The Diversity Of Healthy Religion: What We Do With What We Know About God Is Important

Even in the year 2019, there are still people and groups of people; many, many, many, people, who believe in a God who can't wait to throw sinners into the fiery pit of hell, without much thought to the fact that they, too, are sinners.

They believe in a God of judgement; certainly not a Universal One who desires all to draw near and wake-up and see what was right before them all along; nor a fun-loving one with a good sense of humor.

What would be different if all embraced diversity within religion?  There would be no option but to realize that Everything Belongs.  There would be a true urge to gather those who don't feel like they belong into the fold.  Not by hitting them upside the head with threats of hell (unless you sign up and drink the Kool-Aid), or shaming them into believing (is that even possible?), but to actually share The Good News by showing what The Good News is.

Why do people need to feel that what they think or believe is the only way; the right way?

I find trying to be right and in control is exhausting!  It diverts our time into a "waste of time".  Time that could be spent in Micah 6:8-ing it:  "...do justice, and to love kindness, and walk humbly with your God".  It's kinda hard to be humble when you're fighting to be right.  "Being right is not enlightenment", as Richard Rohr says.

What we know about God is this:  God is Love (1 John 4:7-8, 1 John 4:19).  And what our  friend The Apostle Paul says about love is this:  Love is patient;  love is kind;  love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;  it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.  (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a)

As far as I know, Paul wasn't telling people to only love certain people (and, even though this particular passage is used frequently in wedding ceremonies, it wasn't written for that purpose).  Heck, one of Paul's most important theologies was that people, through Christ (might I throw in the concept of The Universal Christ), are no longer contained within whatever box they'd been put into by society!  So, take "Jew", "Greek", "Man", "Woman", "Slave", "Master", etc., from the year 50-ish CE/AD and insert out current boxes from the year 2019 CE/AD:  "Citizen", "Illegal Alien" (he used that one too, I think), "Straight", "LGBTQIA", "Republican", "Democrat", "Churched", "Unchurched", "Senior Citizen", College Student", and, yeah, "Christian", "Jew", "Muslim", Aetheist", etc., etc., etc., how can we read these passages and not get it?

We waste our time defending our corner of the sandbox and  screaming at others that they are wrong, instead of going out and finding new friends on the playground.  I use a childish analogy because we are being childish.  Not in the good way of "little children" as in, only those who see as "little children" will get into the Kingdom of Heaven, but in the unreasonable, temper tantrum way of spoiled rotten brats.

Mrs. B