Very well then, CFR.
Pleased to meet you.
I only discovered this site today and I'm enjoying reading the more progressive running threads.
I have fundamentalists in my spouses family and their list of daily do's and donts are positively mind boggling. Worse yet, when I moved into their community I learned I was expected to attend their Church. I had not yet at that point actually read much of my Bible as I was a newbie Christian and trying to take it slowly to absorb as much as possible.
I learned I was terribly under prepared for all they told me I needed to learn at this particular Church, the United Church of God (an offshoot of the old Worldwide Church of God founded by Herbert Armstrong). And they seemed to NOT want you to be reading your bible and interpreting for yourself (dont read the study guide unless we've supplied it type thing). They are the Church of pamphlets and they hand them out like hot cakes in an effort to answer every question, lest there be soul seeking that leads one 'astray'. This is the Church that cranks out that monthly magazine 'The Good News'.
They are an odd mix of Seventh Day Adventism, Mormonism, Judaism and Christianity.
They worship the Sabbath, celebrate the feasts, refrain from pagan holidays (xmas and easter) steer clear of unclean foods, don't believe in hell but do believe the first fruits will have their own universes to rule and that if you blow your shot at salvation here you get a 2nd and 3rd shot later, maybe while your being judged by Jesus. Not sure.
Anyhow, they tithe like their paying an electric bill, they're super exclusionary and the bottom line is I saw I'd just married into a cult.
Everything awesome I'd been learning about Christ started to feel very strange, so I hunkered down and began to read and research what the Bible had to say on all this.
Galatians is truly my favorite book in the new Testament. It made so much so clear. As I continued to work my way thru I began to realize just how these people reduced Christ to nothing but the doorman for God the Father. That didn't sit very well with me.
And it made a great deal of what I'd experienced in terms of fellowship with folks in other Churches suspect as I began to see the legalism in fundamentalism. These folks put God in a box and that's their reality.
There is no spiritual growth for them in their walk with Christ.
I finally wrote a paper on it and gave it to my mother in law. She claims I made her doubt her faith....which was kind of funny since I doubt her 'faith'.
I used this example to illustrate what her path to Christ looked like to me:
If someone wanted me to cross a parking lot and gave me a map and it had a precise spot for me to place each foot as I crossed that parking lot, what do you think I would learn on that journey? What would I see? What would I experience. How would it make me a better person?
If I am so focused on all the details of that map, WHAT precisely is the lesson?
She didn't seem to follow this and took it to mean I wish to be disobedient.
The funny thing is that she has placed that yolk around her neck and yet she doesn't follow ALL the laws. Just the ones her Church tells her to.
So your summary advancing Fundamentalism as an affront to what God intended for us with that new and better covenant really resonated with me and I feel like I landed here for a reason.
Peace,
C2R
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