When I woke up this morning, I muzzily told myself "I'd better get back to work and write the last bit of the blog post." It took me a while to remember that I'd not started writing any of it yet; before I realized that the whole thing had simply been dreamt. Here's me, trying to rewrite what I only dreamed I'd written:
The Christianity I was raised with was kind of like a pointy stick I'd been handed that I was walking around with, and one with which I had been instructed to faithfully poke anyone nearby. It stretched pretty far. And it was very pointy. You could go around and no one ever got very near you.
The Christianity I was raised with was kind of like a pointy stick I'd been handed that I was walking around with, and one with which I had been instructed to faithfully poke anyone nearby. It stretched pretty far. And it was very pointy. You could go around and no one ever got very near you.
But simply poking others, and building my identity upon being one of the Precious Few did not prove fulfilling, in the long run. Didn't want to spread that message to the world: "You're going to hell when you die! You need to learn about the gospel right now! From me! Probably best to come to our church to do that, after listening to me, because you can't trust most of what's being taught out there by most churches! Come along and we'll teach you about love and acceptance!"
I think a lot of people raised with religion believed most of it when they were little, and then found they didn't. Like Santa. A fairly black and white thing. Grew up a bit and suddenly declared they didn't believe in God anymore. It wasn't like that for me.
At first, I certainly believed. Not just about God. About all of it. I knew everything when I was ten. Post-tribulation or pre-tribulation Rapture? Pre. Creation or evolution? Creation. Six 12-hour days with six 12-hour nights to built all of reality, or an unspecified amount of time? Six 12-hour days with six 12-hour nights. Calvinism or Arminianism? Calvinism. Six-point Calvinism or lesser forms of it? Six-point. (Every petal on the T.U.L.I.P.) Santa Claus and Christmas? Pagan and wrong. Same with Easter and the Bunny. Superstition. We believed bible truth.
And I grew up as sheltered from the beliefs of others as possible. No TV or movies at home, and book selections carefully screened. No odd, other people's beliefs about anything we thought mattered. No book that deigned to comment on good and evil or God and devil, or even depict them. At first all this was done to us, but soon enough we were sufficiently trained to do it to ourselves.
Despite being taught that we Absolutely Could Not "lose" our salvation and end up in hell, we feared something else nearly as much: losing the correctness of our doctrinal positions. And letting ourselves be exposed to the ideas of people who maybe thought that God would, eventually, try to save everyone, or that maybe Christians would have to weather the Great Tribulation, or that maybe the message of the bible gets through clear and strong, but some of the actual translations and edits are a bit mistaken, or that we ought to be trying to speak in tongues if we truly loved God? Hearing much of any of that could soon land us in Errorland.
Cults loomed large in the public consciousness in the 70s and 80s (and with good reason) and the idea that going to a different church, or reading books written by folks outside of ours, could infect us with mania for something Utterly Wrong, could brainwash us out of our correct beliefs, was very strong. We unthinkingly avoiding having our thinking touched by other views.
Cults loomed large in the public consciousness in the 70s and 80s (and with good reason) and the idea that going to a different church, or reading books written by folks outside of ours, could infect us with mania for something Utterly Wrong, could brainwash us out of our correct beliefs, was very strong. We unthinkingly avoiding having our thinking touched by other views.
So I grew up with a brain and heart that had pretty much only ever heard the One Opinion. The One Story.
But it happened, eventually, anyway. Other views got to me. My parents let me hear about evolution at school. I heard at school that being gay wasn't a sinful choice, but that some people were born that way. As an older teen and young adult, I stopped fleeing conversations and other exposure to the thinking of Jehovah's witnesses, Mormons, Baptists and Pentecostals. And they said and wrote stuff that sounded crazy to me. Mostly they thought I was going to hell because they thought my beliefs were wrong and that I was associated with the wrong group. The nerve!
When we had divisions within our own "right" group, forming pairs of groups who then both said the other one was wrong, I noted this, and was willing to hear what the people on the "other" side had to say. About everything. I took it all in. I went and talked and listened to people on every side of it I could find. I didn't look to "keep my life simple," in terms of views. I didn't let my circle of association narrow when my church's circle of fellowship did. I collected it all and looked for what it was that seemed to get one down the highway.
And, frightened, I slowly lost my grip on the idea that my church group was somehow the only right one, the one God was "with." This idea had been very central, and the loss of it was like it is for most people to lose their belief that Christianity is the only right religion.
But still, I held to the idea that all of the fighting and splitting off and leaving one another in the ditch to die that went on at my group was a Really Bad Thing. A thing we'd done for generations and were almost proud about. It certainly made us feel more right, somehow. This upset me. It seemed like a clear reversal of position, a clear doing one thing despite having said another. So no matter how bad stuff got, and the less I was able to submerse myself in the toxic spirit there, I believed firmly that it would be very, very wrong to do to them what they were all doing to one another: to walk away. To stop listening. To cease "being there" for each other. To cease trying to understand.
But still, I held to the idea that all of the fighting and splitting off and leaving one another in the ditch to die that went on at my group was a Really Bad Thing. A thing we'd done for generations and were almost proud about. It certainly made us feel more right, somehow. This upset me. It seemed like a clear reversal of position, a clear doing one thing despite having said another. So no matter how bad stuff got, and the less I was able to submerse myself in the toxic spirit there, I believed firmly that it would be very, very wrong to do to them what they were all doing to one another: to walk away. To stop listening. To cease "being there" for each other. To cease trying to understand.
And, of course, they did that to me instead. They're not listening. They're not "there" for me. Haven't been for most of my adult life. If I were able to fix that, I would. Not by smothering and burying my deepest convictions. But by listening. Trying to understand. Looking to hang out a few times a year.
Trouble is, no one wants to talk. Mostly, they're keeping their heads simple by shielding them from the beliefs and views of others. And I carry around with me a whole collection of those.
Nowadays, you're not likely to force me to "admit" that gays are wrong, or Trump is right, or America used to be Christian and is now doomed because of pursuing greater tolerance, or letting women out of their rightful place or even if I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that God made the world in exactly six 12-hour days with six 12-hour nights between them. I don't know about any of that for sure. And it's very freeing to leave it to God to sort that stuff out and approach the things with humility, if at all.
In fact, I am very sincerely undecided about any number of thing and likely to remain that way. I know this makes me "not serious" about my faith, as far as many are concerned. Missing the point and not getting out there and hitting "like" on Pro Life posts on Facebook. But I'm not interested in your frantic need to shove me into taking a side, with your pointy stick, or be pushed away so you don't have to hear someone like me, living his life, anywhere near you.
In fact, I am very sincerely undecided about any number of thing and likely to remain that way. I know this makes me "not serious" about my faith, as far as many are concerned. Missing the point and not getting out there and hitting "like" on Pro Life posts on Facebook. But I'm not interested in your frantic need to shove me into taking a side, with your pointy stick, or be pushed away so you don't have to hear someone like me, living his life, anywhere near you.
Nowadays, I guess I'm an agnostic about a lot of things apart from the existence of God. I think He's out there. I think we deal, He and I, across infinite space, and from deep within me and from behind everything. From between the molecules, fueling them. I'm trying to know the God of the bible and of my experience. I'm trying to broaden and deepen as to what I think and feel about Him. And it ends up having nothing to do with church or with doctrine or politics in any conventional sense. It's kind of... psychological. We all have growing and healing and learning and repenting to do, whether we believe in a God of any kind or not, and that's what it's about for me, as the sort of God I believe in evolves.
It's very "small," mostly. No rooms filled with hundreds or thousands of people who apparently all agree about stuff. There's no culture of people putting out albums, where I find my faith. There's no clear choice as to which political party to vote for. There's no street address to show up to, to see a room full of people who agree, no mailing address to get helpful books and pamphlets from, outlining what "we" all think and believe. There is no Grand Surrender of some life path I might have otherwise theoretically followed. God is helping me be me, more. Properly.
There's just me and God. And it's quiet. And it's taking my whole life. There aren't too many songs. There aren't too many rituals. There's not a lot of money being collected, or committees chaired. There aren't titles and positions to go around. No churches are being planted at all. But it's the only way I know to get to know God. To neither walk away from the idea, nor let other people sell it to me on a weekly basis.
It's very "small," mostly. No rooms filled with hundreds or thousands of people who apparently all agree about stuff. There's no culture of people putting out albums, where I find my faith. There's no clear choice as to which political party to vote for. There's no street address to show up to, to see a room full of people who agree, no mailing address to get helpful books and pamphlets from, outlining what "we" all think and believe. There is no Grand Surrender of some life path I might have otherwise theoretically followed. God is helping me be me, more. Properly.
There's just me and God. And it's quiet. And it's taking my whole life. There aren't too many songs. There aren't too many rituals. There's not a lot of money being collected, or committees chaired. There aren't titles and positions to go around. No churches are being planted at all. But it's the only way I know to get to know God. To neither walk away from the idea, nor let other people sell it to me on a weekly basis.
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