Out of Sorts, This I Believe

I am procrastinating. I should be writing an ante litem letter, but
here I am blogging instead. Yesterday was a strange one.
Apparently 3/4 of the church knew the pastor was going to be out
of town, I was part of the 1/4 that showed up, the 1/4 that did not
know.

Sis and husband showed up for services, even though they had
already been to their church’s morning service. Between the low
attendance and the guest speaker they did not really get the Mosaic
experience. Really though, maybe they picked the right week to
come since the speaker was a pastor with a strong “Jesus is the only
way” outlook, which they share. Frankly the sermon was too long
and came pretty close to being the sort of sermon that kept me out
of Baptist churches most of my life. It made my little red fundy
flags go up.

Now I will take a brief break from my generalized hatefulness and
share the funny and to the point message the guest speaker gave.
In a nutshell, spiritual maturity is loving each other and creating
unity. It was funny to me because for days I have been judgmental
and harshly opinionated and a little bit negative. So, a little fundy
or not, it brought me up short against my ugliness. It is easy to
love my immediate circle and easy to love the ones that are far
away, but I have, and continue to have, great difficulty loving
people I know of individually that are not family or friends. I really
am a bit of a crank.

I will say, since I have already implied it, that I do not believe in any
version of the Jesus Christ story that involves most of the world,
including Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Muslims, Buddhist etc., going to
hell. Further, I do not believe that Jesus Christ was God in
the Trinitarian sense. [Check out the Johannine Comma]. I think that
both God and Jesus are. Jesus prayed to God, not to himself.

I believe that Jesus is the key to the Kingdom of
Heaven. But I don’t think the key will work if you do not take it
and put it in the lock,open the door, and go
through it. There are other keys to the Kingdom, there are
other mansions in Heaven, there are other sheep, not of this fold.
These things I believe. If I am wrong, I will have lots of company
in the afterlife.