Had I not been in such a lowly state of mind, I might not have found God again. Sometimes, success and competence can stand in the way of faith. Faith tends to meet people in their sense of need and want. Deficiency can be open to faith. But its opposite, sufficiency, is often a stranger to faith. Convicted criminals living in confinement are more likely to be persons of faith than are top professors in elite universities (where I work). One could say of me at age 19 that I was in a prison of my own making. Thus, it was with a sense of emptiness that I turned back to God, the merciful One who’d spared my mother’s life nineteen years prior.
In those first months of renewed faith, I was on a high. I’d come home to a spiritual outlook I’d grown up with, but the difference now was that theological definitions were coming into focus. No longer, as before, did I hold to a vague notion of God as a benevolent force uniting all the world’s religions. Rather, God was present specifically in the person of Christ and had come down from above to visit his creation.
One goal of this visit was to share with anyone who would listen what their true purpose was to be – that is, what they were made for. In pop culture, this is referred to as finding one’s “true destiny,” but it means something a bit different with God, more like how to know him, how to walk with him, how to be his friend. God is always speaking, and it takes a certain posture, a certain attitude of the heart, to hear his voice. Jesus said, “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.”
I desperately wanted to hear God and know his will for my life. But I had no idea what direction to take. Something in music? Business? I was clueless. What I recognized early on, however, was that in more general terms, my first calling was simply to serve God. It seemed a tall order for the professional-grade egoist I’d become. Where would I find the strength for such change? It wasn’t in me. Yet the calling was there, and I proceeded with it rather clumsily. I was awkward and wobbly at first, but gradually found my footing on the path of Christ, which is sometimes referred to as a “faith-walk.” Such a journey meant giving up my life’s number one goal of looking out for number one. In the early stages, when I managed to turn attention to God and others, I was surprised at how fulfilling it was. This feeling of satisfaction was, for me, a novel experience, as though a fresh wind had blown through my body.
People around me noticed a difference. A friend told me years later that the transformation she’d seen in me, going from a stand-offish, aloof “droid” to an open, somewhat caring soul, had inspired her return to faith. I hadn’t realized she’d had this experience, and I cried when she told me the story.
Less positively, one evening in the basement of our Marshall home, I talked openly to Dad about my conversion to Christ. He was not impressed. I had mistakenly assumed that he, too, should find God as I had. In response, he asked the pointed question of how, at age 19, I had become so wise, and why I thought he needed converting. Wasn’t he the one who’d first planted the suggestion of faith in me? Wasn’t I being quite judgmental?
Dad was not a man to be trifled with. I had crossed a line that I regretted. But he showed his true colors one night, not long after the conversation just mentioned, when my friend Karen visited our house. Before heading to bed, Dad had cautioned that any late-evening visitors should park on the street rather than in the driveway, due to the heavy snow coming down. A bit later, Karen arrived and pulled directly into the driveway, which I allowed despite my father’s warning.
A couple of hours later, around midnight, Karen said her farewell, slogged out the door to her vehicle, started the engine, and promptly stalled in white snowpack that rose above the wheel wells. She rocked the car back and forth, to no avail. I shoveled a short strip behind each tire. More rocking ensued, but she was stuck deep. Then the death march for me began: back into the house, off with the boots, climb the stairs to the parents’ bedroom with stomach churning, knock on the door, and wait for wrath to appear. Dad came to the door. He’d been asleep. I told him what I’d done – or failed to do. I apologized. He said something very close to this quotation: “Son, you disobeyed me, and I’m disappointed. Don’t do that again. But let’s make the best of this and get your friend on her way.” He got dressed, and the two of us, shoveling and pushing together, managed to liberate Karen from the forbidden zone.
Back indoors, I thanked my father, and he went back to bed. He never mentioned the incident again. I realized I still had a ways to go in the wisdom department. And I took his actions and words as a picture of God’s grace: honest about human wrongdoing and yet, somehow, forgiving. Rick, you messed up. And . . . you’re off the hook. Your slate is wiped clean. Jesus once said to a woman accused of immorality that he would not condemn her, but he also didn’t ignore what she’d done. Dismissing her, he said, “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
