The Square Peg

Have you ever stopped to think about why you believe what you believe? I’ve been examining some of the beliefs that formed in my heart and mind while growing up, and realized not all were intentionally instructed. Many were passed on with specific intent. Some were accepted and I took ownership of them while others were rejected and I formed different beliefs. But more was caught than taught. Perhaps that’s true of you, too.

I was told that God created everything, and that He loved it all. And I believed it. But I didn’t like church much as a kid; it was full of rules (mostly “don't’s”; very few “do’s”) and righteousness seemed to be measured by what I subtracted from my life, rather than by what I added to the world. This disturbed me.

Nobody ever instructed me to “be prejudice”, yet racism and bigotry were never classified as unChrist-like by the church we occasionally visited. In fact, I don’t recall it ever being mentioned. But even as a little girl, I knew hating a group of people for something they couldn’t control (skin color, eye shape, etc) was not only ridiculous, it was wrong. I didn’t want somebody to dislike me because I had brown eyes or was left-handed. I was fascinated by our different skin colors, though.

I loved milk when I was little. White milk and chocolate milk have similar chemical structure, and I thought they were both delicious. And in my five-year-old mind, I likened ethnicity with milk. For real. I deduced that God liked white and chocolate milk. And since I knew chocolate came in milk and dark varieties, I concluded my Panamanian next-door neighbor was milk chocolate flavored, and my upstairs African neighbor was dark (fudge) flavored. I couldn’t figure out what kind of milk Asians were (I didn’t know about buttermilk then), but milk was milk, and it was all good; the strawberry kind, the chocolate kind, and the white kind I poured on my Fruit Loops every morning.

I’ve been attending church most of my adult life. And the math I’m most concerned with is the REALationships being multiplied as a result of truth + love.

Diversity doesn’t = division; unity doesn’t require conformity.
I’m just sayin’.