My First God I Knew

Christmas morning, when Santa was still my god.

I grew up without a single introduction to God. God was never discussed or mentioned in our house. We didn’t pray before we ate. On Thanksgiving my dad would sometimes bow his head and say, “Rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub. Yay God!” and then laugh.

Occasionally, when my mom tucked me into bed, she would say, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

This did not bring me comfort.

Instead, I lay there imagining myself dying in my sleep and wondering who this “Lord” was who would come and take me away. My dad also talked about my mom’s brother Fred, who died of leukemia when I was two years old. According to my dad, Uncle Fred was now a ghost who lived in our house. Fred had been handy when he was alive, so whenever something mysteriously started working again, my dad would say that Fred had fixed it for us.

This was pretty much the extent of my early spiritual formation.

Except for Santa Claus.

Santa was different. I knew Santa. From the time I was teeny tiny, I was aware of him and felt him watching me. Not just at Christmas, but all year long.

He knew when I was sleeping. He knew when I was awake. He knew when I was bad or good, so I had better be good for goodness’ sake.

I took this very seriously.

When my brother tortured me by farting in my face or tickling me until I cried, I held myself back from slugging him, scratching him or kicking him because Santa was watching. I couldn’t afford too many marks on the naughty side of the ledger.

I wasn’t necessarily trying to be the very best kid on Santa’s list. I just needed to be good enough to avoid the lump of coal.

As Christmas got closer, I ramped things up. I became extra helpful to my parents. I gave in to my brother and played all the games he wanted to play, like Battleship, chess and Pong. He was better than me at all of them and always beat me, so I didn’t particularly enjoy playing with him. But Santa was watching, and December was no time to get lazy. I needed to rack up some good deeds.

At school, I tried not to talk out of turn or get too playful in line. I looked for opportunities to share. I tried to be a model student.

Every Christmas my dad joked that my brother and I were getting nothing but coal and it was going to be a very sad Christmas. But somewhere inside, I felt fairly confident. I had done the calculations. There were some naughty marks, sure, but I was pretty certain the good outweighed the bad.

Then presents began accumulating under the tree with my name on them.

I had squeaked by.

Santa was really my first god.

My relationship with him was transactional. I behaved, he rewarded me. I misbehaved, he withheld. My job was to keep the scales tipped in my favor.

And then, in one moment, my god disappeared.

I was sitting in the waiting room at ballet class when my brother told me Santa wasn’t real. It was all a lie parents told their kids so they would behave.

I knew immediately that he was telling the truth because of my mother’s reaction.

“Todd! That is not nice. Why did you have to spoil Christmas for her like that?”

I played it off like I already knew. I wasn’t about to let my brother or my mother know how devastated I was. I didn’t want them to know I was some stupid little kid who had lived for Santa all year.

But inside, something collapsed.

The all-seeing man I had been performing for my entire life had never existed.

In a matter of seconds, I became an atheist.

I lived quite comfortably without a god until sometime in the fourth grade, when I met a lion.

That year our school had a reading contest. We earned points for every book we finished, and if we accumulated enough points, we got to go on a class trip to the lake at the end of the year. My brother had done it two years before me, so naturally I was determined to do it too.

One of the many books I picked up was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

I had no idea that book was going to change me forever.

With every glimpse of Aslan, I fell more deeply in love with him. Like Lucy, I was completely swept away. Aslan made me feel safe and known. I felt that I could make mistakes and somehow still be accepted by him. He possessed the deepest magic. I knew he was more powerful than the White Witch, and I trusted him completely.

Then Edmund betrayed everyone for Turkish Delight.

The Witch knew the Deep Magic. A traitor belonged to her, and Edmund’s betrayal meant his life was hers.

But Aslan offered his own life instead.

When Aslan allowed himself to be tied to the Stone Table, shaved, mocked and humiliated, I cried and cried. I could barely keep reading. My heart broke as my hero was killed.

I thought Aslan was indestructible.

I thought he would save everyone.

I thought he could never die.

And then I discovered the Deeper Magic.

The Witch knew the law, but she didn’t understand what happened when an innocent victim willingly gave his life in the place of a traitor. Death itself would begin to work backward.

Aslan came back to life.

I cried again, this time with relief and joy. Aslan lived! The Witch would be defeated. The snow began to melt in Narnia, and something frozen inside me began to melt too.

After that, I imagined Aslan following me everywhere.

Aslan came to school with me. He was beside me when I slept. When I was scared, I called out to him and felt him close. I knew Aslan was powerful, but unlike Santa, I wasn’t afraid that he was keeping a list.

I believed Aslan loved me.

It would be years before I understood what had happened to me.

I thought I was reading a fantasy about a magical land inside a wardrobe. Looking back, I believe God was introducing Himself to a little girl who had never been introduced to Him.

I didn’t know the theology. I didn’t understand sacrifice, grace, redemption or resurrection. I didn’t know what it meant for an innocent man to willingly take the place of someone guilty.

But I understood Aslan.

And for the first time, I encountered a completely different kind of God.

Santa watched me to see if I deserved a reward.

Aslan loved Edmund when Edmund deserved nothing.

Santa kept a record of wrongs.

Aslan took the traitor’s punishment upon himself.

Santa taught me to perform.

Aslan taught me that I could be loved.

One god required me to save myself by being good enough. The other came to save me.

Years later, as a teenager, I drifted far away from the make-believe land of Narnia and found plenty of Turkish Delight of my own. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, constant partying and a strange death wish carried me pretty far into the cold.

Eventually, God got my attention and gripped my heart.

But what drew me to Him wasn’t fear of punishment. It wasn’t the threat of hell or some divine lump of coal. I wasn’t attracted by rules or even by a desire to follow them. I had already spent enough of my childhood trying to keep the scales tipped in my favor.

I was drawn to a God of love.

A God who wasn’t standing at a distance recording my failures, but who was willing to enter the story and rescue me from them. A God who knew exactly who I was, including the worst parts, and called me anyway.

A God who wanted to take me on an adventure.

Sometimes I wonder how many people have rejected God when what they actually rejected was Santa Claus.

Maybe somewhere along the way, God was presented to them as the great cosmic scorekeeper. Be good. Follow the rules. Don’t mess up. Accumulate enough points. Try harder. Do better. And maybe, if the good outweighs the bad, you’ll discover a few presents under the tree with your name on them.

That was the first god I knew.

But he wasn’t the God who eventually found me.

Strangely enough, I first recognized Him as a lion.

And maybe that is one of the beautiful things about God. He knows how to find us before we even know what we’re looking for.