Why I'm (still) a Christian

On April 2nd, 1999, I was listening to Fresh Air when Terry Gross asked her guest, Huston Smith, what he would say to young people who practice a kind of cafeteria-style religion, in which they take a little of this and a little of that. Huston Smith, an expert in world religions and author of a seminal work on the subject, said, "If you want to find water, stand in one place and dig as deep as you can." At the time, it was exactly what I needed to prompt me to attend seminary.

When I entered Earlham School of Religion in the fall of 1999, I made God a deal: I would stand in one place for three years, and dig as deep as I could. If I found water in Christianity during those three years, then I would stay. If I didn't, then I would move on to another religion, and start digging again. The happy news is that I found a deep well of living water.

Up to that point, I had a shallow understanding of Jesus and of the Church that came after him. Jesus was at best fire insurance to keep me out of hell, the baby born on Christmas who died on the cross for my sins and rose from the dead on Easter. I hadn't spent much time with the Jesus who lived between Christmas and Easter and who taught us to love our enemies. He was a refreshing and challenging teacher. Sixteen years later, I still struggle to live up to the things he taught. The Law of Love is easy to grasp, but it's hard to master. Just seeking to understand and live into the Sermon on the Mount will be a lifelong practice -- ten thousand hours is not nearly enough time for this task.

Before seminary, I had also spent little time in the broad and deep world of Christian theology, tradition, and history. As many of us have, I grew up in a small branch of Christianity that liked to think of itself as the home for True Believers. My father is a theologian in the Wesleyan Church, and I had dug deep into that tradition, but I had not plumbed the depths of Christianity. I still haven't, and that's part of why I'm still digging. There's so much more to learn about Christianity, I honestly don't have time to become an expert in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam too. I could spend the rest of my life on Christianity -- and probably will -- and never learn everything there is to know about it.

In the age of Google, it's easy to think that having a little bit of knowledge about everything is good enough. We're excellent at trivia, because we can always ask Siri and she can look it up on IMDB and Wikipedia. But that's not enough for me. I need a religious practice that gives me water to drink every day. In Christianity, I've tapped into a vast aquifer, and I'm staying here for as long as it continues to bring me life.