“Where I grew up there weren’t many trees. Where there was we’d tear them down and use them on our enemies.” ~Peace On Earth, U2
I grew up in 2 different places: the chaos of Southwest Philadelphia, and the insular bubble of the Adventist church. While these distinct places warred with each other for possession of my eternal soul, they still somehow existed in beautiful tandem with each other. I went to a small Adventist school in a good part of Philly, so most of my days were spent isolated from the drugs, violence, and strong language rated R-ness of my own neighborhood. But then I would come home and the switch was flipped.
There was a drug den at the end of my block. Everyone knew it was there but we all simply kept our distance on our way to the 7-Eleven on the other corner. We would play tag in the water from the fire hydrant in the summer while strange types went in and out of the dilapidated house (that has since been torn down). And it didn’t seem odd at all, as if every kid had a drug den at the end of their block, as if Narnia were real after all.
But Narnia wasn’t real, except when my mother read it to me at night, and the closest I ever got to that kind of magic was at church every Saturday. Even though the Adventist church we went to was in North Philly it might as well have been in Shangri-La because of how shut off it was from the world. When I passed through those doors it was like time stopped and I was transported back to the world of those 1950s’ television shows, when everyone was safe, and when everywhere was your backyard.
Things weren’t real on Saturdays, when god reigned from on high in the form of black men behind a pulpit shouting olden words to adoring crowds who knew they could do no wrong. It was the epitome of a caste system where everyone within those doors was sanctified, a la Henry VIII, by virtue of being there, and by validating the system itself. Which of course meant that everyone outside in the cold was doomed to the depths of hell itself. It was Judgement Day wrapped up in rhetoric and a supposed missionary message that was less than sincere.
It was far away, both theoretically and geographically, from the drug den on my block, but both places shared the ideology that life was to be shut off from experience. And no more was that evident than in how I was expected to react to these two realities of life. While I was supposed to ignore the drug den, to pretend that it didn’t exist and that those who occupied the space were invisible, it was necessary in church to pretend that we were the chosen ones, that others should look to us as examples, that we were all going to heaven just by nature of being there every Saturday.
And while neither way of looking at the world was healthy, I took it all in and spit it back out just like they taught me. I was the dutiful robot who spent most of his formative years pretending that things were the way the adults around me said they were. I was the boy who saw the cracks in “perfection” and was supposed to gloss over them because everyone else did. But I didn’t. I just pushed it down, and I mulled it over deep inside, and I recognized that the crack addicts were people too, that they were worthy of being seen just as I was. I mulled it over deep inside, and I realized the church goers weren’t pillars of divinity.
I realized that no matter where we come from there are elements that draw us all together as human beings, and that the more we embrace those elements the less we judge. And the less we judge the more likely we are to understand where we come from, where we truly come from, is the sum of all those places rolled into one, that the story we have to tell is more than just form but content as well.
Sam
There’s a saying that you can never go home again, and I believe wholeheartedly in it. Not that you can’t go back to the physical place, but that you can’t go back to how you used to fit into that space. That’s important for a world of reasons, but the biggest one is that there is something to be said for nostalgia, once that distance has been forged, that connects us back to that time period, and to who we were at the time.
I left home at age twenty-one, at a time when most people would have recognized me as an adult, but I was in turmoil. My whole life I knew one way to be, and that was Seventh-Day Adventist. Even in my late teens when I might have been qualified as being a backslider, I still identified with being SDA. It was all I had ever known, and breaking away from it was one of the most difficult things I had ever done.
The God Box
Posted in commentary, Religion, SDA, Spiritual, Uncategorized, tagged faith, god, questioning, religion on March 17, 2018| Leave a Comment »
“You are not upset that we have different boxes. You are upset because my box does not match yours.” ~Rob Lester
And the craziest part of it all is that we don’t realize we’re doing it. You know what I’ve realized, though, after all this time? I see now that the whole time I was growing up I did just the same thing. I placed God inside that box, and it has a name: organized religion.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9) (The Bible)
It is this grace that is the key, not anything else. By placing God inside a box it means we believe we can decide what happens. It means we think our works will mark us for salvation. Organized religion the world around is based on this assumption. If we do good works then God will reward us. And each one is different, yet the same. Christians say that God will reward those who have been faithful. Hindus say we need to be dedicated to ceremonies and rituals for a gift from a God in the afterlife. Muslims believe in a God who gives us what we deserve based on our deeds.
In this way too many organized religions place God in this box. It’s understandable, too, because we like definitions. We as human beings like to be able to visualize and define everything. Instead of taking it all in faith, instead of simply accepting that undeserving grace, we look for validation from others, then we translate that validation into a blessing we believe we will get from whatever our version of God happens to be.
“Did man emerge from non-being through his own devices? Was he his own creator? Did mankind create the heavens and earth? Certainly they do not know God.” (52:35-36) (The Qu’ran)
This idea that mankind can know what’s best for mankind is ridiculed by the Qu’ran. This passage is another way of saying God knows best, that we must trust in God, and yet the beliefs espoused by the religion itself shows a God who does not accept all. It is once again not an idea of grace and an all-encompassing acceptance. The only way to know this God is to follow the teachings of the prophet and of the holy book itself. It is simply another way of placing God in this box.
For some people this is the only way for them to be able to understand God, by placing Him in this box, by placing limitations upon a being who is above even the idea of limiting. Even by just saying Him we place restrictions on a being we cannot ever truly contain. Nor should we be trying to contain Him, trying to bend our will and actions to this idea of a God that organized religion imposes on us. For a time it’s necessary, even instructive, to see God through a childlike lens, through that rudimentary belief system, but as we grow in Him we can see more the individual nature of the relationship that has no limitations. Because He has no limitations.
Then we battle over it, as if one religion is better than any other, as if God esteems one more than he esteems all the rest. We are of the “one faith,” the “one church,” the “essential elementary understanding,” and everything else we do to place labels of differentiation and judgment on everything and on everyone, including ourselves.
“What religion needs today is not more flying with God, or leaping with God, or jumping up and down with God, or going into spasms and convulsions and epileptic fits with God. What religion needs today is more walking with God.” ~Milo H. Gates
This idea of walking with God is one espoused by many organized religions, or at least they pay lip service to it. They agree that we all need to walk with God, but they don’t make it a personal walk. Just saying that our walk with God needs to take place alongside others (who are on their own personal walks) undermines the strength of that statement.
I remember when my youngest was in kindergarten, and one of the comments from the teacher was that Madeline was good at “parallel play,” which means playing alongside other kids without playing with them. She said it like it was the worst thing in the world, but it was peaceful. Madeline was doing what she wanted instead of destroying what the kid next to her was doing. I was good with that. It’s how I feel about the idea of having to be with others, to share the “walk” with others. It’s unnecessary, and it can be detrimental. We are all on our own journeys with God, personal journeys that could be disrupted by thinking ours needs to be just like someone else’s.
People often ask me why I don’t go to church now, especially those who I grew up with in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. They ask me what’s going on with my personal relationship with God because they fear for me. They’re worried that my lack of fellowship with “true believers” will be detrimental to my soul salvation. And to them I say they should focus on themselves, on their own personal relationship with God, that instead of putting Him in a box, they should actually walk with Him, free of those boxes. Allow for His grace, for His mercy, and for His overwhelming acceptance to help you see that it’s not about organized religion.
It’s about you and Him. That’s all it’s ever been about.
Sam
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