Anomaly

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, an anomaly is a person or thing that is different from what is usual.

When I was eight years old, my mom decided that our family needed to go to church. I was too young to argue, but I was terrified that first Sunday when I walked into the Children’s Church without my mom. My sister and I got separated leaving me in tears. An adult in the room saw what happened and helped me sit next to her and the Children’s Pastor asked me to take my frown and turn it upside down. That made me smile.

That was my first church experience, I would spend the next forty years in church, not always the same one, but always an evangelical denomination. As I got older, I was an anomaly there.

As a child I learned that we should love our neighbor (Matthew 22:39), help the hurting (Good Samaritan Parable Luke 10:25-37), that God created every person (Psalm 139:13-14), and God cares so much about us that he knows how many hairs we have on our head (Matthew 10:26-31). Since I felt like I had to earn love in my family, learning there was a God who loved me no matter what was encouraging to me.

Unfortunately as I got older, I was taught that God’s love has limits. We are only to love those who have the same beliefs as us. We are only to love those who love like us. I learned that if I hung out with the “wrong” people or listened to the “wrong” music I needed to ask God for forgiveness or risk being sent to hell.

I left the church a few years ago. I felt like I was different from what is usual; an anomaly. I still believed that I should love my neighbor, no matter what, not based on their religion, immigration status, or sexuality. I couldn’t sit through another service discussing how we need to pray for others, but at the same time vote for people who were determined to deny rights to everyone equally. People are people no matter what they believe, where they came from, or who they love.

ALL people are worth basic rights and being treated with dignity and respect!

We are all worthy of love and acceptance. There is no asterisk or “but” in that statement.

I am demoralized by the reality that I live in a nation where over half the voting population believes that we only have to take care of ourselves.

I must still be an anomaly.