Progress, God's Middle Name

I feel like writing tonight. Most of this is random, most of it a process in venting.

I am sickened by the ignorance of extreme religion. I am sickened by people who consistently claim to love Jesus, or God, but clearly hate the people God would have loved, and does love - gays, lesbians, abortionists, feminists, liberalists, fundamentalists or any other -ists that have beliefs that may be something other than socially or religiously toward the extreme.

I am disturbed by beliefs that women (and men) be bound to strict rights and responsibilities based on ancient writings taken out of their context, and further placed forcefully into our own.

I am made deeply concerned by Christians who are willing to squelch any form of questioning that may not involve clear answers, as if all answers can be found in some form of scripture, even on subjects that scripture never mentions at all. I am amazed at the open, intentional hypocrisy of Christians who thus think that they know God well enough to believe in a boundary-laden, concrete systematic theology.

I am mystified by people who allow Luther, Calvin, Augustine, Aquinas, James Dobson or Focus on the Family, the Southern Baptist Convention or any other person or entity speak for them and form their close-minded thoughts concerning religion and the world. If that is all that they can bring to the table, then I say go back to the Reformation, go back to the Third Century, and go back to Nashville. Those thoughts only hinder the world; they hinder it from the progressivism that ushers in equality, and justice, and oneness and peace that Jesus talks about.

I will always keep the need to be theologically progressive in my mind and heart. Why would God expect anything less if we were formed in the direct likeness of the Holy One, creatively, with the charge to live that way? Why, if we see the progress - socially, religiously, economically - of the human race throughout scripture?

It saddens me that millions of Christians hold to extremes, unwilling to engage in conversation, and unwilling to live progressively.