Hugo Schwyzer

I’m still mulling the whole race, sex, and Full Frontal Feminism controversy. More on that soon.

On a different note, my friend “Clive” and I were talking a couple of weeks ago about a mutual buddy of ours, “Keith.” I met Clive and Keith at my old gym a decade ago; we’re all about the same age and we were “lifting partners” and “spinning pals” for several years. Clive and Keith are both evangelicals, both graduates of the same small prestigious Christian liberal-arts college. In different ways, they both played pivotal roles in my return to Christ in 1998. In my early days of sobriety and conversion, I found it difficult to talk easily about what was happening in my life. Working out together was the shared activity that made our masculine intimacy easier, and in different ways, Clive and Keith were able to do some vital “witness work” to bring me home to Jesus once again.

As it turns out, Clive and Keith aren’t speaking much these days. According to Clive, Keith (a very successful self-made entrepeneur) has turned his back on a lot of old friends. Keith has a hard time, apparently, hearing constructive criticism without getting outraged and defensive. The three of us belong to a Christian subculture in which loving confrontation and an insistence on mutual accountability are vital — and yet Keith has grown increasingly certain that he doesn’t need that kind of gentle challenge. Keith’s marriage is increasingly stormy, his relationship with his four children is strained, and his hard-driving business practices have alienated old and new acquaintances alike. We’re worried about him, and Clive and I spent a bit of time chatting about ways to “get through” to him.

As we talked, I thought of the lyrics of “Amazing Grace”, perhaps the best-known and best-loved hymn in the English-speaking world. The line “I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see” came into my head. And the more I thought about those words — in connection to my own life and to my friend Keith’s — the more troubled I grew. It’s a beautiful song, of course. But theologically and psychologically, it’s seriously misleading.

Evangelicals don’t agree about everything, but we tend to agree that a “born-again” experience of some sort is essential. Even when raised in a Christian home, even when raised in a church that practices infant baptism, evangelicals generally believe that each individual must make his or her own “decision for Christ.” For my friends Clive and Keith, that decision happened in their adolescence. For me, that decision happened at 31. The problem, of course, is that the rhetoric of evangelical Christianity (summed up in the line from “Amazing Grace”) is that conversion takes us from blindness to sight. All of a sudden, perhaps simply as the result of the heartfelt recitation of the formula of salvation, we are “found” and we can “see.”

The danger, of course, is the famous and nearly universal hubris of the new convert. “New” Christians, particulary those in evangelical subculture, embrace the “instant transformation” view of conversion. Rather than seeing conversion as a long, slow, often meandering journey, most young evangelicals (even educated ones) tend to see “coming to Christ” as being like the flipping on of a switch. And once we “see”, then it’s easy to become harshly judgmental of those whom we regard as “not yet in the light”. We talk about “living in the truth”, and when you walk around using phrases like that to describe your theological worldview, the chances that you’re going to come across as infuriatingly smug grow close to certain. It’s also easy for converts to believe that we are ourselves are in no further need of discipling and accountability; we’re “walking with Jesus” now, and He gives us all the accountability we need.

I take my faith very seriously. My relationship with Christ is the Great Fact of my life. Everything that I have is secondary to it, even my marriage. But I have to guard against doing what my friend Keith (who helped bring me to Christ) is doing: using my faith as a justification for brushing off much-needed intervention in my life. My faith is the rock on which I stand, but I don’t stand on it alone. My faith is a shield against despair, but it is not a shield against the call to accountability. The fact that I “once was lost, but now am found” doesn’t mean that I always know where the hell I am. The fact that I once was completely blind doesn’t mean I now see everything the way it truly is. Even with Christ in my life, I still see through a very dark and smudged window — and my spiritual growth is contingent not just upon my faith, but on my continual willingess to have others point out to me those things I don’t yet see.

Perhaps this does have something to do with the whole darned Full Frontal Feminism discussion. A lot of folks think I’ve missed the boat on this one. I’m not convinced that the criticisms aimed my way are justified, though I think some may be valid. What I am certain of is that I am “looking through a glass darkly”, and that in all aspects of my life (spiritual, relational, intellectual, pedagogical) I need continued help. When others are angry at me, or are imploring me to rethink a prized position, it’s my job to listen to what they’re saying and reflect. That doesn’t mean I need to take every criticism to heart. But it does mean that I need to mull what’s said to me, even in anger. There’s a lot I don’t get, and some things I’ll probably never get, but I can always — with effort and discernment — “get” a new insight that I didn’t have before.

For me, “being lost” and then “found” doesn’t mean I’m wiser, more perceptive, or more spiritual than anyone else. My “blindness” prior to my conversion refers less to the absence of sight than to my false conviction that I could actually see the world as it really was. Paradoxically, my conversion experience didn’t relieve me of my blindness — it made me aware, for the first time, of just how blind I was. I’m still going through life, tapping a cane and bumping into walls. But at least I know I need some guidance now.

I once was lost, and I still am, but at least I’ve got a compass now to navigate my way through this very big, very beautiful, very exasperating forest.