Over the last while, I have truly been contemplating a very serious and heartfelt question: Is it bigoted to be a believer in God and to state emphatically that there are moral rights and moral wrongs? Further, is it bigoted to say that through the beliefs and teachings to which I submit myself willingly that there are some activities that are beyond the pale and to which I should not partake?
Is it bigoted to say that sin is sin even when it afflicts the comfortable spirit of mankind striving to separate themselves from God because they are disquieted by the distance their actions create between their soul and the Holy Spirit?
I DO believe that some things are sins. I also believe deeply in the process of repentance for those sins. Be they 'great' or 'small' in our mortal and flawed comprehension, God sees no stripe of sin that is not due the cleansing process of the Atoning blood of our Sinless Savior.
Jesus Christ didn't willingly die on the cross for us to have us just say "no, thanks, Lord, but I don't NEED you", although, He KNEW that there would be some of us who would do just that. We do have agency to make moral choices and stand accountable for those decisions whether that accountability leads to reward or damnation.
Those who reject the opportunity to take our burdens and place them at the feet of the Savior and be cleansed are truly rejecting our only true foundation. Almost as if in our venal and rebellious hearts, we think that if we jam our thumb into His all seeing eye, we can remove the penalty for our selfish and prideful actions and blind Him to the reality of our sins. When we continue on doing what feels good to us personally without regard for Him who made us and for Him who has bought us with so very grave a price - His own blood - we remove our own opportunity for exaltation and a chance to return to His presence whole, clean and welcomed.
Being a believer in God and Jesus Christ, and unfortunately being well acquainted with the failings of mortality and the sins that are part of not only the learning curve, I am thankful that there ARE absolutes.
When we open ourselves up to the vain and foolish belief that 'everything' is acceptable in life and to God, we are in error and on the path to sin. That others consider this view bigoted and narrow is ALSO a form of sin. It's called PRIDE.
When people throw themselves wholeheartedly into what is a 'feel good' moment for them alone, they forget that there are other people, other needs, other wants and other desires beyond their own, and that leads to selfishness and both are a form of dishonesty before God.
The world would have us believe that those who are followers of God and Christ are delusional and backwards. They would have us believe that 'enlightened' people have no need of a god nor of the moral absolutes that my Judeo-Christian upbringing has offered to us. Though there are other religious belief systems that share elements of what I know to be true, that they lack Christ in their beliefs to me means that they are not totally in tune. And for some people, that statement makes me a bigot because I believe that Christ IS the Way, the Truth and the Life.
But the world is wrong.
Believing in God doesn't make me backward, unenlightened or ignorant. Nor does that belief make me a bigot. It is a privilege to believe in God and to serve Him. I feel honored to enter His holy house at every opportunity and to feel immersed in His healing Spirit and in the Balm of Gilead that binds up the wounds of life that have been inflicted from without and from within.
I KNOW that God lives because I have felt His presence moving and working in and through my life. I feel that presence as a vital, living force that acts as an anchor to my soul. That doesn't make me delusional. It makes me thankful and makes me feel grounded.
I truly feel sorry for people who elect to use their moral agency to distance themselves from God as if they don't need Him at all.
The understanding of our need doesn't make us less... through God we can be oh so infinitely more.
I'm not a bigot.
I AM a believer.
And for that, I am truly thankful.
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