As a life long United Methodist, my faith has always rested in the Jesus of social justice. The idea of Jesus dying for my sins was present, but not the sole focus of why I followed him. I was always frightened a bit by the people who I would see outside of concert halls with their pamphlets who were quite certain that I did not know Jesus and would certainly be going to hell upon my death. I was puzzled by how they thought they knew me at all, much less well enough to know what was in my heart. You see, I didn’t have that big moment where I turned from a life of sin and asked Jesus into my heart. I have lived with and loved Jesus for as long as I can remember. I was offended by strangers who felt that my relationships with God was not good enough. This was in fact a barrier to my faith for many years. Oh, I did have that moment at the neighbor’s Baptist church “fill the pew” night where I walked down to the altar and later found myself in the pastor’s office with a bunch of other grade schoolers wonder why they thought my faith wasn’t good enough. I repeated the prayer that they told me to, but it just confused me. This pattern would repeat itself over the years until I got it straight within myself that God is love and lives within me.

The idea of “atonement” has puzzled me. I knew that Jesus died for my sins and I appreciate it, I just don’t think that’s all there is to Christianity. When I read A Better Atonement: Beyond the Depraved Doctrine of Original Sin by Tony Jones, I realize that there are tons of ideas about this and many smart men and women spend great deals of time pondering the concept. Tony does a great job of explaining the different types of atonement and where they originated. I find comfort in the idea that I’m not the only one who struggles with this idea. I respect that this is very important to people, but I also realize that I don’t need to worry about the how and why all these things happen too much. I don’t think it really matters if we all agree if Adam and Eve where real people, or an effective metaphor to explain creation to a verbal culture. God is big enough and loving enough for all of us. I just need to love God and love others. I’ll leave the whole bloody Jesus mess to the theologians who get paid to think about these things.