Beginning musings on God

Growing Up Holy & Wholly: Understanding and Hope for Adult Children of Evangelicals, by Donald Sloat is a helpful book and an important read for many of us, however, some of the book's power is lost because Sloat pursued the subject through a lens of the DiSC personality inventory. That lens skewed the message which I needed to hear.

I am not solely a high D & I personality. I have also been emotionally raped by fundamentalists who approach Christianity as a rule book and a religion of do’s and don’ts. They preached grace and the importance of relationship. And grace was offered within the framework of their comfort and control. Outside of their comfort and control, however, I was isolated and led to believe that I must be living outside the will of God.

This approach to God has affected my ability to relate with others as well. Sometimes I act in a way that I know my friends will consider stupid at best. The test of my faith and the test of the community is how they respond when I acknowledge my stupidity to them and inform them that I am not sure I can give up my stupidity yet.

I could never do that in the church. It isn’t allowed, I guess that is the center of my complaint. Even churches that try to allow it, like the one I attend now can’t really allow it because of the historical system they have been handed. Though they are making wonderful changes, in part to address this very issue. The broken system can’t be changed inside a generation. It will take a much longer time. In short, I am saying that the evangelical church that raised me, and trained me didn’t allow me to be human.

Currently, I am trying to regain a framework that allows me to approach God. The only framework I’ve ever known has hindered my entering His presence. I’ve known that I was human and that I didn’t measure up. If I don’t measure up, how can I come into the presence of the Almighty God? If I know I am wrong, how can I stand in his presence?  

The church community I now call home is one of the safest religious places I have found. I am helped by the fact that this far in I get to stand outside and look as it were in a mirror. I get to see people make the mistakes I made, I get to offer grace, freedom and room to them. I get to encourage people along their journey and not weigh them down with my judgments about them or demand them to be what I need them to be. It is, at this time, the best way I know to show Christ with in His community, and it remains safe for me. But that is another story altogether.

 Before my fall into grace, my theological work centered on Trinitarian thought. My thinking, though limited, might prove to be useful as a springboard to recovering a relationship with God. The center of my struggle is getting out of my head into my heart. I tend to live in my head. My mind is a safe place for me. I escape feeling by thinking. Feeling does not seem safe. That is a lie, however. I do want to feel and I do not want to escape to my head and stay trapped there as I have in the past. I want to feel whatever comes up.

At the same time, I do not want to be thoughtless. Life has to make sense or it will lose any power that it might have for me as I journey toward wholeness. The reason I dare to venture toward theology again is to give me an idea – not a template – for God. The thoughts that follow are but a spring board. They are not, indeed they cannot be a rule. Rather, they are but my attempts to clean off one facet of the brilliance that I know to be Creator.

 The Apostle John tells us that God is love. He does not tell us that God became love after he created, but rather that in his essence, he is love. The reason that God is love is that he is Trinity. He is three. Yet at the same time, he is one. I will not take the time to make the biblical argument for God as Trinity. I am merely suggesting it as a starting point for this understanding of God.

If God is Trinity, and God is love then he is perfect relationship. He is everything that we long for and desire in relationship. At the same time he has no darkness or evil in him and therefore carries none of the baggage we associate with all our relationships. He is all that is good and none of what is bad in that word “relationship”.

The picture he gave of this perfect relationship is the sexual act itself. At the moment of shared climax people experience something, which mirrors this perfect relationship. There is a bonding that occurs. In that moment there can be complete ecstasy, complete intimacy, complete vulnerability. “Making love” comes as close as we can get to what we were created to be – people living in the image of God. What a weird an wonderful thought this is. It is only the beginning of my thinking. More is to come, but this will have to do for today ...

Comments

[KV]

"fall into grace"

Nice! :) Thanks for telling me about that book, SG.