Yesterday I found (and read) the diary I started in 1985. As I read through the pages I was amazed at what I lived through, but even more amazed with the evidence that I have had twenty six years of unresolved issues. As a young person who literally "grew up" in the church I religiously listened to my spiritual leadership and blindly accepted what they taught. I got saved, began attempting to proselytize friends and family members to keep them from ending up up in hell. While I still profess faith in Jesus and attempt to live out that faith in relationship with every person, creature, and aspect of creation in meaningfully healthy ways, I am most certainly not the same. What happened? I got older, went to seminary (twice) and began studying on my own, I began realizing that blindly following anyone is a surefire way to lose sight of what real.
From 1985 on I developed an unhealthy sense of personal spiritual superiority that led to an irrational sense of self. Because I was saved, sanctified, Holy Spirit filled and fire baptized, I was taught that I was set apart and God's favored. The short of what I was taught was that getting "saved", coming to know Jesus, attending church, and living a morally responsible life somehow made me "better than" others who didn't do these things. The older I get the more clearly I see that doing these actions religiously do not translate to becoming "better than" those who don't. Over the years I've learned that having a relationship with God through Jesus is good but in end if it doesn't translate to effecting change outside of self there is little benefit.
As an associate pastor at a small AME church my heart's desire is that we we as church leaders will stop discriminating, demonizing differences, exploiting biblical illiteracy, and perpetuating the same for sake of tradition. We cannot discriminate among the people of God and so determine whose lifestyle is most pleasing unto God. We cannot demonize people for expressing differences we don't agree with or understand. We must cease merely telling people what the Bible says based on our narrow interpretations. We must acknowledge and educate people; telling them the truth- that the faith stories, Spirit inspired words of the Bible, have been passed down throughout years of patriarchal, misogynistic, privileging lenses that are not always filled with the Spirit. We have to stop simply living as though the image of the church we've concocted and lived out for the last 2000+ years is perfect and without need for revision. In so doing, we must acknowledge that we are people of the present testament and that the Old and New Testaments of our faith book emerged out of particular times and places in history- reflective of their circumstances and experiences with the same God whom we each encounter today. When we do, we will surely come to realize that Spirit led life is filled with freedom to hear God, know God, and to live wholly effecting positive change in the lives of God's people.
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