Feathery Tendrils of Joy.
While my last five posts don’t lead directly to my present life, I find it impossible to write about the last four years with any clarity. Did I make it back to the arms of the church? Yes, I did. The various church relationships I’ve cultivated have led to happiness and broken hearts, discipleship and loss of faith. I’ve seen young kids ostracied for questioning their sexuality, I’ve seen parents blame the youth leaders for circumstances outside their control, I’ve witnessed as person after person applauded a sermon about “24/7 spirituality” only to leave the trappings of their faith at the door. But that’s not all I’ve seen- I’ve also seen churches rise en masse to help the needy, I’ve seen volunteers show up in such great numbers that they had to be turned away. I’ve seen lives changed because of the faithfulness of friends. I’ve seen pregnant teens struggle with the consequences of their choices, learn new maturity, find the Father’s love in the wake of their own broken hearts. I’ve seen loss of faith and faith regained, brokeness and beauty.
I’ve learned to feel joy in my faith again. Part of the reason it is so hard to write about is simply because joy is insidious. I believe that there are times where people change overnight. I have met people who can give incredible testimony of God coming into their lives and changing them so radically that their friends could no longer recognize them. But is that how it normally happens? No. We go through situation and situation, mountain and valley, drought and monsoon. Somewhere along the way the change happens- but oh so slowly. Just like aging, like the metamorphosis of a butterfly, like carving a statue out of stone.
Somewhere along the journey I felt the tendrils of joy creep back into my heart. Feathery and fine at first, but it grew and grew. Somewhere along the way I saw how I pictured myself changing. I started to feel more sure, more positive. I went from questioning my call to proclaiming it. And parts of what I was meant to do I simply stumbled into by chance- like the time I wrote an “open letter to the church on homosexuality” on my blog, which earned me a never before seen sixty comments.
Somehow I ended up here, writing this to you. I’m not entirely sure how or even why- I’ve guarded my own story closely on this blog. Yet one day I felt a nudging, the kind of nudge I’ve learned not to ignore. So I gave away my secret faith.
I hope it helps you.
How SLC Punk made me go to church.
My call back to the church came through an interesting fulcrum: the movie SLC Punk.
I’d been reading my Bible. I’d been finding comfort in music, in art, in writing. I’d been feeling stronger and stronger day by day. But it was SLC Punk that made me want to leave the valley of my discontent for good. For those who don’t know the story, SLC Punk is about a group of anarchists who are looking for, um, something. The main character is the son of a banker (or lawyer, or some kind of glorified white collar grunt) who drives a nice car and eats at fancy restaurants and is adamant that he didn’t “sell out” but instead “bought in” to a bigger dream. At the end of the movie you see the main character walking down the street in a fancy suit, saying that it’s easier to dismantle the machine from the inside. I’d watched the movie several times before and never been as struck by that imagery as I was on one balmy summer night. I was laying on the couch fanning myself to stay cool, hating the heat and humidity and pretty much everything about life. I heard that line, and something inside my head clicked. It was like a cool breeze suddenly blew through the window. Everything was more bearable.
I’d been content, until that point, to stick to my group of likeminded friends and complain. We’d all had similar scars and experiences, we all fed into each other’s dissatisfaction and bitterness. We talked about wanting to fight the powers, but we never fought anything. We never affected anything. I’m not saying that there wasn’t tremendous value in what we did for each other: we needed each other. We were a balm for each other. Our unity helped us to heal. But as long as we stayed content to lick each other’s wounds, we’d never help anyone else. If I wanted to see the empire change, I’d have to put on my fancy suit and get inside it.
If I wanted a relevant youth ministry, I had to minister. If I wanted a worship song without ad-lib lyrics, I’d have to write it. If I wanted a sermon from a different part of the Bible I’d have to preach it. If I wanted traditional leadership to be challenged, I’d have to sound the alarm. And that wasn’t going to happen as long as I was laying on my couch watching Fight Club every Sunday morning instead of biting the bullet and reinserting myself into the Christian lifestyle.
(To be continued…)
My Crisis of Christianity
I spent a long time angry at God because I was angry with other Christians. I couldn’t understand how, if they spoke to God as they seemed to, and heard from God as they claimed to, they couldn’t understand God’s heart for other people. How could God let Christians get away with the kind of cruelty they espoused towards others? Towards me, my friends, strangers whose stories I’d heard? Christianity seemed, to me, to be a big farce. A way of slapping an “I’m okay” sticker on people’s most virulent behaviors. It was okay to gossip in the name of God, judge in the name of God, castigate in the name of God. It was okay to torment people as long as you were doing it to save them!
There had been a time that I had embraced the Evangelical lifestyle. Handing out “Jesus Pamphlets” at the park, demanding that my friends recognize and leave their sins, burning all my non-Christian music and trying to read the right things. The thing was, it made me miserable. I had gone from a suicidal depression into a grudging last-resort relationship from God. And that depression had deeply colored the way I viewed God. I had seen God as wanting my life, but wanting it because he was the possessive Jealous God of the Old Testament. I didn’t truly understand God’s love for me. And the Christian lifestyle I’d adopted seemed to reinforce the idea that God didn’t particularly care for me. Living without all of the things I loved- my fantasy novels, my music, my pride, my inert sense of what was and wasn’t appropriate behavior at the park… These things all were impossible for me to deal with.
I took to forcing myself to live with Christianity with the same kind of zeal I attacked everything in my life. I viewed my distaste for the lifestyle I was living as a challenge, a test of faith. Sarcastically saying “Jesus is my boyfriend” as a way to justify my inability to have a relationship with the opposite sex was supposed to fulfil me. I didn’t confront the fact that I ran away from relationships because I was terrified- I justified it with my faith. Burning all of my old music and devoting myself to only pursuing what was “good and holy” was supposed to reinforce my devotion to God. So burn the fact that it was leaving me bored, that all I had to listen to was what I saw as falsely cheerful tripe. It was supposed to fulfill me, so it would. I would “fake it till I made it” if it killed me.
And by the time I hit my late teens, it was certainly killing me. I was back to listening to the music I liked. So DMX and Staind and Nirvana weren’t on the approved list? Oh well. I was back to wearing the clothes I liked. So tight tops and black lace skirts and leather knee high boots and pink hair weren’t a good Christian look? (Not to mention the huge tattoo on my lower back…) Oh well. So being depressed and angry at God and thinking “Jesus will never fill this emotional hole in my gut” wasn’t the right attitude towards God? Screw it. So refusing to Evangelize and telling the people I was hanging out with that I didn’t care how they felt about Jesus, that was their business, is shirking my Christian duty? By the time I started wrestling with that one, my attitude was to reply, “F*** IT. I want to be able to be friends with my friends, get out of my faith. I don’t want to talk about it!”
And for several years, I confused the above with having a crisis of Faith. But, in the end, it wasn’t really a crisis of faith I was having. It was a crisis of Christianity. There is a famous Buddha quote that reads: “Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings — that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.” That quote affected me profoundly. So many of the tenats of faith I’d been raised with simply went contrary to my internal compass. And who gave me that compass? Who gave me my conscience? Would God have created me to react so adversely to Christianity if he wanted me to be a Christian? What in the world was going on here?
Then I realized something else. The Bible has this to say: (Romans 2:14-15)- Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. This verse has been used, for some time, to demonstrate that God guides man’s law by guiding his heart. That written inside of each one of us is a code that can guide us to God’s heart for our lives. And I, by trying to be what other people percieved as a Good Christian, was denying that code. I was denying who God made me to be by trying to be who other people wanted me to be.
What I needed to do was seek after God’s heart for me, to leave behind the trappings of the Lindsey of Old and just try to be the best disciple I could. But not a disciple of the church- a disciple of God himself, of Jesus.
(to be continued…)
Jesus and Me plus nothingness makes three.
By the time I turned nineteen, I didn’t discuss my spiritual life with anyone. I was fairly certain my family wouldn’t understand, and I didn’t have many friends that I felt comfortable being honest with. Just a few years ago I was the one leading the prayer groups, I was the one leading the Bible lessons, I was the one answering other people’s questions. A spiritual crisis seemed like the kind of luxury I couldn’t afford. The friends who did know that I’d given up on church mostly commiserated. We were a rag-tag group of kids who had often had our faith questioned because of our appearance, or our choice in music, or the friends outside the church walls we chose to keep. But I didn’t really even talk to those friends about what I was doing to keep myself going. Studying Buddhism? Taoism? Wicca? I was the one who may as well have had “Jesus is my boyfriend” tattooed on my forehead for most of my life.
I wasn’t sure that anyone could understand what I was going through. I didn’t even understand.
I would practice yoga. Not just the exercises, as was quickly becoming fashionable, but the spiritual lifestyle as well. Focused thought, strength of center, guiding your bodies internal energies. It made sense to me. It seemed to be working. Day by day I wasn becoming less scattered and panicky, more in control not just of my body but of my emotions as well. I would meditate on nothingness. This was an interesting practice, as my brain is hyperactive, and clearing myself of all conscious thought has always been nigh on impossible. But I would light a candle and focus on the light inside the light. I would sit, for hours, trying to empty myself. It was my time alone, my secret. I really didn’t even talk about it with my husband.
And slowly, over the course of years, I learned to be quiet. To listen.
In the meantime, I worked on my relationship with God. I wanted to trust him, I wanted to trust Jesus, I wanted to walk into a church on a Sunday morning and not feel horribly out of place. Yet the times we did go to church I still felt like a charlatain. I didn’t like other Christians, and it bothered me.
In the quiet of the morning when there was no one in my world but myself, I would become empty. I would become the flame within the flame, pure potential. In this place of silence I would feel something that I had never before felt so keenly: Love. Love in its purest and simplest form. Love that exists for no other reason than itself. Love, which like God, proudly proclaims “I am that I am.” End of question.
I became absolutely sure of three things: God is love, Jesus is the embodiment of that love, and those who live in that love serve God.
Yet I couldn’t seem to conquer the pain that was eating me alive. I couldn’t find the words to express it, but I felt betrayed. Broken. Misused. I had given God my life out of bitterness and despair, and up until that point my relationship with him had been defined by that. I felt no joy- I felt hope, but no joy.
(to be continued)
How Buddhism led me back to God.
When I was in my late teens, heading into adulthood, I was unsure of myself. I wasn’t sure about my spirituality, or how I felt about my family, or what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn’t even entirely sure that I was sane. I went through a period of intense questioning. My biggest questions were about God. Who was God? Was God really even there? If God was there, was he a good and loving God or some cranky guy in the clouds with a big stick and a score to settle?
What was the real point of Christianity? If someone asked me my opinion of church, I wouldn’t equivocate. I would smirk and say that it was a load of crap, that I had other things to do. Church made me feel guilty and dirty and even more unsure than I already was. I saw people getting joy from it and I hated them, I hated myself for not feeling what they were feeling. The only thing I did know with any certainty was that the status quo wasn’t working.
So I gave up. I stopped going to church. I stopped reading my Bible. I stopped doing everything. I started buying books about the Dalai Lama and Taoism. I read about Wicca and elemental spirituality. I buried myself in hope- hope that even if everything I grew up believing was wrong, that there was still some essence of goodness in the world, that there was still something I could connect myself to, to give myself purpose. Here’s the thing: I never questioned if there was some higher force or higher power. I was sure of it. And even at my worst, I still believed in a kind of god. That god just wasn’t the God of Christianity. Or, at least, that’s what I thought.
Because my God was a loving God. He was compassionate and tender. He didn’t want for people to suffer, or be judged, or be tossed aside. Yet the way I saw God’s name being used seemed to say something different. People used God to set themselves apart, to judge others, to justify their bigotry. And I couldn’t let myself believe in the same God they did.
I found a lot of the elements of the God I sought after in Eastern Spirituality. Here were systems of belief based off of truth and observation. They talked about a natural order, an observable rightness, aligning one’s self with the right patterns in order to be whole. They talked about how man kills himself with anger, judgment and bitterness. How pain is not your enemy, but a way to find truth. They talked about how the greatest good comes from sacrifice. And as I read these words, I found myself thinking, “isn’t this Jesus?”
Jesus spoke in the same sort of parables as the Dali Lama. He spoke observational truth. His words rang true because one could watch the world around themselves and see the evidence. He cautioned against anger, bitterness, judgment, and idleness. His death itself proves that there is no power greater than sacrifice. And certainly he didn’t view pain as the enemy if he was called the “man of many sorrows.”
I had an epiphany. No matter my contentions with the church, everything brought me back to Jesus. And I felt sure that I could embrace all that I loved the most about Buddhism and Taoism while still following God: mastery of one’s will, one’s body, one’s emotions, self-sacrifice… these are concepts that are very at home in Christianity.
(To be continued…)
There are no blue birds.
To introduce the need for critical thinking and the scientific method, my Psychology professor stood up and proudly proclaimed that there are no blue birds. Of course this was answered by the laughter of the classroom. But my Professor smiled with grim determination and reiterated his point, asking if anyone could prove that blue birds exist. Show him a picture of a blue bird? Clearly it was doctored. Explain to him about the millions of eye witness accounts of blue birds? He equates it to mass hysteria, much like leads to belief in the existence of the Abominable Snowman or like creatures. Ask him to go outside and see the blue birds in the flower garden? He simply states that such an action would be pointless, as surely the birds are not truly blue- for there are no blue birds.
Once the class started to get really irritated with him, he launched into a long speech on how science is not about explaining what you percieve to be true, but studying all available facts and seeing if you can be disproven. Proving that there are no blue birds requires searching for evidence of their existence- evidence that is overwhelming- thus immediately disarming you of the need to prove you are right. Clearly, you are wrong. And while my professor’s example was a ridiculous one, meant to grab our attention and not chosen for it’s applicability, the concept holds water.
And I find that as childish as my professor’s argument was (clearly!) that truly intelligent people show the same niaveness and ignorance of their facts in their own arguments. Often. A few examples:
- There is no God. Christians suffer from mass hysteria. Any anecdotal evidence to the contrary is coincidental, baked, or insignificant.
- All gay people were sexually abused or otherwise traumatized. Any that don’t remember abuse are hiding from the truth. Others who don’t remember abuse and aren’t deluding themselves are only gay to be fashionable, or out of rebellion, or because they are weak willed and were forced into it.
- All gay people had parents who were distant or ineffective or not devoted enough to God. Any who claim otherwise were probably abused or something.
- If a woman works outside of the home it will cause irreparable damage to her children.
- A child has to have a father figure to be well adjusted. For that reason, a woman has to remain married to the father of her children, no matter how he treats her, as long as said father is not abusing the children.
- Gay people are not capable of raising well adjusted children.
And I could list this stuff forever, really I could. There’s no limit to the amount of false, indefensible assumptions that people make. And most of them carry some grain of truth, just enough truth that a person can grip onto them like a pit-bull and never ever let go. Some of what people argue as evidence of God in their life surely is anecdotal coincidence. Certainly some gay people were abused, or had poor parents, or were just “trying it on” and grew out of it- but the existence of those stereotypes doesn’t mean that there aren’t real, valid experiences that fall outside of those boundaries. And while some children may have suffered being raised by single parents, there are other children that may have suffered more due to a parent staying in a relationship to avoid the possible damage caused by leaving.
All one must do is open onesself to the possibility of being wrong, and one discovers a whole new world. A new breadth of experience and possibility. A world in which one is challenged, one fights to know the truth. And sometimes we discover that we are right, that when we engage in an honest debate all the challenges to our ideals are silenced. Sometimes we discover that we are wrong- and isn’t that okay?
Tomorrow I’ll write more about my own journey of questioning my faith, but for tonight I’d like to leave you all with a question:
Can you intelligently defend your beliefs? Or if someone holds up the metaphorical blue bird, do you stubbornly say “surely that bird isn’t blue.”?
Avoiding Hell looks like Hell on Earth.
What is more important: that people experience God’s love, or that they leave behind their old ways?
In my opinion, that’s actually a false question. I think that people cannot leave behind their old ways without experiencing God’s love, and if they truly experience the love of the Father they will gladly follow him- thus leaving their old ways behind them. I’m deeply disturbed by evangelism that focuses on Hell and punishment as a way to guide people away from sin, and not God’s love. I’m even more deeply disturbed by the impression that the prevalence of such language gives people who do not truly understand Christianity.
People hear that the point isn’t about living a full and happy life: it’s about avoiding punishment.
People hear that the reason to follow God isn’t because one loves Him, but because one is afraid to do otherwise.
People hear that Christians are afraid- afraid of sin, afraid of the consequences of sin, afraid of people who sin.
People hear that there is a fear of temptation, and thus a need to be cloistered.
People hear all of these things, and what is the logical conclusion? That faith is a prison. One lives behind the steel bars of Righteousness, wearing the garish red of Christ’s blood, unable to walk outside the walls of Christian living. That anything other than the routines of faith, the words of faith, the actions of faith means certain doom. People see this prison-faith and they think that Christians are the ones who need saving- that fear is used to subjugate and dig in the checkbook, that the pastors of megachurches grow fat and rich off of the fear of their congregants.
No wonder Christianity is “despised” by contemporary media- if one looks at history, fear and mass hysteria has led to some pretty awful things. But is Christianity really as bad as it may appear? Certainly in some cases it is- I’ve been to churches that felt like a prison, churches where even talking about the latest book or movie was frowned on as “idle chatter”. But is that what faith is really meant to be? What God wishes for us?
I don’t believe it for even a second. I think of God and think of joy and life, happiness, bliss, the reward of leaving sin behind isn’t avoiding hell: it is felt every day in my life right now. It is about strength and sureness, it’s about the peace that comes from knowing why you are here and what you are meant to be. It’s about the security of knowing that you are loved and cherished, that you are wanted. That you are needed. It’s about walking side by side with brothers and sisters who care about you, who would sacrifice for your sake and you for theirs. It’s about living a life of giving, about seeing the world around you become a better place. Now read this paragraph again, and then picture what people who have never experienced genuine Christianity think of it.
Evangelism: we’re doing it wrong.
Don’t mock my brother. (That’s my job!)
Here is something I find interesting: when a non-Christian mocks any Christian, other Christians (even if they do not share the view being mocked) will take this as an affront to the religion as a whole and they will stoke their righteous fires. But Christians feel free to mock other Christians without viewing this as an affront to Jesus (so long as they are mocking another Christian who doesn’t share their views).
Examples? Mainstream Christians joking about the Amish. Or joking about tree-hugging hippy-dippy Christians that “compost for Christ” har har har. Or liberal Christians joking about conservative ones. Or the constant infighting between Republicans and Democrats, who all too often seem to lose all respect for the FAITH of their counterparts just because they don’t share political views. Or any time people joke callously about a particular theology, completely oblivious to the fact that someone in the room with them may still share it. A good example of this is women who will mock the concept of being submissive to their husband- how hurtful is it for another woman who still holds that belief as sacred to hear herself being categorized as a lobotomized extension of her husband’s will?
How odd is it that if a non-Christian were to say “hey, hippy, are you sure you’re high on God and not the special cookies?” all Christians in the proximity would call to arms, but when a fellow Christian does it, it is iron sharpening iron?
I think it’s the same mentality that allows a big brother to mock his sister, but punch another guy in the face if said guy does the same.
Or, more accurately, situational hypocrisy.
Something to think about. I think we all do this- not just Christians, but any time there’s a bubble culture it takes on that kind of tone. A “we can rib our own but you stay OUT” tone.
Humanity is so fascinating.
Splenda is Perverse: my thoughts on the “Natural Order” of things.
Recently I saw a remark that (paraphrased) said, “you never know what man’s perversion of the natural could lead to.”
I was sorely tempted to reply, “Splenda?”
But I held my tongue. Of course, the original comment was in reply to the “normalization” of “aberrant sexuality”, the kind of language I always feel is used in too broad of strokes. There are still sects of Christianity that feel that any sex that isn’t intended to produce progeny is aberrant, so how do we define what is or isn’t good? (A conversation for another day. Bear with me.) But in any case, to say that “aberrant sexuality” is man “perverting the natural order” also seems to me to be a bit ridiculous. It’s defining what is natural, here on Earth, in relation to God’s intent.
Are we really very sure that we know what God wants our planet to be like?
Does God want us to have microwaves?
Does God want us to have cell phones?
Drive cars?
Drink things sweetened with Splenda?
Does he want us to cage animals in zoos?
Feed dogs prepared meals from tin cans?
Wear polyester?
Live in cities?
Watch television?
Buy food that comes in cardboard containers?
Wear makeup?
Dye our hair?
You may think that I’m being sarcastic, so let me assure you that I am not. Humanity has given shape to the world we now live in. This is not my Father’s world. From the cement skyscrapers blocking our view of the night sky to the McDonald’s wrapper tangled in the bushes in my backyard, this is not my Father’s world. This is our world, and the imprint of humanity “perverting the natural order” is all over the freaking place. I’m telling you, Splenda is perverse. Sugar ought to be sugar, dogs ought to be treated like dogs, people ought to know how to put seeds in the ground and get food from them. To think that our daily lives align with the natural order is truly laughable, unless one truly believes that humanity (given it’s dominion) ought to be able to define what the natural order is.
In which case, why can’t two men decide that there are enough procreators out there, and they can love whom they will?
Again, I am not joking around here. You will rarely read me being more serious than this. If your argument is against perverting nature, take off that polyester shirt when you’re making it.
Okay, maybe not.
My point remains. Humanity, (or at least Western humanity) is removed from nature. Our perception of the natural order is perverted. We really shouldn’t be making that argument unless we’re ready to give up an awful lot of comfort.
Discuss below.
Christians shouldn’t be afraid of Gay Pride.
So yesterday my online world is all a-Twitter with news that Obama has officially named June LGBT Pride month. I heard this news almost entirely from other Christians who were concerned about what this news means for them and their families. I saw things like, “I’m disturbed,” and “Obama is pandering to the left again”, and “it’s a sad day for traditional families.” Even though I’m a heterosexual wife and mother, solidly in the world of mainstream Christianity and living an oh-so-traditional family life, I still find reactions like those of my contemporaries disturbing.
I wanted very badly to respond to all of the comments I was reading as fully as possible, but Twitter’s 140 character limit was painfully constrictive.
So today I write a blog post, and I hope it reaches the right eyes.
Should Christians be disturbed by the Gay Rights and Pride movement? Should we reject our American President if he affirms it?
No.
My reasons?
- Assuming that God “does not intend for anyone to be Gay”, the argument that God is offended by living a gay life only holds water for those who wish to please God. America isn’t made entirely of Christians, and those who disagree with the tenants of our beliefs should still be protected by societal laws while they lead the lives they wish for themselves.
- A gay person being protected while living their life with their partner and family does not impugn on my right to live my traditional life with my “traditional” family.
- No matter what one’s reason, when you have a negative emotional reaction to a gay person being happy and proud of their life, what they read into that is that you don’t want them to be happy. When we, as Christians, say we are “disturbed by”; “upset at”; or “disgusted with” our President showing fidelity to his gay constituency the message the world gets is that we Do Not Like The Gays. This is killing our ability to show them God’s love. I cannot be okay with that.
- No matter how legitimate one’s complaint may be, when one makes a public declaration as a Christian, one must consider the affect that declaration will have on perceptions of Christ and God. Our first duty as Christians is NOT to eradicate sin or make sinning more difficult, but to demonstrate God’s love. We should be showing the value of true discipleship, the fruit of good lives, the happiness and transcendent joy that comes from knowing that Jesus calls us friends. Showing disgust with sin as a primary reaction negates, in the eyes of those who hear it, our greater message. It says, to put it plainly, “you’re not good enough for me.” Is that really the message God would have us get across?
- When making a public declaration our concern must not only be with what we want to say but with how it is heard. You may want to say you’re disappointed, but if what people HEAR is “I hate Gays”, perhaps you should share your disappointment privately and say, “I don’t hate gays” instead.
Christianity looks really selfish at times like these. We look as we need to be protected from sin and we’re offended that more people aren’t thinking about OUR needs, instead of the needs of our gay neighbors. If we are truly Christian, then we know that Jesus is our strength and our shield. We don’t need to be afraid. Our fearful reaction to gay pride shows a lack of faith.
And that is what I wanted to say.
