A comment from my previous entry:
"in theory, I believe church is... a good idea. in practice, I find that... sometimes it can actually be worse than going without. I don't know. I find the church is helpful in helping people in a community type setting, but at the same time, it can be a very judgmental place. I find it kind of ironic that it is supposed to be the house of God, God who teaches love everyone and that it is not our place to judge. Christianity and Catholicism, in some ways, create some of the most hypocritical people."
There was a time in my life I would have disagreed with this. In fact, for the first part of my adult life, I'd have disagreed with it because I thought that there was nothing good that could come out of a church. I was much too bitter and proud to believe God and, based on many of the Christians I knew...well, whatever they had, I didn't want it.
Then, after addiction, homelessness, and other great loss, I searched and studied and found I could align my "head knowledge" with what I knew in my heart and I became a part of the church. I came to know so many amazing people. So many amazing people with such great love. My family was surrounded by love and support to the degree that I was able to love and support so many others. This was church life. A symbiotic life where people loved me and poured their lives into mine and I was able to love people and pour my life into theirs.
Of course I knew, and could find no shortage of examples of, hypocrisy and judgement by people who claimed to be Christians--WBC anyone? And people who really were Christians--we are, however, still just people. But I really felt like, even though I didn't have as much money and I wasn't as smart as many of the people around me, I was as "good" as anyone else in that building. And we were there. Every time the doors were open, we were there. We were there to be taught and to teach, to be ministered to and to lead ministry. Five, six, seven times a week we were there.
(Side note: I've never had much money and have never really cared about having less than others--I am certainly happy just being able to get by. And smarter...well, more educated and...less mistakes? sort of smarts. Education, of course, tied to the money I didn't have. And go to college, get married, then have babies instead of drop out of high school, addiction, drop out of college, addiction, get married, get divorced, addiction, homelessness, get pregnant, get married, go back to college...sort of mistakes.)
But now...now I feel different. I don't know. I do know that feelings aren't necessarily true. Just because I feel judged does not mean I am being judged. Maybe it was me that changed throughout everything. Maybe my situation has changed my perspective and I am not seeing things clearly. Maybe my situation has caused me to see things more clearly than I had before.
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