The Spiritual Journey - First Installment

An exchange over the weekend with an old friend got me thinking about my spiritual journey.  Then, last night, I dreamed that Park Place Baptist Church was gone and the property where it had once stood was a nice lawn with a few trees that had evidently survived the demolition.  Park Place was the church I grew up in and the place I spent most of my first 20 years of life after home and school.  It is the source of some of the most wonderful memories of my life.  However, what I learned there also served as the source of some of the strongest spiritual conflicts in my life—conflicts that I couldn’t resolve until the 5^th decade of my life on this earthly plane.

So, this morning, I’m reflecting on my spirituality and what it looks like now that I’m finally comfortable with it.  You see, growing up I was surrounded by wonderful, well-meaning people who taught me what they believed.  I listened.  I processed.  I questioned.  Although I quickly learned that questioning wasn’t such a good idea, there was no doubt that for the most part these were sincere, thoughtful people who worked at living their faith.  Some met with more success than others. 

One of the main themes I couldn’t accept was the idea that if one didn’t find our particular brand of religion, one was doomed to an eternity in hell.  I simply couldn’t reconcile that with the image of God the Father who loved us enough that he sacrificed his only son so that we might avoid the burning pit.  I especially bristled at the idea of the poor people in the jungles of Africa dying and going to hell because the missionaries we were frantically dispersing around the world didn’t get to them in time.  Our goal was to save the world.  Talk about biting off more than you can chew.

As an adult, I would find myself tearing up when singing some of the words to the old hymns.  It just felt so wrong for me.  As a teenager, I just couldn’t accept these concepts of our religion being the official religion of entry into heaven.  I mean, I knew Catholic kids.  I even knew a Jewish girl, yeah, in Houston, Texas, in the 60s.  As well, I knew a variety of kids from other religious belief systems and some who were unaffiliated.  And, yet, these were some pretty great people.  So, how does this fatherly God work again in a world where so many of my fellow human beings, and good ones at that, were doomed.  I can remember a study program in Training Union (wherein we were trained to be good Southern Baptists) when I was in high school where we looked at a different religion every week to see what was wrong with that religion and why ours was so much better.  What happened to judge that ye be not judged?

So, at the turn of the century, I began my spiritual journey in earnest.  More about that next time.