I think back to the times when we went to Sunday school and were carted off to summer camp every year. I love those innocent days. We would run everywhere, play games and definitely make sure that we wouldn't talk to any girls. Even though Michelle was the prettiest thing I had ever seen, there was no way in heck I was going to tell her. I remember one time in church; I placed a tack on my singing friend's seat and how he screamed out in pain when he sat down. It was hilarious. I can easily visualize the time when I accepted Jesus into my life and how much peace I felt. Or the times that our family would take the youth out and we would go water-skiing or snow skiing. They were great times.
Yet things started to shift to the bad. I was about eleven when my mom pulled me aside to tell me how we wouldn't be celebrating Christmas or Easter anymore. And how we wouldn't be eating certain foods. That the church we were now going to attend had strict rules on how we were supposed to live life and our old church was a lie. We had to ensure a certain standard of religiosity to make Heaven, or else we would receive eternal damnation.
Meetings in this church consisted of going to people's homes to talk about the days of judgment and how the world was coming to an end. The meetings would consist of condemning others for not following our sect. After a few years of this, I was quickly becoming a casual observer, and approaching a place of leaving. The cross roads came when the church leader approached me and told me I wasn't a strong enough believer and needed to get more into the bible. Than, in a couple of weeks I would find out that he had sexually abused all his children. Being sexually abused myself and seeing my mother's family being sexual abused by priests, I had a hatred for this behavior and never went back. Besides I had other things to do, sports, education, girls and work were to entertaining and exciting to be held back by a bunch of religious fanatics.
I entered university and starting living the dream. Life was great. Girls, school, sports and entertainment. What more could a person want? I was occasionally going to church, but made sure it didn't interfere with my life. Church was more of a place to meet people than actually listening to those hypocrites in the pulpits. And besides, all those solemn, boring sermons and church gatherings. Why? Who wants to hear about judgment day and when it is coming, I thought it also said don't worry about tomorrow? So, I always was curious to why there was the hypocrisy in the church, but yet people would still go. Especially very intelligent people.
My friend Regine was brilliant. She aced all her tests in genetics, plant biology and organic chem. and could have had a prestigious career in whatever, but she chose teaching. And not only teaching, but that she could become a mom. I thought she was wasting her life. Another friend, who was brilliant in pretty much every field, and was the director in a major corporation, would walk in such a peace, I couldn't understand it. And would have some sort of power that would give him advantage. What the heck? Even though they walked in a powerful grace, I couldn't understand why they wouldn't confront a society on the edge of its demise. The answer was always standard, "God has it and that's the way it has to be." I couldn't accept that. I couldn't accept a God that wouldn't want his people to rise up and stand for justice. Why would God allow millions of children to die of poverty and war and millions of others to die of AIDS and so forth? So was it God's judgments or was the church not walking in the full authority that it has or was there even a God? Evolution sure showed otherwise.
My town was becoming much too small for me and so I left for the world of America. Hoping that I could understand the injustices that were occurring in the world and also make some real money. My job was in the tech sector and enabled me to travel all over the states to install and maintain different types of manufacturing, environmental equipment. Sometimes, I would be able to go to New York to party with my stockbroker friends. Eventually, I thought that this would lead into greater things. I had hoped we could connect the environmental/science to the business world and bring about sustainability in a spiritual order. That if these issues were brought to the table, than people would recognize the implications of reactive living.
However, it turned out that living is always about yourself. It's not in our nature to help and love others. And those nights in New York and elsewhere else were always about pleasing ourselves. Nothing much was ever said about dying children, wars, global warming, species extinction, and deforestation or anything else. I was confused. Didn't anyone care about sustainability, poverty, diseases and so forth?
And that is why I am here in this church. I have met my crossroads again. I break down and cry. God, are you real? Do you care? In the chaos of a darkening world, He pours forth love, hope, peace and joy. I can literally feel the years of abuse washing away as I sit in his presence. And than He shows me how much He still loves and cares for people. And how He cries when children are sexually abused and when children are killed. How he shouts out in anger when a woman is raped and how he hates how billions of dollars pour into pornography while millions starve. However, judgment is His, he whispers in my ear as he holds me in His arms. He shows me how freedom comes from a choice and people can choose to see what their actions reap. He can't interfere with that, because people have to choose to love him. He hates how evolution is a system of justification, but he still loves the people who are in it and believe in it. They have the choice to live in reality or in disillusion. So He tells me how the church is called to bring reconciliation between man and God, the environment, society and himself. And how it is doing that, it needs more young people to rise up and stand up for justice. To be ambassador's for Christ, in a world that is controlled by a dark spirit. A dark spirit that wants to bring war, sexual abuse, disunity in the church, species destruction, hatred, murders, global warming and deforestation.
So he says, we can't worry about these things. We live by faith and not by sight. For we live in an eternal kingdom that is built upon joy, peace, righteousness and the Holy Sprit. So it is our duties to be servants of grace and to show how to love our neighbors as ourselves.
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