My first encounter with the divine (Part 1)

We, humans, create religions in our human (fleshy) effort to perform to win a connection with the divine, or to look like we do. By doing this, we reject that God came to us already, and that through Jesus of Nazareth, He did all that was necessary for our reconciliation and connection with Him. He only asks us to trust and follow Him. Following His Spirit, we will still accomplish (perform) things -in fact, Jesus said that those who follow Him will do greater than He did- but that will be because we’re following His lead, listening to His guidance first, then obeying. Not because we initiate anything, out of our intellectual effort, but because He drew us, leads us, so we do things through His own grace (ability, competence) in us. The former type of doing is vanity and is dead spiritually since originated in us and sustained by our own efforts. The latter type of doing gives life, since originated by the Spirit of life, only performed through us, so we have no real credit. So, do religions save? Nope! None of them. One person saves: his name is Jesus-Christ, the Son of God. Do religions matter to God? I don’t think so, but since it’s something humans tend to do (remember, religion is about our deeds, what we do to win God’s attention) the Bible talks about what could be a pure religion before God in James 1: 26-27, but still, this doesn’t save. What I am convinced of, is that all the people inside of all the religions matter deeply to Him. He loves them, He wants them all to be saved and to be translated from the Kingdom of the enemy to His Kingdom. My point here is that: while we see ourselves divided between so many religions, fighting and claiming this one (generally ours) is better than those others, God sees all of us humanity divided just between two Kingdoms (Matthew 12:26-28). Therefore, the question I should ask myself is not “what religion do I practice”, but “to which spiritual Kingdom do I belong”. All in all, it’s believing a lie to think there are many ways to find God. There’s just one way to God and His Kingdom, and it’s not a religion. It is the One Person to ever say: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”, Jesus-Christ, the son of God (John 14:6).

Tertio, another reason is that, through religions, a generation may enforce opinions on another, as if they were divine orders. The contrast is that, divine orders are eternal principles. They are universal laws, therefore unshakable. They make sense through all ages, because they are TRUTH. On the contrary, opinions and personal beliefs may change and adjust with time. Nonetheless, they still can be enforced through religious fear, control and shaming. When opinions are not based upon Godly principles, they won’t be able to naturally sustain nor remain by themselves. Consequently, people wake up feeling deceived, and attribute the deception directly to the God whom these religious authorities claim to represent when they were establishing their tradition or opinion as His norm. In the Bible, we get to see Paul making sure to clarify whether he was just sharing an opinion or sharing God’s insight on a matter (1 Corinthians 7:12). Wise spiritual Christian leaders still do the same as Paul.

When I was a child, I remember some peers and I used to be very annoyed by so many religious rules that we were forced to follow to “please God”, but that could never make sense to us nor seem to help us grow closer to God. To me, they seemed to exist only to embarrass me as a little girl and teenager. I couldn’t wait for the moment to grow and be “out there”, making my decisions out of my own proven convictions.

The shame I felt when I had to join an excursion wearing a long jean skirt! Apparently “God” didn’t want women to wear pants. Of course, it was nothing more than a traditional outdated belief. I would usually discuss with my family: “Please, show me where it says pants. It says that God doesn’t like men to wear women’s clothing, or women to wear men’s clothing. And I’m okay with that: I’m not asking for any boy’s pants! There are pants for girls and pants for boys! In Jesus’ time, wasn’t everybody wearing tunics? But there surely were robes for men and robes for women. Besides, why would God have a personal problem with me? He should know that, as a girl, I am technically safer in pants!”. In vain. No matter how much sense I thought I was making, I still had to wear that long jean skirt to go hiking. The funny thing is that, in my misery, I felt better off than some peers who were forbidden to wear jewelry, could not enjoy their hair out, or have lips gloss on, for the same so-called godly reasons. Unless God personally instruct you not to do something that normally is not a sin, those public limitations are not godly, they are simply religious (Colossians 2: 8, 16-18, 20-23).

Religion would have separated me from God after it told me about Him. I realized as a teenager that most people weren’t really respecting themselves & the God they were talking about more than they feared key-people’s superficial view of them. I think that I stopped taking some of these meetings seriously. I kept attending only because of my parents (as long as I was living under their roof, I had no choice); but also because some of my friends would be there. We would manage to have fun anyhow, even at the risk of being “disciplined” at home for having talked too much or for having chosen any other creative ways to escape boredom. We couldn’t fall asleep either. Little pinches from our mothers would wake us up every single time; their children couldn’t be seen sleeping. Our communities were trying hard to hem us in, but the methods weren’t the best, and they couldn’t catch up with our teenage realities.

However, I am thankful for my background, since, growing up on the path that God saw for me, there was no better place to inform me overall about Him, and about what’s in the famous old book that talks about Him, the Bible. These painful little pinches keeping me awake, helped me soak in biblical stories and historical facts even when I wasn’t paying much attention to the speaker. Just the fact of being present, my ears were exposed to what was being said. I was repeatedly forced to stay awake throughout all the meetings (worst torture for a sleepy bored child). Nevertheless, that was enough for information to get in.

Therefore, I heard over and over about the existence of the Creator, the ultimate Source that we all refer to as God. I heard about Jesus, God’s son who came on Earth to do the human experience in flesh and bones. I also was told that Jesus’ mission was to die and go to hell to pay the price of sin for humanity, so that those who trust in Him would not go there anymore. After Jesus did all this, God raised Him back to eternal and ultimate quality of life and ranked His name higher than any other existing names on and beyond Earth, in all the universe. Then after Jesus-Christ resurrected, He showed up in a brand new and powerful body (that could pass through walls and do other unbelievable tricks, such that He had to convince His disciples that He was not a ghost. “Look at my hands and my feet. Touch me (…); a ghost does not have a body like this”, Luke 24:39, Easy-To-Read Version). Finally, I was also told that, upon leaving Earth, Jesus promised to release His Spirit to those who would believe in Him, birthing them anew to empower them to do His will on Earth, and represent God, standing for what is right in God’s eyes. I was told that the ultimate goal of God is to restore Earth to its beautiful and prosperous state, and make it look like the atmosphere ruling in Heaven. A place where evil is nowhere to be found, as everything operates in righteousness, peace and joy in the Spirit of Christ. 

Growing up, I heard that story about God and humanity over and over. But I was in no rush to decide if I would believe it or not. The story and I simply coexisted alongside each other. The idea of an existing God was not particularly bothering me. That could always be as possible as the fact that I actually had no particular reason to mind it.