Getting to Know You, Part 3

Aaron Blumer, Site Publisher

For as long as I can remember, hearing the story of creation, fall, and redemption on a regular basis has been part of my life. Both at home and at church, people lovingly declared the message of the cross to me and took pains to explain it—even when I was too young to understand. I also can’t remember a time when I doubted the truth of any part of it.

But recognizing the truth of a set of ideas is one thing. Responding personally to what those truths demand is another. In my case the latter was something of a struggle. Or, rather, feeling confident that I had responded properly was something of a struggle.

Since my parents were involved in sharing Christ with me very early, they remember the first time I responded to the gospel. Apparently I sought one or both them out and asked for help and, by the end of the conversation, had expressed my desire to turn from sin and trust Christ. They were satisfied that I knew what I was doing. Maybe I did know.

But a few years later, by age seven, I no longer had any memory of those events. What I did have was a frequent and growing sense that something was wrong with me personally and that something was wrong between me and God as a result. I felt guilt. I didn’t feel it during church under the angry pronouncements of evangelists. The preaching I heard in those days excelled in laying out the biblical facts. It was when I lay awake in bed at night that the implications of those facts made me squirm.

Even at that “innocent” age, I needed absolutely no persuading that I was a sinner. I did things I knew were wrong every day. I’m pretty sure I committed every sin I knew about at the time. (Fortunately, I didn’t know about all that many, or I’d have sinned even more. Maybe that’s part of what Paul was getting at in Romans 7.)

I also didn’t need convincing that Jesus had gone to the cross for sinners, including me. And I had no doubt that forgiveness and cleansing were available to me. But I was not confident that God had accepted me or that a home in heaven was mine.

Some bad theology

I was also confused on a couple of theological points. My parents and church taught that once you trust Christ and become God’s child, that relationship can’t be reversed. Once saved, always saved. Since others had told me I’d made a profession when I was younger, I reasoned that to ask God again to save me would itself be a sin and couldn’t possibly fix anything.

The other theological point of confusion had to do with the role of prayer. I knew one had to believe certain things but also felt that it was vital that one say certain things in order to be saved. Since I couldn’t remember the event, I didn’t know if I’d met either criteria, let alone both.

Finally, as I was mulling over my predicament one summer afternoon during “nap time,” I had a moment of clarity. The Spirit was at work, and the things I had been taught clicked in a different way. Surely the God who loved us all enough to do something so drastic as become man and die on a cross was the sort of God who would understand if I felt the need to pray again, seeking His salvation. And surely He would give me credit for saying the right thing even if I messed the words up some, wouldn’t He?

With that door finally open, I could talk to God about it freely. With still less than complete certainty, I cast myself on His mercy. That happened a couple of times I think, but soon the matter was settled. I became convinced that He had indeed heard my cry and had made me His child.

When people ask me when I became a Christian, the short answer is “I don’t know.” It’s entirely possible that I expressed genuine repentant faith on that day at age five with Mom and Dad. But it’s equally true that I can’t be sure I really believed until a summer day a few years later.

Only at the beginning

Of course, entering the family is only the beginning. Thankfully, God planted an amazing number of helpful people along the path of my life after my conversion. I enjoyed the ministries of some extremely gifted and motivated Sunday school teachers and junior church workers at Riverdale Baptist Church in Flint, Michigan (and other churches after that). We learned dozens of verses I can still quote. That’s when we learned to recite the books of the Bible so fast the list sounded like one incredibly long word. And we did Bible drills until we could even find Habakkuk 2:12 in well under a minute. (Nobody fell for “First Hezekiah 3:9” either!)

Mom and Dad made sure we sat under sound expositional preaching over the years, too. It was a greatly blessed way to grow up, and I can’t take credit for any of it. The period of disaffection and cynicism that tempted me later was, no doubt, greatly mitigated by the fact that God had already exposed me to the influence of so many humble, God-loving, Scripture-honoring men and women.

The rest of my story I’ll condense. I was a pretty legalistic guy in high school (“legalistic” here means preoccupied with judging people by outward appearance). I learned to preach by practicing in my head the diatribes I thought my peers needed to hear. But even then, some of what I was hearing from the less thoughtful brand of fundamentalists was starting to sound like nonsense. Questions like “How can the beat in the music be evil and the same beat in the cheers we use at the ball games not be evil?” wouldn’t go away. (I’m actually way more conservative about music now than I was after college, for what it’s worth. Explaining why will have to wait for another day.)

The separatism I was hearing about in those days seemed to have some problems as well. Some leaders seemed to get “blacklisted” on awfully scant evidence, while some well-known and respected fundamentalists had obvious problems no one seemed to care about. Far too much broad-brushing seemed to be going on. This continued into my college years. At times it seemed like “the world, the flesh, and the devil” had been replaced by “the neoevanglicals, John MacArthur, and CCM” as the three great enemies of the believer. In fairness to the leaders I sat under in those days, part of the problem was probably my own perceptions of what they intended to communicate. And always God saw to it that I also encountered men with their priorities straight and their study of the Word front and center.

Twenty years later, I find myself on the other side of the struggle to figure out where I belong. Along the way, various fundamentalists and the whole “ism” seemed wholly without merit. I was tempted to walk away completely more than once (whatever “walk away” means outside of academic institutions, camps, and conferences). But the good, godly, humble, Bible-rooted, small town pastors I’d known growing up, as well as outstanding men of God I met every step of the way (several of whom were my classmates at BJU and Central), kept me believing that I really had nothing to walk away from. A movement is one thing. Faithfulness is another. The more the two are in sync, the better, but the many faithful men who are also fundamentalists are what made (and still make) me more than content to strive to be one myself.

So my aim in life is to serve the Lord with gladness in whatever ways He leads. It continues to be a very, very interesting journey!

Site Publisher Aaron Blumer, a native of lower Michigan, is a graduate of Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC) and Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). He, his wife, and their two children live in a small town in western Wisconsin, where he has pastored Grace Baptist Church (Boyceville, WI) since 2000. Prior to serving as a pastor, Aaron taught school in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and served in customer service and technical support for Unisys Corporation (Eagan, MN). He enjoys science fiction, music, and dabbling in software engineering.