For some, the idea of being a Christian means becoming a dull, self-righteous person who has to go to church every week and listen to boring sermons. The reality is quite the opposite and I will try to explain why in this post.
From the ages of 17 to 34, I was addicted to alcohol. I needed it to cope with an overwhelming sense of inferiority or low self-esteem. Without it, my anxiety was paralyzing. But it was a double-edged sword. By numbing my feelings, I was unable to grow emotionally. In the end, I was even unable to do my job at work.
I lived in my own world, safe and secure, but totally out of touch with the real world. As my wife often reminds me, she had to bring up our two sons, because I simply wasn’t there to be of use. Those 17 years are just a blur to me and I never grew up. Emotionally, I stayed a teenager and behaved accordingly.
The organization I worked for sent me to rehab at age 34, where I spent 3 months being detoxed, going to group therapy and mandatory meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). When I came back to work, I was like a fish out of water. I had no idea how to handle life in the real world. I had to learn how to be an adult!
There were certain things I had to commit to, if I was to remain sober. Firstly, I had to avoid places such as bars and nightclubs. Secondly, I had to find a new group of friends, ones that were not just drinking buddies. Lastly, I had to go to many AA meetings, sometimes more than once in the same day.
Most importantly, I had to find myself a sponsor, someone who could guide me on my journey of recovery and in whom I could share my deepest and darkest secrets. To sum it all up, I had to change my:
- People
- Places
- Things
As a result, I not only got sobriety, but HOPE. For the first time in my life, I could see myself becoming a fully functioning adult, living life on life’s terms. I managed to stay sober for 10 years, but my underlying anxiety led me back to drinking and years of going in and out of AA. It took me many years before I stopped for good.
You may be wondering what all this has to do with Christianity or living a Christian lifestyle. Well, I realized there was a giant hole in my life. Not in my head, but in my heart, my very psyche. And it was a God shaped hole. Nothing I did could ever fix it, believe me I tried everything!
I had always believed in God and used to go to church before I started drinking. In AA, they talk about a God, as you understand him. So I started going to a church that focused on Pauline teaching and the importance of living the way Jesus and the Apostles did in those first 100 years of Christianity. A church where there were no ordained ministers or clergy, no doctrines and no system of hierarchy.
There, I learned about being saved by grace and not through any works on my part. Simply by believing that Jesus was the Son of God was all that was needed to allow God to fill that huge hole I had. Of course action was also required to grow my faith, and it involved changing my:
- People
- Places
- Things
I mixed with people who believed the same things, went to places they went to (church) and stopped doing things that were not beneficial to my mental and emotional health. And what did I get? HOPE! God was doing for me what I could not do for myself. And, as an added benefit, I get eternal life. Seemed like a win-win to me!
So, I merely replaced AA with church once a week, learned how to understand what I was reading in the Bible and got to enjoy life as a free person. Did I become dull and self-righteous? I don’t believe so. I’m still me, just a better me. Living the Christian lifestyle actually took less effort than going to AA and enabled me to do things like making this website. My brain now actually works, instead of being a useless lump of grey-matter.
Did I lose my anxiety? No, but I have learned to live with it, rather than fight it. I can see it for what it is and how it caused me to drink in the first place. There are both good and bad examples of Christians, just as there are in any group of people. It is not logical to judge Christianity as a religion, simply because there are some bad apples. People are human and therefore, by nature, not perfect.
Even if the only thing you get out of it is the promise of eternal life, I think that alone is a very solid reason for becoming a Christian!