Last night, my church finished its study of Margaret Feinberg's Scouting the Divine: My Search for God in Wine, Wool, and Wild Honey.
I've
committed to doing a write-up on my church's Bible study, but, to be
honest, I'm not in the mood right now. One thing that is difficult is
that I do not know what I really believe about God, Jesus, religion,
etc. Even when I supposedly did know what I believed about those
things, deep down I really did not know, or my conservative Christian
beliefs did not appeal to me that much and I only believed in them
because I felt I had to. Some who read me may think that I should stop
sitting on the fence----that I should either accept conservative
Christianity with its God, who comes across as sort of a jerk, or I
should be an atheist. Neither option appeals to me. For that matter,
neither do liberal forms of religion, which strike me as "made-up". I
find that my beliefs on a given day vacillate among Christianity, belief
in a benevolent higher power, and a cheerful agnosticism.
Last
night at Bible study, I could identify with the talk about loving our
neighbors and trying to help them out, and I especially appreciated
people's stories about their struggles to do so. But when some were
lamenting that a large number of evangelicals do not believe that Jesus
is the only way to heaven, and they were saying that those evangelicals
were not true Christians because believing in Jesus as the only way to
get forgiveness is so foundational to Christianity, I felt somewhat
uncomfortable. "Suppose that's true", I wondered. Even if I were to
accept that as true, I wouldn't know how to live with that kind of
God----one who excluded so many people. I suppose that, if I identify
with anything, it's an article that Clark Pinnock wrote defending an
inclusivist view of salvation (see my post here). I appreciated that he sought to support with Scripture the notion that God's love is vast, wide, and inclusive.
I
won't publish any comments that I consider to be a put-down. But
please feel free to share how you have handled these sorts of issues in
your spiritual journey.