May 24, 2008

Mix-n-Match

I feel like I have run into this more and more lately, people who take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and call it their "faith". What I have a hard time with is what exactly are they putting their faith in? Now I'm not telling people what they should or shouldn't believe in (though I do feel strongly about this guy named Jesus and firmly believe that if you don't know Him, you should get to) but I am asking them to understand what it is exactly they are professing as their belief. I think it has become a pet-peeve of mine to hear people talk about "believing" (or liking) this aspect of one particular religion and another aspect of another religion or this part of the Bible but not this part. At some point, make a decision and go with it.

Hearing someone talk about their belief in God and go on to describe how they decided to accept a little something from one religion, a little something from another and still a little more from another one is, honestly, confusing. It would seem to me that this line of logic is rather illogical and here's why: if someone believes there is a (G)od, which would by definition put it above us as humans, then doesn't the act of mixing and matching beliefs from various religions in a sense say that the one that is doing the mixing and matching actually knows better or more than the (G)od, which would then make the individual smarter than the (G)od and ultimately above it.

I will be the first to admit that there are things I don't understand about Christianity but I don't think that means I have the authority or right to simply ignore them or decide I don't like them and so I'll fill them in with something that sounds or feels better. Hence my struggle with the Unitarian Church, to believe in everything is really to believe in nothing. Theology that is bad or not theology is not good theology. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of acceptance and unity, that's why I am a trying to be like Jesus (aka: a Christian; but I'm getting more and more apprehensive of that label because the "Christian brand" is starting to make me a little nervous...I'll write more about this in a later post). When everything is easy to understand and feels good there is no need for faith, fortunately for those of us trying to follow Jesus that is not the case.

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