By: Katy-Anne Wilson
It is fast approaching one year since I left fundamentalism, and while some of the memories hurt, I also see something beautiful emerging from the hurt. It was about this time last year that I became disillusioned and unsettled about many things with fundamentalism. The only people I talked to about it were God and the lady who at the time was my best friend. This year, on March 3rd, will make four years that I have been a Christian. It's been one amazing journey. It was about this time four years ago that I began to become unsettled about salvation. I went to my pastor and he told me to read the book of John, and to read it over and over until I figured out if I was saved or not. He said that the book of John was written for those who don't believe to believe, so it was a good place to start. I was praying and asking God to show me (people have told me God doesn't hear the prayers of those who aren't Christians, and until I see some solid Biblical evidence I tend to disagree with that theory).
I realized that while I walked around in self-righteousness snottily judging everybody else as not as spiritual and not right with God and how much better I was because of my standards and "convictions" and how much doctrine and apologetics I knew, that, when it came down to it, I knew nothing. When I came to the place a few months later, 10 days before my 23rd birthday, where I accepted Jesus, I was humiliated, and now I am thankful for that. I was humiliated because I had acted like I had it all together, like I knew so much more about the Bible than other people, and then realized that I knew nothing. When I got saved, it took me a while to tell people, because I was embarrassed. I told my pastor that I was embarrassed but that I did want everyone to know and that I did want to be baptized because I knew that the first two times didn't count. He smiled and said he'd take care of it. He did, by baptizing me Easter Sunday when he knew that almost everyone would be there plus visitors to boot. Looking back, it must have been insanely hilarious to those driving past at the time of my baptism. I was baptized in a cattle trough in a parking lot on a busy street, and I was very obviously pregnant.
I needed to get to a place of humiliation because my main sin in my life at that time was pride. I was proud at how much knowledge I thought I had, at how much I thought I was living better than everybody else. Unless you've been there, you probably can't imagine how that humiliation feels. I realized my good works could not earn me favor with God, for, as much as I said otherwise, I truly did believe in some part that my works were what saved me. I realized also that praying a pretty sounding little prayer did not save me. What I realized when I became a Christian that day was that it is JESUS who saves. I had been reading the gospel of John like my pastor told me to (actually, I devoured it and read it twice in one day) and I realized that formulas like pretty prayers don't save, works don't save, that it is Jesus and ONLY Jesus who saves. Now, when I got saved I did pray, but it wasn't that prayer that saved me. It was Jesus who saved me. And that was the first time I truly understood the difference. I had never, in almost 23 years of growing up with Christianity, realized that salvation was about Jesus and not about what I did. I'd never understood what the Bible meant when it said salvation was not earned by my works, until that point. I'd only just grasped that concept. That took 23 years of growing up in Christian culture, church every Sunday, Bible reading, prayer, etc. Twenty-three years of religion before I found the savior.
It wasn't long before I got caught up in self-righteousness again and lost sight of all that I had in Christ. Worship was empty and meaningless. But, about this time last year, God started revealing some things to me, and I started to see...
