Confession: I haven't set foot inside a church building since Maundy Thursday, and that was part of my son's assignment for his comparative religion class.

Call it limbo. Call it transition. Call it whatever you will, I'm in a strange place.

Why, you ask? Because I can no longer subscribe fully to all the tenets and practices of my denomination. Wait, you say, I thought you were non-denominational... yeah, I was. I still am. But I no longer agree 100 percent with some of the tenets of my "faith camp."

Do I still believe in God? Without a doubt. Do I still call upon Jesus as my Lord and Savior? Absolutely.

But I have questions and concerns about the doctrines I accepted and adopted as a young believer, and those questions and concerns have led me to pull back, to seek the Lord privately and personally, for direction, for guidance, and for instruction.

Am I angry, bitter, resentful, or upset with my former church or its members?  No.

Do I believe God is calling me to something different? Something that doesn't quite fit within the practicum of the church in which I learned faith and attained a place of leadership? Yes.

The trouble, I find, comes in the explanation. When asked, I'm tempted to tell people I've decided to become a Catholic. Catholic means "universal church," so I wouldn't be fibbing, technically. Besides, I really like Pope Francis.

Seriously, though, it's hard to explain to friends from church why I'm not there. People who leave the church are angry. Or backslid. Or rebellious sheep. By leaving the church they are leaving God. Or so I believed. And now I find myself wearing their shoes, though I'm hungrier for God and His Spirit and His wisdom and guidance and purpose than ever.... Wanna talk about confused?

I can't even put it into words, and for a writer, that's a terrifying conundrum.

For my friends and loved ones, I love you. If you're connected to the church, go, listen to the Holy Spirit, obey. And if you've already fallen OUT of the church spectrum for whatever reason... LISTEN to the Holy Spirit, obey, and be the child of God you were created to be. Love, believe, forgive, show mercy, do what's right, fellowship with other believers... whether in the church or "out" of the church, after all, Jesus didn't come to establish a church, or a religion. He came to establish a one-on-one relationship. Where that relationship leads you is between you and Him.

No matter what label you put on it, religion is something we practice. Much the same way doctors practice medicine. When you come up on a problem, you apply the best methods you know, and hope everything works out all right. Sometimes it does. Sometimes, not so much (because religion is not perfect and religion is not God).

Like medicine, when we decide our methods of practice are perfect and complete and immune from scrutiny or question, we run the risk of becoming autocratic despots over our own practices.

In the days before germs were widely accepted as the cause of disease, physicians who insisted on cleaning their surgical tools were ridiculed by their peers. Why? It didn't fit with the "practice" of medicine at the time.

On the television serious "House," Hugh Laurie's character is frequently put at odds with the hospital administration because the way he practices medicine is unorthodox, not the same way "they" practice. 

Religion is much the same.


When Martin Luther tacked his "95 theses" to the door of that German church, he willingly subjected himself to ridicule, persecution, and torment. Because what he stated was wrong? No, because what he wrote was contrary to the religious practice of the day in which he lived.

He wasn't the first. Jesus repeatedly did things that went against the grain of the religious community in which He lived and operated. He instituted new "practices" for everything from what to do with the Sabbath to how to handle blind men and lepers and how to deal with a food shortage at the church potluck. And he was persecuted for changing those practices.

Whatever our religious persuasions, we are responsible for our own practice of what we believe to be true and right. At the same time, we are responsible to uphold the highest law at all times (even in our practice of our religion): Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. No matter what format our religious practice takes in matters of food and drink, attire and appearance, methods and styles of worship or prayer, etc., we're to PRACTICE loving God and loving our fellow man. (The fact that it's a practice means we will make mistakes, and should be prepared to pick up and begin again.)

When our practice differs from someone else's practice, that's not a call to arms. It's not a time to condemn and reject and judge. It's time to go back to that ultimate law (the one that is, surprisingly, the same across the board) and apply it.

When it comes down to it, the practice of our religion should be a matter of the heart, actions that spring organically from what you believe to be the truth about God, about the human soul, about creation and eternity. And it's frighteningly individual, personal, and unique. In other words, we don't get to judge someone else's practice, and we shouldn't let someone else judge ours.

Every time God wanted to help one of His beloved along in the process of transformation, he made them move.

Maybe not geographically (although that happened too, on occasion), but He urged them into places that were 1) outside their comfort zones, and 2) removed from an atmosphere of doubt and unbelief.
I think we'd all agree that in order to make significant change we have to step outside our comfort zones ... outside of the tidy little environments we create for ourselves.

But many of us have never been taught to recognize and remove ourselves from toxic environments.

Huh? What's a toxic environment?

One polluted by fear and doubt. (Jesus tossed out all the friends and family members gathered around the 12-year-old's deathbed... he took the blind fellow out of town before he made mudballs from spit and healed the dude...)

Toxic environments are polluted by religion, especially judgment and control and condemnation. (God was ready to heal, but no one could get through the doors to get to Jesus... the paralyzed guy and his four crazy friends ripped the roof off to get through that polluted environment.)

Toxic environments are polluted by fear, offense, bitterness, jealousy, or unforgiveness. (Legion was so out of control no one even checked on him anymore... until Jesus showed up and cleared the air to restore him to his right mind.)

I could go on.

There are thousands, maybe millions, of potential contaminants to our spiritual water supply. In the same way, there are probably an equal number of ways our spiritual environments can be polluted by natural and/or spiritual sources.

Our job, every day, is to go through a spiritual purification process before we take other steps, make other decisions, or attempt to move forward. Check for...
Guilt
Shame
Fear
Bitterness
Doubt
Anger
Unbelief
Religiosity

Where those things appear, we stop up the power of God, and God, contrary to popular belief, will honor your right to choose things of your own free will. Choose to hold on to doubt and fear and He'll let ya.