If Holy Spirit transcends the trappings of time and space, then why are some Christians still talking about slaves, warriors, battles, masters, kings, thrones, conquering nations, races and animal sacrifice? If Christ is eternal, then why do we keep associating Him with the cultural limitations of his temporal life on earth?

I attend a fundamentalist church because I find spiritual release in the enthusiasm and music of its members. I appreciate their focused faith and the uninhibited way in which they express their closeness with the Source. I like the idea of speaking in tongues. To me, it means that there is an exquisite force sustaining us, and it is far bigger than our confused little human minds. This Energy is even powerful enough to override temporal intellectual notions. I have often wondered how people who are so free in worship style and demonstrate nearly the same enthrallment found at a hippy love-in, can be so narrow in their understanding of the physical and the spirit world. I have gotten practiced at avoiding our differences of opinion, and of keeping my mouth shut. Sometimes it hurts me though, that the divine is still so enmeshed with cultural and political issues.

During the time of Christ’s earth manifestation, the human population was not even aware that the earth was round. The area around the Fertile Crescent was the universe. As always, nations were fighting one another for supremacy. Their political problems of the era were similar to ones that we have now, only theirs just happened to take place during the era of Christ’s time on earth. Fundamentalists seem to assume that the trappings of that physical place and time are one and the same with an eternal, spiritual code. They are focusing on content rather than context. The content is only an example of that particular era in history, but those same references to master, servant, throne, king, slave and chosen nation are used to describe the whole Christian religion as it is even today.

How are we ever going to get beyond the “us-them” mentality, the “my God is better than your God” confusion and the “God’s gonna get you” understanding of the divine? Please. Let’s leave nations and wars and politics and customs and rituals and social order out of religion. I know there is a Holy Spirit, or else why would a physical body be given the grace to automatically heal itself? But the Holy Spirit of my world is completely above fleeting, physical human issues. Until everyone accepts this fact, there will always continue to be wars and murders cloaked as “God sanctioned endeavors” and we will never truly aspire to a level higher than that of human fallibility, and we will continue to escape any responsibility for our faults by saying, “God, (Daddy) made us this way.”

If you want to know the truth, I believe gender is a superficial attribute as well. Simply because Christ manifested as a human male does not have to mean that the Holy Spirit is incapable of manifesting in any other manner. Fundamentalists are still trapped at the physical level on this issue too, but I will save that idea for another article.