Take the Long Way Home

My current journey began last year as my boys and I were studying world history.  We were studying the Reformation and I wanted to spend some time with Martin Luther, so I warmed up the search engine on the old computer and started surfing.  I stumbled across the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Luther - I never would have gone there on purpose.  I had never thought about what the ‘other side’ thought of him.  I honestly thought I knew the “whole ” story, which is puzzling because I looked down on others who didn’t look at more than one side of an issue.  Why had I never applied this same test to my faith?  Why should I study both (or all) sides of political issues, historical issues, etc, but not all sides of a faith issue?  I”ll tell you why, because I thought I had.

I grew up attending 1st Presbyterian Church, but my parents believed quite differently than what was preached on Sunday.  So, as a child, I went to church on Sunday (and to that church’s day school all week long) and was taught one thing, but my father would teach me something entirely different when we got home.  I took on the attitude of one who knew something better than the average joe.  I had special knowledge of the Bible that those “sheep” at church didn’t take the time to figure out for themselves.  You see, ‘they” just listened to the preacher on Sunday and believed whatever he told them, while ‘I’ studied deeper (looking back at this somewhat objectively, I was doing the same thing - believing what someone else told me to believe).  But this ’special’ knowledge didn’t affect my heart at all (my arrogant attitude revealed what was truly inside my heart), I did not live a Christian life at all.

When children began to come along, I wanted them to have the same kind of childhood that I had had, and that included Sunday School.  So dh and I headed off for Sunday School.  Only something different happened this time.  The Holy Spirit spoke to me, broke through that arrogance and showed me that “knowledge” of God was not the same thing as being a Christian.  He showed me people who had “the joy of their salvation”, who didn’t approach God in purely an intellectual way, as I did, but were “sold out” for him.  I had dismissed these folks before as freaks, now I saw that their devotion was for real and I wanted some!  God changed my heart and I began to truly love him, not just learn about him.  I began to really listen to my preachers and read all the books I could get my hands on.  I became convinced that this “reformed faith” was the real thing, so I threw out my old beliefs (my ’special knowledge’) and forged ahead in the “truth”.  I was a firm believer in the 5 points of Calvinism, but there remained in my mind some questions from the days of my ’special knowledge’, some ideas that I couldn’t totally dismiss.  I put them in the realm of things that I don’t know for sure, but they aren’t salvific, so I can put them aside for now.

Now, I’m sure that all churches have these folks, but the reformed church has quite a few of these arrogant, condesceding know it alls.  You know who I’m talking about, right?  Well, you would have to put me in that catagory.  My arrogance wasn’t really gone, I had just replaced one theology for another.  Only this time I wasn’t alone in my arrogance, I had reinforcements!  We would look down our noses at the poor sods who believed differently then we did.  We were truly convinced that Scripture was on our side, and in the protestant church, what else do you need?  One of the groups that we felt especially sorry for were Catholics.  Those poor fools had added all kinds of requirements onto the simple faith of the apostles.  They worshipped Mary and the Saints.  The confessed their sins to a priest.  They believed that the pope was infallible (which of course means that anything he says is inerrant,right?).  The church had started out all right, I assumed, but then came Constantine in the 4th century and it was all downhill from then.  Pagan rituals became mixed in with Christian, immoral and power hungry people took over the church and turned it into “the whore of Babylon”.  Then of course came Martin Luther and John Calvin and those guys to save things.  Where would we be today without those heroes, right?  Well this leads us right back to my finding the article on Luther on the internet.

The Catholic Encyclopedia had quite a different view of Luther than I did.  I read most of the article and even clicked on links to read about other issues, but ultimately decided, oh they were just mad that he shed light on their faults.  I mean they couldn’t back up their practices with Scripture or anything, right?

Although this left some niggling questions in the back of my mind, I plodded on with my normal life.  Then one of my arrogant buddies was lamenting one day about how nobody knows about church history.  How she taught co op classes for homeschoolers and none of them (except her children of course) knew anything about what our beliefs were based on.  Those dumb parents don’t know what their churches really teach or where those beliefs come from or that anyone believes any differently than they do.  And then there are those Catholics!  They don’t know anything!  I thought, gee she was right, I hadn’t taught my children much about church history (of course I didn’t tell her that!).  So I hurried off to order a book on church history that I could use to teach the boys.  I bought it from a reputable reformed author of course!

In this book was a description of the early church.  It talked about Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Polycarp and described their martyrdom.  Although, it quoted them rarely.  It spoke of Iranaeus and Origen.  I began to wonder, how much do we know about the early church?  Can you read what these men wrote?  It talked about the defense against heresy, and about the church councils.  I began to realize how much happened before the reformation.  I know this sounds stupid, but I had never read anyone earlier than Luther and Calvin.  I considered them the “fathers of the church”, and I had never questioned this.  Now more questions were forming in the back of my mind, but like the others, these got pushed back farther and farther as ‘real life’ beckoned.  I downloaded The Ante-Nicene Church Fathers onto my Bible software, but didn’t read them.

Then I began to frequent a homeschooling forum where theological ideas were debated.  I had never participated in anything like it (I lurked for a long time, reading a lot of old threads before actually participating myself).  Because of some prompt (I don’t even remember what it was - something along the lines of the Early Church Fathers supporting a Catholic viewpoint) I started reading those Ante-Nicene Church Fathers.  I was shocked!  They did indeed support a Catholic view.  Scripture and tradition, real presense in the Eucharist, obeying the bishop as Christ, confession, talk of Mary that was very uncomfortable, the primacy of Rome, the communion of saints (and not in the way that my church explained it!), salvation through faith and good works, no assurance of salvation (ie  able to lose it), free will in choosing God.  I was stunned.  I was lost.  What was I to do with this information?  The early church didn’t look like my “reformation” church at all, it looked like the church that Martin Luther rebelled from!

On this homeschooling forum there were quite a few discussions between Catholics and Protestants (discussion is a generous word, debate is not strong enough either, attacks is a better word).  What kept striking me was that the leaders in some of these attacks on the Catholic viewpoint were obviously Reformed, like me.  But their words were cruel and cutting, their replies arrogant and condescending.  They seemed purposely to misrepresent what the Catholic ladies said and turn it around to mean something else.  And yet these Catholic ladies were gracious and kind in their own replies.  And their explanations made sense!  In fact, their arguments seemed the stronger of the two.  How could this be?  Their replies were Scriptural and well thought out, logical and reasonable.  How could this be?  They knew more about church history than I did, had read all those Early Church Fathers and some I hadn’t yet read.  How could this be?  I had read books on what Catholics believed and why those beliefs were wrong.  I had a pastor who used to be Catholic and he talked all the time about what Catholics believed and why they were wrong.  How could these things not be true?  What these ladies espoused (and they backed up with Catholic Catechism) was NOT what I had been taught Catholics believed.  How could this be?

I began to research the Catholic Church.  I went to the library and checked out the book, Crossing the Tiber by Stephen Ray.  Ray is a protestant turned Catholic.  His discovery of the Catholic faith (and the failings of protestantism) so mirrored mine that I spent most of the book with my jaw dropped open.  Then, on recomendation, I read Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic by David Currie.  Good book, although since I didn’t grow up fundamentalist it didn’t resonate quite like the other.  Then I read Rome Sweet Home by Scott and Kimberly Hahn.  Another good one.  After reading a description of Jesus in the Mass (by one of those Catholic ladies on the forum) I told my husband that I wanted to go to Mass.  He took it all in stride.  He doesn’t enjoy study and reading the way I do, and he doesn’t really enjoy listening to me talk about it either, but he listened a little bit when I told him some of what I was learning.  He said it sounded like I needed to experiment a little, and  he had no problem taking me to Mass. 

I was scared to death when we entered that church!  But I LOVED Mass.  It’s all Scripture and it’s all about Jesus!  My dh said he liked it too, he said it’s hard to fall asleep with all that standing, sitting and kneeling. 

We have been attending Mass ever since, and we have even started RCIA classes (classes you take to join the Catholic Church. They last for months, teaching you about the Church and culminating in the reception of the Eucharist and joining the Church at Easter), but have not made a definite decision what will happen at Easter.  Becoming Catholic is not like becoming Baptist (from Presbyterian).  Your reformed friends will roll their eyes at you becoming a Baptist, but they will black ball you becoming Catholic.  I will become someone’s “mission field”.  I will be treated like Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons.  Swimming the Tiber is certainly an accurate description of what reconciling with the Catholic Church is like.  It is a crossing over, a leaving everything behind decision.  It’s like Julius Ceasaer crossing the Rubicon.  A major decision with lasting consequences.  I haven’t told anyone what we are doing.  I know the reactions I’m in for, the incredulity.  I don’t know yet how my family will react.  They will not be happy for us if we make this journey.

To whom shall I go Lord, you have the words of eternal life….

     As much as I like to hear myself talk, I have resisted the “blog”.  It’s one thing to write something in a notebook that no one but me will ever have any interest in reading, it’s quite another to put it out on the internet where no one but me will ever have any interest in reading it!  Somehow posting this in public makes the assumption that someone else WILL be interested and that’s a lot of pressure.  But here I am anyway, warts and all, interest or none.

I had lunch with an old friend with whom I’m in constant contact, but don’t see very often.  She asked me how I was doing, she said she could sense that I had something on my mind.  I told her that I didn’t have anything concrete to tell her yet, but that yes, I did have something on my mind.  I assured her that when I had worked it out in my own mind, I would let her in, and that if I could put it into words now, I would.  Sorry to be so vague, I said, I’m on a spiritual journey of sorts and I don’t know where I’m going to end  up.  I don’t know what path I’m on, so I don’t know my destination.  I’m questioning a lot of things, but I don’t have any answers yet.

This is  a friend, a true friend, that I can tell anything to, because she, unlike most people, has the ability to see right through me.  Most people accept what they see on the surface, also accept what I’m willing  to divulge and make their assumptions about me in this way.  It’s the “normal” way, it’s what we all do.  It’s the way I “know” others.  But this friend has the uncanny ability to see who I am despite what she sees on the surface and despite what I tell her about myself.  Sometimes she “knows” me better than I know myself.  Maybe this is because she is a writer.  She once confided in me, that she was writing a story in which I was a character.  Or not me, exactly, but a character that was inspired by me.  She wrote down for me a quick description of her “character”:

            She is a wonderful, complex woman still trying to fit into her skin.  Some are comfortable with theirs at birth - others go through phases - but there are those who never quite fit - but you have to love her for it.

Although this was scrawled on the back of an envelope it is one of my most treasured items.  It describes me perfectly.  I don’t fit into my own skin, I’ve never fit in anywhere I’ve ever gone.  I’ve never felt completely at home or at ease anywhere in my life.  I hope that heaven will fill my inner most longings for a feeling of belonging, a feeling of comfort and ease, a complete safety that I’ve not found in this life.  Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be?  I am not at home here on this earth, I will only be home when I reach heaven. 

Through this blog I hope to work through this “spiritual journey”.  I hope to work through my questions, and my answers and find my way home.  If there are any who choose to make this journey with me then, welcome.  If there are not, that’s okay too, it is my journey after all.  A journey that I must make somewhat alone, although I have discovered many friends along the way.  I must admit upfront that this is not the *beginning* of my journey, this is more like the middle.  I apologize  up front for any confusion this causes, but my thoughts are rarely linear anyhow, so it probably wouldn’t be any easier to follow if I had been braver and began this blog at the beginning.