Part 1 : Chapter 1 : The Beginning

My name is Sean Causewell.

I am a broken Christian.

I should, I guess, go back to the beginning to give you an idea of who I am.

My history.

My family was a church going bunch. My ancestry is filled with generations of devout Church of Christ and Baptist folks. My grandparents met each other in church. One great-grandfather wanted to be a minister, but as the treasurer for a small town in Oklahoma, he felt called by God to stick to the job. He saved the town from the Great Depression.

For the first few years of my life, my parents were not pursuing a walk with God. They were young, 21 and 25, respectively, and still working to get their heads on their shoulders. (Also, newly married, both having been in failed marriages before.) My grandparents were the ones who took us to church and talked to us about the Bible. My parents didn't have much to say on the matter.

In second grade I stood on the end of the sidewalk on my street. The lights in my house were bright and warm, the night air chill and crisp. I looked to the night sky, picked out the brightest star I could see (probably really a planet) and told God that if He wanted to send Jesus again, I'd be His brother. I meant it. It wasn't a conversion experience, but it was a sign of a heart calling out for its Creator.

When I was eleven, my family moved back to the place my stepmom had grown up. We started going to the Baptist church she'd attended when she was a girl. Soon after, my younger brother and sister went forward. Easter, one of them went, probably both of them. I wasn't willing to accept Christ until it was real in my heart. I certainly didn't feel enough to go with them.

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Baptist summer camp. Passionate evangelists and denim jeans in 100 degree weather. It was here I met Christ. Thirteen years old, I stumbled down an aisle. Tears poured from my eyes. Sobbing, I told the person at the altar I needed Jesus, wanted Him to be my savior. I don't remember the sermon that night. I just know that one of the things I took to Him--paralyzing guilt since my parent's divorce when I was four--was completely removed from me. My experience with Christ was real, solid, and it stuck.

A year later, my stepmom went to work for a local evangelist. He spoke about being filled with the Holy Spirit. He talked about a lot of stuff our Baptist preacher wasn't comfortable with. My family left the Baptist church to be involved in the charismatic movement of the early eighties.

My parents were excited. The Bible could be REAL. The things they read about in the New Testament were for today. They were radical, exciting days. My father raised from the dead a poodle that had been run over (really). Another one of their friends had cavities cleaned and filled while in a prayer service (also, really). The stories--especially the poodle one--seem silly to me now, and maybe to you too. This is the place where my parents were. I believe God meets us wherever we are. A pure heart goes a long way.

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I tried to live my life unto God in the most honest way I could. My best--as I grew in years, and in Christ--was not always The Best, but I pursued Him as deeply as I knew how. If there was any purity in me--purity being something my spirit has always cried out for--I hope it was in my motivation towards God in my pursuit of Him.

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My relationship with God was just that, a relationship. I took it at face value that the veil was truly torn in two and that I could know God. I loved the scriptures that were about being known by God and knowing Him. Christ's blood had saved me from Hell, sure, but more than that, it had opened the door to know the Creator. Nothing was sweeter to me than the thick presence of the Holy Spirit, or the manifest goodness of God, no matter how small the expression (once, my senior year of high school, it was a firefly that floated by my car as my girlfriend wrenched my heart from my body, breaking up with me--gooey, I know. It was high school and that's where I was at). I reveled in the New Creation. I pursued separation from sin. Sanctification. Separation TO God! A person OF God. My faith was one of devotion and seeking the Bible for the answers of life.

I served in the church. I worked with just about every age group. I loved junior high people. They are open soil, open to the planting of God's Word. Their energy and the chaos they live in was a place I could be. They were my people to minister to. I worked with them as a lay minister for several years, then I was asked to be a junior high pastor. I worked with a group of 200 kids every week. I had a great staff. I had amazing kids. What I did not have were good leaders. They were a small part of what happened to me, but a large part of my response to it.

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The wheels came off of my life. Every area where I looked for support, and more importantly safety, crumbled. Basic, fundamental truths, that I had built my identity upon--that we, as human beings, build our identities upon--were shown to be fabrications, or were greatly challenged. My parents divorced. The girl I was going to marry and I broke it off. The pastors of my church went from kind and compassionate to controlling and paranoid. All of this, in a few month's time.

I was crushed. Emotionally--devastated. Relationally--unable to trust. Spiritually--not only destroyed, but I sat at dinner with my parents and said, "I don't even know if I am a Christian anymore."

My identities--as a Christian, as a man, as just a person--were stripped from me.

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Seven years. It's been a journey as I struggle back to who I am. Though I made mistakes, and did things I am not proud of, the greater challenges of my character revealed that one thing remained true, constant, and unbroken. Beneath the hurt, the anger, the fear, the lust, the distrust, at the core of who I was, Christ remained. The reborn human spirit--buffered by my own desire, and slave to the ignominious bullying of my flesh and the whiny selfishness of my soul--was solid. Buried under layers of muck and gunk. Surrounded by sludge. The part of me that is the truest "me" remained. The part that God made.

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I am not the only one who's gone through this sort of thing. I count too many among my faithful and diligent Christian friends, those now broken and wandering.

I can hear the murmurs, "Their commitment must not have been strong enough."

With this, I cannot agree. These are people whose dedication was beyond casual. These are people who truly took up their cross. I count myself, humbly, among them.

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How do fervent Christians go cold? How do they get so broken?

More importantly, for me, how do they step back into a world they do not trust? How do you walk into a place that was once home, but now feels strange, even alien? How do you embrace what now sounds full of catch phrases and religious speak, is populated by stereotypes, and those blind to the outside world you've been living in?

I don't know.

Here's what I do know.

I am going to try. My walk with God, and the resounding truth that lives in my heart, demand I give it a shot.

That is what this blog is about.

My name is Sean Causewell.

I am a broken Christian.