What I wish my faith to be

If there is any fairy tale character I feel like the most, it would have to be the boy who told the Emperor he was wearing no clothes.  It’s the way I’ve always been.  Sometimes I can be so socially awkward that I just plain out say what I think, and it’s often usually the opposite of what everyone else is thinking.  And once I open my mouth, I usually just go all the way.  Just give me a soap box so people can see me. 

This is a natural tendency of mine, and I don’t think the conservative environment I grew up in as a child looked very highly on this trait.  I can remember being in ninth grade and people in my high school government class and people were questioning whether or not girls could wear skinny jeans or if they would cause their “brothers in Christ to stumble.”  I can remember perking up and saying that jeans normally don’t trip people, and if somehow boys were going to stumble because of them, they could get back up on their own.  You could take away my grade in government class, but no one was taking away my skinny jeans. 


Yes, I look back on my skinny jean victory and chuckle.  I really can be like that sometimes.

That may be why I am sometimes uncomfortable in the Church.  Oftentimes a midst the loud music, I often wonder if this whole Christianity thing is true or we're just being dumb.  I just always want to ask “why and how do you know?” and those are the two questions that religious people seem to avoid.  As soon as you ask, “how do we know this is true?” religious people usually get mad.  After awhile, you just stop asking. 

When you’re a kid, you’re just taught by religious people that bad people who don’t love Jesus go to hell.  Of course we believe them – no good child wants to go to hell! And I think the fear of hell is like a cloud that just hangs over us our whole lives.   But as we get older, the message “follow Jesus or you’ll go to hell” turns into, “believe like we do or else you’ll go to hell.”  Those two messages are completely different, but somehow I think we may have gotten them mixed up.  We can’t follow the “dark side” (and of course there are distinct sides, because everything in the world is clearly black and white). 

No wonder so many Christians are so stupid.  We’re afraid if we think too much we might end up going to hell.  We say things like, “I asked Jesus in my heart” but whenever I ask what that actually means, no one can ever answer my question.  It’s just like – hurry and ask Jesus in your heart, but never question what that means!

I had this mindset for a long time, then I finally realized that no one goes to hell because they used the muscle that God put between their ears; people spend an eternity without God because of their self-righteousness.  And while we’re still here on earth, I want my faith to be as honest and sincere and un-inhibited as possible. 

 

If Christianity is real, we need to be very vocal people.  If you honestly believe the world is going to end because Jesus will one day come down through the clouds, the rest of the culture is going to look at you like you’re a nut job and you might want to have a reason to persuade them on this very serious issue (I mean, the last time I checked, the end of the world was a serious issue).  So, if you claim to have an inside scoop on the end the world, you might want to start telling people. 

Yes, the right doctrines are probably significant issues too, but I think there is so much more to faith than that.  That is one thing that I give my generation the thumbs up on – I think we’ve finally realized that traditionalism is more focused on checking the box than genuine faith.  Yes, the traditionalist may be right in keep repeating that we are saved by faith, not works.  But I think we’ve forgotten that while faith saves, fruitless faith never does. 

And I don’t think winning political victories qualifies as fruit.  So, if you want to see fruit in your life, stop pointing to the political victories you helped score and counting that as some kind of fruit.  Point to the people you have helped nurture people.  Point to the times you had compassion on the “least of these”.   

I did not become a Christian when I said the sinner’s prayer.  I became a Christian when I finally decided that my faith meant a life of compassion.  I became a Christian when I finally decided believing right may not be as important as doing right.

And in that sense, I think I have to be born again everyday. 

I have always said that you can tell a lot about a person by what makes them mad.  The thing that makes me burning mad is injustice on the weak.  Sometimes I can forgive, but I have a restless rage when I see religious do-gooders turn a blind eye.

Several months ago, I was reading an article about refugee women in Kosovo.  It is a place where refugee women are raped on a regular basis.  Often, women are gang raped on the side of the road.  To provide aid for this problem, several organizations sought to provide women with reproductive-health kits that contained equipment to deliver babies and give blood transfusions, among other things.  However, the kit also contained birth control and a piece of equipment that could be used to either perform an early abortion or help evacuate the uterus from a woman who had miscarried. 

The pro-life groups protested by calling these kits “ethnic cleansing.”

So what did we do?  Absolutely nothing.  Well, nothing besides protest.

Sadly, the pro-life movement may not have the intellectual honesty to distinguish between Adolf Hitler and a woman trying to defend herself.  I keep this article in my room, just to remind me what I really believe about the sanctity of life.  Every time I see it, I almost get sick.   

I am sorry that our pro-life organizations are not concerned about all life as much as they are scoring a political victory.  I am sorry that we pride ourselves in giving the unborn a voice, when far too often, we squelch the cries of the victimized that have already been born.

Whenever I see people standing in front of the court house with “LIFE” stickers taped over their mouths, I think of the woman who was gang raped in the street.  Where was her life?  Why aren't we standing up for her life - or does that not fit well in a conservative Christian ideology?  If you are a “pro-lifer” who really wants to stand up for injustice, then get the tape off your mouth and start doing it.  And go all the way.

It's the same thing with racism.  You can hardly say anything about racism in some conservative Churches these days without being called "liberal".  I finally just said if standing up for people who are victims of social injustice makes me liberal, fine.  Just call me Christian first.  

The question used to be “What Would Jesus Do?”  Yet I think the question now be, “What Would the Liberals Do?”  And whatever the “liberals” do, just do the opposite.  I just wish we could put down our political ideologies and do the right thing just because it's the right thing.  Maybe we should start thinking before we do, instead of thinking our good intentions gives us some holy faith.

I’m passionate about my views of on life and faith.  They are very intimate cousins.  My deepest prayer is that my faith would be real, and that my defense of life would be a sincere outpouring from it.  If these two things are not real, my life has been one big cosmic joke.