Reply #129: I'm a liberal and a Christian. [View All]

I was raised in a fundamentalist Baptist church, but have grown from those simple beginnings. I still consider myself Christian, because I still strive to follow Christ's teachings: love one another, don't judge others, forgive, help the less fortunate, seek justice and peace, etc. But I abhor the intolerance and narrow-mindedness that goes with fundamentalism.

They get the whole idea of "Jesus or Hell" from many scriptures, but primarily from one passage in John's gospel, chapter 3. Jesus tells Nicodemus that one must be "born again" to enter God's kingdom. Fundamentalists read this to mean if your not "born again" you won't enter the kingdom. When Nicodemus is confused by what he thinks is a literal rebirth, Jesus speaks of God's spirit moving where it will and our inability to understand all of God's mysteries. Fundies would say this means we aren't to question God's ways and just accept everything on faith. Then we have perhaps the most well-known verse 16, when Jesus says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will have eternal life." Which the fundies interpret to mean "if you don't believe, you won't have eternal life."

But what fundamentalists never realize is that Jesus never really said what he meant by born again. They say it has to be the same emotional moment they experienced, and anything less doesn't count. God's ways are mysterious, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't seek deeper understanding, and it has nothing to do with God being so selective or for excluding so many because their spiritual experiences are different. And for me, the most important point to verse 16 is the fact that God loved, and still loves, the world, and if I am to be a follower of the one who said those words, I, too, need to love the world, without exclusions or reservations.