A Letter

There was a Facebook posting going around about "hit like" if you are a True Christian. I have a hard time with those things, so I jotted down what I felt here.

Dear God:

Am I a Christian?

I read your book several times. There are some beautiful passages in it, but… even as a little kid I had a hard time reading it. The writing alone was sloppy, edited beyond belief, but I found I could use it to justify my points of view, but somehow… it felt like I was missing the point… well, really, I just didn’t get the point, or at least… I thought I did… but I felt empty.

Then a church came along God! And they said that you hadn’t stopped talking, and that made sense to me! So for a long time I went to this church, well… on and off… but I read all their books too, and they had beautiful passages in them, but my friends who called themselves Christians would get mad at me and show me passages in their book (the one I had trouble reading, remember?) and would tell me the devil had a hold on me.

I was scared God. I didn’t like what I had read about the devil, and I never wanted people to think that I followed him! I certainly didn’t consider myself a “devilian”. I would have thought that the way I was trying to live would make me a good Christian. I guess I didn’t get it God.

So when I got a bit older, I began to wonder who Christ really was. I mean, I had a picture of Him from your book God (you remember, the one you “wrote” that is so mysterious and not so well written) and I had realized by now that your book had been written by men who loved you, but other men had changed and twisted your words and called them yours so they could have power over other men around them. What had been written about Christ was not what I think Christ would have been proud of… and it bothered me God, that Your Son had not been allowed to write in your book in the first place, other men had just tried to remember what he said years after he said them (I can’t remember what I said yesterday!)

But I still felt like I was a Christian God, I mean, I hoped that I loved your Son, even though I was not a perfect boy, but I wasn’t trying to hurt people or nothing! I was really trying to live what I felt Christ was teaching on the mountain that day… but I still felt that something was missing.

In your book, in James somewhere, you mentioned that if we didn’t understand, we could come to you, and that you wouldn’t be mad at us (I guess that’s what “upbraideth” means – by the way, that word doesn’t pass my spell-check) so I turned on some music that touches my heart deeply, and I quieted my thoughts the best I could God and I listened for you. I truly tried to listen for you.

And I heard you God! And I heard your Son, and felt your love, excuse me, your Deep Love for me and everything you have created everywhere… (of which this world is such a small part) and I started using my little talent to write what I was feeling and the tears flowed over the paper and in my heart… you know, those cleansing ones You love to send to us little children when we feel we’ve gone astray…

And I shared my feelings God. I thought my Christian friends would love them, but I heard so many times that they ran counter to your book God. I don’t get it. I really don’t.

My world picture isn’t helping me God. In my heart I felt a deep love for all things, for all beings, for all creation… and that it all breathes Life, and that you breathe all of this into everything. But my Christian friends don’t often get that. They read in your book to love your enemy, but they hold their banners high and march into “righteous” war against them. (By the way God, didn’t you tell me that their enemies were your children? Why are they trying to destroy half of themselves not to mention your children because of their banners?)

I don’t know God. I know I love you, and I know I love Christ as I feel Him in my heart… but I have a hard time seeing that Love I feel inside in the outer world right now. The ones who claim your book is your only literal word seem to be making as big a mess of things politically around me, as the other ones who say their book is your literal word.

Are Religions your home God? Do you sanction this group over here above that group over there? Why did you make us so different in our thinking God? Wouldn’t it have been so much easier to make us all the same? We wouldn’t fight. We wouldn’t call each other names. Wouldn’t we be true Christians then?

Oh, and God… somewhere along the line I got the crazy idea that your heart and love are in each one of us, and that we have the gifts to lift our world, but so many of the folks around me think you have to do all the work yourself. Aren’t you doing that through us? Aren’t you asking us to be quiet, and listen to our hearts and learn that you still walk among us? And that we are you in that respect! That you lift the world through us?

Isn’t that what Christ was trying to tell the people on the mountain so long ago?

Anyway that’s what I got. I’m sorry I missed the point God. I know that if I publish this letter in my outer world, all sorts of Christians are going to call me a Deviler, or maybe they won’t call me that but I will be given some label, and probably have to go get drugs to fix me up somehow.

Anyway God thanks for listening. I do love you. I do love your Son Christ that I have felt in my heart and in my hands so many times. I just wish that qualified me to be a Christian…

That’s all.