I haven’t written since before Christmas what with preparing both our home and the church for the annual celebration. It was a good and full time tinged with the cyclical sadness of the anniversary of my mom’s death.
I preached Christmas and Epiphany services. Old stories. New words. And was struck again with how Christians (I can only speak to my tradition, though I believe it exists in every spiritual tradition) are charged with challenging the dominant social paradigm.
I am not interested in saving of my soul from a vengeful and angry God. I refuse to afraid of Godde. It goes against every light fiber of my being.
Nope. I am ready to call Christians to be Christians and stop being moral puppets for right wing ideologues. Morality is not about ruling the minutia of the bedroom, the ‘place’ of women, or the arrogance of claiming that the wealthy are favored by Godde.
Here’s the new (for the last two thousand+ years) paradigm Christians are challenged to shift into:
– share so that there is enough for everyone: food, water, housing, healthcare
– act out of love, not warm-fuzzy feelings, but with the intent for the well-being of others
– claim the power to forgive so that you are freed from destructive impulses and a space is made for the possibility of peace.
– be a compassionate conduit of grace
– see the face of Godde in absolutely every creature you meet.
– work against oppression in all its forms
– don’t base your actions on results you can calculate but trust the call to live in a different way
– don’t be afraid
To all you Christians and former Christians out there: it’s time to take back our faith. It has been coopted by the powerful and twisted in to shapes unrecognizable. Even as a pastor I am sometimes ashamed to say I am a Christian because of what it has (rightfully) come to mean to the majority of people. But now I want to invite all you closeted Christians, all you exes who have bitter bile in your throats, all you who have stretched beyond the confines of rigid morality, all you who have been oppressed and broken by the church to take back our faith and drink in the sweet nectar of grace. It’s time to become the paradigm shift Christ calls us to by living it into existence. It’s time to do the faithful work of changing the world.
Amen! However I have come to call myself a “disciple of Jesus” rather than a “Christian” because the latter has been so defiled in our day, but also because the word Christian barely appears in Scripture, is pretty much equated with “gentile”, associated with political horrors like the crusades. Jesus did not come to found the Christian religion and Peter, Paul, Mary and all those folks were observant jews their entire lives. I am half Jewish and a disciple of Jesus and a pastor – but I prefer not to call myself “Christian”.
I hope to be up to the challenge this year more than ever.
Beautiful. I’m not a Christian, I’m a very Reform Jew/agnostic, very steeped in the need for separation of church/state lest we succumb to the horror of history, and admit that the term Christian becomes worse in its inferences with every passing news story. I have to stop and read pieces like yours, talk with people who are not fundamentalist, or even with people who are- and try to find the humaneness and the striving in all of us. These are dark times and we need to keep connected somehow.