No one ever really gave me the lay of the land. My adolescent ears only heard the most rudimentary summary of the Christian faith.
“You don’t want to go to hell do you?”
Well … no.
“You do want to go to heaven don’t you?”
Well… yes.
“Then you need to get baptized.” That was the gist of most of the sermons I heard during my one-year introduction to Christianity as I emerged from an unchurched upbringing and sat self-consciously on a church pew.
Avoid hell.
Secure heaven.
Get baptized.
So I did.
But I had no idea what to do next. I didn’t even know there was a next. I’d been taught, at least implicitly, that Christianity was a destination. What I didn’t know is that it is instead an expedition. I thought that on April 1, 1984, as I rose from the waters of baptism, my journey had ended. What I didn’t realize was that my journey had just started.
The Christian faith has a number of cartographers, people who have specialized in mapping out our spiritual pilgrimage. They’ve identified the turning points, the milestones, the obstacles and the stages. They’ve charted the geography, noting every valley, mountain and plain. They’ve been the prophetic voice reminding us of the movement, progress and development called for on the way.
And we’ve never needed this more than we do right now. In this season when a virus has upended normal and almost every plan we’ve made has been unmade, we need clear maps charting a way forward. And in this time when (white, American) Christianity has become tragically aligned with capitalism rather than compassion, with personal freedom rather than public good, with political idolatry and bureaucracy rather than honesty and constancy, with power and privilege rather than faith, hope and love, we need an accurate atlas to find the way we’ve so woefully lost.
Join me in this mini-series as we explore what the best and brightest, ancient and contemporary, share about the voyage of our faith.
