If you live in Georgia the story of Shorter College and the faith statement one is required to sign is about a week old. There has been no
shortage of opinions concerning this “goodie-two shoes” approach to controlling
people’s lives.

I guess as a private institution they can have any rule they want. With that said, the college has absolutely no business in people’s
bedrooms. They choose to quote the Old Testament for the reasoning for this
rule...I believe that in the Old Testament polygamy seemed to be acceptable,
stoning wives for adultery was the law of the day and marriages for the most
part were arranged. Shorter University is certainly on a power trip of the
worst kind.

Yet there is a deeper and far more dangerous issue which is occurring in regards to this faith statement that people are being forced to
sign.

In fact, it is just not Shorter College and their homophobia; it is a “Church Universal” problem from almost every main-line
traditional church to the most conservative, evangelical church. This dangerous
issue happens to one degree or another in each and every organized
congregation. 

The “Church” does not want you and me to own our faith. The “Church” requires you and me to either rent or lease our faith. Sadly, that has
been the situation for a very long time.

Remember when Jesus chastises the Jewish leadership in his day:

Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. "The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent
teachers in God's Law. You won't go wrong in following their teachings on
Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they
don't live it. They don't take it into their hearts and live it out in their
behavior. It's all spit-and-polish veneer.

"Instead of giving you God's Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like
pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these
loads, and wouldn't think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are
perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers
the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the
most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery,
receiving honorary degrees, and getting called 'Doctor' and 'Reverend.'

"Don't let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don't set people up
as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that
authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the
title of 'Father'; you have only one Father, and he's in heaven. And don't let
people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader
for you and them—Christ.

"Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you'll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you're content
to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.”

I would encourage the reader to read the rest of the chapter as Jesus has hit the nail right on the head.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2023&versio...

Think about when one signs a rental agreement.  There are always lists of things that can you evicted from the property.  If there
are problems with the property the owner may listen and respond or they may
not…if you are not happy, too bad…move out.

Sound familiar? Think really hard, isn’t that what belonging to a church is all about?  What is
really sad and dangerous is what this does to the individual person of faith.

The “Church” has a list of those things that keep us in good standing as far a renting your faith from God. Screw up enough of them on the
list and we are told our relationship with God is no longer valid. Think I am
kidding?  Consider:

My partner’s father was a hard working man with twelve children. The family was Episcopalian. With twelve children to support and a
stay-at-home wife, it required him to work an extra job. The extra job kept him
from coming to church very often.

When he suddenly died at the age of fifty-seven from a massive heart attack (probably from working much too hard) the church refused
to conduct the funeral or give him a proper burial because he was not in good
standing.

What about if we don’t confess prior to participating in “Holy Communion”? We can be refused the host and drink. Don’t take Communion
for long enough and we are considered outside the faith.

Are we baptized?  If not, then our relationship with Jesus is not valid with God.

Be outside the proscribed norm for the understanding of sexual orientation, the proper participation of sexual activities or not follow
the proper definition of gender identity and we are told our relationship with
God is not valid.

Another problem with renting instead of owning is there is no reason to invest, grow or improve what is being rented. Why? Because it is
not ours, it can all be taken away in an instant…so why bother?  How many empty pews are there on Sunday
morning these days?  People have given
up, walked away or found all these rental agreements set forth by the “Church”
to be irrelevant to their everyday lives.

Not to be outdone, “The Church” has taken to a marketing campaign to fill it’s quota of rentals not because it cares about our spiritual
needs and relationship with God but because… well, please just read Matthew 23.
The methodology is even more heinous then in Jesus’ time… PowerPoint
presentations, full orchestras, only the best of the best singers, grand
buildings, and huge congregations complete with pastors who are nothing more
than snake-oil salesmen convincing you if you buy their product you will be
saved and if you don’t buy it there is a place reserved for you in the fiery
pit of hell.

Shorter College is a perfect example.

The “Church” has had it backwards for a very long time. Jesus taught and lived in such a way that it was clear it was about owning our
faith with God and not renting it.

People who own something invest in it. They make an effort to improve it, place value and priority in it. People, who own it, protect it
with their lives. Ownership does not allow for one to just walk away and
replace it on a whim.  When Jesus said
the greatest love we can show is by laying down our lives for another…that
doesn’t happen with a rental faith…that only can happen when we own our faith.

I have come to understand our job as persons of faith is not about the conversion of souls…it is about the protection of souls. Our job is
not to figure out why one has a need and how bad they were to get to this
needed place but rather simply meet the need.

Not once did Jesus ever tell someone how screwed up they were but rather treated them as owners of their faith and met the need in
measure with their faith.

In today’s world, if we dare to take ownership of our faith, we will be told we are crazy, misfits or rebels. If we dare to claim that our
relationship with God is ours and we will no longer allow for guilt trips to be
laid upon us or told how and when to practice our faith, we will be called
heretics, scandalous or worse, perverts. 

When we own our relationship with God rather than rent or lease it, this gives us the ability to understand that maybe by accident or
maybe with intentionality, the “Apple” company had it exactly right
theological-speaking when they wrote:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square
holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they
have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them,
glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because
they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see
them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough
to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

When we own our faith we can then live out the meaning of these words found recently on the internet:http://queen7d.deviantart.com/art/The-Choice-is-Mine-135928929

“I choose…to live by choice, not by chance;

to make changes, not excuses;

to be motivated, not manipulated;

to be useful, not be used;

to excel, not compete;

I choose self-esteem, not self pity;

I choose to listen to my inner voice(God), not the random opinion of others.”