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Is My Message Anti-Christian? (part two)

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Creative Commons License photo credit: AlicePopkorn

I continue here my unfolding story of my own journey to faith for your own judgment in answer to the question, Is my message anti-Christian? In part one, I describe the experience of growing up in a home that was very polarized in their view of spirituality. Here I describe the effect of that polarity in my own life.

Regardless of their wide, and significant, differences in religious belief, it was evident to me that both sides of my family loved God. Both of my parents prayed regularly, and talked openly about it. Both parents had a relationship with Jesus Christ, however varied their understanding of that relationship was, which was NOT spoken openly about. In all grateful sincerity I can say that I learned from my parents a profound respect for, and deep heartfelt desire to do the will of the Father (or, “Mother/Father God,” as my mother called God). I learned tolerance and open-mindedness from those early years as well, although those lessons came through retrospect later on. First I had to rebel from both perspectives and set out on my own haphazard, willful, and often dangerous, path.

Being quite a rebellious young person, I turned my back on both parents and their way of thinking. I decided that my father's way was way too rigid, too “black and white,” too authoritarian. I could not relate to his either/or ultimatums, and on the other hand, my mother's way seemed namby-pamby, woo-woo, and ungrounded in reality.

I pursued my own way, which included lots of experimental drug use (“seeking God by knocking at the wrong door,” as I've heard it described) and living on the edge. I turned to the principles taught in and through nature, and involved myself for a period of time as an apprentice to a Native American Medicine Man. I decided I wanted to live a simple, conscious, life. I believed that the less one had, the happier and more in harmony with life one could live. I aspired to live happily with little.

And then in my late twenties, through my father's intervention, I found the twelve-step path, and so began my own recovery from addiction as well as what became a life-work in the field of family dysfunction, addiction, and co-dependency. During those early years of recovery, I began the long slow process of reconciling the polarity between the two perspectives presented me throughout my childhood.

I was no longer prepared to throw either perspective away totally, and so I began to cull through and separate out what fit for me from each of my parent's perspective in search of the gifts and lessons offered me there.

Somewhere along the way it occurred to me that our Creator is like a master potter, who creates each “vessel” according to his own designs for that particular vessel. Some vessels are made to hold water, a meal, or wine, while still others are designed to hold a fine perfume or to keep a flame alive.

To me this is what is meant in Romans 8: 28 – 30, when Paul states, “For those God foreknew … predestined … called .. . ” etc. – To me, Paul is saying that we, like all good ideas, are first conceived in the mind, the Divine Mind; we were blueprinted in detail, and brought into form for a purpose. We are each and every one a life expression of a Divine Thought, conceived in the Mind of our Creator Source, and brought into being with our unique set of proclivities and leanings, of talents and skills, all outlined in the Mind of our Creator before we were born. Along with life, we are given a free-will, so we might choose whether to align with the Creator's design for us or not, but what and how we are made to be, as well as where we are placed, our life circumstances and family, are all set in place for us by, and for, the purposes of Source. This is how it seems to me.

I have more to say about my coming home to Christ and how that happened in my next blog. Hope you will stay tuned.

Blessings,

Lynne

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