I am currently sitting in the basement of the home in which I work and live and the vast silence reminds me that it is only 6:30am and I am yet to have gone to bed. I got up a little bit ago because I began to drive my mind crazy with wondering and contemplation and I think my mind has just about had it with me, so I must share.
Lately, I have been struggling with where I fit into this whole Christianity mess. I came to the conclusion a few days ago that I didn't want to be one.
Don't get me wrong; I desire to live my life according to the will of Christ for it, in respect and gratitude for a blood shed unselfishly for me. However, I do not want to be found anywhere near the label of "christian" and here is why...
I grew up in Nigeria and I had the opportunity to visit back again earlier this year for five months. It is a trip I regret in large part... (of course, not all parts of it are regrettable). I still suffer the agonies I sustained from that trip and it is in large part from Christians.
Please understand that this is not a complaint. I do not wish to blame anyone and I don't really have anything to blame on anyone so it is not a blame story.
In Nigeria, we have a practice I like to call Intolerant Faith. We still practice the old time and very under-educated religion. Pharisaical thought and reason that does not allow for strays to believe that there is a God who loves them and does not just want to shove His law down their throat. Shorts are not allowed in chapel, neither is the chewing of gum. These are sins! SAYS WHO?! I don't think Jesus gives a damnation if I chew my gum in chapel! We do welcome the sinners, we have outreaches were we tell them for 13 seconds that Jesus loves them, and then 69 minutes we spend telling them the commandments. When they do show up in church, the preacher gets up and condemns them for their sins.
I have more friends today within the last 3 years, than I've had before then. Before then, (and I am still working on it), I was the evangelist. I wanted to spread the law of God to and fro; and there was nothing wrong with that. I had an answer for every question, every denial, every straying thought. And they weren't necessarily wrong. Sometimes, It's not about the answer, it's not about logic. It's about time, about presence and about love. In all my preaching and professing, I NEVER understood. If you don't bother to find out whether or not there was a drought, then you will never understand why the fruit yielded poorly.
Here's where I might get a bit controversial. A young African child transitioning into America is one of the most scary, invigorating, confusing, emotional, and exciting time. It all in all, is difficult. I didn't understand the ranks growing up and in Nigeria we are taught NOTHING about slavery. We know nothing about it in Nigeria.
I went to a school in the north shore with very few African American students (about 7). In due time, I would find out that I was naturally supposed to "join" the African American clique. I didn't. I was informed then that I was not black... or that I was "playing white". I looked down at my hand, and still clearly "black", I walked on. I get asked often by some African-Americans why I don't have many "black" friends. Honestly, I don't think I walked around deciphering between the races and deciding to shun my own. I have considered over time, the subconscious part of it and this I offer: I don't know how to "act black", and this has believe it or not, been an issue for almost every "African American" I have met. Not all of them, but most of them. I am a Nigerian girl. I grew up in Nigeria, not in black America. I am having enough trouble combining my own accent with the general American accent. I don't need to ghettorize it. I sound ridiculous when I do. African kids who come to America and try to be "black" look and sound ridiculous.
I have more "white" friends than I do "black" ones because I am not "black" enough. If you understand this, you won't be angry with me, If you don't understand, you will be. It's not that I don't want "black" friends, it's that I am averse to being made to feel like a misfit.
I was going somewhere with that anecdote.
I am not trying to utter a fulmination from my faith at all. On the contrary, I am trying to demarcate myself from what I have experienced it to be and what I know it to be. I don't generally feel inferior to anyone except for when I am in the company of Christians. In their company, I feel like I constantly need to change little bits and pieces of me to fit "their" sermon until I lose who God had identified me to be in the first place. I have been betrayed the most by them; there is this sense of family that we create, (like an inpenetrable cult) that we coax each other to share and then we gossip by "sharing" it outside of confidence, plastering "prayer request" on it to call it good. I feel judgment, I feel reproach, I feel intolerance. The best Christian living I have ever seen was through an non Christian.
I don't want to belong to anyone or anything that does not allow me to remain exactly what I was created to be; and if I strayed from that, be patient and kind and without judgment rear me back to home. That is a feat Christianity today is yet to achieve.
I will declare however, that I have been incomparably blessed by friends who have shown me the essence of the Law. Who have shown me that that the Law in all practicality is love. Who have shown me this love.
And I love them... too.
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