What I resent
With Christianity itself, I'm rather orthodox/traditional in my beliefs. I believe in God, I believe in Jesus Christ as His Son, I believe in the Holy Spirit. (I explain the Holy Spirit to my son as "the part of God that lives inside us to help us do what he wants".)
I don't understand how it all works. I don't understand how God can be "three in one", how Jesus can be both God and God's Son. I also don't claim to understand how God works. I've long given up on there being a formula on how I can please God, or a formula for the perfect prayer. I don't always understand evil, why evil happens to people that did nothing wrong; or why those who are evil do not "get theirs".
But I do believe in God because I believe He is bigger and smarter than I am, and I do believe there will come a day when all will be made new, when wrong will be righted.
I may have problems at times with what God does, but I don't believe that I resent God.
What I do resent is how people have used the name of God to hurt and abuse people. I resent how people use God to justify their bad behavior.
And I also resent the shallowness of how faith is presented. I resent simple explanations and simple formulas, of "this is how God works, if you do A, he will do B". I resent the explanations of, "Oh, if such-and-such didn't happen, you must not have had enough faith." It's all on the backs of the believer. You know, sometimes God does say "no", for whatever reasons He has, and it's really unfair to blame people for "not having enough faith" when things didn't work the way the believer wanted.
I also thoroughly resent "Christianese". Anyone who tells me, "God is in control," does not value their life very much. There's a sense in which I believe "God is in control," as in, He will cause things to work out for my ultimate good. I just resent it when "God is in control" is used as a throwaway Christian cliche.
I also resent, "the Lord will provide," being used as a throwaway Christian cliche. It falls along the same line as "be of good cheer, keep warm and well fed" from the book of James. I read a social media thread about, what happens when you're a Christian out of work and the only job you can find is on Sunday? Someone answered, "The Lord will provide," in the context of, you shouldn't work on Sunday because that would interfere with you attending church. I guess that person forgot about the first responders, the doctors, nurses, soldiers, etc. that work on Sundays.
I've experienced abusive faith and I've read about it, and sometimes, those experiences have left me with more questions than answers. I want true faith.
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