Blaming Christian

I'm not at church this morning. Again. 


Don't get me wrong, I am very, very thankful for the faith family that I have. It is a relatively diverse group of people who come together more or less weekly for the purpose of seeking spiritual guidance and fulfillment. And it's exquisitely important to note that some of the people who I commune with regularly on the most spiritual levels do not frequent the same church--or any church.


To be completely honest, I have a very paradoxical relationship with organized religion. Which is a bit odd given my personal history and what I consider my depth of faith to be. 


My dad has been a pastor since I was three in a Mennonite church. First at West Union in Parnell, IA for 17 years, an now at Beth-El Mennonite in Colorado Springs for the past 18 or so. (For those of you whose education about Mennonites has come from reality TV or tour-guide type books, we drive cars and wear shorts and listen to Black Eyed Peas and drink beer and have real live flush toilets and electric lights and I have never owned a horse.) If you've never attended a Mennonite Church, do. They are--generally speaking--very welcoming, tolerant, grounded, deeply spiritual people who are less interested in "the Bible tells me so" than "love thy neighbor". My experience has been one that has grounded me to seek Truth, and not based on religion. 

Let me explain: 

The Bible tells a love story. It is not, contrary to popular belief, a book of rules and regulations and judgements about lifestyle and lists of punishable sins.  


It is amazing and heartbreaking to me how many people read the Bible--regularly--and completely miss the point. There are, roughly, 1186 chapters in the version of the Bible most widely read. (For you scholar-type people, there are several different versions and scripts used in other faiths, especially Jewish tradition, that are not usually published in the version decreed as acceptable by King James the somethingth--thus the King James version. It gets fairly confusing, but scholars decided which books to include in this version, which as been accepted as Unarguable Truth by Christians Everywhere ever since.) This is not your average lazy Sunday read. To even plow through some of it will take days. Most people cannot even read the whole thing in a year. 

It seems to my little pea-size brain that the Biblical story is easiest to understand when taken in the context of the original listeners. What details were important culturally and socially? What parts that seem insignificant to me may have had fundamental meanings to those originally hearing the story?

In that context, I realize that there was a lot that God asked of those who claimed to love and follow God. Take Jesus, for example. He did not come to die on the cross to save our sins. As I read the story in the context of the Old Testament, following the entire story line, it seems his original intent was to completely buck the politio-religious system that existed at the time. I would even argue that he didn't come to establish followers, but was God's effort at a continued relationship with misguided humanity. In the end, salvation through his death on the cross was the gift he left for those who entered into that relationship with God. 

I'm not sure I can measure up. 


In the wake of a lot of prattle about gun control and Chick-fil-a over the past couple of weeks, I was deeply grieved to see that, once again, Christians everywhere have confused a commitment to an issue over commitment to people. Commitment to relationships with people, no matter the "cause". Truthfully, it makes me ashamed to be associated or categorized with those who would use one's experiences and understandings--in this case even oneself--against them. I know that I've heard people say, "Well, we have to draw the line somewhere," when defending the contradictions of their beliefs and their actions. But the Truth is that the line between right and wrong runs through the middle of each one of us. We'd tear ourselves and everyone we care about apart if we tried to draw a hard line irrespective of the relationships on either side. It's impossible.

I do not intend to stop going to church. Even though it is imperfect--the dysfunction that affects every family affects every church family as well. That's part of being human and part of belonging to a family. I may not agree with how everyone votes or how they choose to spend their money or what they think the issue is. They probably don't agree with me. But I value that relationship and conversation.

I hope that I can teach my kids how to read the Bible and other faith writings--it's one thing to read, another to read wisely. I hope they learn faster and are wiser than I have been. I hope they learn to love enough to be able to enter that relationship and converstaion unconditionally. And though it seems paradoxical at first, perhaps I'm just painfully aware of the contradiction of being a Christian.