I feel like I’m starting my spiritual journey about half a lifetime behind the start line. The gun has just fired and I can’t even see where the race begins.
I want to blame organized religion. I want to let everyone know that I was plucked off the starting blocks as a child and dropped in the middle of God knows where because of the evangelical church. But I know that it’s not quite that simple.
Let me try to explain myself. Over the past couple of years I have been trying to reconcile my environmental passions with what I learned in church. I would say I was pretty successful with my attempts. The sacrificial system and Jesus reconciliation, creation care and love for people, evangelism and land restoration. I could build bridges in my mind that were good enough for me and if you read my older posts maybe they were good enough for you. Then I found out that what I learned in church wasn’t always right. In fact, being right wasn’t even the point. While this explains so much it also left me adrift in a sea of ideas.
It seems that religious teaching couldn’t keep up with the Information Age and I can now google for Greek from a church pew. Is hell an adopted myth from a pagan culture? Did God really exclude other cultures that just so happen to have the same creation legend as Israel? Did Jesus actually have to die to appease a tribal system of sacrifice? In fact, the case for aliens is starting to feel more compelling than ever before. All this thinking is seen as dangerous for the church. I'm being led astray by Satan and all those people out there with different ideas are maliciously trying to sabotage my sanctification. But if you meet a few of those people you find out that they are just asking questions too and sometimes they have some good ideas!
So here I am, ready to pray to the God of my youth and I’m not sure if I even have that right. Thanks church. In mid-life I’m starting from scratch.
You and I both know that’s not gonna work right? It is not nearly so tidy as that. If God is there, and I’ve been wrong, doesn’t that mean I’m in a good place? Doesn’t it mean that the journey I’ve been on has led me to a place of openness? The real tragedy here is waiting for me to embrace it. To become bitter and jaded towards those pastors and influencers who tried to protect me as they pretended they had a corner on the market for truth. To be angry that they told me to go and preach to the world without the freedom to enter it. To hate the people who perpetuate hate through the conduit of organized religion. For a time, can I just flirt with this approach? Can I indulge in the sweet taste of self righteousness? I fear it will tempt me for years to come. But I will fight it. If I don’t fight against this poisoned state, I truly have become lost and learned nothing from the road already travelled.
It seems to me that there is a deep love. An organizing force making tulips bloom in spring and maple keys fall in summer. A presence from legend that constantly draws all things to itself. It doesn’t matter if I assign it a gender or an origin. Nor does it matter if I‘m right. If I can abide with this God and be left with a love for you, for the earth, for those who have done wrong (yes, even Christians), then I have journeyed as far as I need to go. And at the end, whether there is heaven, hell, or something else entirely I will be satisfied that I made it to the start line.