Author Archive

Live and Let Live

September 28, 2011
by Jenn

Some nights, the bed that I share with Gayle just isn’t big enough for the two of us.  For whatever reason, one or the other of us can’t get comfortable.  When this happens, I usually move to the spare bed and all is well.  The other night, she got up and moved to the uncomfortable couch.  When I realized she was gone, I was upset.  ”Why didn’t she just poke me and tell me to move?  She knows I don’t mind and then we both could have been comfortable in beds, instead of her fighting with the couch for a few hours and waking unrested.”  So I got up, told her to get back in bed and I moved to the spare bed, causing bad feelings all around.   Later I found out that she had tried repeatedly to wake me because she couldn’t get comfortable and finally gave up.

So what is the point of recounting this little “marital squabble”?  Because it made me realize that by just assuming that you know what is best for other people and trying to orchestrate your ideas in their lives, you run the risk or just making things worse for everyone.  I think as Christians we do this with regularity.  We try to force others to conform to our ideas about what is best.

Matthew 7:1 extols us to “judge not, lest we be judged’. It is important that we know all the facts before we attempt to ‘fix’ someone else. I must admit my hackles are raised when ‘they’ try to tell me who I should and shouldn’t love and what we should and shouldn’t do.  I could comply with their beliefs, but I would be miserable, uncomfortable and downright angry. This is even true in Churches, we believe we know to whom the preacher is speaking; or we hope we do. We have predetermined someone’s motivation for their actions when in reality we have no idea.  From the large theology issues to the small ‘embrace or deny new technology in the service’ issues. We as a people love to finger point and tell others how “God would want it”!

1 Corinthians 2:11 tells us, ‘For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.”  As people and especially as Christians we must remain vigilant to know the difference between our wants and desires for others and truly God’s commands for their lives. It’s something we all need to recognize and work on.  No two people are the same; we all have our own personal ideas.  And the only way to live peacefully is to let others live with their ideas and not try to force our thoughts into their heads.

: Thoughts

Don’t Kill The Messenger

July 31, 2011
by Jenn

I grew up in a traditional, conservative, Baptist family.   My dad was a minister, we were in church every time the doors were open and even sometimes when they weren’t.  We were taught that the Bible was the inerrant word of God, completely factual and true.  And I bought in hook, line and sinker, without question.  In fact, it never occurred to me that there might be a different explanation, and those who brought up the possibility were obviously not truly Christian.

I like to think I’ve grown up some since then.   I believe I was made in God’s image and that includes the fact that I am gay.  I don’t believe I’m going to hell just because I don’t believe in a literal seven day creation story anymore.  But I still bristle when people espouse alternate theories about events portrayed in the Bible.

Which is why today in church I got my “panties in a wad” as they say.  The minister had just read the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 (which didn’t count women or children – a different post for a different day) with just 5 loaves of bread and two fish and dared to say that it didn’t matter if the story was literal or not, what mattered was the message to be gained from the story.  Well, to be honest, I’m not sure I remember what the take away message was, I was too upset that a minister would say – out loud – that the Bible might not be a true account of an actual event.  The horror!

I had to stop and remind myself that I was not still that rigid fundamentalist.  I’m growing and allowing others to have their opinion about things without freaking out.  In addition, I’m not sure I still believe that the Bible is a perfect accounting of events.

Unfortunately, what happened today was that I missed a good message that might have made me a better person because I got hung up on a petty little thing.  How many times in life does this happen to us?  We get lost in the fact that the person talking might look different, or have a different opinion on things and completely miss the importance in what they are saying.

 

: Thoughts