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| Category: Mental Health |
Date published: October 9, 2004 |
I could just as well have entitled this article THE CO-DEPENDANT BELIEVER, because the abuses done to us through religion aren't confined to Christians alone. "There's no such animal," you might say. Well, think again. Have you ever heard someone say that they are a recovered, or recovering, Catholic, Baptist, Lutheran, Mormon, Seventh Day Adventist, Jehovah Witness, or some other religion? It isn't the faith in Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, etc. that makes a person a co-dependant believer, it's the extremes surrounding our religions that does it to us. Places guilt so deeply in ours souls that we tremble at the thought of doing wrong. They fill the psychiatrist's offices with their victims. Faith should set us free, not place us in chains.
As a Christian, I grew up Catholic and converted to Baptist in my older years, but I have seen the extremes in these two faiths, as well as in many others. As a young girl, I vehemently spit out the meat sandwich I'd taken a bite from, on a Thursday night, after the clock had passed twelve and it now was Friday. To eat meat on Friday was a mortal sin, punishable by the pains of hell. Now the Catholic Church has since dropped that rule, but if it was truly a sin back then, it would still be a sin today. God doesn't change His teachings, it's man that changes them, or makes up their own. God says that all sin is subject to death, but He provided us a way of escape, and as a Christian, I believe that escape to be faith and trust in Jesus Christ as my Savior. He set me free from the bondage of sin...or should I say, freed me from the law, and from the penalty of sin. Christ paid the price for my sins on the cross at calvary.
And so, if Christ freed us, why do we insist on living in bondage, allowing ourselves to be shackled by law. I remember back when I was a sophomore in high school. A handsome Italian priest taught the religious training class to the girls, and I was one of them. I had a dream one night in which I held this priest's hand. Oh, the guilt. Any of you who grew up Catholic back in the fifties and sixties know of what I'm talking about. My Catholic conscience was so seared by the time I reached high school that I woke up from that dream with extreme guilt. I wondered if I needed to confess my sin to a priest, or should I just let it be and hope it wouldn't condemn me to hell. I decided to hope for the best.
"Don't wear red, it excites the boys. Never sit on a boy's lap without the thickness of two telephone books between you. Patten leather shoes reflect's your underpants." These were just a few of the things I was taught in high school by an over zealous nun. It's no wonder I ran to confession at every opportunity. If I had nothing to confess, I'd make a general confession. This was one in which the priest would recite a list of sins and you would answer yes or no if you'd ever committed one of them. I figured this kind of confession once a year would cover any sin I may have omitted confessing...like holding hands with that priest in my dream.
In the event you think I'm picking on the Catholics, I've known many faiths, including some Baptist's churches, in which you were condemned for going to the movies, wearing makeup, and heaven forbid you should dance. Our churches, and parents, as young children indoctrinate us. The extreme do's and don'ts of our religions place us into bondage, and create the co-dependant illnesses commonly found in children of alcoholics. To this day, I walk the straight and narrow, and when I do fall off the line in the slightest, my conscience pricks. "That's a good thing," you might say. But not when that conscience becomes unreasonable. Would Christ have fed the hungry or healed the sick on the Sabbath if he'd been a co-dependant believer? No, I don't think so, He trusted His father in heaven and did what was right, and yet, he was chastised by the religious of His day for doing just that. He dared to break the law, to use His common sense and not go to extremes. He walked in love, and lived by grace.
There isn't anything wrong with "walking the line," after all, Christ didn't free us from sin in order that we might sin freely. As Saint Paul said, "Heaven forbid," but we need to learn how to walk in love and live by Grace like Christ did and not let our long lists of do's and don'ts shackle us and put us into bondage. Without the bondage of the law, we are free to experience a higher level of spirituality and truly experience what it means to be a believer, not just another religious zealot.
Tomorrow, I'm going to buy myself a bright red dress and a shiny new pair of patten leather shoes, (do they still sell those things?) and the heck with the telephone books. HEY, I'M MARRIED; I CAN DO THAT... OK?
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