To celebrate our ten year anniversary, we are inviting back former writers back to tpc in order to hear what they’ve been thinking about since leaving the post calvin. Today, please welcome back Brad Zwiers. Brad (‘12) graduated from Calvin College in 2012 and Western Theological Seminary in 2015. He’s currently a pastor at Calvin CRC in Grand Rapids. He often stares at books he wishes he could read but knows he will not finish and goes for long walks with his wife, Gwyn, and son, Malcolm.
In the years since graduating college and then seminary, getting married, writing for the post calvin for seven years, teaching at a high school, becoming a pastor, and becoming a parent, one nagging question has troubled me all along: did I used to be a better person?
This is a difficult question to ask, and an even harder question to answer. And yet it’s constantly there, waiting for a quiet moment of reflection to pounce. Part of the reason it bothers me so much is I’m afraid the answer is simple: yes. I used to be a better person, a better Christian, a better friend. Because while I’m aware of memory’s shortcomings, I can’t help but miss who I used to be (or who I think I used to be). Past Brad had time for people. He was often tired but never exhausted. He was energized by deep discussion or by holding a question in your hand, turning it over, examining it from all sides. His faith anchored him. His anxiety felt under control. His anger was channeled; his joy resplendent.
According to Spotify, my most played song of 2023 was “Funeral Plant” by the band Fireworks, the fifth track on their album Higher Lonely Power. I know why. As the guitars crescendo near the end of the song, the lead vocalist sings, “What was it about me back then? If you want I can try to be it again.” The first time I heard “Funeral Plant” I was in the car and parked in our driveway. I replayed the end of the song again and again with a lump in my throat and realized that’s exactly what I’d been feeling for years. I had a hard time naming the feeling or putting it into words until I heard the end of “Funeral Plant.” What was it about me back then? If you want I can try to be it again. Or: did I used to be a better person?
At some point along the way, I must have absorbed the idea that a person grows in wisdom as they age. That the heart softens. I thought morality grew in a linear progression and that I’d be able, in some form, to track that progression as I grew in moral stature—a chart of all the ways I’d developed into a better human being. I knew there would be setbacks, of course, but I assumed that once I moved through them those setbacks would only slingshot me forward. I would be refined by the fire, you know, or better for the struggle. Now, I don’t know.
I will say here, though, that I don’t think the opposite is true, either. It’s not as though I reached peak moral, ethical, and spiritual form my senior year of college and then linearly regressed as time went on. The journey has sincerely been, to use a bundle of cliches, one of peaks and valleys, one step forward and two steps back, an exercise in patience. And the reality is that while this question eats at me, I am grateful for who and where I am now. So what gives?
The other month I was talking with another pastor. We hadn’t met before, and he was telling me about his role as a youth pastor in his congregation. He talked about the fun his youth group had together and the bond they had formed but lamented how reluctant some of the high schoolers seemed to explore their faith more deeply. Almost without thinking I jumped in to reassure him: “Hey, that’s completely normal. Discipleship is slow, for all of us.”
In that moment I think I found (or perhaps I was given) some footing for my own existential questions. Discipleship is slow. For now I’ll add this, too: Discipleship is slow, and it’s non-linear. Did I used to be a better person, a better Christian, a better friend? Maybe. But I might be better in the future, too, and it could be that this is partly what the Psalms mean when they tell us to wait on the Lord.
Brad Zwiers (’12) graduated from Calvin College in 2012 and Western Theological Seminary in 2015. He will not be graduating from any more schools. He often stares at books he wishes he could read but knows he will not finish and goes for long walks with his wife, Gwyn. Sometimes he plays basketball and always he follows the greatest sporting club in the world, Liverpool F.C.
