The Religion Barrier

I smile upon reading a story called Salvation about a boy being pushed to claim having been saved in front of his church. It wasn’t too terribly long ago that I had a similar situation going on in my life. Since I was born I had heard about getting saved. I heard the many stories of how it felt like a huge weight was lifted off your shoulders. It was the most perfect moment of existence and all the bad was gone. Now you can truly see the light.

I had gone to church for years all by myself. I walked alone, up a hill and a right at the stop sign. All the way down to the church I called home from the time I was five years old. I had several bibles that were given to me. I was alone in my religious teaching as my mother slept in the other room the whole time I was gone. When I was nine, my foster family brought me to another year as a vacation bible school student. This was nothing new to me but what I was going to experience was.

I was asked at this special time if I were saved. This was the moment I had been hearing about all my life. I answered truthfully with a simple ‘no’. That was the short of the process, the discussions, the readings, the decision. I was ready. I was told I was ready. It was definitely time. I wanted to be saved! Maybe if I were saved my life would change. This load of unhappiness, the troubled feelings and my situation would be lifted. I’d be a different person and my life would never be the same. I got to it. I said the required verse and put my heart and soul into it. I wanted it!

When it was over, I opened my eyes hoping for the same experience everyone else had felt. That special something was bound to come to me, I was sure. I would be SAVED! I waited. I smiled at the sweet, curly headed older lady holding my hand. I waited. I smiled over to the white haired preacher man holding my other hand. I waited. I felt uncomfortable, I must have done something wrong. I’ve always had a hard time admitting to such so, out of not wanting to disappoint these well intentioned people, I sounded genuine and said I felt the infamous ‘it’. Oh yeah, it happened and I felt it.

Who knows? Maybe I would feel it later and my excitement was the problem. My nerves were crowding my real feelings. I waited. As the day wore on to the next, I knew it wasn’t coming. It wasn’t coming that night and it wasn’t coming when I got my certificate of authenticity saying ‘it’ happened. Not even a year later did it happen when I got saved, again. I even went as far as to getting baptized to ‘seal the deal’. ‘It’ never came. I could never understand why nothing happened to me but it did to everyone else.

Why wasn’t I happy? Why didn’t I experience what everyone else had and my troubles been lifted? I look back and wonder were my troubles too much? Are the people who have this miraculous experience too simple minded and have nothing to bare as it is, making the transition a simple one? Did I expect too much? The power of words didn’t help me when saying that special verse. Is that all getting saved is? The power of words in action.

What if that is all it is and that’s why people feel something because the words worked and they weren’t reading into it the way I was. They just let it do what it does. If all it really was was the power of words, and there wasn’t really anything special, what would the Christian religion be like? What would people think if they thought that was what it was and it isn’t Jesus coming into you. But more, the perception of him coming into your heart. Thinking it and visualizing it was what made the feeling happen, not the actual action. That is a thought that more than likely wouldn’t get a second chance to most people, especially those in need of open minds.