“You’re a sinner” …. “You’re unworthy of god’s love” …. “You don’t deserve a single blessing you’ve been given” …. “drop to your knees, and be grateful for the pain Jesus took for you.” …

These words placed together sound eerily similar to the words my abusive partners said to me. I shake when I hear them. Though I’ve walked away from the teaching of sin long ago, I’d be lying if I didn’t still hold, deep within me this fear of being evil, corrupt, and worthless.

I sat in the back of the packed church, observing the small families, their hands raised in the foggy, lite up air in the large worship hall. Their mouths dropped, vocal chords expelling emotion. I imagine their silent pleas behind the words they sing. Both praising the almighty and begging for “redemption unearned”

The worship stopped and a video popped up on the large screens. Her voice swing around me, the pain in her tone crept through my pores and hit my gut. She was abused & tormented though her words never said those words, but abuse knows abuse. I can walk into a room and instantly feel my spirit latch onto a fellow victim/survivor.

I began to weep. Silently I sat, my lips quivering and my heart pounding. Suddenly, another voice took over, and then so did my rage.

It was Easter Sunday you see. The day Christians all around the world celebrate the rising of the Son of man. A day where the topic of sin seems to be the highlight of churches all over.

Back to my fellow warrior. Hundreds of us sat packed in this room, I’d prepped my heart to hear the way Jesus healed her, reminded her that the words spoken over her were lies, that what was done to her had no barring on her worth, her value and certainly she was pure and clean in God’s eyes.

I didn’t hear those words. We heard how sinful she was, how Jesus was her only savior to cleanse her flesh, and how unworthy she was of Jesus and God’s love. She spoke again with words that delivered a crushing blow to my gut, “I’m so grateful, my sin is in the open. Though I am unworthy, he has redeemed me.”

The pastor spoke of that woman moving fast towards hell until she accepted Jesus was the only way to cleanse her evil. Not a single word about the abuse she experienced. Not a single prayer for the healing of a broken spirit.

My husband listens to a song, almost on repeat, of a preacher speaking about how unworthy he knows he is of love from God. Of begging god for love and thanking god for grace not deserved.

I turn the song off now when I’m around. I’ve no intention of begging for forgiveness. I’ve no desire to see God, whose own first words when I was created was “it is good” as someone who demands me to see myself as worthless apart from themselves.

I am not innately evil, bad, or unworthy of love, grace and forgiveness. I don’t need a “savior”. God doesn’t wash me from sin, God washes me from the lies and filth of a corrupt world. A world dedicated to consuming power and building a caste where no one can reach God.

I am told in Genesis Adam and Eve walked with God. We are fed the lie in church buildings that God couldn’t look at us anymore. But the word tells us Adam and Eve couldn’t look at God anymore.

When my dog does something wrong he has a hard time looking at me.

Folks, you’ve been fed a lie. And that lie is what Jesus freed us from on that cross. We are not unworthy or undeserving of God’s love, but instead are flowing with God’s love. There is nothing that can keep us from God’s love. Nothing.

My little girl didn’t ask to be brought into this world, but in love and from love she was wonderfully created to simply, be…. loved.