Door

About a week ago, my buddy and I went to have coffee to catch up on life. As we were finding a seat, we ran into a mutual friend who was having a conversation with a guy in his twenties. They invited us to sit down and join the conversation, and so we agreed. I'm so glad we did, because the younger guy had lots of questions to ask. Spiritual questions. And I love getting to give my opinions on spiritual issues. 

It wasn't long into the conversation before I realized that this guy was dealing with the same spiritual struggles as I was dealing with his age, and really all the way up to about four years ago.

Underneath the surface of his questions, I sensed that he had this terrifying fear of hell because he was picking apart the same verses of the Bible that I would spend hours interrogating. And as he read all these verses, I couldn't help but think about how fear had been the motivator of most of my spiritual actions. From serving the homeless to serving the church, the fear of God's punishment drove me to do some really good things. 

I sympathized with the guy. I understood what he was feeling. I understood how many nights he was probably going to sleep pondering and wrestling and worrying about what would happen when he dies. 

And there are so many people just like him, right now, who are doing really good things in the world out of a desperate attempt to please an angry God who has plans to send them to hell if they don't keep up the righteous living. On the outside, they appear sold out, all in, and some of the most loving people in the world, but on the inside they're dying. They're falling apart. They're wondering how long they can sustain this way of life. 

And so, as this guy shared his story, I shared with him my current concepts of God, and heaven, and hell, and Jesus, and all those good words in the Christian vocabulary. I also shared how I arrived to those concepts. 

The one question he asked that stuck out from the others was, How do I get to heaven?

And I knew, and sensed, and felt in my bones that he was asking it with a sincere desire to get to heaven. Except, he had never thought of the possibility of heaven on earth. Much like me, he'd never been taught the art form of questioning. 

My response was: You've gotta suspend your belief systems. If you don't, your heaven and hell will always be some place that happens after you die. If I could describe what heaven is to me, I'd say it's always on the other side of whatever my greatest current fear is. If my greatest fear is a door, heaven is what happens as a result of walking through it. Hell is what happens when I get too paralyzed to open the door, much less walk through it. So, what's your greatest fear right now?

Now, I understand that some people use fear as a healthy motivator. But that was not this kid's story, and neither was it mine. Fear would drive me to drink, and the fear of God's punishment would drive me to do as many good things as I could do in 24 hours in order to make up for the drinking. It was my vicious cycle. 

And the fear of God and hell were two roads among many that would lead me to the bottle. 

I'm gonna throw another side note in here that may offend some people, but I'm honestly only trying to share my story. I once used to take all of the Bible literally. So, the parts about God smiting cities and children and families and killing off humanity with a flood and turning Sodom and Gomorrah into a pile of salt - not only were those real events but they saturated my views of God. I couldn't imagine God without imagining violence and curses and thunder and wrath. I couldn't imagine that the Bible was written by people, and they too - just like me - looked at the world through the lens of whatever box they'd created for their God.

This is a real thing. The way we read really does affect the way we believe and live. And the Bible doesn't hold a monopoly on this sort of thing. This can happen through any sacred text. 

And so, my God always demanded more. More sacrifice. More money. More love. More compassion. More altruism, until I had nothing left but my shaky belief systems and a God I was afraid of. 

And this did not help my drinking problem one bit. It only enhanced it. It gave me another reason to drown myself in alcohol. 

The cycle kept going and seemed like it would never end. Even after I took my last drink, the spiritual crisis in my life was furiously raging. I didn't have any way to cope with my fear of God except to hold on and wait for something to change. 

And that brings me to my next point. 

Change. 

When my concept of God changed, it wasn't based on anything I'd done on my part. It happened to me. I was a recipient of something beautiful, mysterious, and breath-giving. I'd done a whole lot to get me to the point of receiving it, but had done nothing to create it. It was a gift, much like my sobriety. 

I was desperate enough, had enough pain, and had enough misery to finally be opened up to a better view of God. My intellectual stamina was done. Every part of me was done. I was spiritually and emotionally bankrupt. 

I had to hit a spiritual bottom. I had to get so tired of shoveling that all I could do was receive and stop trying to fix everything. It was at this point of desperation that God changed me. It's like God extracted all the preconceived, damaging, toxic ideas that had been in my head for so long and replaced them all with ideas of a God who was forever loving, compassionate, merciful, and forgiving. 

And it changed everything.

It changed how I looked at the world. It changed how I looked at myself. It changed how I looked at altruism. It changed how I looked at work. It changed how I looked at sex. It changed how I looked at problems.

It literally changed everything, and I haven't been the same since.

And now, whenever I read those violent stories in the Bible, I don't automatically get afraid of God. I read them as I would any other book, but get deep spiritual principles out of it that can be used to enhance my spiritual life. And I find that the people who wrote those stories were probably just as afraid of God as I was because it saturated the way they wrote.

In closing, I don't know if that guy will ever read this, but I'd like to let him know:

Friend, keep digging because eventually you're gonna hit Texas gumbo and that stuff's really hard to dig through with a shovel. But, you'll probably get a backhoe. And eventually the backhoe's not gonna be powerful enough. And then, you may get one of those huge augers. But eventually, that huge auger's not gonna be powerful enough. And then, you may get the world's strongest pile driver. But eventually, that pile driver's not gonna be powerful enough. Eventually, there's not gonna be a tool in this world strong enough to go any deeper. So, keep digging until you can't dig anymore. Don't stop. Chances are, if you stop too soon, when you still have energy left, you're still gonna be in control. Once you've finally run out of energy, and power, and determination, and motivation, you'll be ready to receive the change that God has for you. You'll be ready to have your current ideas transformed into new, life-giving ideas that will forever alter the course of your existence and it'll be absolutely mind-blowing.