What’s one thing you wish you had started doing earlier in life?
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I was baptised as a baby into the Roman Catholic church. I never remember disbelieving in God. But much of the time, I just went along with the common religion in Ireland – as did almost everyone back in the last century. I felt a little closer to Jesus when I’d watch a movie about Jesus. I also felt close to Him when I took communion. I’m not sure if I was ever convinced that the bread turned into the body of Jesus. But whatever church I’ve been in, and whatever they believed about communion, that was always a precious moment.
When I got to my teens (13), I began to wonder about truth. I discovered the Beatles properly in 1974. I was interested in their visit to India, and George Harrison’s interest in the Hare Krishna movement. I used to meet these guys on the streets of Cork. I think I got a prayer leaflet and a book from them. So, might some other religion be true too?
What if I’d been born in Iran? Wouldn’t I be a Muslim? – or maybe a Hindu in India and a Buddhist in Cambodia – or maybe a Mormon in Salt Lake City. Shouldn’t I think it all through for myself? And what about Protestants? I remembering seeing Protestant buildings around Cork – Church of Ireland, Methodist, Presbyterian, Quakers, and so on. And you’d get people like Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on doors. I remember going to a free movie in town that the Mormons were showing. I think I remember Walt Disney being in it introducing the Osmonds, but maybe I’m mixing it up with something else at the time 😀.
Then, I started meeting evangelical Christians, who emphasized the need for personally committing your life to Christ. I liked the fact that they were regarded as orthodox by the Roman Catholic church. I’d have been more uneasy about them if they were classed as a cult or whatever – though that wouldn’t necessarily mean that they were wrong.
I asked them which church was right. They never heavily pushed their own churches, but they did express what the found incorrect in the Roman Catholic church. And many of them wanted their churches to be more like the New Testament church, so they weren’t all that keen on historical Protestant churches either – partly because some are not all that different from the Roman Catholic church and partly because some no longer take the Bible seriously or see it as truly inspired.
I met evangelical Christians over five years, and I often argued with them. I’d often hear them preaching on Trans World Radio Monte Carlo too, when I’d be searching for pop music on Radio Luxembourg 208. I remember meeting a guy who was giving out leaflets outside the cinema showing Late Great Planet Earth in 1980. I met him some months later after I committed my life to Christ. He remembered me, and he thought I was quite argumentative. I created a post on my Conversion Chronology last year 😀.
Anyway, I might not have transferred to an evangelical church earlier in life, but I certainly would have liked to have had that personal committment. Maybe I had it to some degree, but what I did in August 1980 made a huge difference to my outlook on life.In Roman Catholicism, you’d hear about people having some sort of personal encounter with God, but it was often in the context of becoming a priest, a nun, or a monk – or someone coming off drugs or whatever. But Jesus said “You must be born again (John 3:7)”. He said this to Nicodemas – a man who was already religious.
I don’t believe that this happens at baptism. At most, in an infant baptism, parents and the church make a committment to welcome the child into the church family and to teaching them about how they can be saved. But that child will later make up their own mind.
Most evangelicals that I know practice believer’s baptism. You get baptised after you believe. Some do practice infant baptism, but again, nothing magical happens. The child needs to come to faith. I did have my confirmation as a Roman Catholic. Some see that as committing yourself at a personal level. It was presented to me more as the point where you begin to argue for Roman Catholicism 😀. However, in the runup to it, our teacher brought us through some of the New Testament, and that was a great experience. Whatever criticism I have of Roman Catholicism, it did influence me to commit my life to Christ. I’m sorry that it didn’t eventually go in a more evangelical direction after the reformation. I can understand why they were annoyed with Luther. If I were leading a church and someone gave me a list of criticisms, my first instinct would be to tell them to get lost – but I’d probably explore their criticism and eventually take any that were legitimate on board.
Nowadays, the Roman Catholic Church seems to have gone in a more liberal/modernist direction – which is the aspect of mainstream Protestant churches that I dislike. Evangelical churches can have their faults to – but ultimately, it’s all about following Jesus – not churches. I go to church to mingle and worship with fellow believers. I also hear of many Roman Catholics identifying as evangelical Christians. And some evangelicals returning to the more historical churches because of their dislike of all the politics, marketing, rock music worship etc 😀. Who knows what the future holds, but I would think that God is most concerned with our own personal faith rather than how we organized ourselves – yet we should model ourselves on the New Testament Church.
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
Hibernia Gospel 