Musings on Faith

  

I know that the act of going to church is not what saves people.  Faith saves people.  Christianity is about faith in Jesus, and Jesus is about love. I have faith, I pray daily, and I try to let my Christianity be reflected in how I live my life. However, I have been operating under the assumption that the way I live my life would be enough.  This was working for me until a few weeks ago when a friend caught me by surprise as  she began talking about the dynamic that religion plays in her life.  As I listened to her talk, I realized that she was mirroring some of my own thoughts about organized religion until she said “I am a good person and that should be enough.”  Before I could stop myself, I began to tell her that it isn't enough. The difference between a good person and a Christian is faith. Christianity is faith combined with the willingness to acknowledge that faith in both word and action.  To be honest, I don’t know which one of us was more shocked to hear me witnessing to someone. 

Shortly after this incident, one of the nicest people I know was asked not to volunteer in church activities because her lifestyle isn’t one that is endorsed by the church.  These judgmental attitudes are exactly why I stopped going to church in the first place.  When I read the negative comments about Christians in the media, I began to muse on those recent conversations and it made question on my own lack of church attendance.

“As a teenager, I began to question the Great Christian Sorting System. My gay friends in high school were kind and funny and loved me, so I suspected that my church had placed them in the wrong category... Injustices in the world needed to be addressed and not ignored. Christians weren't good; people who fought for peace and justice and were good. I had been lied to, and in my anger at being lied to about the containers, I left the church. But it turns out, I hadn't actually escaped the sorting system. I had just changed the labels.”
― Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint

When I was growing up mom took us to church every single Sunday.  As I matured, I realized that I didn’t agree with her church's theological approach to worship, plus the rigid judgmental attitudes that I witnessed offended me.  Choosing not to attend the church I was raised in did not change my faith in God so I spent a few years exploring other religions until I found one that aligned with my beliefs.  

Religion is like having a preference for a certain type of cola.  Some people like Coke, others like Pepsi, and still others like Mountain Dew.  I prefer Coke and, since my preference doesn’t hurt anyone, I don’t understand why the Pepsi lovers choose to ostracize me or why the Mountain Dew Lovers choose to smile to my face and talk trash about me behind my back.  None of these responses will change my preference. In fact, both responses are just silly. In the end, the subject matter is about carbonated sugar water with a little difference in flavor.

You see, I didn’t forsake God or Jesus, and I would never begrudge someone who worships a different way than I do or even someone chooses not to worship. I learned to be true to my own path.  Until recently I have always had a ‘live and let live’ attitude because I do not believe in forcing my ideology on other people. Now I am wondering if I need to make some adjustments in my way of life.  Have I kept my conversations about faith neutral simply to prevent offending anyone? If that is the case, am I unknowingly denying my faith in doing so?    

A book by Nadia Bolz Weber, a unique Lutheran pastor,  talks about how she found her own flavor of Christianity.  Her common sense sermons and unorthodox persona captured my attention because I too have always been the one in my family making choices that didn’t align with the more rigid way of worship.  I like the underdogs, the rebels, and the outcasts because I have never understood people who choose to follow blindly. Sometimes it seems as if some folks want their religion to define who they are when it is our love of Christ that should be defining us.

“And the Word that had most recently come from the mouth of God was, “This is my beloved in whom I am well pleased.” Identity. It’s always God’s first move. Before we do anything wrong, and before we do anything right, God has named and claimed us as God’s own. But almost immediately, other things try to tell us who we are and to whom we belong: capitalism, the weight-loss industrial complex, our parents, kids at school—they all have a go at telling us who we are. But only God can do that. Everything else is temptation.”
― Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint

I realize that regardless of whatever facet of society we happen to align ourselves with, the judgmental attitudes are always there.  Perhaps I was just holding Christians to a higher standard and, in doing so, I was forgetting that we are all just flawed humans.  We live in a difficult and complex world these days. Everywhere we look we are told what we should do or say.  It is a ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’ world.  Being true to our faith will inevitably offend someone whether we intended it to or not.  Yet if we don’t have faith, faith in God and in ourselves, the possibility exists that we will begin to doubt our own identity and that makes us vulnerable. That vulnerable state is what places us in danger of allowing outside sources to define our identity for us. 

“This desire to learn what the faith is from those who have lived it in the face of being told they are not welcome or worthy is far more than “inclusion.” Actually, inclusion isn’t the right word at all, because it sounds like in our niceness and virtue we are allowing “them” to join “us”—like we are judging another group of people to be worthy of inclusion in a tent that we don’t own.”
― Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint

The dilemma is this; how does a Christian remain true to their beliefs without offending other people?  The answer is that we can’t, because everyone has an opinion and not all opinions align with ours.   All we can do is be true to our faith and not force our beliefs on others while remaining transparent in our humanity.  We need to stop preaching perfectionism, we need to eliminate the labels, and most of all we need to allow everyone else to be human too.

The bible is full of heroes and saints who were sinners first.  I think that experiencing sin is part of God’s plan for some of us.  How do I describe color to someone who has never seen it or describe a flavor to someone who has never had the sense of taste? God knows that certain people need to experience sin before they can truly understand it.  I think that Christians should be open and share Christianity with those who want to know more, but management of the sinners should be left to God. We are all flawed and no one has the right to judge another person.  

Those jagged edges of humanity is what holds people together.  Shame divides, causing people to hide.   –Nadia Bolz-Weber

Our authenticity, is what pulls us together but expecting perfection from ourselves, or from others, creates a sense of “I am not enough.”  That fear of not being perfect only serves to separate  which creates division, a sense that one isn’t worthy to belong;  but in the eyes of God we are all worthy. All he asks for is faith.  So go to church or don’t go to church? I think it depends on the person. To witness or not to witness?  That again depends on if someone is receptive to hearing what we have to say.  I think we should leave the act of saving souls to God and we just focus on living in a way that reflects love and compassion, which is what Christianity is really about.

..And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

Matthew 18;6