Divorcing God

Originally written on December 14, 2012.  Published almost one year later.

It’s been 5,997 days…give or take.  Sixteen and almost a half years.

One can form quite a relationship with this type of time.  With the type of devotion that I have put forth for this commitment.  I have been a faithful wife, not prostituting myself before other gods, not turning to the right nor the left since the moment I said yes to this relationship.  Not until recently at least.

Rob Bell in his books often alludes to the Ten Commandments and Mount Sinai as a marriage contract between God and his people.

God himself talks about how his people are his bride and he is the bridegroom.  Hosea is all about how his people have been a harlot, prostituting themselves before other gods.  He commands Hosea to go through the earthy heartbreak of marrying a woman who will turn out to be unfaithful not just once, but multiple times.  God is said to cry over our “prostituting” just as Hosea must have cried over his wife’s.

God himself divorces his people in Jeremiah 3:3.  Yep, he “writes” up a certificate of divorce…somehow…and sends them on their way.  Even though God is said to hate divorce over in Malachi 2:6.  This could be because to God divorce is detestable for it breaks what he considers to be unbreakable…the marriage that guarantees a contract between two people and a sure-fire way to track the lineage of a man’s seed.

Or it could also be because God had to go through the pain of divorce himself…and because he knows what it is like to have all these people worship him with their annual festivals and tributes and tithes…and then there is nothing.  Where there were happy memories being made by a family ~ there is now just the void where the memories become painful reminders that things are no longer as they were.

God himself, if he is really omnipotent and omniscient, well then he could see this one coming down the pipeline.  He could see that I have learned too much history about religions, about where he himself even evolved from and how.  He could see that I am onto his game and know that there is a disconnect some where along the line between what I know in my heart about the Divine and the one that is displayed in the Bible…that the hoops I’ve jumped through to make my faith work no longer are working.

He could see that there would be a point in time when I would stop believing in the system and decide that – like he did – it would be time for me to write my second set of divorce papers and to send him on his way.

Gosh, and I thought I was done with the grief part in my life.  I mean it is not just God I am leaving here, but it is my community, the future I thought that I had, the path I thought I was being led down…I mean I was all set to devote my life to seminary and becoming some type of healing pastor.

Instead, I now find myself willingly walking not out the back door…but the front door of the Church.  For the most part I have not even cried over this divorce…not yet at least.  I am sure there will be lots of questions and inquiries and more questions as I continue to travel down a different path.  I am sure there will be some additional losses that will not be able to sustain the chasm I now find myself in – one where there are not clear cut, defined answers like there were before.

If Dante’s Inferno and his description of purgatory were real…well ~ well it wouldn’t describe where I am either.  I actually do not mind where I am…living in a very gray zone.

A very gray zone in which I still prescribe to the teachings of Jesus whole-heartedly, I just do not believe he was anything more than a real person living the most godly life of his time.  Which strange enough makes his life even more powerful, even more poignant and even more relevant to me in this life.  While I no longer would consider myself a Christian, I might very well be more of a Disciple of a 1st century Rabbi than I ever was before.

A very gray zone in which I will no longer worship the person of Jesus ~ but where I grow to love him as a person more and more each day.

A very gray zone in which I no longer care whether his resurrection is a proven fact of history – for who of us can really know this for sure.  Yet, I will concern myself with how I am living the story of resurrection through my own body.

A very gray zone in which I will continue to look for the Ultimate Truth ~ Love ~ in the Bible…as well as other places and sources in our world.

A very gray zone in which I know there is a God Spark inside of me – if you will – that has always lived there…and is finally being revealed as the Goddess she is…which frankly makes a whole lot of sense since I am a woman.

In all of this, I am trying to live in the balance of learning about my new faith as it morphs into this new dimension of spirituality while continuing to hold in this same space the beliefs I once held dear.

For if I completely deny those beliefs that I had, that so many of my friends and readers have – then I deny my own experience and my own reality of sixteen and almost a half years.  I needed the beliefs I had for very real reasons – in some way, shape or form I needed them.

For me, those beliefs helped provide protection and care.  For me, those beliefs helped to grow me up from the young, directionless, parentless girl I was – helped provide black and white answers for the years I needed black and white answers.

Yet, now – now as a woman who is awakening and coming into her soul – I no longer need black and white answers.  For me, I can comfortably – albeit sometimes squirmishly – live in that gray zone I described above.  I do not need to live knowing all the answers to life’s hardest questions.  For me, my path in and through the Judeo-Christian Bible was my gateway to this deeper understanding into the unknowing that is the mystery of the Divine.  My Biblical understanding will most likely always form the foundation for how I understand the Divine.  And for this I will always be thankful for my upbringing in Christianity.