When I asked my mother why I wasn’t baptized, she told me it was because when she looked at my infant body, she could find no evidence of sin. She decided that I had the right to make the choice when I was old enough to do so.
When I was married the first time, my husband’s family insisted that I be baptized in their Lutheran church and be married there, or else I wasn’t welcome to marry their son. I was unclean and unschooled in their beliefs. I was angry but went along with their wishes and was baptized in my 20’s. As far as they were concerned, I was saved. Their son, meanwhile, became a drug addict and overdosed, while I worked to support us. I had left him after his affair and death because I wanted no part of him. His parents were conservative, religious, and Republican. When he died, I wasn’t allowed to come to the funeral, despite my not being a drug addict or loser like their son. He never told them why I had left and they never knew he was a drug addict until he died.
One day I asked a friend of mine why he had his 6 kids baptized, but they never went to church. He told me it was his “insurance policy” that his kids would “go to heaven.” It didn’t matter how they lived their lives. They had already paid their ticket.
I can’t tell you how many Catholic weddings I’ve attended where the bride is:
already pregnant
on birth control
not a virgin
and how many couples want to marry someone who is Catholic but can’t because they aren’t a member of the Church. I was engaged to a beautiful man, who was forced to break it off because he was Jewish, and I was not.
I’ve never believed in the concept of sin. It’s anti-love. It’s anti-choice. It removes any possible sense of self responsibility. It sets up the belief that at birth, we’re all bad and need to be saved by something or someone else.
I’ve had an incredible life. God and I are just fine.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I think you don’t understand the idea of sin. It isn’t understood by observing the hypocrisy or inconsistency of others who believe in sin.
You can start and privately inventory yourself or people you love and understand how you and they have fallen short.
The concepts of sin sticks with us doesn’t it. The seven deadly sins. The categories of sin from the catholic church. The concept of sin in other cultures around the world. It really sticks with us as does the idea of good or of a power greater than our selves.
These ideas are not anachronisms because we can imagine setting them aside. They live on because humanity lives on and carries them within.
If I don’t believe in sin isn’t that analogous to believing I am a demigod of sorts. I am indestructible, I will love as long as I want to, I know better than most and than my forebearers? The list goes on.
I have deluded myself many times…..