I’d rather be loved than be right

My dad baptized me on March 4, 1987. A few minutes later, he scribbled out a baptism certificate and handed it to me in his church office.

This is the date of my baptism.

But the day I was “born again” was a date that I can’t figure.

I know it was sometime in January or February of 1998. It was early on a weekday morning and I was vacuuming one of the wide hallways in the Jim Bill McInteer Bible Building at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas.

I was in my fourth year of college. I earned spending money by vacuuming the Bible building every morning before the sun came up.

That morning, I was in deep distress.

A few days earlier, my mom and I had an argument about something in the Bible. I don’t remember exactly what, but it was one of those things that the Bible does not spell out in black and white. It was one of those things that people who read the Bible can read a lot of different ways.

And Mom and I just happened to read it differently.

She read it one way. I read it another. A discussion turned into a debate. The debate turned into whatever you call it when a 22-year old and his mom get emotional about their disagreement.

I remember that things ended with Mom crying out to me: “But what if you’re wrong? I’m afraid for your soul!”

No boy (or young man) can stand to make his mom cry, so I backed down and went off to feel bad about it in private. But the memory of that exchange would not let me rest. It bothered me all day, every day, until that morning I was alone in the Bible building.

It was that question: “What if you’re wrong?”

What bothered me about it was that I kept thinking: “Of course I’m wrong! How can anybody ever be right all the time?”

At that point in my life, I was old enough to know that I got things wrong all the time. I was old enough to know that I was going to keep getting things wrong as long as I lived.

The problem is that, in the Christian tradition that raised me, there was no margin for error. My parents and teachers taught me that “being saved” was conditional on getting everything right all the time.

That’s why we feverishly dissected the Bible, scrutinizing every jot and tittle, splitting every hair. We were desperate to know “the right way” to act, feel, and think so that God would let us into heaven. We knew that if we messed up or missed the mark on even one point, it would mean an eternity in hell.

The problem is that the Bible is not so clear on some things. These things could cause great concern for us because the margin for error was so wide. We could so easily get our interpretation wrong and end up on God’s bad side. These were the things that we debated most fiercely and with emotion that sometimes erupted into hysteria.

It was one such thing over which my mom and I debated over Christmas 1997. It was one such thing that left us both emotional wrecks. It was one such thing that left me wondering if I was really in danger of hell.

I took all of those feelings to God in prayer.

For days, I wrestled with him for three hours every morning as I vacuumed.

Until the day I finally blurted to God: “I’m done. I’m out.”

The truth flowed from me: “If you’re the kind of God who demands perfection from me and then makes it impossible for me to understand exactly what you want, then I’m doomed. I can never live up to you. And, frankly, I don’t even want to try. Because if you’re that kind of God, spending eternity with you sounds worse than hell. It seems to me that you’ve set us up for hell with you or hell without you. So forget you. You’re not worth it. Go ahead and send me to hell. That seems to be what you want to do anyway.”

I was terrified by the words that few out of me to God. Big, mean, scary God.

And then it happened.

Hello, son. It’s nice to finally meet the real you. I’ve been waiting for you a long time. Don’t be afraid to tell the truth. I can take it. I love the truth, even when it hurts. This life I’m making for you is not about you knowing the right things. It’s about knowing one thing with all your heart: My love for you is constant, true, and will never leave you no matter what you do or don’t do. If you know this one thing, everything else falls into place and you don’t have to go through life being afraid. Now, I would love to walk with you. Would you like to walk with me? I’d love for you to get to know the real me.

That was the moment I was truly born again.

All my life, I believed that being right was the way to get love.

But in that moment, I started to believe that I was being loved by God and that God’s love made me all right with him.

Rather than having to find God and try to keep him around by getting every detail figured out, God found me and promised to keep me near him. Believing this meant that I could now just enjoy God working out the details for me as we walk through life together.

In the end, it is a personal choice. I could keep on believing in a God who insists that I get it right. But believing in that God isn’t worth it. Even on the chance that I do get it right (I won’t), the rewards I would earn from such a God are not loving rewards.

Besides, I don’t want rewards; I just want to be loved as I am. I just want to know that I’m worth something to somebody before I do one thing to earn it.

I would rather be loved than be right.

So I choose to believe in a God who loves me the same way I love my own son. I loved him before he even came out of my wife’s womb. Loved him just because. To this day, I love him just because he is who he is. He could never do anything that would change my love for him. I would die for him.

The Gospel–the Good News–is that God loves us this way. Loves us as a Father, as a Mother. Loves us enough to forgive even the sins of betrayal we commit against him. Loves us enough to keep loving us when we hate him.

Loves us enough to die for us.

Loves us enough to come back to life for us.

Loves us enough to be as close as the next beat of our hearts, the next breath in our lungs.

This I now know: I’m rarely right, but I am always loved.

And so are you.

Grace and peace.