Everybody's got a story. Here's mine...
My first memory of Jesus is from a sketch of Jesus on the cross in a gaudy pink children's book about Christianity... probably distributed by the Jehovah's Witnesses. I remember staring at that picture, printed in equally gaudy green ink on cheap rough paper and thinking, "Why is that man on the cross?" Somehow even then I understood that he was there for me.
When I met him for the first time, it was in a different book, under a different name. His name in this book was Aslan. Again he was dying, this time on a cold stone table. And again, I understood it was for me. I gave my life to Christ back then, as a talking lion from a children's story - the son of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea.
Shortly afterward, I found my way to a church in the area. I remember weeping uncontrollably the day I committed my life to the son of God under his commonly recognized name. In that sense, C.S. Lewis led me to Jesus. I think, though, that Aslan may always be his special name to me. I was baptized on Easter Sunday of my 8th grade year.
I was lonely as a kid. I didn't have many friends. I didn't fit in. My relationship with my father was - we'll call it strained. What I really wanted more than anything was to feel loved and accepted. I remember a vision (if you want to call it that) that I had early in my Christian life of Jesus holding out his hands to embrace me as a father would a son. It took me 20 years to really accept that vision of Jesus, and I spent much of that time running from an image of God that was nothing like reality. During those years of high school and college I investigated a number of different religions and experienced different types of spirituality... enough to know that none of them made any more sense than Christianity.
When I was 22 years old and preparing to graduate from college, God set me on a journey to understand his heart. That journey has taken me through the lands of legalism, fundamentalism, evangelicalism, liberalism, just about every -ism you can imagine. After 10+ years of "professional" ministry and six years of study across two different seminaries, I have at least as many questions as I have answers, but I have come to know the truth of this passage of scripture:
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:16-19)
Jesus showed us who God is. He showed us God's heart. His heart is selfless love. It's difficult, I think, for us to grasp what that means, but Christ revealed to us what the selfless heart of God does. It loves prostitutes and criminals, prodigals and crazies, lepers, loons and lugnuts. It even finds the grace to keep company with those of us who labor under the delusion that we have it all together. It redeems and restores and renews. It loves unconditionally.
Jesus came to invite us into that love. He taught that we first have to accept it. Trust it. Then we can begin to live it out for and with those around us. Then we can begin to see a glimmer of the kingdom he promised. Not completely. Not yet. But we can catch a glimpse. Just there. Just over the horizon. And it's beautiful. It's so beautiful you feel like your heart will either overflow or burst. All you want is to see more. And you want others to see it. You think, maybe, if everyone could just get a good look at it, maybe it would change things right here and right now. If everyone could just see Jesus - see his crazy, upside-down, ridiculous, paradoxical and relentlessly loving heart - it might change everything.
At least, that's how it was for me. Seeing God's selfless heart in Christ changed everything for me. It was like stepping back from a beautifully intricate painting and watching everything shift into place and become clear. All along I had simply been viewing it from the wrong perspective. Instead of a sketch of Jesus in gaudy green ink, I saw him for the first time in magnificent and living color. And at last, instead of merely catching a glimpse of Aslan's mane, I looked straight into his eyes and saw the love of a father.