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Read Part I of My Reformation Story HERE.
My small circle of close friends were beginning to scatter a bit. Some exploring the Catholic church, some attending an Episcopal church others going to a different Presbyterian church. I was left alone to sort all this out.
I just never could step out far enough to go Episcopal and being Catholic had never been an option for me. I was weary with no answers just more questions.
There had to be one truth, one way to interpret God’s Word, everyone couldn’t be right and that was maddening! For every verse, every denomination had it’s interpretation, all different. Who was teaching me the right way to understand God’s Word? I had to be convinced from Scripture.
Everyone used the same words, said the same things, but all had slightly different meanings. Not one denomination I studied would deny that we are saved “by grace through faith” but in such subtle ways all seemed to undermined this with their particular caveats. I could follow the rational of the Calvinist, things made sense to my human reason but was I to trust that? I appreciated the enthusiasm of the Baptist but what I had learned there left me despairing, wondering why I couldn’t shake the sins that plagued me.
In both of these churches I was left having to come back to myself for assurance that I was saved. Did I trust Jesus enough? Did I mean it when I prayed for Him to come into my heart? Did I really have faith?!
I knew there had to be more to Baptism and Communion. Scripture did say some pretty certain things about them, but surely I couldn’t just take these verses as they were written could I? Each church explained them so differently. I’d intellectualized them and I’d dismissed them.
I was confused as a termite in a wooden yo yo, as my Baptist pastor would have said. And then more confusion came when my close friends decided to try the Lutheran church.
At least by this point I was familiar with Martin Luther so the whole Lutheran thing wasn’t nearly as foreign as it had once been. Some of my friends had started attending these classes, learning the Lutheran doctrines through this thing called a Catechism. Then they began to join this church, one at a time I was losing them to Lutheranism!
I knew I had to look into what it was they were all finding here. I started straddling the fence between these Lutherans and the Presbyterians. Reading this and that from each. I went to the Lutheran Sunday services from time to time while still considering myself part of the Presbyterian church.
If you’re interested in the differences between Calvinism (Presbyterians) and Lutheranism you can listen to THIS.
I started one of those Catechism classes, then I stopped. Started then stopped. Every time we got to Baptism I’d run for the hills. I read “Baptism does now save you.” I was shown this in scripture: I Peter 3:21, Rom. 6:4, Mark 16:16, Titus 3:5–8. But there was no way I could confess that Baptism saved someone, especially a baby.
Every time we got to Communion and the pastor showed me where Christ says His body and blood were there in the bread and wine: Matt 26:26-28, I Corinthians 11:2-29. I just couldn’t see it.
I was going to the Lutheran church more consistently but waffling. I sat in the pew while my friends went up for Communion. I wondered what the big deal was, why I couldn’t just have that meal too. We all believed Jesus saved.
I became a little angry, I was tired of searching for answers and was about to throw in the towel. But the pastor at that church wouldn’t let me.
I remember meeting with him. He knew my story, he knew my questions, he knew my struggle and he told me one thing. Stop reading everybody on all of this. Take some time to read only what the Lutheran church teaches and if after a while you still can’t say that it is the true teaching, then go somewhere else.
I accepted his challenge and my mind was relieved to only have one teaching to consider for once! Was the Lutheran teaching sound and correct? Would I be convinced FROM SCRIPTURE that this was where I needed to be?
My dear girlfriend described to me what it had been like for her. She and I grew up together. We had been on this journey side by side. She had “gone Lutheran” before me and she told me:
“It was like a light came on.”
Her hurdles were the same as mine had been, then suddenly they weren’t hurdles for her any more. I envied that.
On round 5 of the 10 week Catechism class at the Lutheran church something that still amazes me happened. It all started with a boy.
A boy I had at various times in my past been convinced I would marry. A young man who had gone off to a Baptist college in Dallas and who appreciated a good discussion on theology. He had watched as my friend and I had walked this long path to understanding. He’d been there many times with other friends of ours while we argued things out. He was never unsure of what he believed, but he was patient with all of our uncertainty.
One thing that scared me back then was that if I did become a Lutheran, he and I would most likely never have a future together. Realistically, statistically in Austin Tx, if I did become a Lutheran I would most likely never have a future with any man! I would be greatly narrowing my scope of potential husbands by becoming Lutheran. I knew that risk and if that was what had to happen I believed I was ready for it.
But, I’ll never forget sitting with him in Starbucks one night, pouring over a big fat red Lutheran Dogmatics book shaking my head over infant baptism and asking, how in the world can a BABY HAVE FAITH? They don’t know anything! How can they believe? How can baptism give a baby faith as the Lutherans (and most of Christendom) teach? How can Baptism give anyone faith?!
My friend looked at me and I forget his exact words but as clear as day I remember the meaning of them. He said something almost like this; “If you think about it, infant baptism is a really good picture of faith. If we can’t have faith apart from God, what better place to see that than with a helpless baby being baptized.”
And suddenly a light came on.
To Be Continued.
