Here is a little secret about me that few people who read my blogs know:  I am a born-again Christian. 

That's right.  I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior on February 9, 1972, when I was 20 years old.  I was a college kid then, and I promptly joined Campus Crusades for Christ and began regularly attending a nondenominational church near campus.  I was baptised in a Baptist church at home--full-dunk style.  I worked as a camp counselor at a Christian camp.  I worked as a counselor at a summer event called Expo 72, where 100,000 young people gathered at Texas Stadium to hear speakers such as Billy Graham and listen to gospel music.  I took an entire six-hour course on the New Testament and, at one point, seriously dated a ministry student.  Early in my career, I taught school at a private Christian academy in West Palm Beach, Florida.

When my kids were growing up, our family had Sunday Bible studies every week of their lives, which I conducted here at home.  They read the entire New Testament (except for Revelations), memorized scripture, and had their own Bibles with their names imprinted on them.  But we didn't just talk about Jesus--we studied Eastern traditions as well, and Native American teachings and the Old Testament and Judaism.  I taught my kids tolerance of all faiths and walks of life, and they were never told that just because someone believed differently, they'd go to hell.

What we studied at home were the words of Christ himself, and his life as he led it.  He dined with those considered sinners by the ruling church elders of his day; he broke church laws to feed the hungry and heal the sick on the Sabbath; he was tolerant of everyone--even the lowliest of the lowly of his day, the lepers. 

He said, Judge not lest ye be judged.

We studied the history and culture of the time the books of the Bible were written, and a little about how they were included in the church lexicon, and the kids were encouraged to explore their own spirituality, as long as it was grounded in the one over-riding principle of all time:

LOVE.

When they became teenagers and no longer wanted to listen to me, we started attending a Methodist church in town, thinking it might be a bit more tolerant than the Baptist and Church of Christ churches we knew.  This is a small-town, rural, conservative area, and the main reason we'd avoided organized churches here all those years was because of that strict belief system that I could not follow--at least, not as I had when I was young and new to the faith. 

But after a youth minister told my 15-year old son that if he gazed lustfully at a girl in a bikini at the pool, he was committing adultery in his heart (ridiculous nonsense--you can't commit adultery if you are not married, in your heart or otherwise)--and then told our 12-year old daughter that because her parents had stopped attending the church, we were going to hell--I took them out of the youth group and out of the church altogether.

To this day, both of my children, who are 27 and 30 now, are deeply spiritual beings.  They are tolerant of all faiths and all spiritual seekers, as well as those whom Jesus might have dined with these days.  They are kind and compassionate people, loyal friends, and moral, good people as well.

My faith has grown into an amalgram, a collection of the best the world has to offer in all disciplines.  My Christianity is more symbolic than literal--much like, for instance, what I taught the kids when my dinosaur-loving little boy had asked if the Garden of Eden was a literal place and if God really did create the world in one week.  I told him that it didn't really matter whether Eden was literal or creation was a week or a million years in the making--what MATTERED was what the creation story had to TEACH us about how alone we feel when we allow ourselves to become separated from God's presence in our lives.

This is pretty much how I look at it now.  It doesn't really matter to me whether Jesus was truly born of a virgin or whether he rose from the dead--what truly matters to me is HOW HE LIVED HIS LIFE and what I can learn from it.  What matters to me is how I can fulfill what I believe to be God's purpose in my life and how I can make my small corner of the world a better place in some way, and whether I can love the people in my life with grace and forgiveness.

This is the message that Jesus had to teach us, and that is the message that I try very hard to live by.  Don't always pull it off, but I try.

I do not, however, preach it in every single e-mail I forward to family and friends.  I don't send around sappy paintings of Jesus, or lengthy sermonettes or stacks of Bible verses.

The thing is, I used to be a crusader, and I understand that prosyletizing is part of some people's belief systems.  Nobody understands that better than me--after all, I used to--literally!--go door to door and preach the gospel of Christ.  (No, I don't do that anymore.)

Here's the thing, though.

The VERY PEOPLE who send me the most drippy and sappy little Christiany sermons...are the ones who also forward to me the nastiest, hateful-est, meanest e-mails I've ever gotten.  One friend who professes to be a Christian and sends me the most sentimental stuff the Internet has to offer, also told me one time that I would never be able to comprehend the depth of the HATRED he feels toward the Clintons.

There is no particular reason for this hatred that I can see, no way in which Bill or Hillary Clinton personally hurt this man, but oh how he hates them.

And oh how he hates Nancy Pelosi.  And oh how he hates Harry Reid.  And oh how he hates John Murtha.  And oh how he hates John Kerry.  And oh how he hates liberals.  And oh the language he can come up with to describe them all--language I don't use on my worst days.

He has sent me such hate-filled e-mails when we were carrying on political debates that it is almost disturbing.  (Only reason I don't worry is that I know this particular man personally and have for many years.)

And if it was just him, I'd think, wow, he can be nuts sometimes.

But it's not just him.  I've seen the pattern over and over again coming from the religious right.

I don't know if they forward around all these little religious e-mails to encourage themselves or to convert people on their list, but I can't help but think that THEY ASSUME THAT BECAUSE I AM A DEMOCRAT I AM THEREFORE GODLESS AND MUST BE SAVED.

I have to think that's part of it.

But the thing is--apart from the obvious about making ignorant assumptions about people--is that, if I wanted to convert someone to a faith that was founded on LOVE...I wouldn't also be so nasty and hateful about everything else.

Now, there are some who could say I hate George W. Bush and they would not be wrong.  They could say I've made some pretty nasty comments about this administration and their war that has been all too personal to my family.

Guilty again.

The DIFFERENCE is that I don't--in one breath--praise Jesus--and in another breath--spew hatred.

You can't have it both ways, I'm thinking.

I am not ashamed of being a Christian.  I just don't go around preaching it every other breath.  If others want to do that, well, power to them.  I have no problem with that.  I have friends whose faith is their whole world to them and I completely respect that.

But don't forward me a sermon quoting scripture and, in the same queue, a hate-spewing tirade against Hillary Clinton or whoever.

The fact that these people seem oblivious to this just amazes me.

The thing about flouting one's Christianity is that, maybe we should look first at the original.

After all, Jesus said that, when we pray, we should go into the closet and close the door--not stand on a street corner and shout so that we look virtuous to all watching.

I'm also pretty sure that, even as those who hated him were torturing and murdering him, he didn't hate back.

If we profess to walk the walk of Jesus...all I'm saying is that maybe we ought to talk the talk as well.

Or just shut up altogether.