I haven’t posted in years now, I suppose. I don’t foresee posting a lot, or maybe even one more time after this one, but I just had to set something right.
In Sunday School we are reading Full Hearted Faith by the late Rachel Held Evans. Evans was a brave and influential woman of faith, having escaped evangelical Christianity and then writing and speaking about her journey. This is the only book I have read by Evans so far and we are only on the fifth chapter.
So far I have enjoyed listening to the book and discussing it in class, but I haven’t felt very deeply connected to much of it on a personal level. I didn’t grow up “in the church,” having come to faith in middle school, attending Youth Group with a friend. So I was not raised in a faith community at all, and my parents were very socially liberal and inclusive, they especially did not buy into the nationalistic, small-minded anti-intellectualism of right-wing Christianity.
Until I finished this chapter on Jonathan Edwards I had forgotten about how I used to believe and even joke about the “Calvinist/Presbyterian answer to ‘why do bad things happen to good people?’ - there are no good people.”
I bought into the whole concept of “total depravity.” Or at least I gave lip service to it. And I am very sorry for that and for anyone I might have misled.
Original sin is simply not true. Original goodness- that is the truth. Maybe I had to be older to understand. To remember that we are created in God’s holy image.
I guess deep down I always believed that- certainly for other people (me I have always had my doubts about my own goodness!) but I do believe that we do the best we can with the information and strength we have at the time.
God walks with us, and loves us, all of us, all the way. And for that I am so grateful.
No comments:
Post a Comment