Just saw a reel where a woman covered her head with a handkerchief before praying over her food.
It brought back memories of growing up in Ghana. In church, our heads were compulsorily covered. I sang in church and even as a teenager, my head was always covered. Because apparently, Paul said even with my low-cut hair, a woman who prays must cover her head.
Today, many of the pastors people run to for dawn prayers, midnight prayers, and inspirational teaching do not cover their heads. Not their wives either. They’re wearing $1000 wigs. Long nails, perfect cleavage-revealing clothes, makeup on fleek. Gucci, Prada, and Prado.
So did the Bible get edited?
Or did understanding evolve?
Did education and language change interpretation?
And in ten years, will there be another understanding? We have transgender Pastors now so heyyy. We’re almost there.
This is partly why I pulled my girls from church.
I watched people build lives around certainty preached by a pastor, then twenty years later the rules changed.
Who gives them back the lost time? Lost opportunity?
Heck! You couldn’t even eat in a restaurant as a Christian. Your sin for the day would be marked.
I will no longer build my life around one man or woman holding a microphone, standing on a pulpit, claiming their presentation is truth and that I should organize my entire life around it.
Today, we can all read the bible.
We have internet to compare versions and read history for context.
We can all ask questions.
We can all think.
I still teach my girls to pray.
I teach them to be good humans.
I teach them to do unto others.
I teach them to notice opportunity and grab it instead of waiting passively for “God’s time.”
I teach them to pivot.
I teach them to surrender only after they have tried everything. The important thing is to try.
But organized religion?
Beyond its communal value, I remain unconvinced.
And another thing that bothers me:
Why must the entire world worship God through the framework of one culture?
I live among and work with Jews, and I know why I ask this.
I have never heard them speak in tongues.
Many of the things we do in Christianity today are not done in Judaism, which is the faith Jesus himself practiced.
So what changed?
What happened?
Somewhere between Jesus, the early church, centuries of interpretation, culture, language, institutions, and tradition, Christianity became something very different from its roots.
Whether people scream under this post or not, Christianity as we practice it today is shaped by human beings. That is simply history. It is man-made.
That does not automatically make it bad.
In fact, I still think Christianity carries some of the strongest values around compassion, forgiveness, service, dignity, and hope. Recognizing Grace.
What I am careful about now is doctrine.
Do not hand your entire life to one man or woman with a microphone standing on a pulpit and calling their interpretation truth.
Read.
Think.
Question.
Pray.
And ask yourself whether the doctrine you follow is producing life, wisdom, growth, and love.
Or whether it is quietly dictating your life in destructive ways.
But we shall discuss that later.
