Sometimes we think we don’t like a particular food because we don’t like the way it has been prepared for us most of the time. Many people think they don’t like certain vegetables, but that’s because they’ve been prepared the same way: steaming until mushy or boiled until flavorless.
My husband thought he didn’t like asparagus, but we found out that he DID like it, but not steamed. Baked, fried, roasted, or grilled, he likes it!
I have many friends who are the kinds of folks that say they don’t like religion, but they like mine. It’s not that they don’t like religion, it’s that they don’t like the way religion has been presented to them. Sometimes you need to step out of your own situation and realize that things can be different if you learn a new perspective.
Much of what churches do is as bitter in our mouths as boiled asparagus, but it is only THOSE churches we need to speak out against. Don’t blame the poor asparagus! Teach people how to make asparagus well!
People long for spirituality and many folks find themselves in places where they are trying to pick up a tradition very different from their own (generally eastern) because it seems to lack what they dislike about religion. What those folks often don’t know is that they’re experiencing a “white-washed” version of that tradition, a version that many people who COME from that tradition would feel insulted by and a version that has been filled up with things from YOUR tradition to make it palatable to you.
Not all churches, not all theologies, not all religious folk… are the same. Get mad at the crappy church from your youth, it probably deserves it. Then open your mind to the possibility of sustenance that is delicious, that nourishes you, and that can make you whole.
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