7;s love, yet God loved us anyway. That made God a really great guy.My interpretation of this particular sermon was that I was a horrible person not worthy of love. I was a sinner and I was going to Hell. I would cry myself to sleep at night because I was so sure that I would be one of those lost souls for all of eternity. The minister talked of redemption. All I had to do to be saved and get into heaven was confess my sins and ask for forgiveness.I was sure, however, that I had far too many sins to be forgiven; besides, I wasn’t really sorry for most of my “sins.” I could not feel bad about questioning my parents’ and the church’s authority. Most of the time it seemed that they contradicted themselves or just didn’t make any sense at all. I had a very hard time digesting the teachings of the church that included both a God who would demand killing and sacrifice and the same God who would love and protect his children. Due to the teachings I received and with so many people being in agreement, I just figured they must be right on some level, which made me the odd man out and the one destined to pay with my soul.All I had to do was to take a look at the Ten Commandments to see that I was not doing so well in the eyes of the Lord. “You must not Murder,” I hadn’t done that. “You must not commit adultery.” I didn’t even know what that meant. “You must not steal,” I did this all the time. I would take change from my father’s change drawer. My mother was always telling me that I could not have candy from the store or small inexpensive toys because we had no money. I knew that she was lying. From the looks of my father’s change drawer, we were rich.Which leads us to the next Commandment, “ You must not tell lies.” If my mother was telling me a lie about the state of our family’s finances wasn’t it all right ...
