Universalism
Phew, what a week the last one was. Busy busy busy - and not in the traditional sense of lots of work and self assigned tasks meant to make oneself feel useful or significant. Rather it was a week filled with confronting the messes I have kept buried for years in the vain hope that by ignoring them they would go away.
Growing up in an ultra conservative Christian homeschool environment there were a few very dangerous ways of thinking that I was told to run away from. To never consider, to not listen to, to flatly reject. If I failed to do so I could be lured in and lead astray and then I would be in mortal danger of facing eternal conscious torment in hell. I never stopped to wonder that if my name was in the book of life than it would not matter what hearsay I listened too, nothing was going to take my name out of the book. On the flip side of that coin if my name was NOT in the book of life well then it would not matter one iota how good of Christian I was and how many times I ran from heretical ways of thinking I was always going to be going to suffer in hell forever no matter what. But like a good home-schooled "christian" boy I did as I was told.
Until 2020. I became increasingly fed up with the evangelical church, hell any church in general. For three plus decades I had been raised in an evangelical tradition heavily steeped in Calvinism. I knew nothing else. I knew of no other theologians in other camps. They were all wrong anyways. The bible is CLEAR. I often wondered how could they be so foolish to be deceived... However, as the American church became more and more repulsive through 2020 and into the years beyond in support of Trump and destructive Republican ideologies I began to explore other faith traditions. One day I came across an Instagram post that suggested anything written by David Bentley Hart. So, I bought his book "That All May Be Saved"
It blew my mind. I finished it and then read it again. Some parts I have read three or four times. It was like wandering in a desert dying of thirst only to find an oasis. Then I started reading "The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama. I learned more in the first 90 pages on how to be a good person, how to be happy, to find meaning, and understand other people than I did going to church every sunday and reading my Bible cover to cover at least a dozen times for 30+ years!
So, maybe you are like me just starting to poke around to see what else is out there. Maybe you are fed up with all the rhetoric, all the nationalism, the hate, the judgement, the shit coming from the right - from people who are supposed to be loving their neighbors but who seem more interested in killing them or letting them die or suffer... If you are welcome. Come follow me on TikTok and/or Instagram because I am fed up - I am sick and tired of watching the madness spread across my country like a disease.