….all the other churches are messed up except for yours.
….you have a hard time finding other believers with the same level of “conviction” you have.
…you believe breastfeeding, “God’s Way”, is a mandate from heaven.
…you have a checklist of activities that must be fulfilled in order to receive God’s promises.
…you believe the Bible is a guidebook for righteous living and not a love story that reveals God’s kind heart.
…you believe the fate of your neighbor’s eternal lives is dependent upon your prayers and Gospel presentations.
…you believe God’s favor on your life is a result of your “obedience to the word.” (And if others would only get their act together, they too could have favor.)
This was where I lived for many years. (Much of this, anyway. I could never quite dig the militant breastfeeding doctrine.) The fruit of it was joyless living and defeat. When I run into someone still ensnared in this stuff I feel sad for them.
It also makes me mad at religion and the destruction in brings to people.
I was thinking about this last night as I watched a show called “Wide Angle” on PBS. It was about a young woman who wanted to compete in the Miss Israeli beauty contest. Because of the religious sect she is part of, there were actual DEATH THREATS against her because the contest require appearing in a bathing suit on TV. And even more sadly…her UNCLE was one of the three people arrested for plotting her murder.
Now granted, I’m personally not into bathing suit displays and would not be a happy mom if Molly decided to cavort around in one as part of a competition. (And God forbid…if *I* ever did the bathing suit thing there would be an entirely different motive for any death threats received. 
)
After much turmoil and anguish, the young woman met with a tribunal, er, the religious leaders, who “persuaded” her to drop her pursuit of her dream.
I couldn’t help but think of the similarities between this radical stuff and the Christian culture here in America. (Check out Greg Boyd’s Myth of a Christian Nation for more on this.)
Wanna learn more? Join the conversation over at “The God Journey.”
Learning to live loved….relaxed in God’s Grace….is still a fairly new thing to me. It’s disorienting and fabulously freeing all at the same time.
Filed under: church, church life, Spirituality, The God Journey Tagged: | church life, freedom, legalism, Spirituality
