Thank you for posting this. My mother died a week ago & I’ve had several occasions where I’ve tried to explain that she raised me to be a “happy Catholic” (as opposed to a “guilty” one; the true divide, imo).
It’s that, right there: “Let all you do be done in love.” That’s what she taught. Love.
My mother is Christian (although she does not go to church, just has a quiet personal relationship w God), and this is the form of Christianity that I’m familiar with. Be a nice person, do what good you can, pray for everyone.
Exactly. She stopped going to church in the early 2000s due to changes being made (sliding backward, away from progress) but she didn’t need it to know God, in the same way my dad did (all around, especially in nature).
Before she died, she said: “The most important thing is that God loves us.”
It’s hard for me to square her quiet Christianity (like, it didn’t even know she had a strong faith until I was an adult, bc she didn’t want to press her faith on me) with the Christianity of some fundamentalists.
All you really need to know to square that particular circle is that people are people and when people search for meaning, mostly what they mean is they want some authority to verify their feelings. The bible is particularly rife with justifications, bereft of their context, in many cases.
Sometimes, in my more alarmed moments, I consider some of the different churches and what they teach, and I wonder if there really is a devil/satan. But my mother also said that “evil” is the “absence of good,” so I suppose it doesn’t matter if there is, it just matters what is promoted and done.
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It’s that, right there: “Let all you do be done in love.” That’s what she taught. Love.
Before she died, she said: “The most important thing is that God loves us.”