Reposted from May 22, 2024
When I was growing up there simply wasn’t any wiggle room in the plan for salvation. No plan B, no exemptions for goodness or kindness offered, no allowances made concerning your family of origin or just where on the planet you happened to be born. It was a black and white faith, and there were definitely winners and losers. There was also a great deal of anxiety, conformity, and judgment.
For me, this was illogical. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Jesus. I loved all the stories in the Bible concerning his teachings and miracles. I read the Beatitudes over and over and pondered his parables. And that was my problem. I couldn’t find Christ’s love in the damnation of so many of God’s children, for if God truly made all these diverse people, why did he decide to play favorites? I believed that God was above this cruelty. I experimented with many different expressions of Christianity, trying to find one to alleviat these worrying thoughts. Discouraged, I wandered into the Unitarian Universalist faith, and something quite amazing happened. I felt the familiarity of God’s love hiding here among the open hearted willing to worship beside others of different spiritual faiths or secular beliefs.
Embracing pluralism means we finally understand that we cannot know everything. We are not infallible beings and neither are our beliefs. We can turn away from the definitions of damnation and salvation that separate us from one another. Instead we are free to practice a pluralistic faith rooted in our individual commitment to the greatest love we can each imagine, the love that abides within and between us.
~Lisa Kiel
