How I Got Saved

Episcopalians seem to be uncomfortable with the concept of being saved.  Bring it up in a Bible Study or discussion group and the leader will say something like, “Salvation doesn’t always happen that way.”  By “that way,” he or she means a dramatic conversion experience – having  visions, falling over (because you’re pushed by the Holy Spirit), speaking in tongues or even feeling compelled to go up for an altar call.

None of that has happened to me.  I have to admit a feel I little cheated.  If someone would ask me when I was saved, I’d have to say, “About the second week in June.”  This is after over ten years of church attendance.  Maybe the first few don’t count, since it was a case of “Just go and sit there.  It can’t hurt and it might help.”  Over the years I began to do more emotionally than “just sit there.”  Of course, after about a month, I was serving coffee at Coffee Hour and taking money at the flea market.   But it did not feel sincere.  I still didn’t know what I believed or if I believed, but I knew that I wanted to.  (I also wanted a trip to Disney World.)

I decided to do everything I would do if I believed.  I was afraid that might make me a hypocrite, but as I said to God, “I’m trying here.”  I was waiting for it to click in.  I wondered if it ever would.

Then, I realized that it had.  I was having an internet argument with various atheists (along with some other Christians) and one not only told me that I was passive-aggressive, sick, twisted, naïve, uneducated and dishonest but that I gave people of faith a bad name.  The only thing that bothered me was being called passive-aggressive.  Seriously!  As I typed my answers, I realized that I actually, truly believed what I was saying.

I’ve been a lot happier since then.

Sometimes, I think, getting saved is realizing that you are.