1) Your God vs. mine: I'm not a resentful person by nature. Despite the fact that I have many problems with aspects of my religious upbringing there is only one thing that I genuinely resent. See through my teen years I struggled with God, with the inflexibility of the law and the concept of God that I had grown up knowing - the one who demanded unquestioning obedience, complete sacrifice of self (which often translates to loss of individuality), and the knowledge that my own inability to unquestioningly agree with what my spiritual elders told me meant that I would never really fit in with the 'good christian' ideal - in my own mental idiom, I would never be a good 'Grace girl'. I struggled with the concepts of predestination, omnipotence, and the generally accepted idea that a God who was 'willing that none should perish,' who in his omnipotence could see the length and breath of existence, would still create a world in which he knew the vast majority of his creation was already doomed to hell. I went to church, I prayed, and in my heart of hearts I wished that God wasn't real. I wished there wasn't a part of me filled with the absolute knowledge of my creator, because every thought hurt but I could no more stop thinking than stop being. I had to get away from the constant battering of dogma, to step away from fundamentalism before I could regain my footing. For two years after leaving home I attended church only sporadically - generally only worship services and the occasional prayer or special service at various charismatic churches in San Diego. I remember asking my best friend one time how she, the most insightful person I've ever known, never seemed to struggle with faith or the nature of God. Crystal told me that she remembered her mother crying out to God, struggling with feelings of inadequacy and worrying that God could never love her. She remembered just knowing absolutely that as much as Crystal loved her mother God loved her more and that what he wanted more than anything was for her to be happy. That was a revelation, and it is the one thing that I resent. I may have had bad experiences in church, but I generally recognize that despite how injured I might feel the people themselves are good people trying the best they can, and I can't be upset about that. What I resent is that it took until my twenties to truly hear the most fundamental message of all - that God loves me, wants what's best for me because he wants me to be happy. Twenty years of church, years and years of struggle because "God so loved the world" is always under emphasized in favor of telling people that they're wrong, they're not good enough, that God is waiting to punish them. Even now, years later this understanding blows my mind, it moves me to tears just writing about it. This concept opened my eyes, because it's easy to love a God who loves you for who you are. Even the terrible things in the world are evidence of his love, that he loved us as individuals enough to give us complete free will, the free will to screw up, to hurt ourselves and others, because God in his infinite understanding knows that without choice everything else is bondage and slavery and true love can never tolerate either. The shackles of law fell off and I was left with a doctrine of love, and I refuse to attend any church that preaches otherwise - which sadly limits my choices. The way I view God is so changed from the way I was brought up that I mentally consider them almost different entities. My God is not the God of my parents, and I wouldn't change that for the world, because my God brings me joy, comfort, and the unconditional love I need to truly have a personal relationship with my creator. I always confessed with my mouth and believed in my heart, but this is the way that God really saved me not only from sin but from religion as well.
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