(Um, yeah, the Maui photos. I just haven’t had much motivation as far as tweaking and posting them goes. I have a few that I already know how I want to PhotoShop, I just have a million other things to do first, ya know? I guess, in the meantime, I’ll just put all the raw images up on Flickr. Watch my twitter updates, I’ll send the link.)

It’s been several months since I last tried on a church. Every time, though, it was a wrong fit. Not the right age range. No racial diversity. Sermons filled with judgment and condemnation. I wrote about it before, but once, over a year ago, I thought I had found a church home. A group I could belong to. I ignored many signs that things just weren’t right. I ignored the fact that I came in alone, and left alone, without a single person saying hello to me (unless I initiated contact, in which case it was a rushed hello, and then a glance away, so I’d know that they didn’t NEED me to be their friend, they had plenty already, thanks). I ignored the fact that each time I attended one of the smaller studies, I was asked my name and if it was my first time attending. In fact, it got so bad that I began making up names, careers, and other things, just to see how long it took. After 6 months, I was Lena from Maryland, and I was an assistant principal at a junior high school. And no one batted an eye.

After I was assaulted, I went back to the same church, though more hesitantly. But I could no longer ignore the fact that it didn’t fit. I was hurt and angry over the fact that no one had bothered to notice me enough to note my absence, or the battered condition in which I returned; it wasn’t about getting sympathy, it was about being recognized, at the very least. And I got bitter. I let the bitterness spread to all churches, to all Christians.

After a few months off, I wanted to try again. I had a better idea of what I wanted. I wanted diversity. I wanted openness. I wanted love, not condemnation. I wanted a church that performed same-sex commitment ceremonies as well as marriages. Maybe it’s a selfish thing, maybe I just wanted a church that wouldn’t make me feel guilty about moving in with JS, the way my family did; maybe I wanted a church that would let me feel like Christianity wasn’t all on their side. JS and I found a few to try, and we struck out.

So I did some research online. I looked into “open and affirming” churches, figuring that if they accepted and embraced homosexuality, they couldn’t be as “traditional” as some of the churches that didn’t work out. I came up with two. Both of them are somewhat of a commute, as far as churches go, but really, it’s not so bad. 25 minutes. And, they’re both in my favorite neighborhood of San Diego.

Today we tried our first one, and it’s hard to describe how it felt when I walked in. We were greeted, but not bombarded, at the door. We wrote our names in the registry, from which we were welcomed in front of the congregation; it would have been awkward, except that it’s obvious they were used to greeting newbies. The inside was like a “normal” church. Stained glass. Crosses. Pews. Pulpit. But the atmosphere was different. I felt accepted, without any effort on anyone’s part. It was the most natural thing that JS and I were there, together as a couple, with different last names (but the same address), and over a decade between our ages. As we found a place to sit, I saw families of all kinds: young and older couples, gay and straight, with and without kids. Friend reaching over the pews to hug each other. Some people wore dresses or slacks. Some wore shorts and tank tops. Most wore jeans. The prayers were simple and heartfelt. The sermon was over before I knew it, and had no mention of judgment or repentance, only of love and joy and redemption. The songs were jubulent and everyone clapped or sang along.

At one point during the service, I felt that prickling feeling behind my eyes, and I swallowed away the small lump in my throat. I leaned over and whispered to JS, “I think these people would be friends with us.”

And really, all doctrine and politics aside, that’s all that I’ve been searching for all along.

Technorati Tags: Religion, Faith, Christianity, Church, Life

Some people homeschool their kids. For safety, say, after a bullying incident. For convenience, if a family has odd schedules. For religious reasons, to have the opportunity to teach your child a moral code or faith based history.
 
I was never homeschooled. But now, I’m home-churched. For many of the same reasons. But mostly because I just don’t fit in any more.
 
I grew up completely flanked by the church. I went to both Sunday School and the regular service each week. I had teachers act out The Best of the Bible on a flannel board. I sang songs with catch phrases: “Yes, Jesus Loves Me!” “The B-I-B-L-E, that’s the book me!” And I sang songs about Bible verses. I memorized verses for points, and I used those points to buy new Bibles, or even better, to buy a nice quilted cover for my Bible. When I got a little older, memorizing verses got me patches to sew onto my Bible Beanie that I wore to my Wednesday Night groups. I got even more points (and thus even more patches) if I brought a non-church friend. Sometimes I got enough points to earn a trophy that I proudly displayed in my bedroom.
 
Every summer and winter I went away to church camp, where different people taught us Bible stories, and told us how much better our lives were when we did only what God wanted us to do. We took Creation Hikes, where we could admire God’s handiwork. We sang songs about the Bible and memorized verses. We prayed a lot, and had calls to “rededicate our lives to the Lord,” where most of us would stumble up the aisles, crying, and confess our sins of doubt and lack of faith to one of the counselors who would pray over us and ask God to forgive us and restore us as His children. We’d float on that high for a week or two after camp, and then it would fade and I’d get grounded for pretending that my brothers hit me just to get them grounded and out of my hair.
 
When I got older, about junior high , I got even more involved in my church. I stayed for the 3rd Sunday service to volunteer in the nursery, or teach kindergarten classes. I joined the Worship Team and lead the songs twice a week, raising my hands and closing my eyes with my sincerity and passion. And as our youth groups started getting hormones, we had a lot of Bible Studies on why God hates sex, unless you’re heterosexually married. But not just sex. Just to be safe, don’t kiss a boy lying down because you don’t have any internal judgement and you won’t be able to stop yourself. And if you DO have sex, you’ll get pregnant. And when you do get pregnant, you CANNOT have an abortion.
 
It sounds horrible, but I loved it. My friends were in church. My family. I had a built in social network and I fit in. I was liked. I was a leader. I was known at my public school as The Christian Girl. I didn’t cuss. I wore kitchy T-shirts. I prayed before I ate lunch. I might have been teased a few times, but not much. Shocking, I know. Not all of my friends at school were Christian, but I was OK with that, because I knew that God would answer my prayers and change their hearts.
 
And then things changed. I grew up. I went a little crazy in college and couldn’t reconcile the pain I was in with the God I once knew. For a while, I was severely depressed, because surely, if parts of the Bible aren’t true, then the whole thing must be not true. It was all or nothing. I couldn’t simply choose to ignore the parts that felt hollow or empty. There was no interpretation of the Bible. There was The Truth. And then suddenly, there was no Truth and I was so very, very lost.
 
Towards the end of college, I was beginning to find my way to a middle ground, to some sort of reconciliation with who I was before and who I wanted to be. The contradictions in the Bible didn’t bug me, I enjoyed having the freedom to come up with different applications of the Bible to my life. And when all else failed, I could simply  rely on that whole “Jesus changed the rules” thing and attribute all those pesky laws and traditions to religion pre-Jesus.
 
It hasn’t been until recently, maybe 6 months or so, that I’ve really felt that I just don’t fit in with Christians. Not only that, but if they knew me and what I was really thinking, then they’d probably prefer me not to bring my bad ju-ju to their house of worship. It’s hard to pin it on one thing. Part if is because when I was raped last year, I had been attending a church for months and still had no one to call for help, or even just to talk.  Part of it is that I’m just too damn liberal now. I want women clergy in my church. I want gay clergy. I want open Communion - not this “you have to be a member or at least baptized” garbage. I want moral discussions about the environment, about Darfur and human rights, about the atrocity of homelessness and hunger. I want to be taught lessons from other faiths and religions, because it’s time Christians acknowledge there are things worth learning outside the walls of fundamentalism.
 
Instead I get sermons about spreading the world of God to Godless people. Or stories about women who had abortions and later realized their terrible mistake, came to Christ, and now battle daily feelings of guilt and self loathing. I get admonished not to be “unequally yoked” in friendship or marriage to someone who isn’t a Christian.
 
When I go to church now, I just sit there feeling more and more angry. So I decided to stop banging my damn head against the floor and, you know, just stop going already. And I have to say, I feel much better. I feel at peace and I feel like I’m more in touch with the important aspects of my faith. I’m not giving up on God or Christianity in its most idealistic sense. And I wouldn’t say that I’m giving up on church, either. But until I can find one that I can walk out of feeling refreshed and challenged, not judged and angry, I don’t plan on going back.

Technorati Tags: Church, Faith, Religion

Tags: Church, Faith

No, really, did I? He’s driving over to my place at 8:30 to go to church with me. 8:30. AM. In the morning. On a Sunday. To go to church. For me.

Peter Patrelli may be purty, but I doubt he’d cut his Sunday Morning Sleep In short for little ol’ moi.

Tags: 11, 74

I know I run the risk of alienating or upsetting some with this post, but there’s just no getting around it for me.

I wrote a little while ago about the conversation I had with John about a question that forms one of the foundations of our faith: Do people who do not accept Jesus as their Savior go to heaven? 

It’s not that I’ve never questioned my upbringing or beliefs before, I mean, c’mon. John and I used to sell our chapel seats in college. I got kicked out of a theology class for asking whether or not it was possible that God chose not to know the future in definitive terms. As my mother likes to say, I’m a contrary person. It took going to a Christian College to turn me into any sort of rebel.

But this is no mere rebellion against conformity. This question has many deep implications to something that defines who I am as a person.

Anyway, back to the question: can people who don’t know Jesus still go to heaven?

In some obvious cases, I think it’s a pretty easy “yes”. Infants, for example. Mentally handicapped individuals. These “groups” never have the chance to make a decision for themselves, and if ours is a God of compassion, I cannot possibly accept that he will penalize them. The same goes for people who lived before Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection – how could they have believed in something that didn’t exist for them?

But there are some cases that don’t have easy answers for me. (Just an aside, take all of this with a grain of salt; I do not claim to think I’m the definitive answer on all things spiritual or theological, this is all purely my own personal thoughts, opinions, and reflections. Also an aside, albeit a different one, should I watch High School Musical 2? I keep hearing about it everywhere!) What about Jewish people living today, who DO believe in Jesus, but don’t think he was the Messiah? What about Muslims? Buddhists? Atheists?

I used to think that it was very clear cut: these people are going to hell. They didn’t accept the gift of God’s grace and are unfit to be in His presence. I didn’t rejoice in that fact; it killed me inside. But now? I’ve had some sort of crisis, or just an epiphany, or I’m hungry and delusional. I believe that God is a God of love and forgiveness, who has NO darkness in Him (I Peter). I believe that love, especially God’s love, can transcend everything, even death. Romans 8:38-39 says just that: “For I am convinced, that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons….will be able to separate us from the love of God.” And again in I Peter it says that The Good News (the Gospel) has been preached to the dead, so that their spirits can live with God. Hebrews states that we die once, and then we’re judged. To me, these verses demonstrate, pretty clearly, that there will be a chance for those who die without Christ to go to Heaven.

And what about bad people? Murderers, rapists, animal abusers? Well, I do think that the Bible is definitive about the fact that God judges everyone in the end, and in Romans 2 it says that the conscience is like a law written in the human heart, and it will show whether we are forgiven or condemned. So “saved” or not, people can be judged by the content of their heart and soul. Also. I think that even if these sorts of people are handed, outright, a second chance after death, they will not take it because those that love evil hate the light, lest their deeds be uncovered (John 3:20). 

And that, dear readers, is my two cents on salvation.

Here’s a recent text conversation I had with John.

Me: So here’s a nice easy question…do you still believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven/salvation?

John: I have the perfect answer to that! It’s [crack] [static] oh shoot. Can’t hear you. [crackle]

Me: This is a TEXT, not actual conversation.

John: Number unavailable.

He’s a funny guy, that John.

But it is interesting, isn’t it, that a question that was SO easy to answer as few as 5 years ago now makes me pause. Isn’t one of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity that Jesus is the only way to heaven? That, and apparently not reading Harry Potter…but I digress. I’m still a Christian. I still believe that Jesus is the son of God, that He died for our sins, and rose again. But do I necessarily think that so called “non-believers” are doomed to an eternity in hell? Well, that’d have to be a big no. But I’m not sure if I’m even allowed to believe that as a Christian.

In junior high and high school I was Little Miss Youth Group. Not really , I mean, it’s not like I had a crown and a sash or anything. But I loved going to church and youth group! All of my friends were there. I went to pro-life rallies with my Dad, and I truly believed that any woman considering an abortion was considering murder. I led the songs at youth group meetings. Sometimes I even closed my eyes with the passion of the lyrics. I know, I know. But in my defense, I was a good little WASP and didn’t raise my hands. I started an early morning prayer group that I went to weekly, and forced my non-churched best friend to go as well. I’m amazed she still talks to me. Abstinence was the only way and it was just plain out wrong to date someone who wasn’t a Christian. I was such an asshole that in grade school, I used to try and force kids on the playground to pray the “salvation prayer” and cried when they didn’t.

Sometimes I miss that person I used to be, if only because the confidence and the living for something else was pretty exhilarating. But, at the same time, I often look back with a mingled sense of shame and anger: would it have killed me to just be nice and shut my trap!

(And just to be absolutely clear, I do NOT think that all people who are confident in their faith/religion/or active in their church are losers. That description just doesn’t apply to me any more, and I wonder what happened.)

On the other hand, I like the person I am now. I believe that the most important things I took away from my religious upbringing are the concepts of love, kindness, forgiveness, doing your best to make the world a good place, and wish to just let it be. OK, one of those might be a Beatle’s song. Sometimes I wonder if religion is in place just to make those things easier to accomplish.

I get so damn frustrated with Christians who give “us” the wrong image. From the vague memories I have of my Bible Verses, Jesus didn’t talk a whole lot about gay marriage, abortion, or foreign trade;  but He did talk a lot about love, helping the poor, taking care of the orphans and widows, not being a hypocrite, and forgiveness. What happened to these things? Does it break anyone else’s heart that Christianity is known more for their vice grip on legalistic morals than the convictions that shape them?

What happened to the easy questions?