Terry Paul Choyce
March 19, 2006, Brunswick Street United Church
One of the big challenges of my life has been my compulsion to question everything. Most people are fairly good at accepting things. When they were children, say 6 years old, and they were told to go to bed at 8:00, they went. I had to know why I had to go to bed, and would I have to go to bed at this time on Friday. And would I have to go to bed at 8 when I was 12? And when my little brother Rusty was 6, would he have to go to bed at 8? And what were my parents doing when we were in bed? And Dad better not eat up all the cake when I was asleep because I wanted some tomorrow. I was not an easy child.
When I was 5, I clearly remember stomping into my parents bedroom one morning and announcing there was no Santa Claus. I said I had thought about it all night and had figured out that Santa Claus could not possibly visit every house in the world in one night. I also knew that Santa Claus was too fat to fit down our chimney. Besides, I'd seen my dad secure wire screening to the top of our chimney to prevent sparks from landing in the trees. And I knew people in apartment buildings didn't even have chimneys, so therefore, there was no Santa Claus. My parents applauded my deductive reasoning ability, but asked me to keep this discovery to myself, and not to tell my sister and brother.
I am afraid I have questioned everything about Christianity too. There is a lot that makes no sense to me. Quite frankly, there is a whole lot in the Old Testament that I refuse to believe in at all. I believe in a loving God, and many times Jehovah was not nice. He was often judgmental, vindictive, and arrogant. So between the ages of 17 and 28 I stopped going to church. I felt that if I could not believe everything in the Bible, I would have nothing to do with structured religion .
But once I had children, I changed. I felt I needed the sense of community that came with being a member of a church. I needed a place of peace and calm to retreat to once a week. And I needed God in my life. I could not do this alone any more. I needed the strength and wisdom of God to get me through my daily struggles and crises. I decided that sometimes a person just has to operate on faith, not fact. Sometimes questions cause too much confusion.
Today, I am in a constant fog about many of my beliefs. I do not know what to believe, what to question, what to discard from my own personal theology.
Frankly, sometimes it is very hard for me to stand up here and read some of the parts of the Bible I do not agree with, and to talk about some of the Biblical concepts that I have problems with. Today's reading from Isaiah (9:13-21) is a perfect example. I am very sensitive to the fact that many of you have beliefs that are quite fundamental and traditional, and I do not want you to lose them. It is important that you gain comfort from what you have always thought was true. But others of you have questioning minds like mine, and you have been dissatisfied with some of the answers you have found in the Bible, or in the theology of the United Church. Some of you are open to new ways of viewing Christianity.
As most of you know, Rev. David Hart has written a brave new book called Christianity: A New Look at Ancient Wisdom. David is also a questioner, and he has come up with a few unique answers. And he tackled one of the subjects I have had the most difficulty with my whole life. I do not want to upset any of you, but I honestly have a difficult time believing in a God who would sacrifice his son for the sins of humanity, and in particular, for my sins. So I was thrilled to read the following part of David's book: (see p. 56-57)
If Jesus did not die for our sins, why did he die? In my class with Rev. Ross Bartlett last week we discussed this a bit. I had an epiphany that makes sense to me. Most of us believe in the Trunity, of God being the Creator, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus was God incarnate, who came to Earth to experience what it really felt like to be a human being. He chose to grow up in a poor family and to spend the first 30 years of his life living what was probably a fairly normal life. Then it was time to make his divinity and his powers known. For three years he preached, and he gathered followers and he healed people. But to truly understand the depths of human pain and suffering, he allowed himself to be betrayed by his friends, tortured, humiliated, and then killed in one of the most gruesome ways ever devised by cruel, ignorant people. God found out just how tough and horrible it can be to be human, so that he could understand us, and love us better.
So Jesus, in a sense, did sacrifice himself for me, but not for my sins. He sacrificed himself for the full and compassionate understanding of what it means to be a human being. And because of that, I think God loves us even more than he did in the times of the Old Testament. By questioning and experiencing, God is one of us. Through Jesus Christ he became human. He loved, he ate, slept, played, worshipped, taught, and he died a terrible death. God truly knows what it is like to be a man.
The crucifixion story is now more meaningful for me. God, through Jesus, sacrificed himself, not to save me from my sins, but to understand me and to truly love me, and to love you.
©Terry Paul Choyce. Used with permission from the author.
