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I’ve often thought about how Christians must have felt during the era of Luther. The church had been revealed as vastly corrupt, the priests had hidden vital religious truths to keep the peasant class oppressed, and theology was just a hot mess of arguments.
How pissed would you be if you were a peasant and all this time, you thought God was like “okay, but I made you a peasant, do a good job and you’ll be rewarded in heaven and also, monetary payment can be made for sin forgiveness. To my priests.”
Only to read the Bible in the vernacular (Thanks, Martin) and realize it said nothing of the sort? Wouldn’t that just be crazy? The entire foundation of your class identity and eternal security and divine relationship just—is false.
And then us evangelical kids (500 years later) watch the religious form we were taught get systematically demolished by leader after leader. Often specifically by sexual sin—the thing we were warned about with HIGHEST frequency.
#menloscandal is sadly just the latest in a string of scandals, the majority of which is likely still submerged in history.
And I think, OH. This. This is how it must have felt to be in the middle of the Reformation. To be yet-not-reformed. It is terrible. It is exhausting. It doesn’t feel worth it. And most of all, it feels disorienting.
I remain convinced that humans need spirituality. I remain convinced that core focus of Christianity is good: The divine-something likes us, no matter the mess. Past that, the disorientation takes over. Past that, I get tired.
As I think we all are. Let me know if anyone has brilliance or support groups or covens to recommend.
