Sunday, July 02, 2006
It amazes me that all my life I grew up in a christian background and never really knew what they were all talking about.
In my school, we learnt hymns like "jesus loves the little children", "this is the day the lord has made", "joy is a flag flown high from the bottom of my heart... where the king is the residence there".
There's a painting in my canteen of the miracle that Jesus did where he multiplied 5 loaves and 2 fishes for a multitude of hundreds or thousands.
Since primary school to secondary school, I attended chapel once every week in school and fell asleep in almost every chapel. The sermon was dry and boring, almost always by some wizened pastor with a white collar that maybe choked his sense of humour too.
So anyway its quite disturbing that when God is real to me, it amazes me that all my life I grew up with his word, his teachings all around and never felt that he is actually real.
In secondary school, despite all my nice christian upbringing, I simply decided that God didn't exist. How could he, if I lived in such a christian environment and still felt my life was so empty, and still felt so helpless? All those nice bible verses just didn't make any sense to me.
God can be distant when it's always a religion. Chapel, hymns, sermons- how can it mean anything if its just a kind of formality? If its a relationship, everything begins to take on a different meaning. When there's no intimacy in a relationship, the only other thing left is formality, empty actions and words, worship compelled by responsibility and not passion.
The way people get introduced to God can change their whole perspective of him. It's so important, especially when their salvation is at stake.
So I don't get why so many people do it the wrong way. Don't tell them that they'd go to hell, don't push your beliefs down their throat, don't act as though you're holier-than-thou, don't bring your friends to your own church just to flaunt your wonderful christian circle of friends and status ("oh, i'm so-and-so here, with so much responsibility, i have no time to be with you, just uh, hang around.") Seriously, who needs that? Or, even worse, approach strangers and scare them with your seriously fanatically-sounding preaching- all of which I have experienced.
Why not genuine, sincere love, which gives and asks for nothing in return? debbie at 10:47 AM