There are few things as unfashionable these days as believing in something, namely in a higher power. So, around two years ago (give or take a few months), I quit believing. It was an experience not unlike the moment I realized that Santa Claus didn’t exist, or the time I saw my parents planting Easter eggs around the house. There was no mythical bunny that crapped out treat-filled eggs, and denouncing the existence of God was my way of saying goodbye to childhood fairy tales for good. I was finished with it. I’d grown out of it. There was no mystery anymore. I was always in church, always with ‘righteous’ people, always so very close to where I thought God would want me. The truth is, I had never felt further from him.
Jesus was always something I accepted in my head but not in my heart. Not in my guts. Not in my bones. I’d always been led to believe that true faith was believing in a set of rules that ignorant, old Southern white men in suits decided on at their weekly meetings at Bob Evans. There was something decidedly phony about my Christian friends at the time. They all talked the same. They all dressed the same. They were all socially maladjusted and liked to go camping. They also enjoyed scowling when I cussed, and shaking their heads in silent disagreement when I brought up something that didn’t directly pertain to Sunday’s sermon. I realized that I wasn’t experiencing real love from these people. They hated liberals. They hated homosexuals. They hated anything they didn’t understand. In all honesty, I think the thing that drove me away from following Christ was the group of people in my life supposedly following Him.
Naturally, I started hanging out with new people. Exciting people. People that totally dug indie films, whiskey, and dirty jokes. These were the very people I was always told were absolutely joyless, loveless, hopeless, and wicked. But they loved me. They loved me with more conviction and ferociousness than I’d ever been loved by a group of friends before. We would drink, smoke, listen to music, and more importantly listen to one another. They weren’t afraid to ask hard questions about life or the Bible. Most of them were atheists. They were all broken people, unafraid to admit it. They were real. Authentic.
The more time I spent in their company, the more I began to join these friends in their drunken merriment. I spent nights in shady places with shady people doing even shadier things. There were girls, alcoholic beverages and loud tunes blaring. All the elements of a cautionary episode of “Saved By the Bell” were there, and I was doing my best drunk Zach Morris imitation. I felt so far removed from that fairly-tale world I used to know. I was growing up. I didn’t need God. I had people who really loved me, which is more than I can say for ‘his’ people in the Church. And then it hit me in the unlikeliest of places.
I distinctly remember driving home in a drunken stupor at the end of the summer. My mouth tasted like rubbing alcohol, and my head felt pumped full of chemicals. It was almost daybreak when I lazily pulled into my driveway and stumbled out of my truck. It was the first chilly morning since summer started, and something about the air told me that it was time to change. It felt as though God himself was telling me that September was on its way, and rain began to drizzle. The rain was warm and hugged me. I took a step outside myself for a moment, and looked at my life the way the Goodyear Blimp looks down on a sporting event. Here I was, 18 years old, wasting time, standing drunk at dawn with rain spitting on me. I thought for a moment about God, about Jesus. My old friends would have me believe that I was the most unlovable thing on earth at that moment. Most Christians would have you believe that, because they simply can’t grasp just how forgiving God can be.
Right then, I felt something come over me. I went inside to brew a pot of coffee. I wandered toward the living room and noticed my old Bible sitting there, rescued from piles of long-forgotten things in my room by my mother. I decided to pick it up for the first time in nearly two years, with nobody around. There were no Christians to judge me, no wild friends to incriminate me. It was just the bold words on the page and me. I took the coffee and my stranger Bible out into the rain and began to read. The first thing I flipped to was Matthew.
If you read the Bible at all, you’ll undoubtedly see that Jesus loves hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors. In fact, if he were around today (sandals, robes, and all) I can’t imagine Jesus hanging out with my old church friends. No, I think he’d have been there with my drunken friends who loved each other, listening to “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” with us, nodding his head as we questioned the mysteries of the galaxy. I’d never felt more like a tax collector than on that porch. I felt so unclean but somehow unafraid to admit it. So I simply admitted I was sinful. We all are. Pat Robertson is, Billy Graham is and George Bush is.
I wept in the rain that morning, and not just a tear cry. I cried a snot cry. And I fell in love with Jesus Christ then and there. In a sense, a fairy tale had finally come true for me. There was no wizard behind a curtain. There was just a big sky raining on me and a longing in my heart to go out and love others the way my old friends never had.
God doesn’t work the way you think he would. He’s not a Republican. He’s not a Democrat. He doesn’t hate homosexuals. He doesn’t demand perfection.
He shows authentic love through drunken social outcasts. He steals your heart when you’re drunk in the rain. He’s always closest to you when you feel the furthest from Him. Keep fighting the good fight, friends.

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