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In This Crisis and In Life — Keep the Faith But Question It Too
By their fruit you will know false prophets
I have a journal in which I’ve been collecting quotes for decades. I came across this one recently — “Pray to God but row away from the rocks,” attributed as a Native American proverb. That seemed appropriate today. I am particularly bedeviled (thesaurus find that also seems apt — you’ll see why) by a sequence of articles about Christian folly that came to my attention on the news and via my feed.
Since I am a believer in context, I’ll quickly give you my “testimony.” (I crack myself up. In Jesus circles, this is a thing, sharing testimony on how you were saved.) I grew up a Christian, from being Southern Baptist in my teens, in my young adulthood I flirted with New Age Christianity and Unity, and then became a very active Episcopalian. I eventually left that church too, over a leadership issue. I have always been a seeker and a questioner — which is why I disavowed my first church when I started thinking for myself. I could never stand hypocrisy and man’s inhumanity to man. When my Sunday school teacher at the Baptist church refused to extend equality to blacks saying that the Bible was only referring to Jews and Gentiles, not to “negroes”, I knew at fourteen, that there was something wrong with that. I am skeptical and critical of any…
