You can't wear sandals to church?
Let me emphasize that many Christians get offended when we are grouped onto one size fits all category. Don't let the extremists fool you. Some just didn't get the message yet and are instead regurgitating something once a week. I had a Catholic tell me that she missed the days when mass was in Latin, because it was more festive. That doesn't mean all Catholics are the same. Many are Bible believing Christians and are thankful that Francis is rather ?refreshing.
Organized religion can lead us down a dangerous path. The less people know about the Bible, the easier they are led astray. There are some good churches out there, the ones that preach love thy neighbor, no matter who they are.
I have sought and walked a one-on-one relationship with the God of my understanding who spoke to me long before I could say the word "Jesus". Make a long story short I did not die that day and soon landed in AA. I have been a member of a very conservative congregation of Plymouth Brethren was am Anglican briefly, a few years with a non-denominational 'community church" who thought God called them there to "heal" gays.
Most recently I was a Baptist, a very liberal denomination with a lesbian pastor at the time.
In AA I served for nearly 10 years in various capacities as groups interrelate and problems need resolving by "trusted servants". Baptists had deacons and councilors, where money is dealt with, and I was called to the latter where I served as "at large". Prior to that I worked in paid ministry running my Social Enterprise gardening company to employ people with barriers, usually drugs and mental illness. I loved those years working in AA, but working for the church was its own hell of egos, self involvement and corruption.
It was in these capacities, where business and money came in where I became totally disillusioned and against organized religion all together. Corruption is a strong word, but I have no hesitation is using it. No, no one is lining their pockets that I saw, but people get jobs because of who they know; have very easy jobs with few requirements to show results and in the end everyone involved is out for their own position first. In our case we had a youth pastor who wasn't doing her job and as a result in a few years all the families with teens went down the street where they had "teen programs" and we were now short on money every month, the same amount as the salary of the youth pastor who now had only 7 and younger to deal with.
Worse, she had been upgrading herself in seminary school, courses the church paid for so now she was collecting double what would normally be paid to a youth pastor as she was paid on level of education not the job. No one saw anything wrong with this, except it had come about as the pastor being chummy best friends of the previous head of council.
Then I was assigned to participate in a study being done by the province of British Columbia on NGO's. It was telephone survey, over three days an hour or two each day. It soon became evident they were, among other things, studying how much actual $ was used for alms. After the three days and what I'd learned by answer questions was that we existed to keep three pastors working, and donate about .5 pr cent of our $330,000 budget each year.
The God of my understanding notified me when I was done being on that council and I left without a word. Since then I have a new assignment, and it involves no money, nothing out of pocket and no real work and no association with any organized religion. What I do sounds simple and is hard top explain without it sounding self serving, but for the first time in my life, beginning seven years ago I am as happy as I have ever been.
The sandals comment came when I attended a "United Church" how I am usually dressed, 'ultra second hand casual' and got several stony looks so I smiled and asked. The lady said huffily that she didn't consider sandals "appropriate". So I said "I guess Jesus isn't welcome then either...good bye."
