From the Philippine Collegian: CONFESSION OF A BELIEVER

[ctan]

I am more or less familiar with the drill of salvation. God's approach nowadays is more subdued—there are no manna falling from the sky, neither are there hailstones chasing me down the brick curved path. There are just people scouting for lost souls, and when you become a target, you will be pursued relentlessly; for your own good, of course. Through a prayer, you would ask for God' grace in order to be saved. Once you're saved, the walk of faith begins: you build a relationship with God, and you stick with people with the same goal to ensure that you will not be deterred from God's path. I have gone through this process many times before. That fact should have given me assurance of a spot in heaven and eternal life, but my spirit remains restless.

I have something to confess: I have stopped going to church, despite all my years of Christian indoctrination. I spent my childhood memorizing Bible verses and competing in Bible quiz bees. I grew up attending Sunday School, and graduated from a Christian elementary school. All these impressed upon me an image of Jesus as a torchbearer of justice and righteousness, yet a gentle lover of the people. In my young life, I wanted to become a disciple of Jesus and emulate His ways.

My family embraces the Protestant faith, the Christian denomination that broke away from the Roman Catholic church after the Reformation movement. The early Protestants wanted to return to the Bible, which they claimed was distorted by the traditions and doctrines set up the Vatican. As a child, I was only vaguely aware of the differences of the two. I knew there were no saints in our churches, while the Catholics have one for almost every occasion. Unlike the Catholics, we did not memorize our prayers. We partook of the Lord's supper only once in a month, while the Catholics had their last supper every mass. Living in a predominantly Catholic society, I thought that I knew my faith better than most did.

It seemed logical that I was magnetized to Christian groups in college. In my freshman year, I and a couple of friends joined one of the university's evangelical Christian organizations. These Christian groups sought out freshmen in dormitories, and were pretty persistent. It was hard to resist an organization that promised spiritual nourishment, especially at a time when we were weighing new ideas and radical beliefs. Was I ready to throw away my Christian beliefs, and gamble on the chance that the Bible might not be holy, as my philosophy professor suggested? At first, I wasn't.

The struggle to keep the faith led on. While I easily trusted the doctrines in my youth, new perspectives and a deeper understanding of religion began creeping into my system. The organization I joined was not strictly the same as the church I grew up in. There were the familiar rituals: the cell meetings, the praise and worship, and the alone time with God, where one reads the Bible and contemplates on the Word. Certain practices, however, further strained whatever adherence I had to my so-called religious beliefs.

In most Christian orgs, believers are encouraged to focus on their personal relationship with God. God is considered a personal god, and members are conditioned to think of God in their own convenient ways: as a father, a friend, a teacher, or whatever they need. God becomes everybody's own run-to guy. This concept disturbed me, for I always thought that if God did exist, He existed for a purpose beyond taking care of me, or any other person in the world. What was the point of being omnipotent and omniscient if God was only here to console me when my grades dropped? God can manage my personal life anytime He wants, but confining Him to my own personal conflicts was belittling His power and existence.

As time went, I became more liberal with the faith. Religion became an object of inquiry, and was scrutinized vis-à-vis different dimensions: history, politics, culture and economy. I was slowly moving from the abstractions of the evangelical faith to a material understanding of the Christian faith. Jesus is not just the Son of God; He was a leader for the oppressed Jews.

God's purpose is unveiled in liberation theology as the attainment of social justice. Liberation theology is a term coined by Gustavo Gutierrez in reference to a movement within Latin American churches in mid-20th century. During that time, Catholic bishops claimed that the teachings of Jesus espouse revolutionary changes in a society where the poor get poorer, much to the chagrin of the Vatican. The bishops wanted to retool Christianity as a weapon to inspire drastic societal change. In this sense, the faith becomes more collective rather than personal. While God may satisfy your personal needs, God surely has bigger plans for you, in relation to others and to society.

This is not to say, of course, that Christian orgs only care about the self and ignore society altogether—after all, it can't. Perhaps what is lacking in their theology is the conscious motivation of the individual and the church towards changing the material conditions of his environment—something Jesus clearly did, as recorded by the Bible.

My material rereading of the Bible, cannot decode all the miracles and mysteries of the Bible. Did Jesus really rise from the dead? Did Moses really tear the sea in half? I don't know, and most of the time, I don't care. I have always thought of my precarious faith as a necessary dogma in life, much like how I have always believed that the world could get better, that the world—including me—could be saved.

SOURCE: http://www.philippinecollegian.org/confession-of-a-believer/