Just Shut Up & Listen!

After hanging out with some dear but highly conservative friends I am once again in question/anger/sadness mode. We got to talking and of course they spouted the party line on a particular gray area - blah blah blah. and it was of course the hard realism of the 'gospel' cushioned in loving phrases and furrowed brows. the apologetic, "i wish it weren't but that's what god says.' not quite jesus' approach to communicating his morality. (i'm so bitter right now, admittedly!) but add on to that the closed-eared approach to my (for once coherent) offering of current scientific research and life experience to broaden the conversation a bit. I find myself angry, honestly, and when I think about it more, sad. (Forewarning- oncomes a slightly self-righteous sermonizing featuring honest bewilderment combined with more than a tad of underdog-middle-child syndrome) How is it that after not fearing to expose myself to anything that might endanger my faith, figuring that the truth has absolutely nothing to fear from my questioning of it if it is true, i get branded a worldly thinker? Some of my friends get so irate when I pose anything that conflicts with their delicate christian sensibilities. My reading and education have exposed me to far more than josh macdowell and his cohorts, and i have worked hard to understand ideas on their own terms and not dismiss them as corruptive because 'a ready defense' gives a cheap, superficial paragraph criticism. as a result, i've got some admittedly and proudly creative theology that i think rings far closer to the truth of the gospel than the stiffed-neck approach. if you go after big questions, you eventually get big, juicy, full-bodied answers. i know everyone's style of faith is different, and that's mostly out of our control, but thinking has always been my way (call me crazy). It's like the verse in Romans 12 that talks about not conforming any longer to the patterns of the world but being transformed by the renewing of your mind - this is our spiritual act of worship. Just by growing up you inherit a host of assumptions and when you hit your teens and beyond, I think we begin the work of critically examining which elements of our thinking are byproducts of indoctrination, including our religion we've grown up in. I think a lot of what christians think are right and wrong with gray areas are based on conforming to how the Bible was interpreted in days of older societies, and to the religion they were slammed with in their childhood. we need to free the message from our cultural inheritance and see it clearly. this is honest saddness (and honest anger too, unfortunately). I feel so lucky in the people that i have had around me to challenge and encourage me because i sounded similar to them at one point and obviously i see myself in a more authentic place now. i'm not trying to put myself above them or judge their faith - we are all at the stage we are at for a reason. i guess it's just the human condition to think that 'my way is better than theirs' but their response to my way makes me itch and spew! hopefully i will not get smitted for this... or worse, blacklisted from church functions. hopefully i will not be forced to orate this entry of my blog before the Pearly Gates. oh, i can just picture that...