Continuation...

Earlier I posted something about how I really have come to believe you can't call yourself an adult until you have really looked back through your life and examined how you were brought up and come to grips with the many ways your parents failed you. That might sound kind of harsh and I in no way mean to insinuate that I have had horrible parents or that you should believe you had horrible parents so let me clarify a bit. Every child comes into this world protected to some degree by their parents. Now hopefully this protection lasts for many years and provides a lot of nurturing and love. We can look out at our society today and realize the success and failure of that protection quite easily. Nevertheless, we come into this world having nothing, incapable of performing anything and offering nothing of value except loud distinct cries and several dirty diapers here and there. As we grow up we are taught right from wrong, and instilled with the values that our parents deem worthy of our knowledge and attention. Whether you want to admit it or not that process is no where near perfection and is in fact quite the opposite. So there naturally has to come a point when everyone single one of us begins to realize who and what we are and why we are hear on this planet. For some of us that launches us to amazing heights while others sink to unimaginable depths. I for quite some time have shifted back and forth. Lately I have really been struggling with the idea of what my parents would call being a good Christian. I grew up in a Christian home, attending church every day the doors were open practically, and spent every summer at youth camps and mission trips. Being a "Christian," I was taught, looked and smelled and sounded like a certain children's fairy tale. I have awoken over the past several years to realize that in fact none of this is true. The walls of my perspective, given to me largely by my parents, have continued to stretch and stretch over the years, and this stretching has produced enormous amounts of pain and frustration along with seasons of tremendous joy! I love my parents with all of my heart as I'm sure most of you do as well, but now that I am a parent myself, I realize that all I can is my best and no matter how hard I try, I will fail over and over again! The same can be said of all of our parents and at some point we have to walk back through the pages of our memory and process those times in order for us to really become who we are meant to be. I firmly believe that our society will continue to reject the church as long as it is filled with people who blindly follow hollow leadership and refuse to test the things that are taught to us from very early ages. For me, this journey has been a hard one producing rough callouses and lots of aches and pains, but the beautiful thing I believe about it all is that the whole picture from cover to cover is a story of redemption, forgiveness, and love.