Faith vs religion – a battle cry

My previous post about rekindling my faith did not sit so well with several of my friends. I have a LOT of friends that are not Christians. I myself did not find my faith until my late 20’s, and honestly I waiver and fall and stumble my way through it in a daily basis. But there’s been a recurring frustration that I run into regularly that I feel I need to write down. If I write the words down they get out of my head, which is a good thing.

Faith and religion are two opposite things. I don’t consider myself religious. I hate the word – I hate all that it implies. Religion is man made, litigious, legalistic, and in my opinion, more harmful than good. Faith, on the other hand, is God driven. It’s about grace and goodness and kindness and love. It’s about treating other people the way you would want to be treated. About loving unguardedly. About redemption. About forgiveness.

Every single day I run into someone that has been hurt by the church. Catholic school beatings. Homophobic attitudes. Republican rants. Genocides. Adulterous pastors. Even things as simple as forced church attendance. The hurt done in the misguided name of Jesus is appalling. It’s embarrassing and it’s shameful and it’s completely unbiblical. It makes my head spin that so many people can be so so wrong. I don’t know how to bridge that gap of untrust and hurt. I don’t know how to “fix” that. Honestly there is no fixing that.

I wish I could show my friends the truth. I wish I could help them feel the love and acceptance and healing that comes from knowing a living God. But I can’t. I feel hogtied sometimes over it. But I can love them through the hurt and the pain. I can lift them up in prayer and let the one that can fix it take over. That’s the best I got.

But I have a request. Don’t lump me in with the misogynistic, homophobic, hypocritical and hurtful “christians” that do more harm than good. I’m not perfect, and I will never claim to be. I’m not even right a lot of the time. I mess up on a daily basis – sometimes really really big. One of my favourite words starts with F. My faith is often as small as a mustard seed – and I doubt more than I believe.

It’s funny to me that I can tell someone about some random uncle and nobody would ever doubt he exists, but I tell them about God and the reaction is rarely positive. Not until someone meets Him themselves will they actually believe He exists. For me, God is very, very real. I have met him. He’s awesome. He redeems me every morning, and he blesses me beyond anything I deserve. He has me in the palm of his hand, and he loves me despite me.

But the Church – the Church is made of people. And people fuck up. People hurt people. People make mistakes. People suck. Every day in the news you will see some sort of twisted individual that is doing one thing or another that is blatantly wrong, yet they say it’s based on their religious convictions. It makes me want to SCREAM. Because that is NOT what Jesus would do. Nor would he ever condone that sort of behaviour!

I believe Jesus would lead the pride parades of today. I believe he would smash the idols of his mother in every Catholic Church. I believe he would be the first to light the Westboro Baptist Church on fire. I believe he weeps at the widespread hurt and devastation done in his name. I believe if he were to walk into any of his churches today he wouldn’t even recognize the hearts of 3/4 of the congregations.

This post is likely to go over like a lead balloon with many of you, and for that I apologize. But it’s really been eating at me for some time. If you equate God with the works of the church, then you’re mistaken. If you think the only way to heaven is to follow the rules of some bureaucratic organization, you have been misled. If you think Jesus hates gay people, you’re wrong. If YOU hate gay people because for some reason your church is preaching that, fix your heart and switch churches. In the words of Morgan Freeman “I hate the word homophobia. It’s not a phobia. You’re not scared. You’re an asshole.”

I want to change the world. I want to make it a better place. I want to see less hate, less “isms”, more acceptance and more love. I want to be able to love Jesus without being made to feel like I’m the root of all evil. I want to be able to have honest and open conversations about faith without the smear of the church’s past haunting every single one. I wish people would be as open to those conversations as they are about breaking down barriers and preaching acceptance and inclusion.

This is a cry from my heart – I look forward to hashing it out with you, preferably over a glass of wine.