of every demographic, all gathering on Sunday morning to sit in a gym and learn about the Bible. I was baffled. I knew this sort of thing happened in Texas, but Cambridge?
I made my way through the throng, noting the piles of bagels and carafes of steaming coffee filling long tables in the lobby. People of every shape, size, and description hugged one another, laughed, and tossed around stories about what they’d done the
night before. It took me a full five minutes of bobbing and weaving to make my way through the crowd, but I finally made it to the gym doorway, where a smiling girl in jeans and a sweater handed me a program.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, averting my eyes. I was afraid that if I made direct contact with anyone, they’d identify me as a nonbeliever—for all I knew, Christians had spiritual X-ray vision and could sense these things—and force me to give my life to Jesus right there on the spot.
I edged into the gym, pausing at the door to take it in. I saw hundreds of pink padded chairs facing a stage set up under the basketball net, with a full rock band—two keyboardists, a cute guy on bass, and even a funky guy hammering away on some bongo drums—warming up a song that sounded like a tune by Dave Matthews. My feet throbbed in my high heels as I stood there, the percussion vibrating through my packed toes. I’d tried to dress like a churchgoing Christian that morning, in a longish skirt and loose sweater; I wanted to blend in. In retrospect, though, I might as well have worn a blinking sign around my neck, announcing Never Been Here Before! I’m New!
I took a seat near the foul line and glanced through the program. There was a long list of pastors, instructions on where to bring your kids. A blue index card with room for my name and address, with boxes I could check off if this was my first visit or I wanted more information about Jesus. A few minutes later the service began, and the band started playing for real. People poured into the gym, clapping their hands or and throwing their arms in the air. It was like being at a rock concert at eleven-thirty in the morning. The lyrics flashed on huge screens on either side of the stage as the lead singer sang: “Here, O Lord, is the place where I belong. Now is the time for me to find my place in your design. Here, O Lord, is an opening of your grace. Now is the time to step inside and follow—I follow you—into the place of greater power, into a time of abundant praise, into the place where all you’ve placed in me reveals your face—here and now.”
