Original Date written: Aug 2012
What does it look like to loose one’s faith in the Christian Doctrine of original sin and salvation and the like?
This was originally written a few weeks before my faith in the Christian doctrine completely fell apart….so interesting to see the progress I had big leap by big leap. A tad bit over a year later – I am even further beyond these beliefs…
* used to believe hook, line and sinker in the rapture…the scary trumpets that would sweep me up away from this earth into an unknown place where I would sing worship songs all day long and do nothing else for the rest of eternity
* how I used to have to will myself to get excited about this…and i love to worship and be with God in that way…but there was still this pestering doubt that this couldn’t be all there was to heaven could there. And I couldn’t voice that to anyone, because if I did I wouldn’t look like I really loved God now and like I didn’t really want to go to heaven…so I remained quiet about my questions in regards to heaven.
* I used to believe that the world was getting worse…that we were going to hell in a hand basket and that Jesus better come along soon and save us from that..those of us that were being faithful and trying our best.
* I used to believe that I was under the gun for sharing the gospel. That if Hell was a real place…which I believed it was, then I would be out there preaching along with the other street preachers and trying to get people to take their tickets to get into heaven…so that they in turn could go out and get more tickets “sold” and so on. That it was all just a numbers game, and that the sooner we got the right numbers, Jesus would come swooping down to collect us and take us to the aforementioned cloud. I had so much guilt I would heap on myself for not being out there preaching the word. I for a time would shy away from conversation with strangers because I felt like I had to look for a “God sighting” in order to breach the topic of salvation and planting the seed and watering it if it was already planted and make sure that the people around me knew who I was. I think that, while I would never admit it, I thought better of myself and a little less of me because I was saved…but this would also make me so sad to think that I couldn’t say the right thing to convince them their need for Christ. I eventually came to more of a peace with this…away from the street preaching mentality as I matured in my walk to realize I didn’t like one time sighting evangelism. I didn’t like just dropping in on someone’s life, getting them to say a prayer and then never seeing them again. I wanted to be part of the process, for them to know that I was with them and could come to me for questions…I wanted to be in a relationship with them as I was in relationship with God. But how many people can I save if I have to be in a relationship with each one of them…gosh how tiring this thinking is when I look back at it.
* Now I see a different continuum in the Bible story…one of where God is always moving us, ever since the Fall, back towards the Garden of Eden. Not to the actual place, but to the state of mind and mentality of the Garden. He isn’t waiting to come back to Earth until we all make it the worst place possible…until we blow eachother up with nukes and the like. No, I now see that God is waiting to return to earth until we realize and ACT on the fact that we have the power to restore the state of mind of the Garden here, now…in this age and time. S/he is waiting until we realize we were given dominion over the Earth S/he created and that we have the option to use that power creatively or harmfully. S/he is waiting until we realize that we have the power to bring peace to Earth by starting with ourselves, by coming out of denial about our own selfishness and childish attempts to hang onto control.
* Prayer is not all there is to the Christian walk. You cannot just pray about something and forget it, saying, “Well, I turned it over to God in prayer today. That settles it..it is now His to deal with and I am free and clear…” God doesn’t work that way. God is a God of action…and we are reflections of God. Therefore we are also people “of action.” Yes, God wants us to be open with Her/Him about our lives…but that is more because S/he knows that if we voice our thoughts to someone else…we will realize them ourselves. And when we realize things ourselves AND that God gives us the power of choice…of choice to deal with that issue or problem in our life – whether tangibly or only in our heads – then there is a call to action. God wants us to be part of our stories…to learn we have the power to be co-creators in our own lives…and we can use that power for good or for evil…that choice is always up to us. But the choice to do nothing about what we bring to God in prayer…well that in itself is a choice as well – isn’t it?
