the winding road

So, I grew up in the Bible Belt.

I was an angry child.

It's true. I was angry at liberals, gays, Bill Clinton, abortion rights activists (any kind of activists, really).

Not just angry, but enraged!

But sometimes my feelings shifted from fury to some kind of somber, world-weary disappointment with the slippery slope. Oh, the slippery slope upon which we now tread!

I'm pretty sure Sarah Palin's base lives right here.

I didn't expect to change my theology. After all, I used to be right all the time.

But now, for example, I don't really believe in hell, as in the lake of burning sulphur and all that.

It's just not fair.

Humans can't be perfect. So, as the story goes, God sighs with impatience and sends a perfect being to die in their place. But only those who believe it are saved from eternal damnation.

Or, perhaps God sighs with love and frantically comes up with some way to save people from the very system God created.

Are Christians the only chosen ones, the benefactors of God's so-called unconditional love?

I don't think so. Because how can love be considered unconditional if it demands a response!

Yes, demands. Either love me and live forever, or reject my love and suffer forever.

God sounds like an abusive boyfriend.

It's pretty easy to control people when you put the fear of God into them. Give them something to hate, something to dominate, some absolutes and call it faith.

Have mercy.

I feel some empathy with the blessedly dwindling religious right. Because I remember how alarmed I felt when my black and white (mostly white) world view was threatened.

I felt anxious without absolutes. Especially about female ordination. Because to some people it's God's plan that women should not preach or teach men. I was content to let Paul speak for me by silencing me.

There was just one problem.

I began to feel uneasy. Just a little bit unsure.

I was 13, the Confirmation Queen, when I asked my pastor why women couldn't do what he did. And he laughed and gave me a tract.

I laughed, too.

Unfortunately for me, I also felt nudged and prodded to get out. I finally did at 20.

It wasn't easy. But that was more than four years ago.

When you're a kid, though, you take things to heart. At least, I did. And I learned that this masculine God, represented by male pastors and elders, could not love me, a girl, as much as he loved my brothers.

I really don't have any patience for this.

When I think about it, my throat closes up. I lose my voice.

What a horrible distortion. Don't you think?

It is hard to give "God" a chance.

Unless God is completely different than what this church teaches.

This would be good news.

I don't believe Jesus came to bear the burden of the sins of all humanity. Instead, perhaps he stopped by to show us how we too might find God within. Not because of the ego, but in spite of it.

Isn't it rather arrogant to berate ourselves for being human? How then could we possible extend love to others?

God must be present in everything or nothing. So then, thinking positively, why not the earth, the stars and wind and rain?

Why not in the quiet?

Why not in the questions. Not in the answers. But in the space to ask.

In other words, in wonder.

Maybe I am finding an oasis in the desert. It's very quiet here.

I hesitate to discuss this process, to defend it somehow.

And yet ... I hear it so rarely, my inner voice.

God's.