#238. Wishing you had partied more before becoming a Christian.

When I mentioned this idea to the SCL focus group, AKA my wife, her response was basically, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I really don’t think this concept is just a guy thing, but maybe it’s more a “maturity thing,” as in she is, and I am not. Hard to tell, but here is how some conversations I have with friends go:

Friend 1:
“I’m really struggling with lust right now, even though I’m married. Sometimes I wish I had slept with more people before I became a Christian.”

Friend 2:
“Really? Why?”

Friend 1:
“I know there would be consequences but I just think I wouldn’t have such a hard time with lust if I had got it out of my system, you know, sowed some wild oats when I was in college or younger.”

Sometimes, I’ll hear people say that they wished they had partied more or tried pot or dated that guy that wasn’t a Christian just to see what he was like or a million other things that are now “off limits” because of their faith.

I think the main issue with that thinking is that it’s kind of a death bed idea. It sounds like the kind of thing people say with their last breaths, “I should have spent more time with my children or taken that job in Italy.” It’s me saying that when I became a Christian I had to put to death all the fun things. And now, I get to live my very gray, very flat, very vanilla, very dull Christian life looking back on all the good stuff I never experienced.

Faith is supposed to be the opposite. Faith is supposed to be about life. Big, wild, happy, sad, beautiful, ugly life. The love we have is designed to make those things seem small and insignificant. You might still want them, but like the kid that realizes the fireworks building on the side of the highway is just a small trailer with some tall walls attached to make it look two stories high, you start to see the hollowness of the things we once held dear.