I can’t be the only one that has been there. Someone else has had to be there. I was trapped; I felt lost. Stuck somewhere between the secular world and the Christian world. I just didn’t fit in and sometimes I accidently wound up back in that position. Christian purgatory the place you don’t want to visit.
The first time I experienced it was my freshman year of college. I had been saved the year before but I didn’t change how I acted because I had no direction. I was new to the Christian world, but all these people at college seemed to be Christians for their whole life. They grew up in the church and got to experience something I never experienced, guidance and discipleship. I felt like an outsider. I just didn’t feel Christian enough to be there. I felt as if people looked at me and said, “Why are you even here?” They looked at how I talked, carried myself and acted. Then, when they discovered I was a baseball player they assumed I wasn’t even a Christian. I felt shunned and pushed out. I felt no sense of belonging. In my Spiritual Formation class I had no clue what was going on. I had no understanding of scripture or anything my teacher really said. I floated by with a ‘C’ in the class. I was lost in this new Christian world and environment with nowhere to turn.
When I came home for breaks I tried to hang out with my old friends from high school. That did not go well. Once again I felt as if they didn’t want me around. People that I loved so much and cared about, made me feel like I didn’t belong anymore. They told me, “Eli, I don’t even know who you are anymore. You have changed so much.” Eventually they just stopped talking to me. I became irrelevant to them. Once again I was lost, there was no one. I felt alone in the secular world too.
This is when I felt like I was in purgatory. This grey murky area between the light of the Christian world and the darkness of the secular one. You feel alone, like a ghost. You can see everyone, but they can’t seem to see you. It got to the point where I felt like I forgot how to swim and was drowning in this ocean that is purgatory. Right when I though my head was going to go under a hand grabbed me and pulled me out. He said, follow me as I follow Christ. He showed me love like Christ showed the Church. He became my brother as he discipled me. I don’t know where I’d be if my brother in Christ didn’t save me from this purgatory.
Even now sometimes I fall into the grey of what is the purgatory ocean. I will be swimming along well; then, a current like a rip tide will grab me and pull me under. This is when I listen to my flesh. This is when I’m constantly sinning and feel like I can’t stop. This is how bad habits form. This is where I need a brother in Christ again. This purgatory ocean will consume us if we don’t work together as the church. When you see someone that may be drowning like I was freshman year, grab them, and be there to disciple them. They need the love Jesus shows you.
