The Moment It All Changed – by Sam Davidson

I’m excited to publish a new guest post today from Sam Davidson. This is our first 5 Flat Tires story about faith. Sam is a professional speaker, author and entrepreneur, in addition to being a husband and a father. I first met Sam a year ago during my first ever trip to Nashville. I spent one very long day in a conference room with Sam and two of his colleagues. And I came away struck by Sam’s incredible thoughtfulness. He shared several stories with me during that trip and I’m honored to publish his story here.

Levi was terrible at his job. That’s how we met. He was the summer intern in charge of manning the soundboard during the worship services. It was my third summer preaching at a Christian camp, but the first in which we had someone not on camp staff dedicated to supporting the technical elements of the worship services. Truth be told, Levi didn’t so much support them as complicate them, but that summer, his presence changed my life.

As soon as we sat down, he said, “Well, I guess you could call this a business lunch, considering the business you’re in.”

He was a poster child of postmodernism and quickly became my icon for my calling. Goateed, slightly pot-bellied, Hawaiian shirted, anime interested, occult curious, question filled and journey oriented, Levi was everything I was not. We were the same age, had similar backgrounds, but could not have been further apart in life. He read books about vampires and werewolves; I read books about the reformation and open theology. He dressed like he was either going to a luau or costume party; I wore khakis and Polo’s religiously. He watched movies about Japanese cartoons and other worlds; I rarely watched movies. But, destiny and fate were drafting an itinerary, and I was along for the ride.

I came into that summer confident and secure. I came in with answers and saw questions as enemies that had to be subdued by the seductive reasoning of truth and definiteness. I read as if the words on the pages of the books I owned would expire. In addition to my history and religion studies, I found time to engage my mind in a myriad of muses, from Spong to Piper and Spurgeon to Borg. I also had gone 450 days without missing a morning of reading the Bible. I was the smartest 20 year old anyone knew. I had (and still have) an uncanny ability to remember nearly everything I read, and everything was available to discuss at length. Dinner with a girl was not a time to coo and flirt. It was a time to see where she stood on matters of infralapsarianism and inerrancy.

It was only about three weeks into the summer. Levi had heard each of my sermons at least twice. I was preaching a series on legacy, expounding upon the last words of several Biblical characters and what they could teach us about the life we ought to live and how we want to be remembered. I talked about salvation, making a difference, spiritual growth, evangelism, and service. But Levi was drawn to a central theme that had haunted his spiritual journey for the last eighteen months: the man Jesus and why his followers were nothing like him.

Levi’s background was similar to mine. He had a ‘salvation experience’ in his teens and immediately became involved in a very active youth group. Mission tripping, summer camping and street evangelizing were all moments we experienced a thousand miles apart. Then life, and the crap it sometimes bring to the party we were enjoying, showed up. The youth minister, someone Levi admired, had an affair and was fired. Levi’s best friend committed suicide – a generous, nice, giving seventeen-year-old photographer killed himself in his studio. As someone who was vocal about not being a Christian, Levi’s youth group pals told him his friend was in hell. Instead of comforting and letting someone cry, these young Christians were quick to pronounce judgment. Levi, with eyes open and a heavy heart began to examine this path he followed. As excited as he got about mission trips across the country, as happy as he was to have a place to belong on Wednesday nights, as much fun as he had at church, he walked away. He wanted no part of a religion and a community that kicked people when they were down. He didn’t want to associate with people who think they knew it all. He didn’t want to be classified in the same group as people who came across as compassionless, close-minded, arrogant individuals. He found what he once believed incredibly unbelievable.

Another thing happened. Levi fell in love his freshman year of college. He had girlfriends before, but this one was different. Levi had found, in his own words, his ‘soul mate.’ Living together, the two were happy, healthy and enjoying life together. Levi shared with her his past, his love for Jesus, and his reasons for walking away. She shared her past, her abusive Catholic home, and her reasons for walking away. The two explored life together as young twenty somethings. They enjoyed the same movies and music, had identical political and social views and knew they were meant for one another. Enticed by close friends, the two began to explore Wicca, and became even more connected. She liked it more than he did, but he loved her, and, and as love often does, that was that.

After we ordered, Levi asks, “So, like I was saying, the church says my best friend from high school, who was the nicest and most loving person I’ve ever met, is in hell. What do you say?”

At that moment, something happened. My theological memory bank went blank. All of my study, all of my learning, all of my cut and dried answers fled at the first sign of real life. As I sat staring at my fettuccini alfredo, and as Levi sat staring at me, my answers had packed their bags and were on a one-way ticket out of here. They left a note on my desk that read, “Dear Sam, thanks for spending so much time with us. We work really well in situations of theory or abstract thought. We’re easy to come by when you’re alone, and we’re glad we could keep you and your giant brain company. But this is real life, now. Levi is just looking for a friend. Like a lot of people out there, he’s not looking for the answers you think you know. Levi knows that life is not easy. He just wants an ear who will listen. If you need us, we’ll be in a library or book that no one will read again for a million years. Sincerely, The Answers.”

Levi could tell that I was either stumped or trying to compose an eloquent response, so he continued, “The church also says I should breakup with my girlfriend. She’s not a Christian and even enjoys some aspects of Wicca. But she makes me so happy and we’re so good together. I avoid terms like soul mate, but she’s it, Sam. What do you think?”

Again, a long pause was all that shot forth from my side of the table. I couldn’t believe it!  This was supposed to be easy! Here he was, firing religious shots across the bow of my golden self-made theological ship, and I couldn’t even defend myself. I ran for ammo, but the garrison was empty. This was black and white; this was so simple; this was supposed to be my finest moment!

But all I could think was: Why should Levi break up with her? If this guy is interested in the man Jesus, who else is she going to meet who feels the same way? There’s no way she’s going to seek out someone like me to help her embrace the finer points and blessings of this 2,000 year old way of life. Who am I to question the love the two have between them? Who am I to question the integrity or substance of that love when it was remarkably absent from my own life at that point? And why was I questioning all of this? Questions were my wild beast that needed to be tamed. I had no defenses against such a barrage of them all at once. I was helpless and wandering about, confused, hopeless, unaware and lost. I had no answers.

Those minutes feeling lost became my 5 flat tire experience. Those minutes were a very personal low point because I had no answers for Levi. But the low point soon became a turning point. In the midst of that silence, something shifted, and then my whole world changed.

I said the wisest thing I could think of. “Well, I think you should stay with her. You may be the only chance she has to know a Christian. But don’t stay with her because you think you can change her. Stay with her because you love her.”

“And as your friend, well, he sounds like a really great guy. I wish I could have met him and gotten to know him like you did. Some people really believe what they told you. And some think the Bible is very clear on heaven and hell and who goes where. But I can’t see how a person as great as your friend is in hell.”

I couldn’t believe I said those very words. Out of my mouth came what I only knew before as dirty devil lies. I shocked myself. What was I doing?  Was I throwing away truth in order to pander to his emotions and come across as politically correct? I was throwing away years of study that had become my very identity. If I said what I did, and worse yet, if I ended up believing it, then I would have no idea who I was. I would be a completely different person and would have to forge a new identity based on who I was after I paid my lunch check. It was my quarter-life crisis five years too early.

I could recant. Even if I never told Levi anything else, I didn’t have to tell any of my like-minded friends what I told him. I could ask God for forgiveness later. No one had to know I even went to lunch. I could just keep it in that secret place all of us keep all of our dirtiest secrets and biggest regrets. I would never have to relive that moment if I didn’t want to. I could continue as before, with this minor road bump serving as a mere hiccup in my quest to be right all the time and keeper of all the answers. I could still study the same theology that dumped me during lunch. Perhaps I could coax it to fall in love with me all over again and we could pretend like lunch never happened.

But to do that I would have to deny who I was becoming. And running from who we are is a chase that never ends and a race we can never win. Our legs will get tired, we will run out of fuel, and who we are will overtake us and we will regret all the miles we ran in the opposite direction. The lunch moment brought to the surface my own destiny and trying to suppress all I was destined to become would only cause me years of heartache I would never be able to get back.

In that moment, I learned more about the call to be myself than any other calling placed upon my life. I learned that the need to be wholly us is often the most difficult calling to obey only because it is the most true. To deny that calling we must deny ourselves and who the Creator God is beckoning us to become. To deny that calling is to waste our life, and it is better to embrace our destiny than to waste our life.

I learned in that moment that everything would forever be different.  I learned that life is about the transitions and changes we all experience, and rarely about the final product. Life has more to teach us in the journey from point A to point B than we can ever learn from the destinations themselves. Life is lived in the lunch moments, in the moments we least expect. The additions and amendments that unscripted life throws our way are not suggestions to be considered, but are realities to be embraced.

In that instant, comprised of two questions during lunch, the God I had been trying to trap inside a perfect box I had assembled from my own ramshackle knowledge had moved. No longer bound by the shallow depth of my box, God blew the latch off the door and walked right thru. This God could change my entire identity in a flash and run rampant in the lives of others when not handcuffed by my own theology and my own stereotypes. Despite the hard work, long hours and early mornings had gone into this box construction, a new age postmodern Matrix guy destroyed my idol in an hour. My house of straw came crashing down at the first blow and I was left to sort through the rubble.

Everything was very different. Everything was new. Again. It was like seeing the sunshine after a month of storms. It was like smelling the ocean having spent a lifetime landlocked. It was like being able to walk after leaving a confining cell. I was different. I was new.

You can read more of Sam’s daily thoughts over at SamDavidson.net.

Tagged as: change, faith, healing, inspiration, journey