When I was a teenager, a Christian teenager
befriended me.
But his friendship was counterfeit.
He just wanted to convert me to his particular
brand of Christianity.
He said if you don’t go with Jesus,
you go to hell.
I wasn’t a deep thinker as a teenager.
I was superficial, rebellious and trouble.
But I must have had some good sense
and maybe a budding intellect.
I said to him, “What if natives on an island,
never saw a missionary or heard of Christ,
do they go to hell out of ignorance?”
Though I’m a Believer of sorts, minus
the dogma and a disbelief in hell,
and a contemplative rather than a
follower of rules I don’t agree with.
And I still don’t believe a loving God would
ever eternally damn anyone.
And I don’t believe the Lord of the Universe
is so limited that there’s only one way,
as many claim there is without even
a scintilla of concrete proof.
I believe as the Sufis believe: “There are
as many paths to God as humans have souls.”
That seems logical to me.
Bob Boyd