Well, painful as it may be, I will start at the beginning. Julie Andrews said that was a very good place to start, and why not?
I was born into a Lutheran home. My dad had previously been Catholic, but converted to marry my mom who was raised Lutheran. Born on a Sunday, I was in a pew on the front row at 7 days old. I later attended the church-school, of course, from Kindergarten through 4th grade, until my parents got divorced, forcing us to move and I attended another one for 5th grade. After that my single mother could not afford private schooling anymore, so it was off to public school I went.
The summer of that transition also marked another transition: from attending Lutheran churches to a “full Gospel, non-denominational” church. Funny, I never realized until writing that just now, that the school switch probably had more to do with that than it did money. Who knows. At any rate, after six years there we changed to an all-out Pentecostal church. During our stay there is when I reached adulthood, moved out, left once, then got really put off by certain things when I came back.
I quit church for a while, then went back to the old, non-denominational one, where the man who had been my youth pastor was now the alpha pastor. He had his problems (temper, and though he seemed to deny rumors of impropriety he divorced and is now married to the song leader who had also been married at the time), but everyone is human and I still think he was a great pastor. It was during that time that I grew closer to God than any other time in my life. I know, you think I’m crazy for thinking he’s so wonderful. But the fact that the church held it together so well after the leadership all fell apart is only a testament to how well he did lead us. We didn’t fall apart, because it wasn’t him that he had us attached to! He did right by pointing us to God at all times. We were able to hang on to God through it all, because that’s what he had taught us to do, along with how to do it.
At any rate, I stuck around through the transition, dug my feet in a little to help fill the gaps (kids’ church, anyone?) and then the new pastor came. He was alright, except when I tried saying something about the Torah (according to sources I’ve been one to ask deep questions since I was a kid), and he told me “no”, that wasn’t the first 5 books of the Bible, it was the book the muslims use! Oooooh. (Yeah, nevermind that Quran thing! That’s a game kids play! Remember it? :rolleyes: )
The final straw was when the new secretary (cuz she left during the split too) got all persnickety with me when I tried nursing my daughter in the service. I’ve always been very discreet, even sans official cover-up, but that wasn’t enough. Unless I was making a spectacle of myself with a huge blanket over my shoulder, or leaving the sanctuary and doing it in the bathroom, it was unacceptable. Well, that position was unacceptable to me. She tried telling me people had complained… and shut up quickly when I asked to face my accusers. It didn’t help that this 30/40-something woman stutterred badly even in non-stressful times. Now it was all the more frustrating because I was hanging on every repeated syllable and then she ended up never telling me what I was asking to know! LOL
I had a talk or two with the pastor, but didn’t get much further. He was a busy man, you see, and didn’t get back to me. Which he then apologized for, but kept failing to get back to me after that! Well, I didn’t want to be seen as rebellious and nursing where I shouldn’t, I’d rather just part ways. But if there was something we could work out I preferred to do that. Additionally, it was his issue I was trying to address… get back with somebody! So after constant frustration over that I stopped going.
Started at a different Pentecostal church a few months later. I looked up the number, called the office, and asked: “Do you allow women to nurse their babies in your services?”. When she said yes, we were good! I attended there for 4 years.
After 3 years, my interests started growing around the Jewish roots of my faith. What Jesus would have done (no, not thanks to those annoying bracelets! LOL), how things were for him, etc. I was sooooo excited to find out that we would be having a Passover Seder! Well, that was kind of a bust, and come to find out hardly like what a real Seder is like, but it totally had me on a roll. I requested that we do more of the festivals, and learning. My request went unhumored. (Though a friend did tell me just a couple weeks ago that they will be doing something for Sukkot this year, 2006. Couldn’t get any more details out of her, though, because she’s even more ignorant than I am! LOL)
I kept learning more and more about Torah, and then had a miscarriage at the end of July. An online, Messianic friend gently told me to read Dueteronomy 28. I’d read it in the past but did again, and couldn’t believe my whole life was explained in such explicit detail, right there. Except maybe for the eating my own children. But the thought wasn’t lost on me that in miscarriages, if all of the baby is not expelled, then whatever is left will be absorbed. Which is basically eating (ingesting) my children. :sick:
I searched high and low for the Messianic congregation I knew we had in our area, but could not find it. After literally countless hours searching, particularly through online directories, I finally found it listed in one. I made contact in September and went to the service that weekend.
The problem was, though, that not only did they meet at the leader’s house, they spoke in tongues. My DH, who was raised Seventh-Day Adventist and whose biggest contentions with my previous church were the lack of Sabbath observance and the speaking in tongues, was not cool with that. He couldn’t get the whole David Koresh thing out of his head. (Or that other guy whose name I don’t remember who had that house with all the people who committed suicide to get on the ‘mother ship’). He forbade me from going, but I knew I’d get back there soon enough. There was so much info and insight that I had just never heard before in all the years and in all the various churches and denominations I had attended. But it was also backed up with infinitely more scripture than I’d ever seen referenced before, too. So I knew I’d be back, but also that I shouldn’t be ‘pressing’ my husband about it at the time.
I hung out and waited, and continued to go to my old church. I observed Rosh Hashannah on my own. December came around, and something really bothered me. The good ol’ pagan xmas tree, exalted in the church. There was a monstrous one in the foyer, and also a couple on either side of the ‘altar’.
Now, the previous year (2004) we were broke. DEAD broke. Not broke like we’d been in years past when we scrounge up some money at the last minute to buy some meager presents… there would be no presents, for anyone, at any time. Which we didn’t necessarily care about, but that we celebrate with DH’s family every year without fail, and everybody gets everyone else something… that was hard. But once we resolved ourselves to the fact that there was absolutley no chance of anything happening, it was pretty great, actually! No stress. Just enjoy the snow and the decorations and the lights and the festive time. But… this was not good enough for my church. And while the gifts they insisted on buying us were very appreciated, it was also slightly troubling that they just couldn’t even fathom us not having ‘gifts’ for what is supposed to be about Christ anyway. I sure didn’t want to sound ungrateful, because I absolutley was not. I know their hearts were in the right place (towards us, at least LOL) and were simply acting out of love. Yet it bothered me throughout the year (2005). Until, like I said, December came and there were these outright pagan symbols, on “Christ’s” supposed altar. And this, after they just had a reformed Satanist come as a guest speaker for a whole weekend! HA! Of course, it didn’t help that even the ex(?)-satanist, after talking about xmas really being the birthday of the forefather of satanism, went and got a tree from here before going back to wherever he lives!! *sigh*
So the inability to let us be without presents, the trees… and then while the pastor was out of town, the Associate Pastor preached. Always a fun, fiery guy, he tells us a story about the newlyweds who honeymooned in Africa. They later found out they were infertile and nothing worked. UNTIL they both got this ‘feeling’ about the statue, threw it out, and then got pregnant. Events they thought were unrelated until that time, and then they got curious and looked up the origins of this statue. It was some sort of fertility god. The moral of the story was that if you have ‘gods’ in your house, then you are cursing yourself, whether you use them for worship or entertainment or even just decoration. Powerful, eh? And no doubt they’d be horrified to hear that I think Buddhas are cute, and that I’d like to have one in my house. (Lucky for them I’m too paranoid to really test that theory!) But meanwhile, this is preached to a whole (big) congregation, by a man of God, and apparently all but me are totally oblivious to the idols on the altar. Oh brother.
I have to leave the sanctuary for a couple minutes. Out there, I run into F and his family. F always wears his prayer shawl, even to this church. It’s how I recognized him when I went to the Messianic one that one time. In spite of a full year of study of things Messianic, I am still shamefully ignorant. There are so many festivals, and so much to each one, that it’s easy to get overwhelmed. I ask him about Channukah, and he (wisely) tells me to not sweat it. That I should just follow God, and He will lead me to what He wants me to do as I go along.
Well, F doesn’t know me very well! LOL. I need to know what I’m supposed to be doing! Even just the ‘essentials’! Throw me a bone here, F! During the course of our talk I somehow find out that the Messianic congregation is planning move into a church later that month! Well! Now that’s interesting!
I go along as normal for a while, procrastinating about the whole idol-on-the-alter thing, when January comes around and the message is a series on stewardship, beginning with tithing. I’m cool with tithing. I tithe! No problems there. Except he starts saying things that are blatantly false!! I mean, not even ‘interpretational’ issues, like I’d been dealing with all year… blatant propaganda! Like just one of the points was where he took from Duet 14 that we should tithe, and then followed it up with all the curses in Duet 28!! I’m like what?!?!? I was horrified. What about the freakin’ THIRTEEN CHAPTERS in between there??? I mean, at the very least let’s have a little consistency! Do we believe “the Law” was done away with, or do we preach adherence to it, with the subsequent blessings and cursings for lack of adherence to it? You have to pick one. Period. So that was it. I knew I couldn’t go back until it was dealt with. And I didn’t know how we’d ever come to an agreement with such a gap, even in his own theology.
I didn’t really dread the talk, but wanted reconciliation and to know if it was just time for me to move on. I didn’t want to leave anything undone. Of course, I didn’t want to bother him at home, and his office schedule is hectic, and my daily schedule is hectic as well, and I never ended up getting a hold of him. After about a month I realized I needed to get back to church lest I get comfortable in my own ways and start “backsliding” (or simply not moving forward), and still knew I could not go back there with the blatant lies that now stood between us.
So I found out where the church the Messianic congregation was meeting in and went there. I was blown away every week with the depth of the preaching. I never realized the reason I had missed so much church before was because I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. But really- I wasn’t! It was the same stuff every week, even if it was in cycles. Nothing new, no digging and seeking, just status quo.
At the time, I still wasn’t convinced that following Torah was necessary, or that the blessings and cursings would apply to me. But I made a decision that I couldn’t go back regardless of if things got patched up with the old pastor, just because of the level of teaching. Somewhere along the line I have come to believe they are necessary. Not for salvation, but certainly for living a decent life! I think the biggest step towards that belief was the following answer that God gave me after asking for at least a decade, what it meant when Jesus said “I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it”. What the heck is that distinction supposed to mean, if they’re just two means to the same end?!?!?
Well, then God told me. It’s not the same end. It’s like this:
A couple gets married, and the husband fulfills his vows. He provides well, does not cheat, loves his wife, and everything else. But his fulfillment does not mean that the wife gets to do what ever she pleases! NO! She still has her side of the bargain to fulfill as well. So it is with Jesus fulfilling ‘the law’. It was a covenant made between God and his people. So him fulfilling his side, doesn’t absolve us of our own. If anything- it makes us all the more liable to do the same.
And now I see. So much else makes sense in light of that. The constant reference to us being the bride and Christ our groom. That when Paul told Timothy the law is for our good, it didn’t mean “because when you get whacked over the head with it you’ll straighten up!”!!. Sure, there’s ‘greater good’ and all that. Sometimes it’s good to get whacked if it’s the only thing that will turn us around. But let’s not overspiritualize things, eh? There’s no other time we call it “good” to get whacked! No, when Paul told Timothy the law is for our good, he actually meant good! And countless other things that finally make sense after all this time questioning.
