On How I Studied the New Testament and found Jesus...

It's not what you think.

I have been a church girl since in utero. My momma carried me into church before I had ears to hear and toted me after that and held my hand and walked me down to the little Baptist Church that was steps from my front door. You have heard, if you have visited here before, that I used to hide out in that church and the black folks church that was just as close as my church and just as far away as segregation in the '60s could make it. I hid from the chaos that was created in my life from poverty and alcoholism and a sense that we must keep the secrets in our family with greater care than we kept our bodies and our minds.

I loved the Lord like Mrs. Evie did and sang songs with her just as loudly. I attended the Sunday School and the Training Union and every worship service and all the revivals and some other revivals at other churches and gospel singings and vacation Bible school and every pot luck and Homecoming. I could cite you chapter and verse and win at the sword drills and knew all the words to all the hymns and most of the gospel songs.

I believed in God with the fierceness that comes from hearing my daddy rage around the house hitting my mother and praying that she would hold his attention and keep him from hitting me. I believed in God with the gratitude that comes from having her survive another day, not leaving me to him and the split personality household that was my stern grandmother and my wonderful granddaddy. I believed because I knew that no one that walked the earth could or would save me if Daddy took a notion to kill us rather than shoot over our heads this time. The secrets of my family could have killed me any day, but they didn't and I gave God plenty of credit for the save.

I had one secret that I have not ever told from that time and it stuck with me until this week.

I had read all those Bible stories and came to understand that much of it was allegory and, perhaps, just plain hyperbole. Most folks will admit as to how there probably wasn't a great fish that swallowed up Jonah and spit him out days later a good deal wiser and not the worse for wear. Talking donkey, uh uh. These things can be argued without too much trouble.

But there is a breaking point of questions for a little Baptist girl who was present every time the church doors opened and plenty of times when, officially, they were not. You have to believe in God and that Jesus is your personal Savior who died for your sins and is, after all, God as well.

I didn't. Don't. God, yes. I have and still do believe and can't explain how or why I don't have any trouble with just "faithing" that one out. Jesus... not so much.

Yes, he was a man born in the first century who had moxie a plenty, what with telling anyone who would listen that the Lord, Addonai, was coming soon and that the Romans would not be a problem any more when that happened. He believed and held his faith in God and spoke out telling all comers that they should believe as well. He preached a message of hope and perseverance and faithfulness and human kindness to each other. He upheld the downtrodden and spoke truth to power and died in the process for his trouble. This is the Jesus I have found the courage to proclaim.

I have no quarrel with any of this and follow his way as well as I can. I just don't, and never have, and lied when I walked down the aisle and said so, believe that Jesus was God before he was born to a virgin girl. I just don't. I cannot. I do believe he died to save me, insomuch as had he not gone to all the trouble he did and become such a thorn in the side to those who killed him, that I might not ever have heard about God in that little church. Likely I would be dancing around some pole in the ground waiting for solstice and communing with animal spirits. Likely you would, too.

I might have believed there was a God. But then again, I might not. Turns out I did hear about God and I did learn the lessons of the preaching of Jesus at the little Baptist church. I heard because he was willing to do what he did without worrying that other folks disagreed with him. He didn't worry that the temple scholars and the administration said he was an unbeliever who preached blasphemy. Until today, I was not willing to follow him in that one. Now, I have told you my last secret.

I don't believe that the one whom I follow was God before he was born. I live in a rocky place here in Texas. Line forms to the right, stones available.