Playing for Time

Born into and raised in the Christian tradition, I took most of it for granted until after college when I latched onto an evangelical mindset and spent the next thirty years thinking I knew something. In the ’90s and after, as events near and far started rattling my self-assured psyche, I began to consider that I may have gotten it wrong about some of the important stuff… and nothing’s been the same since. Today, ten years after walking away from organized religion, communal faith practices, and corporate worship, I’m taking a socially-distanced look at the transformation of “the church” through the eyes of people who once loved it… and the number one sentiment I see is this:

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“I keep wondering why so many Christians still think another human being’s relationship or marriage or body is any of their business.” – John Pavlovitz

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And there’s that thing where helping another human is somehow wrong now, even in the eyes of a lot of church factions. Organized Christianity having lost the plot so overwhelmingly that one can scarcely find the biblical Jesus in any of it, I can’t see going back for more condemnation and butt-whippin’s from people who struggle on a daily basis to deal with life in any cohesive way. Their “help” in the past has left me with permanent scars.

Fear and selfishness are turning the world on its ear, just when we’re on the cusp of new knowledge and technology that will change it for the better if we can keep humanity alive long enough. A stunted mindset doesn’t keep the boogeymen away, it just makes them trickier to deal with when they get here, and there’s so much that makes me glad I’m still around – the next decade is going to be on fire with advances, we’re going to learn amazing things, and I don’t want to miss it. Fear of change has the power to shut that all down… too sad for words.

I no longer think I know who or what might be out there running the show, or where this all goes from here… but I’m on a first-name basis with Karma, and I know from a lifetime of hit-or-miss attempts at being worthy of breath that these things are real and true:

And when I know better, I’ll do better. Amen.