Unlikely Places: HPE 026 and the Story of the Church

As an introduction, I am a theology major at what purports itself as the largest charismatic Christian liberal arts university in the world. This means that I take lots of courses whose course number begins with THE, where we talk about who God is; BIB, where we talk about what he wrote (more or less); and CHRM, where we talk about how to be his body.

One class in the last category, Intro to Youth Ministry, met in the Aerobics Center so that we didn't have to come dressed in the Code (which was a collared shirt, dress pants and shoes). It was great. Some people came dressed in shorts and flip-flops (which was unheard of in those days) and we talked honestly and openly about God and working with teenagers.

As it turns out, the class which has informed my faith in some of the most startling ways, and probably taught me the most about being the body of Christ, met in the room across the hall. HPE 026 -- Beginning Swimming.

I feel at least a little bit obligated to tell some embarrassing story about myself here. I didn't grow up a swimmer; instead, I grew up afraid of most everything: the dark, spiders, heights, water, touching electric poles (not the wires, the wooden poles that they're connected to [or to which they're connected, if you're a grammarian]), lightning, and so on. (I'd like to point out that I have conquered these fears and moved on to new, more rational ones, like failure, rejection, abandonment, isolation, and babies) When I was 9 or 10 my parents decided that it was time for me to learn the things that came early for normal kids, like riding bikes and swimming. So they signed me up for swimming lessons at the local YMCA and I was off. The first couple of lessons were pretty chill: wading around in the shallow end, ducking my head under water, doing the whole hold-on-to-the-wall-and-kick-your-legs-furiously trick.

But then came a day of dread and terror: Jump-Into-The-Deep-End-Day. I couldn't do it. I was just too scared. Looking into the clear, 12-foot deep water, it didn't make sense to me that anything in that water could support me, that instead the Abyss would consume me. And there was this little, 4-year-old girl who just kept doing it over and over again and I was the one standing there in my swimming shorts to chicken to do it.

To make matters worse, this wasn't just a private trauma. No, instead there was a wall of windows directly behind me allowing everyone in the lobby of the Y--everybody's parents, random strangers, and God-knows-who-else--to watch the awkward 10-year-old boy sob and moan about dying if he jumps into the deep end.

So let's just say that swimming wasn't exactly something that I did for fun growing up. As such, I wasn't really in shape to pass the swim proficiency required here for graduation. Which led to me having to take HPE 026 this past fall, an experience I was not really looking forward to that much.

{{A brief interlude whereby I list reasons for hesitation:

1. I had, to that point, made a reasoned and passionate effort to avoid the men's locker room in the AC at all costs.
2. Aforementioned traumatic little-girl-being-more-manly-than-me experience.
3. My hatred of being wet which, as it turns out, is quite a bit of the whole swimming thing.

Regardless of these three entirely valid and reasonable objections, degree requirements are degree requirements. As it turns out, I learned a lot more than just how to swim.

Here's why: this class takes people from all different majors, backgrounds, and dorms, and puts them all into this bizarre and, for many, frightening experience that no one's really fully prepared for. It's a completely foreign environment filled with strangers and everyone's self-conscious and everyone's worried that they're going to look stupid--probably because most of us have stories like mine above where they had some shaming experience or recognition of their inadequacy in a very public and affecting way. Sound familiar yet?

This is what the Church is. None of us really have a clue what we're doing and we're all hoping with all our hearts that nobody else notices.

And while I was out there in that pool, treading for the first time in my life in the deep end for the entirety of class, I learned something. You don't go to the pool in order to walk around in the water. You go to a pool to swim.

Swimming is weird, because if you're just watching it looks like you're floating on nothing. On top of that, it is by far the most efficient way in which a person can get through water.

We often use watery imagery in the Church to describe grace ("Hallelujah grace like rain falls down on me") and I think that the metaphor fits here at least as well as it would anywhere else. See, I grew up on this idea that God's grace is like a safety net for when we don't quite measure up. "Oh, you messed up a little, good thing this grace was here to catch your fall."

But now I don't think so anymore. I think that God's grace is the water in the pool. And it was never the point that we walk by our own strength when we're in it, but rather to glide through it in a wholly supernatural way.

I hope this makes sense.

Peace, love, and joy to you all.