Your Type Not Wanted

I loved this cartoon when it appeared on ASBO Jesus recently.

I'm a pastor's kid and I spent years as one of those question marks.  I also spent years working to conceal that I was one of those question marks.  I'll never forget some of the faces as I shared my testimony when I was baptised (by my dad) just weeks before my eighteenth birthday.  For the first time (and maybe the only time in that church), I talked about the fact that for the past six years I'd been asking major questions about my faith.  That I'd spent a lot of years pretty convinced that I didn't even want anything to do with this Christian thing.   That a church split that happened when I was ten had left me pretty convinced that most Christians were hypocrites and not people I wanted to know.  That I hated being a pastor's kid. And (though I'm not sure I actually said this in my testimony) that the only reason my butt was in a seat week after week for a lot of those years was that the rule in our house was that as long as we were under legal age (which is 18 here in Alberta) and living in mom and dad's house, on Sunday morning we would be in church.  There were a few pretty shocked faces as I shared.

Looking back I wonder if they would have been gracious about the questions.  But at the time, all I knew to do was hide them.  I hid them other places too, but mostly in church.  And these days, I meet people all the time who know what it's like to be "that type".  And I count it a privilege to stand up and tell them "me too" and I still love Jesus, and I know He loves me and welcomes me - questions and all.