faith, freedom and fasting

Faith has always been a central part of my family's life, at least as far back as I can remember. Of course, like any other family that believes, our faith as a unit has wavered back an forth. Additionally, individual members of the family, myself included, have felt confused, pulled, unsure, and confident all at the same instance. Over the past few years at Brown, I definitely felt more convicted in my faith. That was until this past year. During my semester abroad at Korea, I was drawn to more charismatic churches and experienced things I never knew even existed in this world. I met people who quite literally gave up every second of their life to the Lord and who inspired me to want to do the same. Pastors preached with vivacity, praise leaders sang til tears ran through the room, and believers raised up their hands and shouted to the Lord for joy, forgiveness, and love~ This way of worshiping the Lord moved me in ways I can't explain. Yet, along this journey, I forgot many of the fundamental principals that make me love Jesus and want to be like him.

See, along with this firey faith comes a great deal of judgment and legalism. "You have to act in a certain way to earn God's forgiveness, and if you don't act in that way, you are at-risk for condemnation and an eternity in Hell. Furthermore, all of your friends who are non-believers will be condemned unless you try to help them..." This was, and is, a rather popular undertone in many Christian churches. I am happy to say that I did not grow up in such a church and I do not condone this more hateful and exclusive kind of faith. It feels so contradictory to me: how can you claim to love the only one who knows how to truly love, but then turn around and be so judging of your neighbor. But then, I suppose scripture itself holds many contradictions that leads to an amalgamation of variegated faiths and traditions.

Needless to say, I felt rather trapped within this means of faith and found myself oftentimes self-loathing. I dwelled on my guilt for my sins daily and thought that a deliverance prayer alone would save me. It took months of first talking to God, then taking a break, then reflecting a GREAT deal to finally develop my own faith relationship with the Lord. And now I believe that the only way to believe God and worship his is just to do that: believe God and worship the way that you know how and the way that works for you. It doesn't have to be in the way that someone tells you. Faith is about finding freedom for yourself.

Well, I am still in the process of loosening my chains. I do recognize more and more though what is truly important to me, and that is to love everyone around me as much as I can. I hate on anything that tries to stand in the way of love: murder, domestic abuse, sex trafficking, socieconomic inequality, racism, Prop 8, and even Christian fundamentalist exclusion. I stand by the belief that God loves all forms of love and hates all forms of hate. Pretty simple principal to stand on, but it's actually rather difficult to live out. Especially since so much of the more hateful, exclusive practices are condoned by large segments of our society.

As complicated as all of this may seem, or as overly-simple, who knows, this is how I see practicing faith for me to be. I just want to promote God's love and practice loving others the way the Lord does. I seek to learn more and more about how to do so by developing a relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And I pray that the Holy Spirit will move me in ways that can improve the world so that hatred no longer has to be central to all we do.

I am fasting this week for my older sister who is taking the boards on Friday. I am not fasting because someone else told me that doing so would help me pray and would help her (though it is true that someone did tell me these things long ago). I am fasting because I love her and because I know that God will see how devoted I am to that love. I believe He will smile upon this act and give her strength to study hard and perform well. I am so proud of her; this is the biggest, most loving gift I know how to give to her right now.