A Christian Journey: Part 1

I wanted to share with all of you a new and exciting spiritual development in my life--I have found a church where I can finally "belong". I thought I'd share it with you over Christmas in several short posts instead of one big long one. I'll be traveling unplugged (as in without my computer--yippee!) for part of the holidays, so I'll be auto-posting and responding to your comments later when I return. I can't wait to hear what you think. I'm hoping you'll be excited for me, and perhaps encouraged about finding spiritual community for yourself, if you've not found somewhere yet. 


Part 1 of 6:

For a long time, I’d wanted to return to Christianity, but the attitude of many Christians stopped me. I knew that I had done a lot of personal work since I’d been away from any formal Christian group (about five years), including discovering a peaceful lifestyle and beliefs, and coming to cherish the values of kindness, tolerance, and love. I had no desire to affiliate with anyone who promoted hatred in any way. 

Most people I’m related to one way or another are Christians of various types. There are nominal Catholics, Pentecostals, mainline Christians, non-denominational Christians, etc. Not all of them, but to be honest, quite a few of them, are some of the most backward-thinking, emotionally repressed, uneducated (no matter how many years of formal education they have), bigoted, and just plain nasty people I know. I would never want to be lumped in with them. I would never want someone I cared about to assume things about me that were inaccurate, and especially things that were hateful, simply because they discovered I was a Christian. 

I don’t think that these family-type folks are accurate representations of Christ or of Christianity in it’s normal form. I think that our American culture distorts many things, plus lots of hurting people find Jesus (yay!) but never grow up (boo!), and in addition my family is also unusually dysfunctional. I think these people are caricatures of Christianity that have been twisted and tweaked and I’m not quite sure who or what they are. But you know that you have met people like this, right? Haters. And then they say they are Christians and you just know you never want to be that. 


I definitely never wanted to be that. 


(To be continued...)


~Photo by LoveHubbie Mark