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Reflections on Christianity

© Julie Richie

I've just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. The book is about a family of Baptist missionaries from Georgia who go to the Congo in the late 1950s to try to "save" the Congolese people from their own pagan gods. As it turns out, the Congolese don't want to be saved, especially since it seems to involve dunking their children in the alligator-infested river for baptism. The Baptist preacher constantly derides them for what he considers their simplemindedness.

What really struck me about this book was the kinship I felt with one of the characters, a teenager named Adah, who was born with deformities and couldn't speak, yet had the same thoughts that I have been having about Christianity and organized religion in general. When 30 of the village children died of some horrible disease, the preacher lamented that since their parents had not had them baptized, they were all going to Hell. Adah points out that these children would be going to Hell based on the luck of the draw. They were unlucky enough to be born in the Congo, rather than into a nice Christian family in the United States.

This is my basic problem with Christianity. The unfairness stays in my mind constantly as I strain during church to find something I can believe in. I've decided that maybe I have to cherish the peace, the stained glass windows and the music and leave the rhetoric behind in order to accommodate my Christian husband. I don't understand what Christians think about the luck of the draw problem. When I brought it up in Sunday school a few weeks ago, the issue was immediately dropped. No one wanted to talk about it.

Going to the Presbyterian church we've been going to is starting to depress me as I look around me and see what I perceive now to be people gloating over the fact that because they have been baptized and believe in Jesus, they are secured a place in Heaven. All I can think about are those who never had a chance to hear about Jesus. Then I think of all the good deeds this church is doing - like running a homeless shelter and building houses for Habitat for Humanity - and I try to convince myself that is good enough. But the feeling that nags at me is that I know deep down inside, no matter how wonderful a person I am, these people at church don't think I'm going to Heaven because my parents did not have me baptized and I have not professed my faith in Jesus.

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