The Quiet Christian

Yes, I’m talking about myself. I’m not saying I’m quiet – I know that’s not true! But I am quiet about my Christianity. Oh, I don’t keep it a secret. People who know me are aware that I belong to the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod; that I attend regularly, nearly every Sunday; that I sing in the choir and serve on the Board of Stewardship; that every Wednesday evening for four years I drove Young’un to confirmation class. But I don’t ever push my religion on other people. I don’t try to convert anyone, or criticize others for what they do or don’t believe.

In this way I’m disobeying my church, because we’re actually supposed to evangelize. I just look at it as one of the ways I’m not perfect. One of the sins that I can lay at the foot of the cross, and not have to pay. I’m the world’s worst salesman, I absolutely hate trying to sell anything: the years when my previous husband and I were in Amway at his insistence were among the worst of my life.

There is one way in which I evangelize, though, and that is if someone asks. Over the years, a few people have asked. As a matter of fact, it happened pretty frequently about twelve or thirteen years ago, when Firstborn was a troubled junior-high student and my mother was a widow with Parkinson’s disease, and I worked at a job I could just barely stand. My co-workers might ask me “What did you do last night?” or “How was your weekend?”, and with a wry little smile I’d deliver a one- or two-liner about finding my son another way to school because he was kicked off the bus, or going to a meeting in which all his teachers unloaded on me, or taking Mom to the emergency room because she was convinced her kidneys had shut down. Now mind you, this wasn’t an occasional thing; a couple times a month, or once a week – this was virtually every day. The people I worked with saw that I lived like this day after day, week in and week out, and somehow managed to come to work every day, to put up with the bullshit there. And many times I was asked, “How do you do it? How do you keep going?” Then I’d tell them.

Because my religion is for me. I don’t go to church for God; He doesn’t get anything out of my being there. But I get something out of it. Now mine is not a feel-good religion by any means; I don’t get pumped up by going to services. I get reminded of my sins, of my humanity; of what a great thing my Redeemer did for me by taking all that and more upon Himself. No, the benefit I get from going to church is a sense of proportion and peace. God is in His place, and I’m in mine. “Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)

Why am I telling you this? Well, you may have noticed that I haven’t been posting lately. The truth is that I’ve been deeply depressed, apparently more than my daily dose of Zoloft could offset, and I’m not very good at hiding it. The whole situation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent levee breaks and flooding caused me to think, really think, about what our country and our government have come to… and that was enough to send me spiraling down into despair. I couldn’t even cry. All I could do was research obsessively, read blogs and websites and newspaper editorials, gorge myself on how bad it is and how powerless I am to do anything about it.

Yesterday I snapped out of it. It was as if something that had been jamming the signal suddenly cleared, and I could easily differentiate what I had power over from what I didn’t. With that came energy to do what is in my power, and serenity to accept that which is not. That serenity is my religion’s gift to me, and it’s why I’m in church most Sunday mornings. Serenity, acceptance – I can’t live without them; I can’t be sane without them. But with them I can be still, and know that God is God.