Fairytale Christianity

Chapter One I’m a Christian – (So What?) When you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior (and by the way – what the heck does than even mean? We will discuss that in a bit), it is a huge step. Even if it means nothing else, it means that you are now on your way to heaven. It means you have escaped the horrors of an eternity away from God. If there were no other reason to accept the free gift of salvation – escaping hell would be enough. The truth of the matter though is that there are other benefits to Christianity, and that is the very first thing we are going to discuss. Parachutes When I joined the Army, I wanted to jump out of airplanes. In order to do this I had to go to Army jump school. Jump school is three weeks long. Week one is called ground week. Most of that week is spent running, doing chin ups, push ups and being harassed. Most folks that quit, quit in the first week. There are certain things that the Army hammers into you starting with that first week. One of them is the fact that the parachute will open. The Jumpmaster repeats that phrase to the students over and over. He wants them to have enough faith in the parachute so that when the time comes for them to jump – they will jump. The second week of jump school is called tower week. During tower week we jumped out of towers and slid down a long zip line cable that we were hooked to. It was kind of fun, and all during tower week the instructors kept reassuring us that our parachutes were state of the art, and that when we finally did jump from a plane, the parachute would open. The third week was jump week. Every student was looking forward to finally getting to jump out of an airplane. We got our ‘chutes on and boarded the plane. That was when I started getting afraid. I seriously began to ask myself what in the world I had been thinking when I signed up. I thought I was afraid when the plane took off, but it turns out I did not yet know what afraid meant. When the jumpmaster opened the door of that airplane, I was trying my best to figure out a way to explain to them that there had been a horrible mistake, and that I was supposed to be in clerk school. When it came time to actually step out the door I was number seven in line to jump. I’ll never forget walking forward towards the door (very quickly) and seeing the heads in front of me disappear - one at a time. All of a sudden all of them were gone and it was my turn. I stepped out the door, gave a couple of terrified grunts, and lo and behold – the parachute opened…just like the jumpmaster said that it would. Over the years I made lots of jumps. As time went on I learned that I could trust that parachute. I did not have to rely on what someone else told me; I had my own experience to rely on. As my experience grew, so did my faith in the equipment. As time went on and I had several hundred jumps, the fear was replaced by the knowledge that I was going to be OK on these jumps, and that I needed to concentrate on the principles of jumping if I wanted to survive without injury. I violated those principles early on in jumping. I had just gotten to the 1st Ranger Battalion as a Private First Class. I was participating in my first (real) night jump. The Jumpmaster advised us that it was dark, and that we would not be able to see the ground. He said that since we could not judge our altitude we should remain in our landing position all of the time. (Landing position consists of feet and knees together, toes pointed, legs slightly bent, etc.) Since I am a Zumwalt I figured that I knew more than the jumpmaster - with all of his experience. I paid for thinking that way, as a matter of fact, I still do. I was about 120 feet in the air (or so I thought), when I hit the ground. Since I thought that I was still 120 feet up, I hit the ground without being in the correct landing position. As a result I sprained my ankle really bad. It swelled up, and turned black on both sides. That injury occurred because I thought I knew more than the Jumpmaster and did not do what he said to do. I did not follow the principles of jumping. As I jumped over the years I hit hard lots of times. It is not at all unusual for a rucksack in Special Forces to weigh over a hundred pounds. Many times the lightest rucksack on a team will be around 110 pounds. By the time you load ammunition, radios, batteries, food, water, and weapons, a rucksack can easily weigh 130 pounds. As a result, when you jump from the plane you come down very fast. Sometimes you hit harder than others. Sometimes it is because the air is thin in the mountains, or the wind is blowing so hard. Sometimes you don’t know why; you just hit hard. I’ve had several times when I’ve hit so hard that I had to lay there a minute to take stock and see if I was OK. In fact, it has taken a minute or two to stop seeing stars. No matter how hard I hit, I was never once tempted to say, “Man, that is the last time I use a parachute when I jump”. I always knew that no matter how hard I hit, thank God I had a parachute. By now you’re probably asking what in the world this has to do with salvation. Since I’m getting tired of typing I am really hoping I can tie this together. When we first consider the possibility of becoming a Christian we (normally) don’t have a whole lot of faith. How could we? We have no experience. All we know is that someone has told us about their experience and assured us that “the ‘chute will open”. That gave us just enough faith to step through that door of Christianity. After being Christians for a while we get our own experience and begin to realize that the parachute will open every single time we need it. We begin to develop a faith that is based on our own experience. Sometimes we get hurt because we start to rely on what we know instead of what God teaches, through His Word. We decide that rather than do what God has told us to do in His instructions, we’ll just look around and make our own decisions – because we know more than the “Jumpmaster”. Sometimes that attitude causes our twisted ankles. The longer we live the more weight we carry that makes it easy to get hurt. We have spouses, bills, children, age, etc. As a result of this added weight, sometimes we hit hard – real hard. Some folks in the church I attend have been through some horrendous times. Some are going through hard times right now. I’ve heard their testimonies and I’ve seen their pain. I’ve never heard one of them say, “Man, that is the last time I wear the parachute of God’s love when I go through something like this”. Anyone who has been through a crisis and felt God’s loving arms wrapped around them knows what I mean. Does this mean that hard times will not ever strike? No it does not. There are teachers who falsely say that all you have to do is to tell God what you want, send in a donation, and all of your health and financial problems will disappear. That is not true. As a matter of fact that is part of what I call Fairy Tale Christianity. There are however, some things that we can be totally assured of. There are some things that God has promised to us. These are the things that we learn from experience that we can depend on. These are the things that I want to discuss in this book. I know that Christians may sometimes have doubts about their own salvation. It is not unusual for Christians to ask themselves, “Am I really saved?” How can we be certain that we are saved? How can we KNOW that we have done what God requires us to do in order to go to heaven. Let’s take a look.