I am a Sea

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This is excerpt #5 from "Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith"


Patton Dodd remembers a day when he was 12 years old, listening to the singing of hundreds of junior high evangleical Christians. They sing:

I am a sea! I am a sec-aiche! I am a sea-aiche are eye aye en!

He has no idea what they are saying. It turns out they are singing:

I am a C! I am a C-h! I am a C-h-r-i-s-t-i-a-n!

Now years later Dodd says that shouting something does not mean it is entered into your heart. He no longer can affirm that evangelical certainty. But I sense that there's something there that he is missing.

There are countless dropouts from Christianity. Other refer to them as graduates. I wish for them and for us all, a more flexible faith, a faith that can mature and develop and continue to evolve. So many exit the faith without realizing that many followers of Christ no longer adhere to the triumphalistic faith of the literalists.

It is possible to be part of a community of the Spirit that enlarges rather than restricts the spirit. I want to say to these foks, don't stop the search.

Peter