Growing Into the Will to Question: Approaching God & Love

God and love - they’ve been two centers in my life. Aside from family, one of the first institutions that pushed me to take love seriously was religion. My parents were highly religious and raised us in church. I still remember when I decided to “get religion.” That’s just another way of speaking about a process of becoming a Christian. Of course, I loved family, but my deeper embrace of love as a value grew out of my desire to please God. Pleasing God grew into a question of understanding.

This is an origin story. It’s a story of my search for God and the development of my relationship with love, a seed point, if you will. I wanted to know God and to embody love. The two were intertwined for me very early in life. I was typically content to trust my original introduction to both blindly, until I wasn’t…

If I am honest, I wanted God to speak to me in a clear, direct way, one I could not deny. I always thought it was supposed to be a voice — that’s how I’d always imagine it. I did not plan to chase God; it did not start that way. My indoctrination into Christianity as a youth meant that I had God, the only one. What more did I need? I was a Christian and there was nothing to chase. It was everyone else who was lost.

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Seeking God

“He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” - 1John 4:8

Another confession… I never got religion like I thought people usually do. As I was growing up, if you wanted to join the church and were new to Christianity, you got on the mourner’s bench. That wasn’t the only way to do it, but it was the way most familiar to me. When I was around eight, I chose to sit on the mourner’s bench. I had been working in church already. So, I figured it was time for me to get religion.

The mourner’s bench was a cultural artifact and a process in Baptist churches. It may still be for all I know. It was part of the sacred phenomenon known as a revival. Revivals were week-long affairs, usually held in the summer at churches all around the area. I know that revival was a widespread practice around Mississippi and I assume, much of the South, if not the country. These were serious affairs. They were times of renewal for the saved and initiation for the interested.

Some churches would have them in buildings. Others would have them in huge tents. I can still see the big white tents with the folding chairs on the lawn. People would come together for a week of worship. My mother would come home from her job as a factory worker at the brick plant, dressed in jeans, a sweater, and the infamous safety net she wore on her head. Then, she’d begin the process of looking like a well-groomed church lady while also prodding us to clean ourselves up and get ready to be at church in the next few hours. She was very active in the church and we would not be missing revival!

Prior to seeking religion, I didn’t have the greatest relationship with revivals. I was a kid and the services took time away from summer playtime. I remember them usually starting around 7pm. Getting ready for them cut prime play time. By the time we would get home, around 9pm or, as late as 10pm sometimes, the cartoons would be off and it’d be closer to bedtime. These revivals would include various guest pastors and choirs each night. They would attend the guest church and lead worship. Some pastors would preach their own revivals, but this was rarer in the late 80s and early 90s. At our church, our pastor would preach Friday night, the final night of the revival.

However, I’ve digressed… By the time I sat on the mourner’s bench, I’d been going to church for as long as I could remember (since I was born actually), but I had not been baptized. Baptism is a religious ritual in Christianity representing the washing away of one’s sins. It occurs after the acceptance of Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. Revivals regularly resulted in baptisms. People would use the mourner’s bench as a public declaration of the intent to seek salvation through Christ. Walking from the mourner’s bench to the altar when the pastor “opened the doors of the church” signaled the acceptance of Jesus. That acceptance would later be affirmed with an oath and other rituals like right-hand fellowship. These were precursors for baptism.

As I understood it then, you were supposed to sit on the bench until you felt the Holy Spirit. When you did, you were to “come off” the bench. Once you did, you’d be welcomed into the body of Christ. Other public rituals, culminating with a baptism service, would establish you as a full member of the church. You were then considered a person of equal standing to all other members, except those higher in the religious hierarchy like deacons and pastors. These were the shepherds of the church.

I still remember the mourner’s bench I sat on as a kid… The church I had gone to was outside of the city limits, in the country. It was an old white wooden building. The entrance was on a dirt road and the church was surrounded by woods. My family had been attending it for generations. The church has since been rebuilt. Back then, the handmade, wooden benches were a mixture of maroon and brown. They were hard with no cushion. The armrests on each end were as tall as my little shoulders. The bench sat between the pulpit and the audience, with enough room for the pastor to come down and engage the mourners directly. Those seeking salvation would sit on the bench all week, or at least, until they decided to accept Christ or rescind their intent, perhaps until another year.

Accepting religion was a wonderful affair. Getting free of the devil by accepting Jesus prompted great celebration and praise throughout the church. When I did get up off the mourner’s bench, I remember my mother stood up and a Bible flew from her lap. I suppose I did feel a variety of emotions, but I can’t say I understood it to be the Holy Spirit. I was affected by that night’s sermon and had decided I was going to join the church. As the pastor stood there relaying to the congregation that, “The doors of the church are opened,” he was still sweating profusely with his handkerchief in hand. He’d given a boisterous sermon full of guttural sounds and thunderous speech. I don’t remember what the sermon was about. I had no problem accepting Jesus and becoming a Christian. It was all I knew and it felt like the right thing to do. I’d always been taught that religion provided the basis of good morals because it taught people how to act.

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Since then, I have spent much time wondering about the voice of God.  As a kid, I would think about how Moses heard God and so did the prophets. Then, Jesus came, died, and came back to his disciples. Not only did they hear Him, they saw Him too. We were taught that God would not be seen though. I also heard pastors and other people say that God said things to them. I wondered what He sounded like because I wanted to know when I heard Him. Given what else I’d read, I wanted a magical, mystical experience of angels coming to speak to me. I cannot say I would’ve been prepared for that even if it had happened.

At the same time, I was taught to value logic. I can recall my dad’s reaction to a church testimony. Once, a woman spoke about how she was in her car driving and looking down or at her phone. Just in the nick of time, God spoke to her and told her to look up. Miraculously, she was able to avoid an accident. She gave great thanks to God and applause grew from the crowd. After service, I remember my dad casually talking to us with a slight smirk, “People just say anything. Why did God have to tell her to look up? It’s common sense to pay attention to the road while you drive.” That small moment, which held a beautiful tension, became a lesson I have carried with me as I have searched for God intently. The boundaries between common sense, intellectual analysis, & divine revelation are intriguing ones. We move across them quite fluidly.

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I have sought the voice of God and sometimes been so eager to hear it or have a mystical experience that I’ve been illogically willing to trust people who report having them. At times, I’ve been willing to trust them more than myself. But, I recognized I was making the same mistake as I did when I would trust the voice of church folks without testing their advice for myself. My life experiences have shown me that God loves us enough to speak directly to us. I’ve also been surprised at how many ways God will “speak” to us. When I am willing to listen, with love in my heart, I comprehend that “voice” in a unique way, even when I cannot articulate that to others.

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Centering Love

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22: 37-40

What does it mean to love? It’s a question I’ve thought intently about at different points in my life, increasingly as I get older. I’ve claimed it as one of my foundational values since I was a teenager. When I came off that mourner’s bench, it made sense because I loved God. All I’d know was “Jesus is Lord." To love God was to enter the church. So, my connection to love extended beyond my family to a larger religious family. The institution of religion, concerned with meaning and the spiritual lives of people, taught me that love was supposed to be all encompassing.

Upon reflection, I realize that my religious experience sowed the seeds for me to question the understanding of love that I got from it. Being deathly afraid of Satan, hell, and an eternity of torment and gnashing teeth (Whew! Talk about some traumatizing imagery for a kid!), I had concerns for myself and my fellow human beings. I appreciated that God loved everyone. But, there were some contradictions I couldn’t ignore.

I didn’t have the language for that when I was a child, but it manifested through curiosity. I was so worried for people who were not Christians. I lay on my pallet in the living room, squirming with anxiety, wondering what happened to all the humans that came before Jesus because they wouldn’t have known to accept Him. I’d ask, but can’t say that I ever got a satisfactory answer. At some point, the answer resolved to a variation of, “Don’t question God!” or “Humans can't know God’s ways.”

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For a long time, I accepted this willful ignorance. I sincerely had believed that if everyone just followed all the Christian rules, the world would be a perfect place. In hindsight, it was a very naive position to take. But, that was love within the bounds of Christianity. God’s love meant God’s way. Jesus’s forgiveness offered grace, but that grace still was grounded in discipline, law, and order. I was never really allowed or encouraged to question God. Blasphemy is a serious offense. Questioning God or the validity of the Bible or its teachings could result in a fiery afterlife and who really wants that! To make matter more confusing, I’d been taught that Satan knew the Word as well as God and could bless people as a form of temptation. The box was taped shut.

As I grew older and began to recognize that people grew up differently, the ability to just accept that we can’t know became more uncomfortable. Things didn’t make sense. I just didn’t get why God would create diverse people, allow them to be tempted and allow them to fall, only to judge them for doing so, and then have HIs own son killed off for their forgiveness. He knew everything! Why did life have to be one big test? Making it a test made little sense when He had the power to make them do as He wished. Moreover, I witnessed people doing things that didn’t appear loving in church. Politics and power games could shroud the intentions of growing close to God. I continued to go to church, enjoy services, pray, and do my best until my mother died. Then, it became more erratic. Jesus was a boon even when I wasn’t attending regularly.

I loved God even if I wasn’t sure if God would or could love me — insert the complications of me realizing early on that I wasn’t straight. This was an unacceptable offense at the time. Still, the value of love that I took from Christianity did make me desire to sincerely treat people “right.” Right, in this lens, was a vague notion grounded in loving my neighbor as I loved myself. It meant recognizing that whatever is done to the least of one of God’s people is done to God. Love didn’t discriminate in theory, but it did in practice. Further, there was no consistency in what counted as loving action.

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I started outgrowing my small town and wanting to explore the world. A different form of love for myself led me to choose to leave my town to go get an education. That gave my curiosity a place to flourish. I had space to question things and consider whether I valued them or not. I held on to Christianity in the way that I was taught it for quite some time even as it was rupturing and the seeds for an evolving understanding of spirituality were sprouting. I would never leave God even though I might leave religion. Love was foundational, even as life would require me to earn the right to claim that value through rigorous questioning and clarification.

At first, I tried to suppress the questions, but their call grew louder. As it did, I went through a difficult time in relation to my faith and understanding of God. The questions turned my blind, unyielding faith on its head. The courage to ask questions broadened and I began to consider the limitations of religion. Although well-meaning, it can elevate discipline & obedience above love. Further, some Christian doctrines value productivity so much that it became common practice to use material wealth, social standing, and good fortune as proxies for God’s love. “Favor” is one way I’ve heard this belief referred to in popular culture. Additionally, it can be practiced in a way that stifles critical thought and access to the benefits of scientific thinking.

By the time I got comfortable with my discomfort and uncertainty, I realized I’d been loved and embraced by people who didn’t go to church regularly. Some didn’t believe in God at all. Some had grown up in drastically different faiths. These people still had a moral compass. I’d been treated kindly and with dignity, which made me feel in communion. This contrasted with some of the rigidity, intolerance, and judgment I’d witnessed in church culture. Although I thought less about the details, I’d spent years witnessing my mother’s love of God clash with church politics. That had introduced an early source of ambiguity within me towards the institution, which grew during my teenage years after she died.

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I have gotten to a place where I’ve made peace with the humanity of religious people acting within an institution that doesn’t always believe in adaptation. I see value in religious traditions, especially when they are practiced with a loving center and guided by wisdom. I also see the value in discipline and how a tradition can become a root for an expanded understanding of God. After all, Jesus has gotten me through some very tough times and I’m still open to insights I can draw from Christianity. While experience is invaluable, God speaks to everyone, not just pastors and priests. I believe grace and love to be universals.

At the same time, my conceptions of God and my values have expanded to be more tolerant and inclusive of various divine conceptions and paths of divine acceptance and revelation. So, too, the well of wisdom I have to draw from is deeper. I am grateful for that. I feel this journey, still evolving, has made me a more loving human being. My understanding of God is bigger than the images of God from my childhood, an old dude with a gray beard or a young man who was unjustly killed to save humanity and conquer death. God is still with me, within me, in the whole of creation, and is reflected across the diversity of all that is manifest like a prism. I am still in love with God and this beautiful creation.

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