The Only ‘Law’ I’m Concerned About…
For the first, say, 46 years of my life (I’m 61 now), I was pretty rigid and certain when it came to what I believed religiously. The church that I was raised in until I was 16 truly believed that they were the only people going to heaven: if you weren’t baptized by immersion, and if it did not take place as a member of this certain denomination (probably the top 4-5 largest denominations in the South), you were going to hell when you died. And, as the years have gone on, I have been certain about being “right” theologically in several systems of thought, especially when it came to interpreting the Bible, which I held to be inerrant and perfect in every way. I became a little less rigid, after attending seminary and in my first few years as a pastor, about certain groups and people not going to heaven, even if they didn’t believe the exact same things as me. And yet I was still exclusionary: heaven was still going to be a fairly small sample size of the history of humanity when all was said and done.
One day in 2007 (I was a college campus minister at the time), I befriended some gay kids…gay kids who claimed to be followers of Jesus, even though no church in town would accept them, because…well, gay people were definitely going to hell unless they changed. But as several weeks passed and I got to know the kids better, I was amazed at their love for others, even towards those who hated them, and at their overall loveliness and compassion and joy. I thought to myself: “These kids aren’t going to hell! They have the “fruit of the Spirit” flowing out of them – much more than me! They aren’t going to hell at all! If I have been wrong about this, then what else have I been wrong about? Those 5 or 6 verses that seem to speak about homosexuality…I don’t think that’s what the writers of those Bible books were talking about.”
To make a long story short: that encounter with those gay college students had a profound effect on me, and I ended up on a journey (which I am still embarking on) of de-constructing my former faith and views altogether and building them back again. It has been a scary journey, one that I will blog more about in the coming weeks and months. I no longer believe that the Bible is without error or that God punished Jesus on the cross to pay for our sins, or that women can’t be pastors. I don’t have the answers to eternity and don’t believe in a hell in the afterlife – I will leave all that stuff to the Divine. What I am convinced about, however, is that the only thing that matters to God and to the Universe is loving your neighbor. The Hebrew Bible said it and Jesus said it, and that is the only “law” I am concerned about: loving people and working to make this current life a happy, whole, equal, and loving place for every single person and animal…starting right here in beautiful Essex County!
