Political

8/3/19– Religion and Politics

I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church in New England, and I whole-heartedly believed in God, and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, even as a teenager. It wasn’t really until my twenties that I really questioned what I believed in. Now, I’m still trying to figure it out. I have strayed so far from God, I’ve done some very bad things. I know that I would have gone down a much darker path if I hadn’t married my husband. We have taken most of the morality we both learned in church and stuck with that. To us it seems more common sense than anything. But as much as I feel like I’m being called back to God in some way, there are so many things in “The Church” that I don’t agree with. Perhaps I simply haven’t found one that I now agree with, I’m not sure.

For some reason I have become very strict about Christianity. I feel like the faith should be backed with much more action, such as having the church open 24/7 so that people who are at rock bottom and have no where to go can go to the church and find refuge there, or having more community outreach. I think that they should be harsher on homosexuality, but more and more often there are Christians saying that they have no problem with homosexuals. I don’t hear cries of outrage from people in the church that their children are being taught sexually explicit things at almost all grades. These sort of things really bother me and I get worked up about it. I find myself blaming the Church for the state that we find ourselves in today. I wish that they had been much more active, but most church-goers seem content to grumble about things but don’t seem to care enough to do anything about it because to do otherwise would negate their faith.

But they will support Israel and try to get all the tribes back to “the promised land”.

My father shared a video with me and my husband, a compilation of interviews with Eric Metaxas and Katie Hopkins.  He was asking us if we had heard of Katie Hopkins. I am familiar with her but my husband wasn’t. I was the only one who watched the entire video compilation (it was quite long), and I pointed out a section where Eric Metaxas said that he had nothing against homosexuals. At first my dad didn’t believe me but then he explained that he’s heard this man talk about homosexuality before and he just meant that he doesn’t hate the people, he just dislikes their activities. And then he wrote me off by saying “What do you care anyway, you don’t believe in God. You can’t just throw God out there whenever you feel like it!”

This is bothering me more than I’d care to admit. Firstly, I’m still trying to figure out what I believe in and I realize that must be frustrating for my parents since they tried to bring me up a certain way, but comments like that don’t really make me more interested in going to church. Secondly, does it matter if I believe in God? If an non-believer points out something that the Bible lays out quite clearly that it is against, why would that make any difference to if it was a believer? If the person being told does believe in the Book, than what does it matter? I think that they forget that I studied the Bible too. I’m not claiming to be a master or that I have the whole Bible memorized, but I know that God is not exactly a fan of homosexuality.

 

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