“A woman’s heart should be so close to God’s that a man has to seek him to find her…”
This quote was inside an email I received. This quote, combined with an intense conversation someone and I had the other day made me question, Why are we so concerned with someone else’s proximity to church, God, and spirituality? I think that people are overly concerned with others religious beliefs, and for what? Does it make someone a better Christian if they can convert their sacrilegious friends over to the Holy word? Does God smile on them then and only then? I don’t see why people are so obsessed with judging someones faith based on how much they go to church. Why is it so hard to believe that someone can be close to God and not support organized religion? Why does it matter to the next person, seriously? It has been my experience that churches can be sometimes filled with many “half” Christians. Folk who step out to the club Saturday night and praise Him with that same hand that held the drink the night before. OR you have the ones who are “SAVED” in the sanctuary and get in the streets and curse folk out or are just plain rude. They spend their time talking about the folk they say at Church that week and how “Oh, Sister so -and so- , No she didn’t.” I feel that if you are someone who is truly “SAVED” you have subscribed to the thoughts that God accepts us as we are.
Now, if someone wants to go to church and get their blessings, I support that fully. But I’m at a point in my life, probably stemming from my own personal experiences where I have issues with church. I remember being like probably between the ages of 10-12 and my grandmother would force me and my cousin to go to Church and Sunday School each week. Most of these weeks she would spend home while we went to Sunday school and she’d join us later at church. Sometimes she didn’t join us. But it was like as soon as we left church, she was happy for a few minutes and then went back to cursing up a storm. I never understood it. I always imagine Christians to be good, kind hearted souls… she never embodied that. Not that she wasn’t kind.. to others.. it just didn’t give me faith in the power of prayer either because things were not easy for us growing up.
Even at work, there is this lady, Lady N, who is always talking about how she spent her wonerful weekends doing church events and passes out little green Bibles trying to convert us sinners to a better place. But then she does conniving things to get her way in the work place, how is this Christian-like? I don’t understand it. I try to keep my relationship with God a personal thing. No I am not ashamed of it. I will shout it to the mountain tops that I believe in God. But I don’t feel that by declaring myself a Christian I have to come down on religions like Buddism, Muslims, Taoism, and even Judaism. In fact, I have a desire to read about all the religions to see how they go about relationships with the higher being. I feel that that can increase my spirituality. End the end, we should be judged by our spirituality not by how well we followed organized religion…
Desiresinspiration,
You make a range of valid points, particularly your point about ‘half Christians’ – Christians whose lives don’t always match what they say they believe in (unfortunately, I have to admit, I am can be one of those sometimes)
With respect to your comment about being truly saved and subscribing to the idea that god accepts us as who we are, I have to (respectfully) disagree with your viewpoint.
I am a Christian, and I personally believe that the bible is the word of god. Unfortunately, the bible says that all of us, at some point in our lives, have sinned before the lord, and that the only way in which god has deemed acceptable for us to be reconciled to him is through faith in the death of Jesus on the cross.
I personally respect everybody and their beliefs, regardless of whether or not they agree with the bible. However, I myself believe that god has said that in the end, he will judge by one criterion and one criterion only – whether or not the man or woman concernced has faith in the death of Jesus on the cross.
As a believer in Christ, it’s not what I think or how I judge others that counts (hopefully, I don’t judge others!) but it’s how god our lord judges which matters.
I feel ya homie. I don’t believe in organized religion because that’s not condusive to what they preach. Think about this. . .
You go to school for 16 years (through college) then most of us stop. Are we any less smart because we stopped going? Or even if we didn’t go in the first place and learned everything we know from tradesmen and books, are we then dumb and not worthy of a paycheck?
I say all of this to say I believe we all need some type of spiritual background, to learn about the spirit from whatever means you are exposed to. It can be any religion (except scientology, that’s just dumb), but you must have some knowledge of it. Now once you know about it, you can find it yourself, like you find knowledge in a book or perhaps experience. . .
just my $0.02