Every one of us are carrying around a God Box.
It doesn't matter what religion you are, the belief system
or spirituality you do (or do not) practice, you have a box. Everybody
does. Some carry this box around like a badge of honor, proudly sharing
the contents in all the arenas of their lives. Some keep their God Box private
and keep their beliefs in silent, sacred space, sharing only with a select
circle. There are others who keep their
God Box stored in the backroom of their mind, rarely giving it a thought as it
sits on a shelf collecting dust.
A God Box contains all the "stuff" you have
experienced, currently believe or at one time believed to be true about God and
spirituality. This box might even contain the beliefs and experiences of others
in your family, your church or spiritual exposure. Your God Box may have been
passed down from generation to generation, full of legacy and tradition that
has been practiced in your family for many years.
As a child, my grandmother was a person who made many
deposits in my God Box. Many Sunday mornings she would pick me up from home,
drop me off at Sunday school and then we would go to the service together at
her church. The halls of the church smelled of crayons and coffee, the pastor
dressed in his white robes and worship involved a lot of standing, kneeling and
sitting during the prayers, hymns and liturgies. I was in awe of my grandmother
as she recited the prayers and creeds from memory, and I loved sitting beside
her and listening to her sing the hymns. We would walk up to the front of the
church and kneel at the altar as she would take communion. I was too young to
partake of the elements and instead received a blessing as the pastor would
make the sign of the cross on my forehead. As a child, my God Box held this
beautiful legacy of my grandmother's faith as well as the awareness that church
meant something to her. Because church was important to her, (and she
loved me so well), it was important to me too. I didn't fully understand her
beliefs, yet her commitment to church and her faith in Jesus made an impression
on me. It was a sweet deposit in my small God Box that I still treasure to this
day.
Attending church with my grandma as well as Christmas Eve
and Easter pretty much sum up the contents of my God Box when I was a
child. As I grew, my God Box landed
somewhere in the back of my mind on a shelf and aside from some teenage
curiosity in world religions and Wicca, it pretty much stayed there.
It wasn't until later in high school that this dusty God Box
was taken off the shelf and opened again. A girl at school befriended me
and she invited me to church with her family. This church was nothing like the
church of my childhood. Rather than organs and hymns, there was a full band and
church felt more like an interactive rock concert. The pastor wore casual clothes and there
wasn't a rhythm of standing and kneeling during service. Even communion was
more like a party than a somber tradition. This was all very new to me. The messages were all about sin and
salvation, relationship with God and a need for a savior. As a child I
understood Jesus in the context of Christmas and Easter, I could recite the
stories. Yet for some reason, this presentation of their "Gospel"
made sense to me, and for the first time I was challenged to consider my own
connection to God in a relational way that wasn’t just Bible stories. I was
intrigued, and almost felt like I had missed out on something important. It
felt like a mystery that was being revealed. These people understood and experienced
God in a way I had never even heard of, and I was curious to understand.
I was offered this "gift” of salvation. It was presented
like a perfectly wrapped present that contained all the blessings, provision
and promises of a wonderful plan for my life and a God who loved me enough that
He was willing to die a terrible death on the cross and give His life for me.
All I had to do was receive the gift by praying a prayer, and it could all be
mine. If I didn’t accept this gift, I was destined to spend eternity in hell.
Seems like a simple choice, right?
What I didn’t know at the time is that this “gift” they were
offering me contained more than just “salvation”. This gift also contained subtle
yet impossible expectations of the life I was supposed to live and beliefs I was
expected to accept about God, people and the world around me. The Bible was now
an obligatory handbook that I needed to navigate life. It contained every
answer and everything I needed to live a life worthy of God. I was challenged to reconsider the influences
in my life and whether they were “Godly” enough. Jesus gave his life to save me from hell, was
it too much to ask that I give up my “non-Christian” music CD’s and R rated
movies? Was I ready to surrender my life and plans to the perfect will of God
for my life? Who were my friends and
were they encouraging me to follow Jesus and live a Godly life? Was I doing my
part in sharing this “good news” with my loved ones to “save them” from eternal
suffering? Was I ready to be rejected and ridiculed for my faith, just like
Jesus was? If I didn’t have concern for those
who were “lost”, was I really even “saved” myself?
As I grew in this lifestyle of faith and branch of Christianity,
I realized that the “gift” of salvation that I now carried in my God Box was so
much more than a “get out of hell free card.” Attached was a worldview that was
filtered through the lens of a literal interpretation of the Bible full of
rules and expectations. In addition to
depositing this salvation prayer/experience into my God Box, my box was now
filled up with exclusive theology, expectations of political allegiance and
false promises of safety, provision and blessing for a faithful life of service
to God.
For a lot of years, I treasured the contents of my God Box. I spent hundreds of hours studying and
wrestling, convinced that I was simply missing something if I disagreed with
any of it. I attributed my “doubts” to a
lack of spiritual maturity and faith foundation. I asked a million questions as I tried to accept
these spiritual, civil and political “truths” that had been dumped into my God
Box. Traditional marriage and family
values, the roles of women in church and society, abortion, authority &
submission, gender roles, dating, the LGBTQIA+ community, government and
political values, world religions, the end times, sin and suffering, heaven and
hell, etc. were all to be interpreted through a Biblical lens clouded by literal
interpretation of scripture.
These beliefs were harmless if they were simply kept in the
box, yet the pressure of “sharing the good news” turned many of these beliefs
into weapons of destruction, and people were getting hurt.
At some point, I realized the contents of my God Box were
getting too heavy to continue to carry. I needed to take an inventory of all
the things I was holding space for in my box. What began as a “free gift” that I
had been given had somehow turned into something that was “taking” from me. I
had spent so much time trying to accept and measure up that somehow, I lost
sense of myself. It had taken my reason
and logic, my capacity to make space for other beliefs, new ideas or
experiences. The exclusivity of this belief system had taken my capacity to
trust myself and be open to the possibility that there was so much more to a
relationship with God than these interpretations of faith in Jesus that I had
been given.
Upon honest reflection and years of sorting and inventorying I realized that a large percentage of the contents in my box belonged to other people. I was warned by others as I started this process of deconstructing my faith that abandoning these beliefs could lead me to paths of deception and destruction. It was scary unraveling ideas I had once held so close; it felt like a house of cards that could come tumbling down at any moment. The hardest part of this process was that I was still convinced that the God of the Bible loved me and that the life and message of Jesus mattered. I know I am called to ministry and to the work of the church. It would have been easy to throw the whole box into the fire and start over. Yet I couldn't do that and be true to who I know I am created to be. I had a lot of work to do to untangle these cords. The good news is that this untangling is not just an intellectual exercise, it is a work of the Spirit.
I am not the same person I was 12 years ago. Really, I’m not
even the same person I was 12 months ago. This is a good thing. My faith continues to evolve and grow as I have
both emptied out and made space for wonder, possibility and curiosity in my God
Box. I hope this rhythm continues for the rest of my life of learning, even
into eternity.
The big question is, what do you carry in your God Box? My hope is that you find the inspiration to take a good look into your own box and consider the things you carry. Hold fast to the things that bring life and love and find the courage to reconsider and reimagine the things that do not. Give yourself permission to grow and change and evolve into all that you are created to be.
