Losing My Religion

Well, it had to happen sometime, I guess.

When I was 9, I was reading my Bible books on missionaries in Africa. They were picture books, with lots of angels and little African children. But the missionary and all the angels were White - and I wondered why God didn't have any Black angels, especially for the African kids. Noting the underlying racism in the angel corps as a symptom of a larger underlying problem, I put the book down and walked away from religion.

I lived happily away from God and God's local social networking group - Christianity - until my 30s. Then I started developing a relationship with something - a God of my understanding. And years after I put down the angel book I picked up another book - "What's So Amazing About Grace?" It talked about how the concept of Grace was unique to Christianity. Well, I liked the concept of Grace - very much. So I threw caution to the wind and took a leap back into the Christian faith. (Well, it was more a slow wading in, and always staying near the edge just in case.)

I settled into Christianity and I stayed there... still uneasy, but trying to take the good with the parts that still didn't fit.

And then Obama was elected President of the United States - and people across the country started going batshit.

Now there are Nazi pictures with Obama's face, and 'good Christians' packing guns to rallies to protest health care reform.

You know, when I studied the Bible, I learned that it mentions the poor and helping the poor about 600 times. Jesus even tells his followers to give up everything to follow him. But you'd think the protestors never read any of that by the way they are acting - "I gotta keep mine, and F the rest of the folks. I'm not going to help out any losers... my taxes might go up or I might have to wait in line. So what if they have NO care; I want a same-day appointment!"

I thwacked myself on the forehead for being so gullible, and promptly apologized to that 9-year-old me - she had it right. Just as there were no Black angels for the little African children, there is no grace in the current Christian public face.

So I'm back to conversing with the God of my understanding - a God who remembers the poor and the planet and stays out of politics. And from what I know of Jesus, I think he's is right there with me, wondering how his message got so twisted - and just what happened to that amazing grace.