Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Changing Religious Direction (Part 3): Finding the Path

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After looking at a fairly wide variety of religious groups with varying levels of seriousness, our cause—finding a faith community that met our requirements without any major deal-breakers—had begun to look hopeless. Churches that largely met our spiritual and moral requirements failed on practical concerns; churches that met our practical concerns failed on the spiritual and moral ones. Nothing had really ‘resonated’ and I hadn’t yet felt a clear call. It was time to go back to the drawing board.

I’ve long believed that you need to know where you’ve come from to figure out with any clarity where you should be going. That’s why I found research into Judaism so attractive and fascinating. Judaism is the earliest record we have of human interaction with the God of Abraham, and it is upon that solid foundation that Christianity was later built. Having determined that Judaism was not the right path for us, I set my sights upon the early history of the Christian church.

Upon the traditions of Judaism and the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Christian Church—which quickly organized as what we now call the Catholic Church—spread throughout the world essentially as one unified body for a millennium before the Great Schism, and then as two bodies (Catholic and Orthodox) for another half-millennium. It wasn’t until the 1500s that the Protestant Reformation began to split Christianity bit-by-bit into the many component denominations we know of today.

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Changing Religious Direction (Part 2): Where To Now?

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Having decided to leave the United Methodist Church (see Part 1), a more difficult dilemma presented itself: where to go next. There are many thousands of faith communities in the world, many of which required a careful look and appropriate research. The groundwork for this process was laid by my own research into the Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—through reading their texts and studying their history.

My intent was to do a kind of a ‘religious reboot’ (though still within the Abrahamic context, since I firmly believe that the God of Abraham is the one true God). I wanted to make a decision without basing it on preconceived notions or biases and, most of all, I wanted to give the Holy Spirit every opportunity to lead me. Ultimately, many of my preconceived notions about various religions and denominations were reinforced in this journey. Others were completely obliterated.

First and foremost, we were able to discern some clear desires we had in a religious community:

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Changing Religious Direction (Part 1): Why We’re Moving On

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When I was in fifth grade, my family began attending services at Community of Faith United Methodist Church in Herndon, Virginia. Before long I was baptized in that church. A few years later, I was confirmed there and was an active participant in the church’s youth group.

When we moved to Bedford, Virginia, my family and I transferred membership to Main Street United Methodist Church. Up until then, I would say I was—at best—a nominal Christian. I didn’t have a particularly solid faith until I participated in a Harvest of Hope summer camp, which is a program of the Society of Saint Andrew hunger ministry (my father’s employer). It was there—seeing Christianity in action and making a positive difference in the world—that I really understood what faith was all about and slowly began to really, truly believe.

At Harvest I also made several friends from the town of Altavista, which is about 30 minutes away from Bedford by winding country roads. A few short weeks later, at the invitation of my new friends, I began active participation in the youth group at Lane Memorial United Methodist Church in Altavista. In the years to come, I also participated in the UMC’s Lynchburg District Youth Worship Team.

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Vermont Legalizes Gay Marriage; First to Do So Validly

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Vermont’s state legislature overrode a gubernatorial veto today, becoming the first state to legalize homosexual marriage through the proper legislative process. Vermont is the fourth state to have legalized same-sex marriage, but Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Iowa have each had gay marriage retroactively read into their state constitutions through activist and, in my opinion, illicit and constitutionally invalid judicial rulings. California also had legal gay marriage under a similar judicial ruling for several months before the people of the state amended the California Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage.

I have spoken in great detail on this web site before about my opinions regarding homosexuality. I consider homosexual activity to be sinful and immoral. That does not mean that being gay is a sin, but choosing to act on those disordered attractions is. I firmly oppose, however, the government legislation of morality—especially when it comes to the private sexual escapades of consenting adults—and I firmly oppose any professional or academic discrimination against anybody on the basis of their sexual orientation. I have no right to impose my moral beliefs on others.

I do not believe that the government should lend any formal recognition to homosexual relationships (which do not meet the historic or moral definitions of marriage), but it’s not the end of the world if government does choose to recognize these unions either. Churches and individuals should not hang themselves up too much on what is legal. The murder of unborn children is legal too in this country, but that does not mean that I have to support it or participate in it.

I do, however, have a big problem with activist judges fabricating a ‘right’ to redefine marriage out of thin air. If the people wish to change the millennia-old definition of marriage as it is applied by their state governments, they have every right to do so through their legislative processes—as Vermont just did. I disagree with the outcome, but I recognize it as a valid policy decision made by a validly representative government. Public policy, however, is not to be written, re-written, and proclaimed by judges who appoint themselves kings.

Students Have a Right to Take Medicine

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Let me make this perfectly clear: students have a right to take over-the-counter and prescription medications whenever and wherever their parents permit them to take them. Public schools often claim—under onerous and overreaching ‘zero-tolerance’ drug policies—that parents have to arrange for the school nurse or other official to handle all medicines and provide them to students at specified times and intervals, but this is not the schools’ decision to make. Schools don’t like to admit it, but it is parents who decide what medicines their children may take and when. Period.

It is particularly ludicrous to hear of otherwise well-behaved students finding themselves suspended or expelled for taking cold medicine, pain killers, or—as in the case of one local girl—oral contraceptives. Newsflash to Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS): oral contraceptives are not, and never will be, a recreational drug akin to meth or marijuana. We can debate the morality of oral contraceptives for teenagers ad-infinitum, but once again that’s an issue for the parents not for the public schools. But, no matter how you cut it, taking an oral contraceptive in school is not an offense at all, let alone an offense worthy of the same punishment a student would get for taking a handgun to school.

What’s most amazing is that schools spend an incredible amount of time and effort on being a drug dispensary, enforcing a strict ‘no medicine at all except via our dispensary’ policy, reviewing and editing (big-brother style) student publications, assigning hours-upon-hours of pointless busywork, establishing and enforcing pointless and overly-restrictive dress codes, and labeling honest criticism of school policies as dangerous anarchistic activity. Meanwhile, they fail to . . . you know . . . educate their students in any useful, worthwhile way. Does anybody else see this as an insanely improper prioritization of educational effort?

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.