why i am a Christian.

I fell in love when I was seventeen years old. It was not at first sight. In fact it had been a long, slow immersion into the true state. I did not even realize the process, the years it took were as ordinary as years come. But in the year of being seventeen I was ready to give in to love.
I did not fall in love with the shadow, as is my custom, I fell in love with the voice from the forest on fire, with the trumpet herald, the dove dropping from the sky to crown one head, the dragon-slayer, the lion, the lamb. The greatest story and storyteller had me eager to enter the tale; in short I fell in love with God.
It is important to clarify that this does not mean I had a strong emotional response to God. Regrettably I am much too bland for that. What I really mean is that in this year I decided to obey God. This is what is meant in scripture by loving God. And this was my attempt in surrendering my indifference and fear for light and grace.
There is a history to this. Through my move from Anglican to celestial to Anglican to Pentecostal systems of worship I did not need the cosmological or ontological arguments for or against deity. Like a true African I took it for granted that there was indeed someone much bigger than me. Years of filling out the word “Christian” on forms made it clear to me that I owed some allegiance to Christ and that three could indeed be one. But I did these things because I was told I must believe or go to hell. What does a child know of hell but that you did not want to go there? There was no concept of a loving God and so I could not love Him. He was frankly a bit of a killjoy and I just said the prayers and tried not to upset him.
All this does not explain why I am a Christian but why I was not until that year.
I became one in the year where my life came apart and then came back together. It was not altruistic or deep. I did it for survival. It made sense and my Pentecostal background told me this was the way to get things from God. And I needed many, many things. I made deals with God and I intended to break my part of this great bargain. He did not. So I found my life led more and more by Him and my flaws became more important. I became different. Somehow less self conscious but more selfish, strangely quieter but falsely louder. I became inconsistent because I finally made a stand but I was so full of falling. I had taken in the bread of life but I was hungrier. Things did not get better inside, they seemed to when it was novel. Once that wore I was in an even worse hole. I knew myself and I knew what was wrong. And I knew I could not fix myself.
My life has come apart recently. In a good way. I have seen promise fade and lovers leave and books unsold and habits reappear. I have had this curious experience, curious enough, where I could hear myself talk and know I was lying. I have found out the shallow beneath the shallow is just me, posing as wise in foolish clothes. A beggar looking for a palace, a drunken man in the gutter ringing for a butler in the snow.
Christianity is the only thing I know that is for the down and out. For me. Looking at us Christians you would not think so. We want to be centre spread in gloss and top of the food chain. We want to be the serpent that swallowed the dove that pecked the lamb to death. There is more to us than turning the other cheek. We are the great re-visionists of our own sacred history. Disciples lived in beach houses, Jesus wore a Versace robe, give to caeser till you can overthrow him, nine coins better than one and the poor you have with you because somebody did not follow the laws of prosperity. All lies, all excuses for our own demise.
Am I painting a grim picture? I do not mean to. I want to show a real one. For it is at ground zero, with that pesky mustard seed, that the Christ-thing begins to grow. When you come to the bottom of the matter, the place of mirrors without pretense and face yourself whole, this is where Christ comes. He is no stranger to being naked, to shame, to pain, to alienation, to being lost.
And this is why I am a Christian. In the end I am looking for people to relate to, somewhere to belong. A place where I do not have to be together but I am getting better merely by being there. I find it in love with God and I cannot relate to God outside the reality of Christ. It is not a placebo for the soul; it will not make you feel good overnight. It is true, though. As true as I have ever known. There is no room for shadows. Slowly the light will get you. I had this letter from an old girlfriend that always moved me to tears. I thought it was the great missing that got me all Maxwell but it was not. It was the way she laid herself bare in words of such beauty. I realize Christianity is always like that. The promise of it is always there, the carte blanche to be bare, to show your true colours and then much more, to see those colours change in slow, painful but true ways that resound into the boundless world to come.
This is why I am a Christian.