I stroked her bouncy curls and tucked them behind her ears. I wrapped my arms around her and she reached in to smell my neck. We participated in our nightly conversation. We discussed the highs and lows of our day. We considered our favorite moments and then there was a slight pause in our conversation. “ Mom, can God be mad?” Without much thought, I said, “yes, there is even a story about Jesus turning over tables in a market place while he was angry.” Her sweet eyes widen and like a hamster wheel of thoughts, I could see her mind moving faster than a cheetah. After what I know was about 17,000 thoughts racing in her mind within only a few moments; she spoke up and her voice cracked. “I think my whole life just changed.”
In that instant, I realized a deep ideology that moves through the entire body of Christian believers at some point and time. Like some type of time travel moment we see in the movies, I traveled back to my younger more vulnerable self. I traveled back to the moment when I was 11 years old, sitting in the southern baptist pew feeling like every cord of my DNA was innately wrong. Feeling like every bad choice became a thread of yarn woven into the structure of my soul. ‘Was God mad at me?’ I remember thinking that the more bad choices I made, the less lovable I became. I don’t remember the moment that I realized that God had this entire other side of his personality that consisted of fire, brimstone, judgment, and hell. But I remember an internal shift in my mind and thus a death to a small part of my already broken heart.
This internal shift opened up my world to a pit of anxiety, worthlessness, and shame. Next came the preteen years which were full of stress, awkward hair cuts, and constant striving. Constant striving catapulted me into a world where nothing less than perfection was allowed. Striving to constantly fix all my mistakes. Striving to make sure everyone around me was happy and healthy. I walked into my preplanned bad decisions knowing that what followed my mistake mentally would be far worse than any ramifications my parents could conger up.
My thoughts shifted from ‘is God mad at me?’ To ‘how could God even love someone like me’. In just that split second of a bedtime conversation, I realized that I’ve spent the majority of my Christian walk feeling like God was mad at me for the laundry list of bad choices I have made. At that very moment, I realized that I would refuse to let my daughter’s paradigm shift like tectonic plates underneath the surface of her being. I refused to let her innocence be replaced with judgment and shame due to some kind of bad theology. Yes, sin is bad. Yes, God can be mad. Yes, we should to do good things. But this is a heart thing, not a head thing. So I refuse to let my innocent, fierce, wild loving daughter believe anything other than she is outrageously loved by the creator of the universe.
The world will teach her shame, her religion will not. We will raise her to be kind and follow the voice of the Holy Spirit. We will teach her right from wrong. But more important than any Sunday school lesson about Noah and his boat; we will teach her that LOVE is the greatest gift that can be given. So as I pushed back her hair from her face once more, I started to explain the goodness and love of Jesus. I reminded her of all the times forgiveness was extended to those people in all the Bible stories. We talked about how anger is a powerful emotion, but LOVE will always win.
