Knowing the truth without violating your Spiritual truths
Between non-ignorance and love
During this time of being at home it has been possible to open my eyes to what I believe and the religion I follow. Today it is my intention to share it with you, because I believe that it is something that concerns all of us who belong to a religion or practice some way of spirituality.
I began to profess the religion of Christianity at the age of twelve, but at that time it was more about a relationship with God than belonging to an organized religion. Let’s say I had found a way to live my spirituality in a personal way without being raised or forced to believe by a Protestant Christian religious system in something specific, it was simply about God, a being that existed and that somehow had a relationship with the name “Jesus”.
But as the years went by, as a churchgoer, I gradually began to trust a set of moral laws dictated by this religion and its leaders, and it seemed good. But then I began to ask many questions concerning religion as such, the Bible and God, was it an act of rebellion to be curious and critical? For sadly this is how other people made me see it, especially authorities I encountered (and still encounter to this day), saying that I should not question and only believe and that this is what faith was all about, and there were times when I did, I blamed myself for coming to doubt. Later I gave more weight to that religion than to God in my life and that was when I transferred the concept of God from a spiritual experience to a human concept.
After months I could realize that churches and organized religious systems were as human as their believers, that they make mistakes, that they are not perfect and in the context of Christianity they also sin, but until now I to wake up to it. It may be obvious, but it was more disappointing for me to do so, to understand that most of those systems are built on human foundations, in which we gradually put our trust until we see ourselves giving up all our values, principles, feelings and actions without ever questioning what those leaders preach to us week after week.
So I set out on a journey, that of discovering the truth; rethinking the value I placed on the religious system to which I belong; and to know God without so many barriers, but all this keeping the principle of “no hatred” and avoiding excusing myself under the failures of that system, because I believe in a God of love, and dear readers, I think that if you are part of Spiritual tree or you constantly read its publications you will have realized that one of the things that most brings peace to our lives are the small details, look at the essence of things and that in those things it is even easier to find God than in the great organized systems of religion, but you will also know that the hatred we generate, in the end, does not make us grow, neither do the excuses and the belief that change comes from outside but not from within, and this is where I will enter into matter.
I must admit that I have felt terrible, because the realization that I built so much on my fears (thinking that it was God) rather than on what God really is; that many times I just let myself be carried away by psychological manipulations and that I stopped questioning just because I felt bad and that I failed my principles, was devastating. I am comforted that God is still present and that there are always new opportunities to reinvent and rethink life to change and go in different directions with a different perspective. But how do you do that without hating everything that is called religion? It’s one of the most complex parts personally, but I have to recognize that religious communities are very helpful, supportive, and guiding. And during times of crisis that sense of belonging helped me to overcome emotional disturbances and suicidal thoughts that I dealt with, so I came to the conclusion that belonging to these communities is not really a bad thing, what is bad is the way we relate to them and the influence that we can have on our spiritual experience.
Communities in general maintain a hierarchy and at the head of them there will always be a leader (good or bad, but a leader at the end of the day) and on behalf of humanity in general, there will always be a need to feel subordinated to something, and this reminds me of series of protests that took place the last year, I can remember the images in my country and throughout Latin America of thousands of young people claiming their governments for different reasons, demonstrating the need to be able to claim something or someone, being human, dear reader, like you or me. Leaders will always exist, they are also part of our essence but there is a God who is over them, it is not wrong to ask their advice or to let yourself be guided a couple of times but the only one who can have complete authority over your life is that supreme being we call God and that God has made us thinking beings, with critical capacity and an essence that no person who says he is coming in the name of love should try to change. With all due respect to those people who judged me for questioning and trying to be myself, being able to know biblical details under scientific and social grounds more deeply has made me have much more solid beliefs, with foundations, and credible arguments.
My final advice to all my readers is that there is no need to shout out loud about the actions of others to try to get them to change. If you realize that there is something wrong, be prudent and be the change you would like to see in them, belong to a religious community if you want to do it, it is fine, as I mentioned, it can be of great help, but
Never forget that spirituality is a purely personal path and that it should contribute to your development and growth, but also to that of those around you.
If you want to silence those who have criticized you for handling a spirituality the way you do, do it through good, with your example and your fruits and not with comments of resentment. You are God’s divine creation, and every part of you was a masterpiece of him.
Step out of the mold but to move forward, not to complain about it; step out of the system but to bring about positive change, not a hate-filled revolution. My revolution is one of love and truth.
With love,
Nicolle Giron.
If you have any similar experience, I would like to read you too :)
Translated from Spanish with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version), and then edited by me :)
