Reading the Bible to escape Christianity
As I shared in my last post, all my life being a Christian was about doing the right things, thinking the right things, beleiving the right things so God would accept me and not burn me. Very often the last few months I have been scared to read the bible, becuase I fear that God-that God who wants to pound me, who wants me to be miserable. I try to hold on to the hope that there is a God who loves me, a God wants to be and not just to do. A God who wants to make me into a good tree that he created me to be, and not the God who demands that I do it all myself. So I stayed away from scripture, because I feared it would destroy my hope.
But when I finally had the courage to peak into scripture again and finally read it for me-and not just as a way to master the concept of God or to be able to explain things to other people-I finally was able to find grace for me in scripture, especially in a verse that seems far to scandalous, far to liberating, far too open ended to be found in the scripture to which I link the god I have grown to hate.
“It is for freedom that you have been made free!”
Are you kidding me-It’s for freedom. Are you seriously telling me that when Jesus liberates me I’m not given the instructial manual on how to make God happy and hate me less. You mean I’m not given the directions on how to have a good resume when I beg and plead for God not to let me burn.
“When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.”
I thought that becoming a Christain meant that you were put under a list of regulations, that you were taught the way of sin managment. That’s what my life has revolved around. No wonder freedom never occurred to me, why the hell would it when all I was given was straight jacket so I could never possibly do anything wrong, so that I could never ever fail and thus face the fury of the most sadistic being I could ever conceive of.
And so now I fight to live in fullness. I fight to live a life where I mess up, but where I at least live. I fight to live in freedom. And when I get sucked back into Christianity, I crawl and claw my way back to scripture where I read, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love…You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Being controlled by sin is no freedom at all, but neither is being controlled by the fear of losing God’s love-by being controlled by rule keeping perfectionism. I want to live! And living never is perfect, but it’s always beautiful. I want to live, i want to live to the full, and when I feel the constraints of the straight jacket of christianity squeezing the life out of me, I find my breath in the story of God’s love for me, the God who wants me to be happy, the God who wants me to be free.
