Yellow Submarine

Once in a while you get shown the light
In the strangest of places if you look at it right
Scarlet Begonias- Grateful Dead




Cognitive dissonance...

 That phrase started having huge meaning for me back in the cold winter months of 2010. I  Starting in the year 2000, I had followed my husband on his way back to full communion with the Roman Catholic Church in which he was raised. Finding dissatisfaction with the answers to life given us there, we left in 2007 and went to not attending a church at all for a couple of years and then joined an Evangelical church that we felt was much closer to our own new found beliefs. Free from the bonds of the magisterium and all that Catholic stuff, we felt free to really for the first time in a long time explore Christendom, read scripture and finally get to the bottom of what it really is all about. I was hungry for the Word, watched Christian TV,  listened to countless hours of sermons and studied my patootie off on every jot and tittle. As much as I loved our new church, though,  I was starting to have some serious issues with fundamental Christianity and the character of God. 

To be fair, I had been delving pretty deeply into Calvinistic theology on my own which I thought at the time truly held all the truths of the universe. This theological system does tend to make God a bit harsher directly than others so the place I was coming from and what my mind did with it may not be representative of all that hold this view. But for me it went just about like this:



  I am saved Hallelujah! but God is very very very very angry with the rest of the world and most of them including my neighbors, friends, the nice cashier at the store, my Catholic in laws, other unsaved family members, and perhaps even some of my very own children would be tormented day and night forever and ever after they died and / or the end of the world. This was not because they did anything wrong, per se (except being born sinful of course) but that God had not chosen them from the foundation of the world for eternal salvation.  

Besides all of the above, the Reformed view gave me a good amount of comfort (for awhile). You see, I hadn't always been (how shall one say)...a "good girl" and there was plenty in my past that deserved the indignation of a Holy God. But with this theology, nothing I did, am doing, or will do can take me out of the club (unless I was never really saved in the first place, but that's another whole can of worms). God and I were good, but as far as the rest of humanity...well. This was causing me a great deal of problems.




I remember walking through the grocery store,  looking upon all the Hell bound masses, with a sickening mixed sensation of pity, privilege, duty, despair, gratefulness and longing...longing for "the end" so we could just get this all over with. I remember kissing my children goodnight and wondering if they were going to make it into the Kingdom. The internal war, although manageable most of the time, would take an occasional turn into something worse and panic would grip and I would wish with all my being that somehow there was something else to this life than this.

So one day I'm on the computer, and the kids are watching Yellow Submarine. If you haven't seen it,

the plot is basically that Pepperland is being invaded by "Blue Meanies" that are trying to ruin everyone's happiness by shutting down music, peace, love, etc. The Beatles, through a series of psychedelic adventures turn the situation around, not with war, but with love. No violence at all now or ever....



And for a moment I thought....If only God were like that.


And then I took it right back. I dare not question this...Dare I?







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