Tag: religion

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Growing Up Seventh-Day Adventist: Unequally Yoked

opposites-attract“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” – 2 Corinthians 6:14 (English Standard Version)

Growing up Seventh-Day Adventist, it was only natural to wonder about the nature of male/female relationships. Everybody growing up wonders about that, but for the SDA it was almost like sacred territory. We saw couples at church, but we were only privy to their public relationship with the Lord, not to their private relationship with each other. But you know how kids are. We talked, and it was pretty easy to place the couples we saw into three categories:

  1. The Ones Who Were Genuinely Happy
  2. The Ones Who Were Pretending
  3. The Ones Who Weren’t Even Pretending

The ones who weren’t even pretending were the ones who we never even saw together. Either the wife would bring the kids to church, the husband would bring the kids to church, or they would both be there, but never in the same place at the same time. These couples tended to be middle-aged with young children. The ones who were pretending could always be seen together, but they were never actually found communicating with each other. And those who were genuinely happy had a seamless nature to how they went about their business while at the same time tending to each other. Those couples were usually smiling, and had an ease to them that we could tell the other couples obviously envied.

But one thing that was hardly ever in question was that each couple we saw at church were in fact baptized Seventh-Day Adventists. While there may have been degrees of faith, the faith itself was never in doubt. Apparently this isn’t so clear-cut in some other religions, but I didn’t know anything about that then. I assumed that everyone who was married was “equally yoked,” meaning that they were of the same religion. I also assumed back then that when I grew up I, too, would marry a Seventh-Day Adventist and raise Seventh-Day Adventist children together with her. That assumption would prove false. Continue reading “Growing Up Seventh-Day Adventist: Unequally Yoked”

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Growing Up Seventh-Day Adventist: Going Home

“There is no past. Only present. And future.” -Theodicus

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.

So many people have memories of their childhoods, be they good or bad, that they come back to in one way or another. For me that childhood was a solid mix of the good and the bad. But whichever sentiment clouds my memories, it’s safe to say that every single one of those thoughts involves my religious upbringing. In fact, just today I was singing “Jesus Loves Me” while at work, and I didn’t even realize I was doing it until I was on the second verse.

My mother used to always ask me to go to church with her every single time I went back to Philadelphia for a visit. I could hear it in her voice, too, that emotion that said I was doing a horrible thing saying no, but there was also that feeling of sadness. And I knew that she wasn’t just asking me to go to church. She was wondering where she went wrong, that I would so fully abandon the church that pretty much raised me nearly as much as she herself did.

But what I wanted to tell her was that it was never her, that she hadn’t done anything wrong. Continue reading “Growing Up Seventh-Day Adventist: Going Home”

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Another Version of God

crying_out“You’re a god, and I am not, and I just thought that you would know.” -Vertical Horizon

There are some days when I strongly believe in a higher power causing the sun to rise in the East and set in the West, a being stronger than us who gives us free will but also pulls the strings when necessary, an iconoclast who by his very nature defies his own existence, who is revered by many but truly loved by few. Lip service, that’s what we usually pay to such a god, and we do it in prayer, sometimes down on our knees, sometimes standing up, sometimes over Skype with our grandmother who is in the home but we choose not to visit. And she believes in such a god who sits high and judges low because so did her grandmother who has been gone lo these many years, a woman who took religion as seriously as she did her shaving rituals.

Then there are days when I honestly don’t see how there can be a benevolent god in a world so full of misery and devastation, when good people die daily and bad people live to be a hundred. Then I stop myself because are there really good people and bad people? There are just people who do bad things, right? And sometimes those same people also do good things, but of course that’s when no one is paying attention. What kind of a god lets things happen, even in the name of free will, that could have been easily prevented? Some days I sit high up in my chair and judge low, feeling like maybe I’m that god I’ve been doubting all along, that maybe being made in his image means I’m upholding an image that is just that, an image, a mirage, a picture in my head that is shared by many who also doubt. Continue reading “Another Version of God”

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A Father and Daughter Conversation: Of Magic and Spirit

th“That’s the thing with magic. You’ve got to know it’s still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.” -Charles de Lint

This afternoon my seven-year old asked me why we celebrate Hanukkah, and I explained to her the miracle of the oil and the lights. She was fascinated by the story and asked me what allows miracles to happen, what the force is that compels wild things to occur and make us believe in the magic that can exist in the world. I explained to her that magic as we think of it is just illusion, all of which can be explained, but that true magic is when something unexplainable happens, when the fabric of the universe is unveiled and all its beauty spills out into our hands, but we don’t see where it comes from. It’s the magic of the oil, and the magic of the magi, and the magic of a larger than life human being with a love of giving gifts to children.

“Who is God?” she queried after I told her the story of why we honor the traditions of the Jewish faith.

“God is the reason everything happens,” I explained.

“So is God magic, since he brought about the miracle?” she asked, scrunching her face up like she was thinking hard.

“Yes, in a way, God is the ultimate magic. He creates something out of nothing,” I answered.

“Like the miracle of the oil?” she asked. She asks a lot of questions, but that’s okay. It’s how she learns.

“Exactly like the miracle of the oil,” I said, nodding my head.

“Well then, what about Christmas? Tell me that story,” she said. And I realized that I had never before truly talked to either one of my children about the real reason for the season. Continue reading “A Father and Daughter Conversation: Of Magic and Spirit”

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Spiritual Detours

You’d be surprised, but I spend an awful lot of time thinking about religion, about church, about spirituality, and about how each of these concepts can exist independently of one another. People often ask me why I don’t go to church, but the answer isn’t a simple one, even though the act of not going is simple. And I know what they’re thinking, that I must be a lost soul, that I’m one of those backsliders who grew up in the church but has now turned his back on it. They would be wrong on both accounts.

I’m not lost. In fact, for the first time in my life I think I finally have solid footing where it comes to God and my connection with him. It has been a long time coming, though, and I have gone through many wrong turns on the journey.

FIRST TURN:

In college I worked at the Temple University library circulation desk, and I had a wide variety of students and non-students come in and ask me questions or tell me things they thought I needed to know. They were looking for the religion section (BS – no joke), or they were trying to find their computer password to log in (they really needed the reference desk), or they wanted to let someone know that a guy had built a book fort in the stacks. One time that stands out, however, was when two guys in gray suits with print ties came up to the desk to ask about my eternal soul. They gave me a pamphlet and invited me to go to their church on the following Sunday. At the time I had so many questions about my eternal soul that I think I became an easy target, and they could see it. Continue reading “Spiritual Detours”