Book Club: Telling God's Story

I'm part of a group reading through the book Telling God's Story (by Peter Enns), in effort to gain some insight around how to teach our kids about our faith in a way that (we hope) avoids some of the misconceptions we grew up with.  If you are interested in following along, you can find the group Facebook page here, and you can find links to some of the other members' thoughts here.  I didn't write anything about chapter one, but I finished chapter two this weekend, and below are my thoughts. 

Recently Luke was filling out an activity-book survey.  He asked each of us if we believe in ghosts, then tallied our answers: I don't. Ryan and Luke aren't sure. Owen does. He looked at the page for a few minutes, before saying that the dog probably believes in ghosts, so his mark would be with Owen. Owen responded, "And if he does, then mom loses! Two, against two, against one."

I know it was an innocent comment, but I still questioned his statement that just because more people think something, that makes it right. We discussed it and agreed that the only way I would really "lose" in that scenario is if we had a way to prove that ghosts exist. And if we could prove that, then yes, I would lose because I would be wrong. Conversely, if we could prove ghosts do not exist, but then he and the dog would "lose," and I would "win," even though a larger group thought the wrong thing.

And don't many of us often make that type of mistake, thinking we must be right when more people agree with us? We look around at the people we interact with and when we discover areas where we agree, we feel like we win, and we feel like those who disagree with us lose.

Even though, realistically, we know that being in the majority doesn't automatically make a person right.

When I was growing up in the midst of Conservative, Evangelical, Homeschooling families, I saw this "majority is right" thinking often. Whatever was the new darling book or speaker or conference or curriculum, seemed to work its way through most of the families -- the families who were "right."  And while some of those things may have been right for some of those people, I now think that some of those things were wrong, or at least wrong for some of us.

This probably contributes to why I am so very skeptical of bandwagons.

So when I found myself rather enthusiastically agreeing to join a book study on teaching the Bible to one's children, I started questioning myself. Even when the book arrived and I started reading the introduction, I couldn't quite shake the anxious feeling that I was treading a little too close to that line of joining in with other like-minded people and jumping on a bandwagon.  And despite that I appreciated the first chapter, I still had my doubts -- not specifically because of the content, but because I was concerned about following a majority of people I respect and setting aside any reservations I had about doing so.

Then I got to the second chapter and read this:

The Bible is not a book on how to invest your money, which political party to join, whether to homeschool, where to go to college, whom to marry, where to live, whether you should buy that car, America as God's chosen people, or a blueprint for present-day world events. It is not, in other words, a "Christian owner's manual." Too many Christians assume that the Bible is the guidebook to address all of life's questions. But that is not what the Bible is designed to do.... 

In this light, I want to introduce what I think is the single most important biblical concept for living a Christian life, not only today, but during any era: wisdom.

When we get down to it, much of our lives as Christians requires us... to "wing it." I don't mean that the Christian life is haphazard with no guidance. I mean that many of the decisions we are called to upon to make every day we make, not because of a verse here or there, but because of the wisdom we have accumulated over the years. That wisdom is acquired through the study of Scripture, prayer, life in a Christian community (not just "going to church"), and plain old life experiences...

And there it is. Wisdom. That is what I want my kids to see in the Bible, to see in Jesus, to see in my faith, and learn for their own lives. Peter Enns is not advocating in this book a blanket set of moral codes or a checklist of behaviors. He even acknowledges that what wisdom might allow for one child or family, it may not for another.

This is so refreshing.

Enns is not asking me to jump on a bandwagon, but rather to use the means available to me to do the reading, research, living, asking, observing, and praying necessary to understand my faith, and then to apply all of those in my interactions with my children as I strive to share God's story with them.  This doesn't mean that I will simply go along with whatever I hear from a popular speaker or automatically go wherever the majority is headed.

I must use wisdom to determine what to do for my own life, majority or not, and I must use wisdom to teach my kids wisdom and discernment for their own lives.

I'm still overwhelmed at the thought of being primarily responsible for teaching my children about God and the Bible.  I still have so many questions and I still ask myself all the time if I'm getting things wrong.  Most of this stuff cannot be proven, only lived and experienced for ourselves, so there are no clear winners or losers when it comes to all the ways Christians can disagree over the Bible.

In light of this, I'm thankful for this book and this group and I'm looking forward to what other insights I can glean from it in the coming chapters and from the others who are reading them.  We may not entirely agree, but we are seeking to gain and share wisdom.

That's really the best any of us can do.

More than 'Just' Friends

Relationships between men and women that do not involve romance and sex are usually referred to as ‘just’ friend relationships… few people seem aware that ‘just’ friend relationships can blossom into relationships of dialogical love. Those of us who have experienced the abundant being that can come from a deep personal relationship with a person of the opposite sex would never speak of our relationship as ‘just.’  Calling these relationships ‘just’ is not only misleading; it trivializes the relationship in a way that seems sacrilege. – John Scudder and Anne Bishop quoted in Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions

Some of my dearest friends are women whom I deeply and intimately love.  Because of the deep bonds we have formed, I would never say these women are ‘just’ friends.  I also have several dear friends who are men.  Yes, I am committed to honoring the vows I've made to my husband – and my cross-gender friendships my be of varying levels of familiarity and physical proximity – but I could never with good conscience say they qualify as ‘just’ friends simply because these friends aren't women.  

Several years ago I reconnected on Facebook with someone from my high school years.  It was right at the beginning of all my unraveling, when my process looked ugly and angry and I often argued with people who still believed all the old things I was in the process of discarding.  Even though he is hundreds of miles away, he was a gracious and calming presence, never balking at my anger or turning away when I was far from gracious.  From his years of religious study, he generously shared his perspective in response to my theological questions when I asked.  He introduced me to Volf and Keating and kindled my love for theological reading.  He would gently rein me in when I was disregarding the value of another person's unique life-experience for the sake of winning an argument.   

There is an undeniable bond that forms when someone can look past your pain and ugliness while you burn down the framework of your life, and treat you as though you've already risen from the ashes.  A person who does that is not ‘just’ a friend.

Five years ago, over shared office observations and a similar sense of humor, I became friends with the guy who sat on the other side of my cubical wall.  We don’t sit near each other anymore, but we still chat with each other every work day.  We share stories of what is going on in our lives outside of work and try to add a little levity to the daily grind.  Sometimes we go to lunch and talk about our kids.  Sometimes we grab a beer after work and commiserate about our jobs.  We talk a lot about beliefs, which can be a challenge considering that we could not be more different from each other when it comes to faith and politics, but we navigate the conversations with a great deal of mutual respect. 

There is an undeniable bond that forms when someone becomes a witness to your daily life and allows you to be a witness to theirs.  A person who does that is not ‘just’ a friend.

I have an ongoing dialogue with a long-distance friend I met over social media.  He messaged me one day to say he’d read some of my posts and that my thoughts and unraveling process resonated with him. We have swapped stories about our similar youth experiences and navigating family relationships while straying from our upbringing.  We check in with each other regularly, discussing work and faith and posts we read online, and we frequently swap prayer requests and commit to praying for each other.

There is an undeniable bond that forms when one person is vulnerable enough to reach out to another person and say, “Yeah. Me too.” and the two of you commit to regularly praying for each other.  A person who does these things is not ‘just’ a friend.

The reason I’m sharing about my experience with cross-gender friendships is to bear witness to their significance in my life.  They aren't taking the place of my relationship with my husband, but they are extremely important to me.  If someone has looked close enough to see all of my messiness and chosen to live life with me anyway – that person is dear to my heart.  The appropriate response when I reflect on all my close friendships should be to readily acknowledge that she or he is a dear friend or a kindred spirit or even a person I love deeply.  Life is too fleeting to distance myself from people who mean so much to me because I’m clinging to a religious or cultural narrative that is preoccupied with sex and only allows me to see my friends as “men” or "women" rather than individuals with whom I've formed a relationship that is a vital part of my life.  

//

Several weeks ago, Natalie Trust wrote a blog series prompted by Dan Brennan's book Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions on the subject of cross-gender friendships.  This book was already on my to-read list and after reading Natalie’s posts (here, here, and here) I moved the book to the top of my reading stack.  I appreciate Natalie for inspiring me to read it sooner rather than later and I’m thankful to Dan Brennan for writing it. For most of my life, the most prominent narratives about relationships between men and women have been ones that are narrow, contradictory, and often promoted shame and confusion.  We are often cautioned against cross-gender friendships because attraction or closeness are equated with sex, even though the same type of relationship with someone of the same gender would be encouraged.

What Dan Brennan does in his book is provide historical, social, and spiritual reasons – ranging from an exploration of pre-Freud friendships to insights we can glean from teachings on chastity in the Catholic tradition – for why we should reevaluate how we think about cross-gender friendships and embrace a new narrative; he does this while providing a depth of insight to help establish that narrative.  Reading Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions and engaging in Natalie's discussions has been extremely valuable to me as I continue to unravel much of what I was taught about gender and relationships.  
 

I appreciated the analysis and criticism of the romantic myth an how it affects both our romantic and non-romantic relationships.  Dan explains, 

Idealizing romantic passion as the unique, one-and-only, exclusive form of love between a man and a woman has created a pervasive romantic myth in our contemporary world when it comes to male-female paired relationships…This is the fruit of romantic idealism, not romantic realism. The notion that one idealized relationship is the be-all, end-all for passion, intimacy, emotional commitment, friendship, happiness, fidelity, and depth, has a cluster of powerful myths supporting it…

The myths to which he is referring are found both in Christian culture (which tends to idolize marriage) and also in popular culture (with the idolization of romance and sex in movies, books, television, and music). I have seen personally the devastation the romantic myth can cause to marriages and the tainted light it can cast on friendships.  

I know that words like “passion” and “intimacy” have become synonyms for sex and can make some uncomfortable in the context of friendship, but the real synonyms for those words are actually: affection, fondness, love, familiarity, belonging, warm friendship, faithfulness, and loyalty.  In fact, the definition for the word 'intimate' includes phrases like: “belonging to or characterizing one’s deepest nature" and "marked by a warm friendship developing over a long association.”  Aren't those desirable characteristics in all close friendships? I think it is beneficial to examine the religious or cultural myths that might hinder intimate cross-gender friendships. 

While the criticism of the romantic myth can apply equally to any cross-gender friendship regardless of religious belief, one of the other points I've spent a lot of time reflecting on relates directly to my faith.  Brennan notes the “one-another’s” in scripture and how we often overlook the obvious inclusion of both genders when we read them:

Consider all the “one another’s” – none of which have a sex-segregated command embedded in them.  Here are just a few: “welcome one another” (Romans 15:7), “pray for one another” (James 5:16), “be kind to one another” (Ephesians 4:32), “greet one another with a holy kiss” (I Corinthians 16:20), “teach and admonish one another” (Colossians 3:16).  None of these contains transcultural  sex-segregated warnings to keep men and women from meeting privately or in public, or from avoiding the powerful intimacy that may grow because male and female friends seek to be obedient to these commands in their nonromantic relationship.

At least five times in the gospel of John, Jesus implores his audience to “love one another;” and other variations of this phrase can be found throughout the New Testament.  It strikes me that there are entire books centered around a very few scriptures that speak specifically to one gender or the other and that those verses dominate admonishments for the interactions of men and women.  In contrast, it seems these multiple “one another” verses are viewed in the abstract, as an almost sterile “love” for some mythical “other.” I had not previously dwelt on these “one another” verses as a call to deep friendship with other embodied people, regardless of gender, but now I can think of them in no other way.  I’m learning to embrace an understanding of cross-gender friendships that can be both encouraged and celebrated within my faith tradition. 

//

I know Christians are the intended audience of Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, but there is a lot to learn from this conversation even if you don't view cross-gender friendships through a religious lens.  It could be invaluable to your emotional health to evaluate what narratives govern your relationships.  If shame or the romantic myth are keeping you from forming intimate connections in your life, it may be time to look at things from a new perspective.  

As a Christian, the book left me hopeful that we won’t always be trapped in a destructive narrative where we idolize romance and are taught we should avoid cross-gender friendships.  As Dan points out, “The mystery of incarnation is that God in Christ overcame the boundaries between heaven and earth, between the spirit and matter, between flesh and spirit, and between men and women.”  The example of Christ is deep friendships with both men and women, who he lived life with and embraced and loved.  I truly believe that through understanding a narrative based on Christ's example the Church can see the truth of how cross-gender friendships can be deep and intimate, as well as holy.

Nothing to Offer

I thought I’d unraveled to the point I could start putting it all back together, but that was an illusion.  Apparently there is more.  I’m okay.  I’m getting by.  But I’m still unraveling and I hadn't planned for that to be the case and it is messy.  I feel that I have nothing to offer anyone right now, but actually writing it out loud is something.  I was going to say that writing it out loud helps, but it actually just means that the three people who read my blog know about it now. Some things are what they are and have to be dealt with over time and I have to learn to keep going.  I am learning to keep going. 

Oh, and one place I'm going is back to church.

Over a month ago, I started reading the book The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience by Thomas Keating.  I got up one Sunday morning with plans to visit a local community church, but after reading several sections from Keating's book with my coffee, I changed my mind and decided to visit a church that keeps to the liturgical tradition.

I Googled one I've frequently driven past to find out when their late service started and I went.  I sat in an old pew and I noticed the way the light filters in through the stained glass and I chanted scripture from a prayer book for the first time ever and I listened to the priest blessing, individually, members of the congregation who were celebrating birthdays that week and my eyes welled up with tears.  As new and different as much of it was for me, I felt what I can only describe as a sense of home.  And I experienced a tiny stir of what I think was hope.  I had a fleeting thought that maybe, somehow, I will find a place where I can start putting some things back together and stop feeling so alone in my faith experience.  Maybe.  Somehow.

I still have much to learn and far to go.  At the moment I'm still feeling like I'm empty, like I have nothing to offer.  I honestly have no idea yet if this church is the place for me, but I've gone three of the past four Sundays anyway.  I have no idea how long it will take before I know if I’m doing the right thing, but I’m doing it until I figure out if I am.   

I hate feeling like this and I hate feeling empty and I hate not having anything good to write about or talk about or give... but I think that is the way life is sometimes.  I think, sometimes, the dry spells teach us just as much as the abundance.  I think I need to stop thinking so much and just keep going.

Ugly and Scary and Stubborn

In his book, The Authenticity of Faith: The Varieties and Illusions of Religious Experience, Richard Beck uses Sigmund Freud’s assertions about religious belief in Future of an Illusion and William James’ observations in The Varieties of Religious Experience as the framework for analyzing religious experience.  He utilizes James' "healthy-mind" and "sick-soul" worldviews throughout the book as he explores and tests various dynamics of faith.  While James includes multiple religions in his work, Beck chooses to focus on how these descriptions apply to the Christian faith.  There is no way that in a single blog post I can do justice to the full content of The Authenticity of Faith and all the details, data, and insight it provides; I will, however, attempt to delve into how reading this book has given me a deeper understand of my own religious experience.

For the sake of expedience and context, I'll quickly explain that according to James, healthy-mind believers are able to find meaning in their lives by focusing on good and their faith is comforting to them because they believe it can overcome evil and suffering.  They embrace their faith wholeheartedly and rarely, if ever, entertain thoughts that it could be misplaced.  When bad things happen in the present, they seek consolation in their beliefs and in the promise of a joyous afterlife.

In contrast to the healthy-mind worldview, the sick-soul believers are those for whom their faith does not create a constant sense of well-being and for whom the promise of a wonderful afterlife is not a consolation in the face of existential discomfort.  Beck describes the sick-souls as those who "exist in the murky middle between belief and disbelief, between faith and unfaith."  These are believers who, despite doubts and uncertainty, continue to choose the realm of faith.  Beck goes on to explain:

I think the sick soul is willing to live in between faith and unfaith, belief and disbelief, because this is the only way they can remain truthful to their lived experience. The pieces of life and the life of faith are not so easily fit together. There are gaps, there are missing pieces... life is experienced as broken glass. Life is experienced as shattered... And as we handle the pieces, we are often cut and wounded. Life resists our attempts at putting the pieces together, intellectually and emotionally.  As a result the sick soul lingers, perhaps for a lifetime, in this ambiguous location, holding onto pieces, God among them, that don't quite fit together.

I've been trying for days to work out how to explain what this has shown me about my own experience.  I am still new enough to the study of both theology and psychology that I have no delusions I fully understand everything Beck explains or everything about the sick soul; I also know that reading one book on a subject does not made me an expert.  However, it is compelling to me to know that the sick-soul is something that has been identified and studied by people who do have a lot of experience in theology and psychology.  Again, I'm not an expert, but based on what I know so far I can say that I identify very much with the sick-soul experience of faith.

Growing up in an environment where it seemed, at least to me, that behaving in a healthy-minded way was the measure of a healthy faith, I always felt like something was wrong with me. I would hear people talking about their own experiences with God and feel like an outsider.  It has been a somewhat emotional experience to read about the sick-soul and realize that is how I experience my faith.  I have spent years trying and trying and trying and try, try, trying to figure out and explain why I simply do not identify with much of what other people have told me about their faith.  It is the oddest sense of relief to learn that someone has studied and can explain my experience based on real studies and data.  It also helps me justify how I can feel the way I do about my faith without abandoning it.

I've certainly considered giving up my faith, but that choice has never been right for me.  On some level, I feel in my bones and in my soul that God IS, even if I'm not completely convinced that my religion has it one-hundred percent right in what we say about God.  I know that there is something to my faith that is real, something intangible I can't deny, even though that knowledge is not necessarily comforting to me. I am also not consoled in the here and now by the thought of heaven or some better future existence.  I never experience or hear of a real-life horror and think "Yes, that's awful now, but it's going to be okay because someday we will all be in heaven" in the way that healthy-minded faith has a tendency to do.  I have learned to embrace my faith this way, despite all the sharp pieces that don't completely make sense or fit together.

I know this post is getting extremely long and perhaps I haven't explained enough of the background for this to make sense to anyone else, but I’ve tried to include the main points that have been rattling around in my head and heart for days now.  I don't want to give the impression that being a sick-soul is a negative thing, because Beck argues the opposite and discusses several of its virtues; I simply haven't highlighted them here because I know that I often fall far, far short of those virtues.  I'm not trying to present myself as an example of an ideal sick soul, I'm merely attempting to explain how identifying with that faith lens has given me hope. Imperfect as I am, knowing the potential virtues of the sick soul gives me something to aspire to.

As I've been evaluating all that I've learned about the healthy mind and sick soul faith experiences, I've frequently gone back and re-read entire sections of the book.  I'm still trying to wrap my thoughts around the various aspects of both worldviews and I have been thinking a lot about what is truth in my faith.  There are multiple verses in the Bible that give examples of either the healthy-mind or the sick-soul, but I keep coming back to Micah 6:8, which could really apply to either: "The LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."

I may be a misfit in some religious circles and faith discussions. I may still be working all of this out in my head.  I may still wish at times I could be a healthy minded person because that would solve many of my struggles, but my mind doesn't work that way.  I may be a sick soul, but my faith is still real to me.  It may be a murky faith, even ugly and scary to some people, but I refuse to pretend it is anything else.  For me, my faith looks like caring about justice, it looks like loving mercy, and it looks like walking with God in the most humble way I can – as imperfectly as I may be managing any of those things right now. 

And my faith also looks like love – murky, flawed, imperfect, broken, stubborn love that perseveres despite all my doubts.





Note: I apologize that I have woefully oversimplified some of Richard Beck's very thorough analysis of religious experience and highly suggest that if you are interested at all in theology or psychology, you read his book. 

Baffled

For anyone who either grew up in the church or is familiar with the more often-told Bible stories, you probably know the story of the woman caught in adultery.  If you are not familiar, here is an excerpt from John 8:  

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her....” At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.
Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
“No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

I've seen this story come up multiple times in discussions over certain social issues around which there is much debate and disagreement.  When I read this story, two things stand out to me.  The first is, where the hell is the man?  Unless I'm misunderstanding something, it takes two people to commit an act of adultery.  Was he in the crowd with a rock in his hand?  What injustice that only this woman is facing death for a crime committed by two equal participants!

The second thing I see is how Jesus stands up for her, this scorned woman who is facing the judgment of the religious leaders of the day.  He not only saves her from a brutal death, but treats her with dignity.  What a scene that must have been and what confusion she must have experienced at this shocking change in her fate.  When I read this, I see a story of mercy, grace, and love, but also of justice -- the woman is treated equally with the man and does not receive solo punishment for the sin of two. Those are the things that stand out to me in this story

I've noticed, however, that what some people focus on in this story is that last line, “Go now and leave your life of sin.”  In the KJV translation, it reads, "Go, and sin no more."  To some, it seems, the main point of this story is that Jesus tells her to stop sinning.  Sure, the rest of the story is nice, but look!  Jesus made it clear that she had to lead a blameless life for the rest of her days!

It has always troubled me, this split in how the story is explained and how some seem to use it like a weapon against those they believe are sinning in a way that is less acceptable than their own sin.  I would always be baffled that the proverbial "moral of the story" could be so completely different to people who all seem to agree on the basic tenets of the Christian faith. 

I just finished reading a book by Richard Beck titled Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality that shed light for me on why there is such a difference in approach when this type of story is discussed.  I wish I had read this years ago.  I have re-read this section of the book (below) numerous times, and now that I've had time to consider it, it makes perfect sense.  For anyone who has spent a lot of time studying psychology, this may be old news.  For me, well, mind = blown.

Given that the experience of the divine is often regulated by disgust psychology, conversations about God, sin and holiness are often being torpedoed at some deep level. A dumbfounding is occurring. These dynamics make conversations about God inherently difficult because our experience of the divine is being regulated by emotion rather than logic, affect rather than theology. I think people in churches have always known this, and felt that people in conflict within the church were generally talking past each other....

Conservatives make appeals to the Purity/Sanctity foundation while liberals restrict their moral judgments to the foundations of Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity. This is simply another way of saying that liberals, weakly or strongly, reject appeals to a vertical, transcendent dimension... in favor of the horizontal dimension of human affairs.

Conservatives will contend that there are times when the sacred...should be privileged over the... call for justice or equity.... For liberals, the metaphysical (“the sacred”) isn’t a category worthy of consideration if real world harm and injustice are at stake.... (emphasis mine)

 I highly recommend reading Dr. Beck's book, as this excerpt really doesn't do justice to his thorough examination of the analysis he offers, but I hope you can see what he is getting at here and what his words illuminated for me.  When I read it, I immediately thought of the different responses to the adulterous woman story. Due to our life experiences and the way our minds work, some of us are thinking more of what is fair, caring, and just when we consider what is "right" and what is "wrong" or what we focus on in certain issues.  Due to the same factors, others are thinking more of what is righteous, pure, or acceptable when considering what is "right" or what is "wrong."

I know this insight doesn't actually change anything.  It doesn't make me more likely to think about the story of the adulterous woman in a different way or change my mind about other frequently debated issues.  I will still disagree with people over where I stand.  However, it does help me see that there will be times when I need to step back and appreciate that I'm arguing in a completely different right vs. wrong "language" than another person.  It doesn't make either of us bad people, it just means that our brains work so differently that we may never be able to agree on that subject.

This knowledge reminds me that there will be times when I need to determine if my relationship with a person is more important than trying to get them to see where I am coming from.  I may never truly grasp the point of view of someone whose mind works differently, but there may be ways to compensate for this difference.  We may never gain full comprehension, but maybe we can get to understanding in the sense of "a state of cooperative or mutually tolerant relations between people."  If we can find a way to relate to those on the other side of this divide, cooperation may be possible.  I have to believe that even if we never get there, it is a goal worth pursuing.

Is God a Christian? Am I?

“God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God.”
- Bishop John Shelby Spong

I hate that in my past I've limited God by acting as though he can only be experienced by everyone else in the world in the same way that I experience him.  In a way, it seems utterly absurd that anyone would think that, but when you believe for so long that the way you believe is the only way, it takes some doing to shift your paradigms.  The past several years have been quite a spiritual journey for me.  

Granted, it has been a long time since I have acted like I thought that my way was the only way, and even longer since I actually thought it.  The thing about being immersed in a culture from a young age (in my case, the conservative evangelical faith) is that when you start to doubt some of the fundamentals of it, it is difficult to simply make a clean break.  You know you don't believe what everyone around you believes, yet you aren't nearly as sure of what you believe INSTEAD as the others are of what you SHOULD believe.  Blurting out "I think that's poppycock!" in response to an assertion, when you have not yet built the framework for your new beliefs, will alienate you more than it will do anything else.

When you finally do get confident enough to make the break from your old beliefs, it can be difficult to do it gracefully.  When I finally did it, my transition was anything but graceful.  I posted my new thoughts and opinions daily on Facebook.  I got into discussions (read: arguments) with old friends.  I could barely hide my disdain for some of the old ideas and I'm sure that came across to my friends and family (who still held those ideas) as disdain for them. I offended people.  I think that because I felt my new point of view was so right for me, I wanted to help other people see that my old way wasn't the only way. 

I can understand why I felt that way, but I now realize that just as my beliefs are personal and stem from my experience, it is the same way for others.  I learned a lot about how scary it can be when someone starts questioning shared beliefs, because it is comfortable to be surrounded by like-minded people.  But no matter what our beliefs, we should not be scared of questions; We should be scared when everyone pretends they don't or shouldn't exist.  Through my questions I've determined there are so many things I don't know at all.

Here is a passage from a book I just finished reading.  This is where I am right now:

There are a lot of things I don’t know. I don’t know where evil came from or why God allows so much suffering in the world. I don’t know if there is such a thing as a “just war.” I don’t know how God will ultimately judge between good and evil. I don’t know which church tradition best represents truth. I don’t know the degree to which God is present in religious systems, or who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. I don’t know if hell is an eternal state or a temporary one or what it will be like.... I don’t know which Bible stories ought to be treated as historically accurate, scientifically provable accounts of facts and which stories are meant to be metaphorical. I don’t know if it really matters so long as those stories transform my life. I don’t know how to reconcile God’s sovereignty with man’s free will. I don’t know what to do with those Bible verses that seem to condone genocide and the oppression of women. I don’t know why I have so many questions, while other Christians don’t seem to have any....

I am learning to live the questions, to follow the teachings of a radical rabbi, to live in an upside-down kingdom in which kings are humbled and servants exalted, to look for God in the eyes of the orphan and the widow, the homeless and the imprisoned, the poor and the sick. My hope is that if I am patient, the questions themselves will dissolve into meaning, the answers won’t matter so much anymore, and perhaps it will all make sense to me on some distant, ordinary day.

(From:  Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions By Rachel Held Evans.  Buy it.  Read it.  Seriously.  Although it tells her own journey, she does a much better job of explaining the process than I am doing here on this blog.) 

What I'm learning is that, regardless of what some others may think, I haven't lost my faith.  I do experience God through faith in Christ -- not just because that is how I was raised, but because that is what I choose and what speaks to me.  Christianity is my "tradition," as the bishop said, but it is not my dogma.  I can see some of my ideas of God in other religious traditions.  I can see God in people who have no religion.  The way I experience God through Christianity may be very different from the way others do, and that is okay.  There are so many things about God that I freely admit I don't know or understand, and that is okay too.  We all make choices about what we believe, what pieces we have to keep in order to become better people and what we have to discard because it is an albatross to our faith.

Of all the ideas we can discard, I think the belief that we all have to experience God the same way should be the first to go.  God is a mystery and we do not own God.