Christian
photo by Donna Techau
“Sometimes people ask me if I believe in life after death. I do. But I am convinced the most important question is whether you believe in life before death.”
— The Rev. Robert Thompson, author of A Voluptuous God –
Before we began attending our current church, we wondered if we might have to start our own fireside worship services someday. Though we considered ourselves to be Christian, we had come to a place where we didn’t particularly like Christians all that much. It had been just over a year since we’d brought “O” and “S” home. That ordeal alone would have been enough to send even Paul of Tarsus back to bullying followers of Jesus. In my case, it thrust me into a rather burdensome examination of my faith, the likes of which I hadn’t attempted since seminary.
If Christians were in the habit of treating children like chattel, did I really want to be one? How could I reconcile the Christian preoccupation with the afterlife with the hellish existence into which my own children were born? How could I align myself with a group of people bent on annihilating spiritual practices older than their own? Finally, having participated in a Vodou ceremony intended to aid in expediting our adoption, could I even call myself a Christian anymore?
Really, when it came down to it, I thought my spiritual time might be better spent worrying about life on earth. Why all the fuss about life after death? It seems to me that the afterlife is already being handled. My job is to co-create with God a temporal appetizer worthy of its heavenly main course.
So when we attended our current church for the first time and the preacher, The Rev. Robert Thompson, preached about creating a heavenly existence here on earth, we hung up our church builder hardhats and stuck around. That same Sunday, the church was taking a collection for relief in Haiti after the hurricanes of 2004. This week, the church sends us off to Florida with good wishes, prayers, and a truck load of supplies and money for Haiti’s earthquake relief.
“…I am convinced the most important question is whether you believe in life before death.”
photo by Donna Techau
