"You're Not a Good Person" {it happened on a sunday} Day 8

At 18, a recent high school graduate moving into my college dorm and starting a new phase of life, I was disappointed, disillusioned, and bitter.  Things hadn't gone according to my plan; I was not attending the school I had hoped to go to, and this affected every area of my life.

The first Sunday I lived on campus, I walked to a Presbyterian church across the street.  The sanctuary was full, and it held a mix of college students and older adults from the community.  There was nothing wrong with it, the service, the people, but there was nothing to entice me to return.  No one talked to me, nothing in the worship music or message spoke to me, and no one was going to check to make sure I went back.  So I didn't.

I made a few attempts to hike a little further down the road to the local Nazarene church, since I'd been part of the Nazarene community through my teen years, and even participated in some of the denomination-specific activities, like youth choir, church camp, and Bible quizzing.  But the experience there was much the same.  I was bored, I was alone, I couldn't see the point in going.  The final straw was the week my roommate asked to come with me, walked in the building and an hour later had five different people welcome her, including someone who invited her over for lunch after the service.  These people would then turn to me, who had been there a few times already, and seemed completely unaware of this fact.  I felt invisible, and I decided to stop bothering with church.

That one time I went out on a Thursday Night 

I still carried the cultural persona of my religious upbringing, however.  I identified as a Christian, though my heart wasn't in it, and I still read my Bible and never quite got the hang of "partying".  The most fun I had on weekends was when my friends from high school would come visit and we would stay up watching Kirsten Dunst movies and making up dance choreography.  Otherwise, I would take a bus to go home for the weekend and visit with my family, do laundry, eat a home cooked meal, and spend time with my new boyfriend (more on him in another post ;).

Sunday evenings tended to be a time to hang out with my roommates, when everyone was back in the dorm, all the friends and other visitors had gone back home, and it was just us.  We liked to go to the nearby on-campus Ice Rink for dinner, because the concession stand accepted our meal cards and made the most delicious grilled cheese sandwiches and greasy french fries.  It was on one of these Sunday dinners at the Ice Rink that I got a reality check.

I was talking about someone, and referred to her as being like myself:  kind of a goody-goody, nice person.  One of my roommates stared at me, frowning.

"What?" I asked.

"You're not a good person," she said in response.

I was immediately defensive.  I preferred to be the one passing judgement on someone else's lifestyle.  "Uh, yes I am.  I don't have sex and I don't swear, I don't get drunk and I've never gotten high." (She was guilty of all of these things.)

First of all, I was surprised to learn that she didn't care about that stuff.  It wasn't an indicator of a good person, and she said that she had certainly never claimed to be anything other than what she was.  She owned her choices.  Second, she'd been watching me closer than I realized.  "You lie, you talk about people behind their backs, you're judgmental, you say you're one way, but you act another."

I had the sensation of being pulled into a spotlight without any clothes on.  I recognized that what she said was true, but I didn't want to deal with it.  I can't even remember what I said next, if I sputtered or fell silent or what.  But I can tell you that it's been 16 years since that conversation and I remember every single word she said to me.  I thought about it a lot over the coming years, a time that would ultimately be transformative in my journey of faith and the direction of my life.  That night, however, I had to go to bed with the realization that my criteria for being "good" were, at best, incomplete, and that I had been called out on it.