I remember it like it was yesterday: the day I was a sassy little Christian kid at a Unitarian Universalist camp. My dad was an Evangelical Christian and my mom was a Unitarian Universalist. They got divorced when I was little, so I took turns going to each of their respective churches or congregations every Sunday. I remember it like it was yesterday, the day in which there was a skit about the beginning of Unitarian Universalism.

In summary, a group of Christians were chanting, “People were born bad!” and a group of Universalists were chanting, “People were born good!” That didn’t line up with what I was taught in Sunday school. We’re all sinners, so Jesus came to save us, I thought. This skit is wrong.

Probably more rudely than I would like to remember, I told somebody exactly that and they accommodatingly adapted the skit. But I was confused. My parents picked religions of love, but very different ones. At one church, I learned that Jesus was the only way. At another church, I learned that there are many ways. It was confusing for an eight-year-old.

Flash forward to last week. I am 22 and I follow Jesus. I sort of ran away from the Unitarian Universalist world in more ways than one, and I had prodigally returned in the form of working at a U.U. camp at a U.U. Retreat Center where my mom was the director.

A really good friend of my mom was the minister for the camp, and she called me asking for help because a counselor dropped out last minute and they were desperate for a female counselor to watch over a bunk of eighth grade girls overnight. I wanted to help out, so I was pretty happy to say yes. I felt like God was giving me a second chance to love these people. During the meeting of counselor training, the director asked the group if we had any concerns before camp started.

“Is it OK that I’m not the same religion as you?”

But I only asked that in my head.

The week passed and so did my worries. As a follower of Jesus, I believe that God is love, so my only agenda for the week was to love people the unconditional way that Jesus loves me. And that was really easy. There was never a dramatic moment where I felt like I couldn't be myself.

Brennan Manning once wrote, "My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.” So, I just lived like that. I didn’t have to give a speech about why Unitarian Universalism is the best religion. I didn’t have to renounce my belief in Jesus.

Here’s what I did do. I helped a crying, homesick 11-year-old girl smile. I tucked a fourth grader into bed. I gave high-fives to exhausted counselors. I let eighth grade girls stay up a little late to talk past curfew. I moved a lot of yoga mats around. I was nice, even when I was freakishly tired. I clapped and cheered super loudly at the talent show. I gave as many hugs as I could. And I just loved people. I looked into people's pretty eyes and I saw my own reflection—and I decided to make that reflection as loving as possible.

And in a moment, I realized that’s all I really have to do. When an 11-year-old girl came to me crying and I saw her sweet brown eyes looking back at me, I wasn’t thinking about theology, I was thinking about her. When a shy eighth grader learns how to play the steel drums and is amazing at it, I’m not thinking about theology, I’m thinking about her.

"You are amazing!" I say with a really big smile that probably makes me look like a crazy person.

She blushes so sweetly and says, "Thank you," with a smile that could melt any cold thing in the human heart.

I think there’s this unspoken rule that you have to tell people if you disagree with them. I had a lot of different ideas than the people who I was friends with at camp, but love wasn’t one of them. At the end of the day, is it more important that they know I disagree with them about who God is or is it more important that they know that I love them? Better yet, that God loves them?

At the end of the day, how do you think Jesus would treat that person who you avidly disagree with? I think He would look past every silly thing we see, and just love the hell out of that person.

(Pun intended.)