Is love enough?

Is love really enough? I wrestle with my fundamental thinking all the time with this one.  I so want to believe that it is, but somewhere in my ingrained mind that runs to the very core of my being, I hear the rantings of my old self.

"You have to balance love with the rest of scripture."

"God is a just God!"

"Love the sinner, hate the sin!"

As I said in my last post, I am reading the Bible again.  Not studying it, just reading it.  I am trying hard not to read it with any preconceived ideology.  (Which is very hard when you have been indoctrinated for over 20 years of your life.)  I am reading different versions of the Bible too.  Whatever strikes my fancy that day...  I read this scripture today and my old mind said, "Boy, that sure does sound New Age!! There has to be a counter for this scripture."  But I stopped myself.  Because it is just that beautiful.

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

Scripture

I started reading The Bible again.  Well, online.  Not the paper kind.  In the 22 years that I have professed to be a born again Christian, I have read (and studied) the Bible several times through.  Always through my 'evangelical glasses' of course.  Things have to line up with what "Christianity mainstream" teaches, or your interpretation of scripture is wrong.  Sure, we take parts of scripture literally and others figuratively.  How do we know which is which? Well, don't let me bore you to death but the process is long and involved and uses words like hermeneutics.  The point of this post is, I love Scripture now.  I do!!  I don't believe what I used to believe.  At all.  But what I do know is that Scripture is now beautiful and flowing and lovely.  I would have never used those words to describe the Bible before.  But reading the Bible with my new untainted eyes is liberating and joyful.  Matthew 22:37-40 says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the greatest and foremost commandment.  "And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor AS YOURSELF." On these two commandments depends the WHOLE LAW and THE PROPHETS."  Love, love, love.  I choose to love.

The Parenting Trap

When I had Camille, I was 28 years old.  I really wanted to parent her "correctly."  There were/are so many philosophies to choose from.  Growing Kids God's Way (blech!), Attachment Parenting, The Ferber Method of sleeping, and of course the The Pearl's crazy ideas!  (let's beat our child with rubber tubing) Now that I am 43 and on child number five, I can honestly say there is no parenting method that fits every child. To be quite honest, it doesn't matter when they use the toilet, if they know their alphabet by the time they are three, if they color inside the lines, if they can count, or stack blocks, or all of that hooplah.  By the time they are in the third grade, it all evens out.  Josiah didn't even know his alphabet when he started Kindergarten and by the end of Kindergaten he was reading just like every other child.  I am so happy I am not that crazy "have to do it right" mother that I used to be.  One more reason I am so grateful for leaving that legalistic, cultish Christianity I was a part of for so long.  If Jesus is the example of love, then I will be that for my children.  Everything else will fall into place.

I just don't get it...

Why Christians always sound so...despondent.

 

The end.

I'll vent here instead

I just posted on Facebook that my husband bought me two tickets to go see Mannheim Steamroller for Christmas.  The problem is I don't like Christmas music.  At all.  I mean, I like it on Christmas Eve.  For an hour.  After that it gives me ageda.  I know, I know...call me a Grinch or worse yet, a heathen.  I like singing Christmas carols of religious nature like "O Holy Night" or "O Come O Come Emmanuel" but I don't like to listen to them repeatedly.  Anyway...this is my beef:

I have been married almost 23 years.  For 23 years he has known I don't like Christmas music.  He KNOWS this.  When we get in the van, I turn OFF the Christmas music.

Olaf loves Christmas music and Mannheim Steamroller.

So, guess what I got for Christmas?

Instead of thinking of me and what I might want to for Christmas, he saw an opportunity to go on a date and see something he wants to see.  If I speak up and say that I really don't want to go then I am the bitch for not being appreciative of his gift.  That, my friends, is bull crap.  I DON'T LIKE CHRISTMAS MUSIC AND I DON'T WANT CHRISTMAS MUSIC TICKETS FOR MY CHRISTMAS PRESENT!

You know what I asked for?  I asked for him to draw me a picture.  He didn't.  He could have, but he chose not to.  Why isn't he the bastard? Why am I still the bitch?  Explain that to me.

Memories

When Camille and Caleb were just babies, a Christian friend came for a visit.  He looked at Caleb and said, "This must be your Ishmael."  Up until that point, I always believed that because we were in the process of adopting God allowed me to conceive Camille.  As soon as he said those words, I began to wonder.  In those days I was journaling and reading my Bible every single day.  In my journal (prior to starting the adoption proceedings) I wrote, "I know God will open my womb.  It's just in His time."  Was Caleb really my Ishmael?  I began to believe that he was.  God must be letting me suffer the consequences for going outside of His will.  I mean, I didn't want to adopt a mentally challenged child.  I didn't seek that out for myself.  The endless therapies, the constant vomiting, the colic and crying 20 hours a day.  I certainly must be out of God's will.  

Oh, how I am so happy I no longer believe that crap!  It is what it is and I blame no one.  If God is punishing me, I won't believe it!  I'd rather believe in a big cosmic mistake than to believe that shit.  I always thought God had a big old "SMITE" button and it said "MISTY" right across the front of it.  You know...like the Easy Button that Staples has?  Except it was a smite button and God pushed it just to piss me off.  It is SO nice to know that He really doesn't care about pissing me off.  I don't even believe anymore that he puts me through trials to "grow" me.  I can honestly say that since I have abandoned these beliefs, my life has been so much happier.  So easy.  So FREE!!  

So if the Son sets you free, YOU WILL BE FREE INDEED!!

Breaking My Alabaster Jar

And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. ⁴There were some who said to themselves indignantly, "Why was the ointment wasted like that? ⁵For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor." And they scolded her. ⁶But Jesus said, "Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me."


I am starting over.  I need a re-do.  I am breaking my alabaster jar over Jesus' head and it may not sit well with the other people seated at the table who also follow Jesus.  That's fine with me.  I'm breaking it anyway.  Why now? Well, for the past five years I have been gradually reexamining my faith.  I used to be the "right wing evangelical christian" pounding her Bible at the people who didn't see things the way I did.  It didn't matter what subject we were talking about, I knew exactly how God thought about it.  I can quote Scripture with the best of them.  Love and grace and mercy were words to me, and not action words either.  Sure, I talked about them and, in my own mind, practiced them.  As "mature" as I thought I was in my faith, I never felt freedom.  I never felt absolute joy.  I never felt complete.  I always felt I needed to "do" things to be a better christian.  Pray more, read my Bible more, measure up to those "Godly" women around me.  Olaf and I were very much caught up in the patriarchal movement (as supported by Vision Forum and other ministries) and he told me on a daily basis how I wasn't measuring up.  To his standards as a wife or to God's standards.


I also started wondering why I interpreted some scripture literally and some I did not.  I mean, the New Testament is the New Testament after all.  I have been to several Precept Ministries Women's Retreats, I have done every Kay Arthur study on the "correct" way to interpret Scripture.  I attended churches like Calvary Chapel where they pride themselves on teaching the Bible "book by book, chapter by chapter."  And yet...


1 Cor 14:34 - women are to remain silent in the church and always be in submission as the Law says.


1 Cor 11 - Should women wear head coverings or not?  Should they cut their hair?


Acts 2 - to babble or not to babble? Is tongues for today?


I could go on and on and on ad nauseam.  Slavery, birth control (think Duggars), homosexuality, racism, classism, circumcision, women in leadership, women working outside of the home... blah, blah, blah.  


You know what the result of the past five years is?  I no longer worry.  I no longer worry how other people interpret scripture.  I no longer worry if they think I have lost my salvation.  I no longer worry about their relationship with the lord.  I am completely enamored with Jesus and me. That's it.  Just us.  You can talk about going to church, mission trips, Bible reading, themes and programs and ministries... Good for you!


I am going to break the alabaster jar because it's what I need to do.  For me.  For Jesus.