It's true, I like going to Church. My church, Grace Seattle, is neither a bastion of religious bigots seeking to yell of the dangers of hell for non-members nor is it a morally corrupt den of iniquity that has no real belief in the quest for inclusion. Judgment should be withheld by those who have not attended because of this, indeed judgment is neither christian nor non-christian but a basic human function that can be very ugly when done ignorantly. That's why the word "grace" is so key. As I see it grace embodies the absence of judgment in ignorance. All that said, I want to share a bit of what I glean every week.
The 30ish minute sermon can be heard at:
http://graceseattle.org/Haralson092808.mp3
"Substitutes for God" (Exodus 20:1-3, Isaiah 44:9-23)
Idols are when we take a good thing and turn it into an ultimate thing, they become substitutes for relying on God. In other words we set up a system of how we make ourselves ok through perfection rather than just being. The idols mentioned in this lesson that resonated with me are:
Work : I love work. Achievement and determination are the virtues extolled to me as a child, in friends, in society and have resulted to a large degree in how I define myself. My ideas are characterized by challenging norms, excelling in balance and seeking the highest level of integrity. I'd say these are all good things. Yet as my therapist and I discussed even today, my identity is wrapped up in this pursuit of perfection. My love of work makes it an ultimate, that if I do well enough then I'll be ok. Yet as soon as I reach a goal, the goal is set higher. This demand of a perfection that is always raised was likened to running a marathon that never ends.
God : When I was little I thought that everything could be defined as right or wrong. There were no grey areas. God, or rather the cruel imitation I knew, became my idol. As perfect as I was, it was never enough. At church we talked about grace and rarely talked about people going to hell, but that did not say there was a possibility that any of our rights or wrongs could be incorrect, or even grey. As a gay boy in this world, I knew that I wanted to die, but I just knew that God wouldn't let me into heaven if I killed myself. These many years later, knowing only a desire for suicide before age 22 all my cognizant years, I see what the freedom of grace is really like. It is free. When I accepted myself for who God created me to be, it was the actual acceptance of God's grace. It was the other half of the earnest committment to God I made at age 4. Now I feel both the comfort of knowing that life makes sense, that there is a right and wrong, and the comfort of knowing I do not need to understand it because the immensity of nuances involved in what is right and wrong allows only the broadest generalizations. Love God, and love others.
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