God loves us no matter how or where we worship

Submitted by Patricia Seagrove (United States), Aug 29, 2008 at 14:07

I grew up in the Bible Belt where people took Christianity very seriously. The main religious difference was how you were baptized and if you weren't baptized a certain way, well, you were going to hell. They also believed that race separatism was ordained by God because God put the races on separate continents. My uncle married a beautiful woman whose family was of the Hebrew faith. We frequently attended religious celebrations such as Seder in their home in Chicago. Her family had so many good people in it - people who believed in God and worshipped a different way. I always felt totally accepted there even though I was a Christian. And, I hate to say it, I felt there was more tolerance there than I ever felt in my Christian community.

The thing that made me sad was that no one in my immediate family could never share our experience of a beautiful Seder ceremony or watching my cousin's bat mizvah with people back home. They would just not have understood and let's face they are the less for it. Indeed, this unwillingness to understand and accept others despite protestations of "loving everyone" is what led me to abandon my church and go to solitary Christian worship. I have never been able to find a Christian congregation since that practiced religious and cultural tolerance and that used Jesus' words as a standard to examine their lives

I am sick at heart to see someone waste time trying to "prove" that someone has ties to the radical muslim movement or is facing death threats because he didn't become a Muslim. Are Israeli right-wing fanatics after me because I didn't choose to become a Jew? I am sick and tired of people using my Christian faith as a reason to be intolerant of others. God loves us all. God made us all.

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