As I typed out my Saturday post, “I Need You“, I cried. These emotions I’ve been dealing with while I’ve been sorting out all the spiritual and mental bondage of twisted scriptures, have been difficult to face. One of the many things that would go through my mind is the fear that my friends would cease to include me in fellowship if they knew I wrestled with some doctrines that just didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t “believe” something just because the majority of evangelicalism said so. I know that God includes me and that he has revealed his Son in me and this is why I believe in Jesus. It’s not because of the bible..although I do enjoy studying the bible…but I hadn’t even read the bible yet when God revealed Jesus to me.
It just so happens that once I decided to finally go to a church, that I ended up in an evangelical fundamental circle of churches. Had I first attended a Catholic church, I might have stayed right there..not knowing any different. With the many voices in the world that continue to attack church after church and pastor after pastor as heretics and false teachers how in the world is anyone supposed to make up their minds anymore?
My heart has been weary of Christianity as a whole for a few years now. In fact, after the awful experience we had before… I was certain that there was no such thing as a real pastor who really tells the truth.
Do you know how difficult it is to go through this and not be able to reach out for help without your own friends accusing you of heresy for even questioning these things?
But deep down in my heart I knew that Jesus is real to me. I experienced him and no matter how much people twist the bible around, I knew I could count on the experiences I have had in his amazing grace. It’s because of his grace that I’ve been able to remain a follower of Jesus and my fascination of the bible has grown into quite a passion.
{I haven’t given up on Jesus, I hope you haven’t given up on me.}
In the past couple of years I have gotten to know others who have been wrestling with these same issues. We love Jesus, but with so many interpretations of the bible and all the petty attacks, we just got tired of it all. And people wonder why church attendance has been on a steady decline over the past few years.
There’s so much violence and hate in the world, we certainly don’t need it in churches.
And we don’t need to see it happening between churches.
There’s far too much animosity between believers today. I fear that if they had the power to…they’d burn us at the stake.
Oh you might think that’s an exaggeration, but maybe that’s because you haven’t been through what we’ve been through.
With the increasing numbers of people who are feeling pushed away from church and from Christianity as a whole, it’s the time to become more active in each other’s spiritual lives…not less active.
We need you to be patient with us as we seek to understand some things. We need people who are strong in their faith in Christ to be able to handle the really tough questions and to be able to still love us if we adamantly disagree about something. We need to know who has a faith strong enough to allow us to be free to question and sort through twisted scriptures. We need to know that you still include us as Christians even if we put some things on a shelf for now.
There are many others like us out there, who have been so afraid to voice their doubts, to reach out for help with things they’re wrestling with. Because no one likes to be rejected.
Everyone seems to like the good Christian women who are perfectly compliant with everything their pastor’s teach. These women who write about how ‘wonderful’ it is to be perfectly obedient to their husbands, who have the godliest children in town, but here’s where the tough stuff comes in…. life just isn’t perfect. The scary part is when these women proclaim that God is going to curse us if we don’t do it just the way their pastor’s have taught them to. Why would friends do this to each other?
This hurts those who are trying to figure out this thing called Christianity.
I already believe in Jesus, but to choose Christianity is such a tough choice with all this muckity muck going on.
And there’s the crossroad… when we believe in Jesus does it mean we HAVE to choose Christianity? Because from our perspective, we’re not seeing a whole lot of Jesus in there anymore. Please don’t take offense to that… I’m not blaming you…but there are a lot of people making Christianity look bad.
My heart aches. I think his heart aches too.
It’s not that I don’t want to be involved with Christianity… I love Christians very much so! It’s just really difficult to find Christians who love me back. Sometimes it’s because I’ve questioned something they hold as sacred. In a misunderstood and confused head, I had to figure some things out, therefore I had to question a lot of things. I think it upset some folks and I never meant to upset people.
Some people have said that if I keep questioning things I might one day reject Jesus, but I can tell you right now that with all the things I have questioned, I never lost my faith in Jesus. We can have the freedom to question teachings and remain utterly devoted to Jesus.
Why did I have to go through all this? Why did I have to experience losing so many friends when I needed them the most?
I think it’s because Jesus wanted to show me just how faithful of a friend and Savior he really is.
Surely, all we need is Jesus.
But I think he wired us to need each other too.
With all that said, I’d like to make a request….please don’t give up on people who question things from the bible. One day that bible will be gone and we’ll all be home and what matters is that we get along and love each other.
Maybe he had me go through all that so I could be prepared to be friends with other women who begin to question things. To be prepared, because they’re going to need to know they’re still included while they wrestle with their beliefs.
We need our sisterhood…so let us know that you’re still there for us.
