Beliefs cont.

Beliefs cont.


Thinking more about why I left the church. My wife read a book by Richard Foster on the various traditions in Christianity--one of which is social justice. That tradition resonated pretty strongly with me, and I found it clear that my Baptist church had not been as connected to that tradition as I thought they should. My experience was with a church that saw proselytizing as their equivalent of making people's lives better. I was around churches that would feed the poor, but only after making them listen to a sermon or something. I personally found that questionable, to say the least.

I have some reservations about converting people's souls, but I am more concerned about a religious faith that seems disconnected from the very essence of human experience. I mean, here on earth. If you send missionaries, but don't attempt to change the way these people eat, what have you done? Someone said something about feeding the poor, the widows and orphans, that how we treated them was how we treated God. That seems pretty clear to me. So, on that note, I can remember my churches mentioning poverty, and some did better than that, but can never remember a Baptist church getting angry, or activated, or animated over poverty. Nudity on television, or perhaps the Last Temptation of Christ film, and most recently Judge Roy Moore's idol of stone, but not poverty. I have heard James Dobson rally the troops over gay marriage, but never over the plight of the poor.

I think it is the perspective that bothers me the most. It is as if Disney's policy toward same-sex partners is more important than the poverty that tears families apart across the country. It was the same lack of perspective that somehow equates Clinton's dalliance with Monica with Reagan's Iran Contra or Dubya's monumental lies to get us into war. I expect the church to be more aware than the rabble who truly think that Michael Jackson's case is a nationally important one. I expect some discernment. And humility. But more on that later.