Being Prodigal: An Origin Story of Sorts
I trace the beginnings of my faith journey to Easter of 1992, the enduring image of the day being standing alongside forty or so other people at the front of the bare, minimally decorated Assembly Hall of the College of Education Ekiadolor. I was there because I had been dragged there by my parents; there being an Easter conference put on by the student Christian movement my parents spent a lot of their spare time supporting. Besides my irritation at being taken along — and thus losing the few days of freedom from parental supervision - responding to an altar call along with the others whilst sobbing profusely is the only thing I remember from the events of the weekend. That would not be the last time I would respond - or pray a similar prayer for that matter - but the sense of relief, joy and confidence about the future which followed that day is why I come back to that place as the definitive start of my spiritual journey. The sense of elation lasted for all of three weeks as I recall, but the sense that something happened that day is one I have never truly shaken off.
Growing up, church life was pervasive, bleeding into every other space I did life in. For all the distinctiveness of the other spaces - home and school - the burden of my recognisable surname meant that in the small town where I lived, certain assumptions were made about my character and behaviour. Academic campus or not, late 90's Southern Nigeria was no bastion of free thought; life and religion (of all sorts) interacted deeply. Even so there was a discernible bubble, one which I fell into deeply. Life in the (Children's Sunday School/ Youth Group/ Singles) bubble had its own versions of things: its own music (Carman,Rebecca St James , Newsboys, DC Talk, Delirious), its own TV shows (re-runs of Another Life, The 700 Club) and books. The strength of the bubble only increased when my father took the plunge and plopped for his collar, swapping the more traditional University Chapel (aligned with the Anglican Communion) with a more fervently Pentecostal one he led. Out went the Book of Common Prayer, in came loud hand clapping, dancing, speaking in tongues, laying on of hands and all the other trappings of Pentecostalism for which we were pressed into service of. The overwhelming sense was of being with the good guys, the true adherents, other variants being compromised.
In my experience, self reinforcing certitude is a notoriously difficult thing to preserve, especially once the barriers that protect it from outside scrutiny are removed. Going away to University did that for me, being the first time I would leave the cover of home for distant lands - a mere 80 miles away. Even there, the brand recognition of my name meant I got sucked into the campus fellowship bubble which was probably a good thing given all the stuff which happened on that campus. Various things however chipped away at the armour of my certitude including densely packed undergraduate accommodation which put me in proximity to people from vastly different walks of life. The Waffarians were a particularly influential lot, their brand of Pidgin English the stuff the cool kids spoke coupled with their street-wisdom a world apart from mine. Over the six years (one additional due to a lengthy strike) the brute force attack of those new influences would leave huge chinks in the youth group built armour.
Out in to the wider world, the engagement was slightly more subtle and intellectual. Wider questions about biblical hermeneutics became the primary abrasive agent bumping up against the sort of literal interpretations espoused by the Left Behind Series. The internet, phones, social media - and podcasts - turned that into a fire hose of information. Well rehearsed views on things like Genesis began to flail, blowing wide a door to drift and doubt. There is only so much one can hold onto when the core of one's beliefs (rightly or wrongly) are blown away. I suppose in a sense I was deconstructing. Years later though, I haven't quite managed to throw the baby out with the bath water so to speak,
Most days I feel a deep kinship with the younger son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, his hightailing it to a far country somewhat akin to how my faith journey evolved in the University years, once I was out of my church bubble. Whilst the emotional response that followed Easter of 1992 suggests a real change happened, my continuing struggle with the simple stuff — a regular practice of prayer and bible study, engaging a discipline of fasting and evangelism amongst others — often leaves me in a state of cognitive dissonance.
It is not only in matters of faith that I feel a strong connection to the prodigal. Sometime in the mid 2000's I physically hightailed it to a city on the Tyne, then moved within spitting distance of the North Sea for a long time and then kicked about in the Middle East for a bit. In a few years, it will have been twenty-years of being an immigrant/expat, most of which I have felt reasonably safe and welcome, bar one incident across the Torry Bridge in Aberdeen many years ago. The increasing rhetoric is one which draws out the prodigal connection strongly, particularly the response of the citizens of the land to the young lad who ostensibly slaves away feeding pigs but yet never really becomes one of them. There has been the odd occasion over the past few days when I have pondered what my end game should be, not helped by visits from older relatives who endured racism in Manchester and Liverpool in 1960's Britain. I suppose there is always the prodigal option, packing it up and running back to the arms of a loving father. The small wrinkle is that I do not think the trajectory Nigeria is on is one of welcoming arms.
Back to the subject of faith - and the vagaries of it - smarter theologians than I such as John Piper make a distinction between justification and sanctification; justification being a more or less instantaneous accounting of righteousness with sanctification being a more gradual growth. Implicit in that — in my layman’s view — is that a propensity for cognitive dissonance exists in all faith journeys, driven by the distance between what one knows to be right and what one does, between being justified and growing into a ‘sufficient’ degree of righteousness.
The consensus, as I understand it, is that a measure of discipline, work and effort are required to bridge this gap, God both working in one and through one. That I largely accept, what is less certain is how much of the push to grow and improve is due to a real change as opposed to the remnants of the church bubble/ cultural Christianity I grew up in and live in now. That to me is the fundamental question.