What real salvation is

I discovered an old email account that had a lot of unread emails on it so I went into it to delete them, only to discover my old Christian ladies email loop from ten years ago.  Wow!  I was such a self-righteous bitch.  But I have to say, not as bad as some on that loop.  One comment was about how there were too many gay women posting on a message board we used to frequent and how awful it was that the other "Christian" women didn't have a problem with them flaunting their "sin."  I do remember that conversation vividly and to my relief, I kept silent about it.  But I know what my feelings were about it and I was one of those who looked down my nose at the sinfulness of homosexuality, patting myself on the back that I really, truly did love them.  Just not their "sin."

That's one of the big lies of Christianity.  Love the sinner, hate the sin.  They do no such thing.  They hate the sinner, too.  They loathe them, look condescendingly at them, use them as examples of what evil looks like, discriminate against them and preach sermons against them.  But that's what love looks like in fundie-ville.  They really think that "tough love" is true love. 

Looking back on that email loop, I'm so appalled by my thinking at that time.  Maybe that's why I'm so bitter now and why I won't put up with that kind of talk from Christians today, even liberal ones.  I despise the person I was as a Christian so why would I want to be around people who are just like I was?  Not to mention the hateful way they treated my youngest.  Yeah...love the sinner, hate the sin.  They hate the ones who are different, poor, alone.  The only reason they pay any attention to them is to get them "saved" and to score another brownie point with their score-keeper.

Another thing I noticed that disgusted me about my behavior was the way we talked about people who died.  The first question out of our heads was "were they saved?"  Seriously.  As if that was the only thing that mattered.  One woman said neither she nor her husband cried when his dad died because he wasn't "saved."  I expressed so much anguish over loved ones who had died who weren't "saved" also.  In my old fundie church whenever it was announced that someone's family member had died, the first question asked was about their "salvation."  Because their lives, what kind of people they were, who loved them, never mattered as much as whether or not they had ticked the right box on the salvation question.  And it wasn't enough that they were a Christian.  They had to be the right kind of Christian.  As in...Catholics and Episcopalians most likely weren't saved.  Any liberal Christian, probably not.  Definitely not if they were Jewish or Muslim.  Or Pagan.  No one even bothered to ask about a Pagan's salvation as it was known that they were worshiping false gods, therefore were worshiping Satan and we all know what happens to Satan-worshipers, don't we?

I'm deleting the whole nonsense without reading anymore but I am glad that I had the chance to go back and see what I left behind.  And I am so glad I did.  I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn't written that Christmas play that led to my loss of faith and my exit from Christianity.  To me, that is real salvation.  I was saved from a system that destroys the heart and soul and spits out a living carcass devoid of life.

BB