STALKED BY JESUS
(first installment in an ongoing series, stay tuned…)
When I was seven I left the church, but only inside my own
head. I continued to attend church for
another six years, having no choice in the matter. I left because I found out that, according to
the God of this church, my little Jewish friends were going to be cast into a
pit of fire for all eternity. In fact,
the rules were so strict that hardly anyone was going to Heaven, and certainly
not me. This was not a God I wanted to
be associated with. I would go to Hell
with my friends.
I didn’t discard God and Jesus though, and certainly not the
Holy Spirit, whom I understood as an invisible cloud of love and goodness that
kind of floated around like Caspar the Friendly Ghost. The Holy Spirit was my favorite, or maybe
Jesus. Jesus said things that brought
tears to my eyes, like “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do.” He was kind to sinners, healed the
sick, gave people food, and asked us to love one another, and not to judge and
condemn others. Judging and condemning
were major activities in the small town where I lived, and I wished we could
get rid of them altogether. I was a
little fat kid with a crazy grandmother whose mother had run away with a guy
who sold magazines, so I had a personal stake in lessening the amount of
judgment in the world. Anyhow, if I gave
up God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit I wouldn’t really have any friends at all.
