Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Personal Lord and Savior? My husband, Steve, was around 7 years old when the congregation at Sunny Glen Southern Baptist Church urged him to inquire within. He was an unusually easy going kid so he offered no resistance and stepped right up and got himself saved.
Mother Bernard never quite put it that directly. In first grade she whipped out a full blown theatrical version of what would be our very own personal “hell” if we didn’t come to know not just God’s Son, Jesus, we also had to be on board with a much more complicated maze of characters and beliefs. The Catholic Church is old and full of rich history, rituals and lots of idols, saints and angels. Our dogma goes back almost two millennia and very little has gone by the wayside. It’s a mountain of religion that is not ingested with anything as concise as accepting my Lord and Savior. Catholic kids of the ‘Golden Age’ of the 50’s and 60’s were subjected to a minimum of a half hour of indoctrination daily. It was a lot to slog through. And it didn’t end when you got to high school – 4 more years…
There was no crying, UNCLE! Or, OK OK I DO accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. And be done with it… Back then I didn’t know there was such an easy out. How cool is that – Jesus saves YOU…
Turns out it’s not really a one and done for my Southern Baptist brothers and sisters. Like the rest of us baptized heathens we were all in a constant and endless search for our REAL savior. Age depending it could be a trip to Six Flags, hanging with the ‘in’ girls, my biggest crush invites me to the Homecoming Dance, or exploring magical lands in Mexico. Ha! I had lots of ‘saviors’. They could change with the season or in and out of my weekly crisis.
College came and went. Life got scary for a while. Real scary. I never thought to reach for a Savior. Jesus made a comeback in my life but not to save me but maybe more for comfort? Then came my search in earnest. I had to make sure my world never got that dark and lost again. The winding road in front of me was a time full of ‘happy’ goals and an immense desire to find THE truth – the guarantee that there was a way out permanently from pain and suffering. All kinds of saviors came and went over the years. Material pleasures usually worked well but could be followed by unexplained anxiety or sadness… I employed the most common distractions – movies, music, eating, drinking, traveling. Everything proved to be a temporary fix.
It was only a matter of time before I was moving into what was coming to be known as a Spiritual Path. Ah Ha, this had to be the answer. My true savior had arrived. Over time this recipe for happiness boiled down to: knowing what I was feeling – I mean – really Really REALLY knowing what I was feeling in each and every moment. Exhausting but helpful. Then came WORD that salvation was to be had from within not out there. Everybody thought that sounded terrific. It was very exciting. Of course, this is what all the great Wisdom Traditions, including Christianity, had been saying for thousands of years but it was new info for us seekers.
It was like deja vu. My dad’s words were coming back to me. “You can’t love anybody until you love yourself” he had said. Hmm. How to do that? Lots of folks on the path began to talk like my dad – everybody wanted to love themselves. I hit a wall. Was I my own Savior? Loving myself sounded like making ME the center of the Universe. Could that be a good thing? I found that changing Dad’s words a little made it more true for me. I can’t experience you as pure love until I experience myself as pure love.
Saviors are on the decline – any and all kinds of saviors… lots of gurus have come and gone, teachers, counselors, priests and ministers are respected but not revered. Materialism and physical distractions are being seen for the limited stuff that they are – creating an insatiable hunger for more. So, I am left to my own conscience and choices. And yet, it turns out my personality is no more the source of my freedom from the bad and the ugly than is any book or online course that promises to liberate my soul. In the end, salvation for me most probably lies beyond the confines of my tiny self. And I suspect that what feels like a finite Judy is part of something I have yet to imagine…
SAVE YOUR (self?) = MERGE
*BTW in the past four years Self-Love vs. narcissism have often been confused. Fine Line Difference. Proceed with Caution…
**Self Care vs. Self Indulgence. Same Fine Line…
My World My Words 