If we have been saved … from what have we been saved?  If we have been saved … for what have we been saved?  If we are saved … then how are we now different?

I straddle the doorway. I am the threshold.

I see the saved keep their distance from this threshold.  I see the saved spectate this doorway as though a crime scene.  Something bad to keep the other side of the tape.  Until someone in the know tells us the gruesome details.  Then we feel nauseous.  Then we wish undone the images burned into our brains.

I straddle the doorway. I am the threshold.

How is it that we can worship … pray … study the bible … volunteer … minister … fellowship … yet fear this “doorway”?  How is it that we fear “crossing over”?  What theology have we branded that fears being of one of God?  How is it we have established a faith of so much and no more?  How is it that we have institutionalised giving all without giving anything much at all?  And just how have we polished our bible so thick with wax that we still mummify our God within?

I straddle the doorway. I am the threshold.

But good folk love the Lord, Paul.  Millions are Christians.  Honest folk serve the Lord.  His kingdom is in every country.  We minister as best we can.  We serve as best we can.  We are fallen.  We are imperfect.  We are followers as best we are able. Why keep telling us we are no more than Pharisees?  We must love each other so that others may know.  We must love each as ourselves.  Why must we remind you of this command – you who writes of “love” yet drags down rather than builds up?  Can you not see the splinter in your own eye?

I have a question.  One that burns my very flesh.  One that dries the saliva from under my very tongue.  I straddle the doorway. I am the threshold.

Why do we teach “the mystery” … “the fear” … “the perfection of love”?  Why do we preach “the fall” … “the gene of sin” … “the never good enough?  Why do we perpetuate a doorway and threshold that does not exist?  Why do you even read these words of “the doorway” …”of the threshold” … if you believe there is none?

Is it because my skills as a storyteller leave you no other choice …

Or because in the dark hours of solitude you, too, see the solid doorway … the blinding light … the threshold of no going back once crossed … the sweat of fear … the stench of death … the what will I become, what will I lose, what must I give up, what will He demand? Is the doorway fact or fiction?  And if fiction …

Then why your hesitation?

I straddle the doorway. I am the threshold.

We squirm at the use of words considered inappropriate or “offensive” – yet we perpetuate the institution of fearing the giving of our lives to God.  I feel a rising anger.  An anger that I experienced taught terror when facing the reality of giving my life to God.   An anger that must be suppressed and expressed so as not to offend my brothers and sisters in Christ.  Because that is love.  Because we are all fallen.  We are all sinners.  And apparently all that means it is not our fault at all.

I straddle the doorway. I am the threshold. And I cannot.

There are 6,000,000 Christians totally shit scared of this “theological tradition” in the world today, and you people don’t give a flying f**k!  The fact that you are offended more at the language I use than at the fear you teach, makes my point.

(please see the conversation below the previous post “Observations through the doorway – the naughty step“ … it is a conversation open to all.  It is a conversation that prompted this post.  A post prompted by a comment by Agent X – with my apologies for taking his quote and giving it one here.)

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“The fact that you are offended more at the language I use than at the fear you teach, makes my point.”

Doesn’t that sound like something I said 2000+ years ago?

There must be a bible scholar or two looking in here.  Maybe they could check my memory.  My memory is that I used the language of love and it offended mightily.  Seems like not much has changed.  Seems it still offends those who swear there is no doorway.  But never dare cross the threshold.