You Told Me To… and I Did

“What happened to you, David?

“When you were young, we were so proud. You grew up in our church. You knew the answers in Sunday school. You sang the hymns. You were baptized at the proper age of twelve. Later, you went to the youth gatherings and said the sweetest prayers. We watched you go off to Bible college and we knew you’d become a fine little preacher.

“What happened to you? Did we do something to cause you to fall away?”

Well… Let me put it to you this way:

You said to pray every day, and I did. But when I whispered to you that it didn’t seem like anyone was listening, you said to try harder, so I did, and it didn’t help.

You said to study the Bible, and I did. But when I became an expert in biblical studies and told you that the Bible said things you never told me about, you were indignant.

You said to tell the truth, and I did. But you didn’t like hearing something other than what you’d always heard and so you urged me to hush before I got into trouble.

You said to love the unlovely, and I did. But I found that you didn’t mean the homeless, and Blacks and Hispanics and those homosexuals.

You ask what happened to me. The answer is I did what you told me to do. In some ways,  I still do.

“Now hold on, you can’t blame us. We never claimed to be perfect but it’s not our fault that you fell from the one true way. You have to take responsibility for your own actions. You have to think for yourself.”

I do. My life is my own. You don’t have to take any blame for how I turned out.