There is nobody so hated in this day and age like the Christians. Being a Christian is like being a conservative republican at a Gay Pride parade. Everybody is polite but nobody really gets what they are doing there.
I don’t hate Christians. I don’t dislike any religion.
If you had asked me eight months ago, I would have told you that you wouldn’t catch me in a church for any reason. Like any reason. Not a single one. Okay, funerals and baptisms got a pass, but that was it. Oh and weddings. Okay, so I wasn’t militant in my dislike of churches but I certainly wasn’t going voluntarily.
Then, like it often does, my life fell apart. Coincidentally, it was during a time when I had made a snarky comment about never going to church. Add to that the dead bird I found behind my car shortly after and a co-worker telling me she thought that I must be cursed and well…I went to church.
I’m not going to say I had some deep religious awakening but I did enjoy what the pastors had to say. They are funny and charming and the stuff they say makes a lot of sense theoretically.
I find myself going every Sunday to hear what they have to say, my daughter is involved in their youth group and even though she isn’t sold on religion, she has a group of friends she really likes.
Here is where the problem comes in. I don’t believe in the same God they do. Well, I don’t define it as they do. To be a Christian by definition breaks down to being a “Christ-follower.” If it were that simple then I don’t believe there would be a problem. My problem comes from where they get their information. To put it in simple terms, I love the class but hate the text book.
I believe in a higher power. I can’t name it or define it but I know it is there. I wish that traditional Christian’s values somehow lined up with the God that is in my heart but it just doesn’t. There is too much hate for a religion that preaches about God’s love. Traditional Christianity, for me, is like a shirt that I loved in the store, looked great on the mannequin, but when I got it home it just doesn’t fit.
I value human rights above anything. I know that sounds sanctimonious but it is the truth. My knee jerk reaction when I hear any group ostracizing any other group of people for any reason, whether it be color, sexuality, gender or disability, it makes me sick. It makes me literally, knot in my stomach, sick.
The reasons Christians get such a bad wrap lately, is because, I think, many people feel the same way as I do. Maybe not as militantly or passionately as I do but to some degree, this religion no longer fits them.
I think people want to believe. I think they want to feel a deep connection and conviction that this whole life isn’t for nothing. We all want some higher, loftier purpose, right?
I just don’t think that many can wrap their heads around the rules involved in Christianity. A man is the head of the household. That loving somebody who is the same gender as you is a sin. It’s strange because I’m willing to concede many points in the bible. I know that these things occurred on some level. History proves it. What I think most Christians don’t want to concede is that this was a bible that may have been dictated by God but it was written by man and many of the rules/sins in the bible are a direct reflection of the societal norms of the day not based on something that God defined.
This brings me back to the incident in question. As most people who actually know us know, my daughter is as outspoken and accepting as I am, and as much as she loves her youth group, last weeks lesson was about how homosexuality is a sin. She was devastated. She was so in love with this group and her teachers and then she was just sucker punched. I knew this would happen eventually. Even with a church that has a huge gay and lesbian following, the church hasn’t really budged on that stance.
I mean, I really hoped that a church as large as this one would have been more progressive but that was strictly stupidity on my part.
My church and most other churches always like to look to Leviticus 20:13 as proof that homosexuality is a sin while their hands are covering up the other “sins” in that book such as not laying with your wife when she is within seven days of menstruation, like not wearing two separate types of fabrics at the same time and not having tattoos.
Oh and lets not forget Leviticus 25:44-46 where it states that you may not only own slaves but bequeath them to your next of kin in the event of your untimely demise.
I might also point out that the sanctity of marriage started as a contract between a man and a woman(‘s father). Women were nothing more than property in the bible. They were bought and sold for the betterment of the men in their lives. Men had multiple wives, they had concubines. Yet, homosexuals are ruining the sanctity of marriage. Please, Brittney Spears and Kim Kardashian are ruining the sanctity of marriage.
Going strictly by the study guide, there are several passages that state that we are no longer bound to the laws of the old testament. That Christ’s dying for our sins, wiped away the old laws and we are to live in the new word which is to love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. There are no addendums, no flags, no buts. It was very clear. They say at my church that God meets you where you stand which means he is always there and always accepting. However, they then ignore a large percentage of their parishioners by glossing over the LGBT community.
I spoke up about my feelings to my daughter’s youth group. Anybody who knows me, won’t be surprised.They, however, were shocked. Their teaching the kids that homosexuality was wrong but we must be tolerant seemed super progressive to them.
I explained to them that they are shaping young mind’s in there. That the hate and ignorance they teach is going to warp some, ostracize some and turn others away from the church. I told them that an impressionable child hearing people they look up too say that what they are, who they were born to be, is wrong is why kids go home and hang themselves in their closets. (Okay, it was harsh but no less true)
I get people making excuses, saying that homosexuality is a sin but its not a big sin, its like lying or cheating on a test (yes, that is how the youth group leader explained it to me) and one person even went so far as to say, yes, you were born gay, but it is acting on it that makes you a sinner.
This sort of logic makes me want to chew my own face off. It’s junk science, it makes NO SENSE. This same loving God that they preach about on Sunday’s made an entire group of people gay so that they could suffer the entirety of their lives alone because he didn’t want them to be happy? He didn’t want them to find somebody to love? What? Why would anybody want to follow that God?
People have taken what was meant to be a blueprint for how to live their lives and they have shaped it into a weapon that they swing without consequence. I have taught my daughter to speak her mind and most of her friends in youth group don’t hesitate to tell people that they don’t believe that homosexuality is a sin.
This is what is so crazy to me. We have a new generation of kids who understand. Who get it. But they go to youth group every week and smile and fake it because they have to if they want to see their friends, if they want to go and help other people. This is why people walk away from the church as adults. This is why people are walking away from Christianity. It no longer fits the society we live in. It has nothing to do with Satan and everything to do with logic and loving others.
I’m not saying I don’t believe in God. I really do feel like there is a divine logic behind this planet. I see it in the science. If that doesn’t make sense, Google phi or the golden ratio. Look at astrology. No, don’t run away. I mean it. Okay, look at the Myers-Briggs personality tests. The reason people can identify with their astrological charts/their personality assessments is because their is divine logic in there that we just haven’t grasped yet. Even God had a basic blueprint, a system of creating who people are, then he through in nature vs. nurture so that not every person on the planet was exactly alike.
Their is a bigger picture here, people. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know that there is something more out there. Most days I have way more questions than answers but I know deep in my heart that whoever is up there, they love every person on this planet equally. I know that they didn’t want us divided by race or gender or sexuality.
I’m not going to stop going to this church. I know that makes me sound like a hypocrite but just because I don’t get the message they want me to get, doesn’t mean I am not getting a message out of it.
However, I’m also not going to stop making myself known. I’m not going to stop telling the pastors and youth group leaders that the things they say have consequences and that as people in the power position of shaping minds they need to be ever mindful of how the things they say can break a child and even an adult.
My roommate says that maybe its my calling to change people’s minds from the inside. I think that might be a goal for somebody bigger than me but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.
