A Fork in the Road

It's official. *takes a deep breath*

I no longer consider myself a member of the Christian faith.

There. I said it.

Finally.

It's been a whirlwind of a journey to this place, with a lot of personal challenges and grieving the loss of my image of myself on the way. Little bits of what I would call my "fundamentalist Christian beliefs" have been changing for a while. Bits of things that just didn't make sense to me anymore. Eventually, it became impossible for me to reconcile the small-minded hatefulness for "other" that I continued to see displayed by the Christian church with the loving Creator that I know. And it was that hatefulness that caused me to seriously start questioning other aspects of my faith.  

For a while, I grasped tightly to at least the basics of what I'd been taught:

• God created the Universe 
• The Bible was God's Word 
• Jesus was God's Son who came to earth as a sacrifice for the sins of the world
• If one didn't acknowledge this gift and receive it (changing one's life in the process), that person would spend eternity in hell being punished for their lack of faith 

And then after quite a lot of seeking and research, I just realized I didn't believe it all anymore. 

I still believe that some form of Divinity is here in the Universe. "Here" meaning all around us and in us. But I can no longer believe the idea that a loving God would send people to hell simply because they picked the wrong name to call Him, or worshipped Him the wrong way, or didn't believe that Jesus was His Son. 

A few months after I rejected the ideas of hell and the need for a savior, I was talking to God as I had always previously done (as a Christian). It had been a while, because I was struggling with trying to figure out what I believed and what that meant. At first, I thought that since I wasn't a Christian anymore, maybe I shouldn't try to talk to Him the same way. But then I just reached out the way I had always done. And my questions were, "What now? How do I talk with you? Do I need to make changes in the way I pray? What does all this change mean?"

Now, when I say "pray" what I really mean is "have a conversation" with God. We've always had a pretty informal relationship. I never felt that I needed to kneel or close my eyes to talk with God. He was always just "there" whenever I reached out, even from my earliest memories.

I really wasn't sure what to do now. Everything had changed - my whole view of the Universe. So I asked, "How do we do this now that everything has changed?" And waited. Very clearly, the Voice that has always been God to me responded, "I haven't changed at all. Only your understanding of me has changed." And behind those words was the most peaceful feeling, and a smile. My mind was blown.

God hadn't changed at all! And He hadn't refused me entrance or chastised me in any way. At that point I finally felt like I understood. Whether I choose to call Him "Divine Spirit", "the Universe", "Krishna", or "Allah" - the Creator is still the same.

The Truth is One; the wise call it by many names. ~the Vedas

I now believe that we all are seeking God, we just learn (or choose) to worship in many different ways. I still believe that Jesus had an understanding of the Universe that few people (if any) in history had. Maybe Buddha did too. Maybe the Dalai Lama does. I'm not really sure about that part. But I think we can all learn much from Jesus and the many other wise men that have gone before us and are with us now.

All my life I have sought an understanding of God and a relationship with God, and that search has brought me here - to love. I choose love.