Twenty years ago, on salvation

When I was 20, my spiritual life felt like an exam where I had been given a topic I hadn’t prepared for.

The guilt of wasting the time meant for preparation, the conviction that failure (sin) defined who I was, and the inability to climb even one step on “Peter’s ladder” (2 Peter 1:5-7) without quickly stumbling back down four—these were all so familiar to me. What could have been a stained-glass window for my soul felt instead like an opaque, heavy crypt stone.

On sunny days, when I watched the rays of light sparkle like diamonds through the leaves of the trees in the park near my college, I believed that God had beautiful plans for me. That a good future awaited me, one whose brightness relied entirely on His wisdom as the almighty Creator. Well, maybe a little on my own perseverance too—like getting up at 6:00 AM to study the Bible. Yes, and perhaps also on the fact that I hadn’t touched chocolate in months, and, honestly, I didn’t miss meat all that much. Oh, and it would probably help if I stopped downloading movies off the internet. And if only I weren’t so easily influenced by my social circle. Maybe if I hadn’t embarrassed God by attending that party where just me and one other friend remained sober because we hadn’t drunk anything—when I should have been the reformer, telling my peers it was sinful to drink themselves into oblivion…

At 20, salvation seemed like something that could be lost in less time than it took to complete a lap around the park.

It’s not that there was anything special about me. I understand that for the generation turning 20 today, moral absolutes are defined by personal identity, that ultimate rule of “be yourself, no matter who you are,” under which all other socio religious norms politely fall in line. But I belong to the generation for whom the moral absolute was “be good,” understood as doing the right thing, feeling the right thing, thinking the right thing. On top of that, I grew up in an environment deeply rooted in Orthodox Christianity, where God’s approval seemed contingent on checking off an impossible list of virtues and tasks. So, at 20, guilt was the foundation upon which I conceived my identity as a child of God, tearing it down and rebuilding it over and over again.

Of course, there were probably others in my generation who saw God as their unconditionally supportive ally. Some might have even taken advantage of this “unconditional” aspect, living their youth by their own rules, with or without regret. To those people, and to those who view God as a loving, gentle, and merciful Father, my story might seem borderline pathological. I’m not saying it isn’t, but it’s the only story I have, so it’s the one I’ll tell.

At 20, I was constantly disappointed by my inability to reach my goals. Every bit of progress was overshadowed by the looming possibility, and eventual reality, of failure. Yet, I didn’t feel I had any choice but to pick myself up, dust myself off, and start again. Each restart was a monumental effort to rekindle the hope that this time, I would succeed in being perfect in every area, so that the God who sees me when no one else does would have nothing to reproach me for. Often, I felt that this was where the battle lay: believing that despite what I so obviously was, the miracle of personal transformation could still happen.

For me, faith in God was essentially synonymous with faith in His power to change me. I wish I had known back then that change is a process, and that doesn’t make it any less miraculous or any less infused with the divine than a sudden, transformative shift, as if touched by a magic wand.

Nearly two decades later, I don’t know of any change that doesn’t involve small, sometimes imperceptible steps, painful setbacks (in proportion to the gap between where you started and where you hope to be), difficult recoveries, doubts, unhelpful nostalgias, but also zeal and enthusiasm—all mixed together in a blend that can often feel murky and hard to separate.

“You want salvation to be like mathematics. But it isn’t,” a theologian friend once told me when I asked how I could know if I had truly repented. I hadn’t yet read C.S. Lewis, whose words would have been a balm to my soul at the time, knowing that such a respected figure in Christianity had put into words my exact dilemma: “Now repentance is no fun at all” the apologist said. “It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here’s the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person — and he would not need it.” [1] 

My friend was right, but my mind, so conditioned by the rigid scales of good and bad deeds, struggled to make sense of what I had heard. Though it was the truth, there was no hook inside me for it to latch onto—no rope to tie myself to the God of love. I was drowning in legalism, yet to those around me, my efforts at spiritual discipline appeared more like signs of a changed heart rather than just a new religious costume draped over the same old belief that God had to be persuaded, convinced to save even me.

I wish I had believed wholeheartedly that the God for whom I am a cherished child—not an accidental presence on Earth—had already prepared the forgiveness that would cleanse me and the people close to me of all the stains of sin, long before any trace of transgenerational inclination towards sin could be passed down by our distant ancestors. Before my very first impulse to act against His will, He had already unleashed His full, omnipotent arsenal against even the most horrific manifestation of sin in me. I wish I had known that my doubts do not scare Him, that my deepest sorrows appear to Him as nothing more than fleeting moments. Just as I prepare to care for my child today, He is patient with my struggles and not overwhelmed by them. There is nothing I could do that would take Him by surprise, disappoint Him, or make Him disgusted with me. He has an antidote even for my gravest sin, but it won’t work like in Alice in Wonderland—instantly and magically—but more like a hospital treatment, where the antibiotics need time to build up and finally overcome the infection. And yet… it’s not a mathematical formula. His love isn’t black and white like the idealism of my 20-year-old self.

I wish I could have understood that God is both the One who struck Uzzah dead for touching the Ark inappropriately (2 Samuel 6:6-7) and the One who tenderly reproved Jonah as he petulantly protested, “‘It is,’ he said. ‘And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.’” (Jonah 4:9). God speaks differently to His vastly different children, even though His message of love remains the same at its core. The Lord is a marvellously great God, infinitely more complex than the neat little boxes of categories we try to use to comprehend Him.

At 20, I wish I had known that God doesn’t speak to me with the harsh voice of those people I considered moral authorities. But if my nearly 40-year-old self had met my 20-year-old self, would we have shared a common language? Without the right to draw on the experiences I lived from 20 onwards, would my older self have been able to offer convincing explanations to my younger self?

Alina Kartman is 37 years old. She is a wife and mother. At 20, she was a communications student and believed that life only gave you what you deserved.