they walked away: reflections on what Church means in a broken world

[This is my life.   Not in any specific, accusatory sort of way, but in a general, truth-for-me sort of way.  This is my life, as honestly as I can put it.  No, I don't know how I feel about my life.  I have not come to grips wholly with my questions.  But I'm coming to the conclusion that healing may very well be found in honesty.  So here it is, as true as is possible.]

They walked away.
They walked away because there was no room for their confusion in your monopoly on truth.
They walked away because you blindly accept what they cannot.
They walked away because in their heart of hearts to follow Jesus means to leave.
They walked away because they felt entirely alone in a crowd, misunderstood and marginalized.
They walked away to preserve their intellectual honesty.

They stayed.
They stayed because, despite all of the reservations, this is Christ's body.
They stayed because they love you and need you.
They stayed because they hope and pray that some day your eyes will be opened.
They stayed because He said it wouldn't be easy.
They stayed because they feel compelled to be a light for the doubters and the skeptics - a beacon on the darkest of nights.

They walked away.
They stayed.

They stayed because they are too afraid to walk away.
They walked away because they are too afraid to stay.

During your altar calls, in the midst of your "do you know Jesus?"s, all they can think is "I believe, help my unbelief."  All they can think is "Do I truly know what it is to follow?"  All they can think is, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."
During your political rants, all they can think is "God have mercy on her, the broken woman who saw no alternative.  God have mercy on him, the boy who loves another boy and lost his church as a result.  God have mercy on her, the woman with no hope but welfare."
During your sermon's five points, during your carefully structured bible study, all they can think is "Am I the only one who finds the Bible so much more wild and beautiful than all of this categorization?"  All they can think is, "God have mercy, reveal to me who You are."
During your angry-at-the-heretics times they look awkwardly at the floor, knowing you're talking about them.  During your self-righteous times, they pray "God have mercy on me, a sinner."

And through it all, they stay.  They stay because through you they see Christ.  In your brokenness He shines through.

He is bright.
He is beautiful.
He holds us together.
He makes us one.

scenes from a childhood: midnight

I'll never forget the morning Midnight died.  I went to school late that morning.  In many ways this fall morning was not unique.  Many mornings just like this came before, many would come after.  My dad woke me up bright and early and we herded the fattened lambs into the back of his old farm truck.  After a long struggle, we managed to wrangle them in and slam shut the door.

Lambs to the slaughter.

The story, of course, began months before: I had begun helping my dad every morning with the chores.  I would wake up an hour earlier than usual to feed bottle lambs, throw chunks of hay and fill buckets of water.  I loved being my dad's "little helper."

And one day, a lamb was born whose mother died.  This happened frequently, but I loved this lamb more than most.  This lamb was also one of the "good" lambs; it was all black with only one small spot of white on its forehead.  I always liked the black lambs most of all.  I fell in love.  My dad, likely wanting to teach me some responsibility, gave me the lamb as my own.  It wouldn't be my last sheep, but as my first, I loved it the most of all.  I named him Midnight.

There was, of course, a problem.  Midnight was a boy lamb.  Boy lambs have little utility on a sheep farm.  Boy lambs don't have babies, and they can't be saved for breeding purposes lest the herd become a scene straight out of rural Arkansas (Happy Birthday, Uncle Dad).  So boy lambs are castrated when they're about a month old and then sold once they reach a certain weight.

Not just sold.  Slaughtered.  After all, that lamb you buy at the grocery store has to come from somewhere.

I never ate lamb growing up.

I knew from the beginning that Midnight wasn't mine to keep.  I knew from the beginning that he'd be my best friend only for the summer, and as summer's heat moved into fall's crispy coolness, Midnight would be my paycheck.

We had a glorious summer, though.  Being raised as a bottle lamb, Midnight was more tame than the rest of the lambs.  He followed me everywhere, even after he stopped drinking from the bottle.  We'd go "bale-jumping."  For you city slickers, this entailed climbing up onto 5-foot tall "round bales" of hay which were stacked in rows.  Once on one bale, we'd jump from row to row.  There would usually be at least 3 or 4 feet of space between rows, so jumping included a certain degree of risk.

Midnight was fearless.  Where I jumped, he jumped.

How I loved him.

Strangely enough, I don't remember dreading the morning we sold him.  I don't remember shedding any tears.  I don't even remember missing him afterward.  All I remember is posing with Midnight for a couple pictures the morning we had him killed.  We stood outside the house, me holding his ears up so he would look strange.  I remember walking through the bowels of the stockyards with him and the other lambs, making sure they all followed the correct path.  I remember leaving him and the others in a pen somewhere and walking away.  I remember being excited about the $85 I made.

This was the way of things.

I had so many kittens growing up.  Most died in horrific ways.  Run over by cars on the road.  Ring-worm infested, prolapses, starved to death.  This was the way of things.

On a farm, life moves to a different rhythm.  On a farm, life is about death.  Life is about practicality and about necessity.  Life is about money and profitability.  There wasn't room in my life for sentimentality and softness.

As the oldest of three daughters, I think I became the son my father never had.  I don't necessarily think he expected me to play that role.  I took it on myself.  I don't know why.  Maybe I was uniquely suited for the harsh reality of life and death on a farm.

Eventually, I left it all behind.  By high school, I wanted nothing to do with the sheep.  I went on to college, became a history major.  I moved to a city, I experienced the unsettling juxtaposition that was so often presented by conversations with my dad about life on the farm.  I remember standing in my kitchen in Bellingham listening to my dad tell me about a c-section he performed on a sheep, and I remember wondering how it was possible to be living such a different life from my origins.

And yet, my growing-up years on a farm molded me into the person I am today.

My upbringing affords me the ability to detach myself emotionally from death and suffering.  I can appreciate intellectually that people might be upset, but myself am unmoved.

My upbringing leaves me relatively "fearless."  Spiders?  Bring 'em on.  Snakes?  No biggie.  The dark?  Hahahahahahaha, I live for the dark.  I grew up playing games in the dark.  Small spaces?  All the better to hide in during hide and seek.  Blood?  Saw plenty of that.

I do wish, though, that I could feel things like other people do.  I wish that suffering moved me, if only because it might spur me to action.  When someone's hurting, my default reaction is often "get over it."  That's not okay.

If I could go back, I would allow myself to cry over Midnight's loss.  I would at least ask my dad if we could keep him, even if all he did was eat our hay and corn and get fat for the rest of his life.  If I could go back, I would allow the death that accompanies life on a farm to penetrate my defenses.  I would allow it to hurt a bit, if only as a reminder that sometimes life is about more than just practicality.

what "Gospel" means to me

Tonight, quite frankly, I'm struggling.  Tonight my insecurities and fears and doubts are dragging me under and it's a bitter struggle to put a smile on my face.  Tonight I have no answers and life seems dark and lonely.

I sat through small group tonight drowning in an ocean of sadness.  On the drive home, a dear friend did her very best to speak hope into my heart, and in many ways it was to no avail.  The darkness weighs on my heart; my stomach is tied in knots and joy is absent.  Tonight I know only distance and doubt, fear and anger, loneliness and desperation.

A few days ago I posted a sermon on my Facebook timeline, describing it as "Gospel."  I had someone ask me tonight what I meant by that.  That question started me thinking; what does "Gospel" mean to me?

If you'd asked me five years ago, or even a year ago what "the Gospel" means, I would have told you that it means that Jesus came to die for our sins and offer us a life with Him.  I still believe that.  But I'm coming to the realization that the Gospel is so much more than a story we tell about something Jesus did on a cross 2000 years ago.  The Gospel's implications are so much wider reaching than that, so much more powerful.

And so tonight, in the midst of despair, I cling to the Gospel, the Good News.

Gospel is relentless belief in Good regardless of the darkness that invades my heart on a daily basis.
Gospel is hope for a future with the Creator of the Universe in spite of my brokenness.
Gospel is the audacious claim to holiness when none is intrinsic.
Gospel is an invitation to dream.
Gospel is restoration.
Gospel is sacrifice, giving one's whole life in pursuit of a seemingly ridiculous ideal: the Kingdom of God come to earth.
Gospel is the Holy Spirit breathing life into my dying lungs.
Gospel is the body of Christ in the form of my brothers and sisters, loving because He first loved us.
Gospel is hope in the midst of despair, beauty in brokenness.

I don't know how to follow Jesus.  I fail at that on a daily basis.  I want to live out Gospel in the lives of those around me, though.  I want to breathe hope into a sick and dying world, a world that needs so desperately the  news that Jesus isn't done with us.  That he's coming back to bring restoration and new life.  I want to bring the love of Jesus to a world that needs it so desperately.  I want Him to transform me that I might go and transform my world.

God, take my life; may I live to make known the Good News.

when every last one of us had it wrong and it cost us everything

A few minutes ago, I stumbled across this, one young woman's statement of solidarity with gay marriage.  I read it and could relate to so much of it, most of all the sense of disillusionment with the Church, with the Church's failure to love as Christ has commanded.  I have felt much the same as this girl so many times, and she expressed it so beautifully, putting into words the tide that has overtaken "our generation."  

I see things a bit differently, though.  I have wrestled both openly and quietly with this issue, going back and forth.  The battle has been intense, as I wade through what the Bible does and does not say and try to sort out how I'm going to approach Scripture and its teachings.  I don't know that there was ever a clear moment when I came to any clear decision on the matter.  I still haven't, really.

But as I read this girl's blog post tonight, it occurred to me that the heart-breaking truth of the matter may very well be that every last one of us had it wrong, and it has cost us everything.

I listened to a sermon on John 8:1-11 the other day, and the words of Jesus in verse 11 have haunted me ever since.  "Then neither do I condemn you.  Go now and leave your life of sin."  There is so much in those words.  Forgiveness.  Acceptance.  Reconciliation.  Restoration.  Peace.  Love.  And yet, a challenge.  Leave your life of sin.  

My friends, if homosexuality is indeed a sin, this does not mean that the church has handled this matter in a manner reflective of Jesus' ministry here on earth.  Then neither do I condemn you.  

In our hatred, in our fear, in our politicization, in our militancy, we have condemned the "sinners" among us.  We have said "leave your life of sin" with no thought of the condemnation in which we take part.  We have neglected to love sacrificially, making Jesus into a bumper sticker, a t-shirt, and a picket sign.  We have reduced Jesus to a check box on a ballot.  "If I vote against homosexual marriage," we thought, "I will be serving Jesus."  

False.

We weren't serving Jesus at all.  We were condemning.  We were throwing stones.  We forgot about the restoration of forgiveness and love.  

Every last one of us had it wrong, and it cost us everything.

It didn't cost us the "sanctity of marriage."  It didn't cost us seats in Congress.  It didn't cost us our "Christian nation."  

It cost us our very souls.

Now we fight over what Paul really meant when he condemned homosexuality instead of recognizing the heart behind his words.  Now we fear for the future of our rights rather than fighting for the rights of the least among us.  We have forgotten that when Jesus healed people or even just when he had conversations with them, he loved them without reservation, and through that love invited them to follow Him from sin into holiness.

God have mercy.

on intolerance

There are some things I'm allowing myself to remain silent on for the time being while I process through my views.  There are some things I don't know right from wrong. I'm naturally very non-confrontational.  I hate arguments, I hate disappointing people.  I hate not agreeing.

Then there is racism.  On racism, I know.  On this I will not have tolerance.  After coming to the sad realization that sometimes, just sometimes the racism among us is not just benign ignorance or playful ribbing, I can no longer remain silent.  

The things we say matter.  The things we laugh at matter.  It matters because left unchecked, hatred turns into murder.  Jesus wasn't kidding when he called hatred the equivalent of murder.  

Once upon a time, a country allowed itself to be swept away with fear and hatred of a group of people perceived to have brought ruin on the entire country.  Once upon a time, that country stood by while six million people were killed in a horrific manner.  Once upon a time, we promised ourselves we would never let this happen again.  Once upon a time we made Hitler out to be someone entirely removed from us.

A monster.

And yet, I find my brothers and sisters buying into the lie that it's even remotely okay to hate Obama for his skin color.  I find my brothers and sisters blinded to the fact that they even hate him because of his skin color when it is quite clear that they do.  I find my brothers and sisters buying into the us-versus-them mentality, the mentality that has the historic potential to end in violence.  In genocide.

And even if it never comes to that?

It means that we hate.

And Jesus says to hate is to kill.

To hate is to close our hearts to the Spirit.  To allow fear to drive out love.  To hate is to deny the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross for people like Obama, for the people we so easily fear and hate.  

The next time someone says something that categorizes people based on their skin color, I pray I will have the courage to approach it with no tolerance.  With love, yes.  But with no tolerance.  Because, quite frankly, it's not okay.  

No more.

the courage of honest inquiry

I am quickly finding that it takes immense amounts of courage to truly study a topic.  It's not hard to gather evidence to support an idea.  What is almost impossibly demanding is to pick a topic in which I have large amounts of vested interest, and then give up bias.  To demand myself to consider all the evidence, even those I secretly consider crazy, this is difficult.

I am going to study as many sides of 1 Timothy 2 as possible.

Am I scared?  Yes.

Am I hoping I'll come to one particular answer?  Yes.

But I must be honest in my inquiry.  I know I'll never be able to entirely cast aside bias, but I'm going to make a concerted effort to do so as much as possible.

I'm trusting God is big enough for my questions, even when I try putting Him in a box and limiting Him in every way possible.

God, my life is Yours.  My heart, my soul, my mind, and my strength; it's all Yours.

dear brothers, sincerely me

Life is a crazy ride.  To blog about it makes it even crazier in some ways - my failures of thought, my confusion and questions are public.  It took me years of passive aggressive blogging to come to terms with the fact that it could be okay to have opinions that turn out to be wrong.  And I'm still struggling with it.  Tonight I present to you the temporary result of years of questions and doubting and hurt.  Tonight I present to you an opinion in progress, just as I myself am a work in progress.  What I present to you is not something I arrived at easily.  But, nonetheless, here it is:

I remember the first time I ran across a different reading of the Pauline texts about women in the first century church than the one with which I grew up.  I remember the horror I felt, the judgment I passed.  I remember pouring over the texts again and again, trying to figure out how these crazy liberals could have so completely mangled the Bible.

And yet, it was the opposite, too.  You see, I've always sort of wrestled with what the Bible says about women.  Always thought the part about women wearing head coverings odd, even if earlier versions of myself were mostly concerned because my church didn't require me to cover my head while praying even though the Bible pretty obviously commands it.  I grew up being taught from all angles to read the Bible as an instruction manual.

And, you know, life happened.  More specifically, college happened.  I decided one fateful day to be a history major.  Things began to shift almost immediately as I was taught to think like a historian.  Doubts flooded in.  I wrestled for years.  Came to terms with God's existence.  Went to grad school.  Graduated and moved to the conservative capital of America, rural Georgia.

And that's when things really began to shift.

Funny, huh?

I'd like to think that God waited to bring these changes into my life until I was here so I'd know it was from Him and not just the result of my "liberalization."

It's been so scary, though.  So. stinking. scary.  I'll make a decision, freak out, and change my mind.  Then eventually I come crawling back to the realization that maybe, just maybe, my instincts in the first place were good.

Some things have happened lately that have forced me to think quite intensively about about  my views on women in the church.  Today I broke down and did some research.  Read some blog posts and articles from both sides of the great divide of theological/doctrinal opinion.  Begged God for humility and wisdom and begged him to stop me if I was wrong.  I say that not as a statement that is intended to set myself up as someone who has heard from God.  Because, friends, I don't know that I have.  I've prayed, yes.  I've read from the Bible and from learned scholars, yes.  But, no booming voice.  Just confusion.

And through the confusion, late in the day, hope.

Hope that maybe there really is intended to be no separation, no demarcation.  That maybe, just maybe, God's kingdom is a place of mutual submission, of true equality and not just injustice and shame masquerading as equality.

And, yes, this does mean what you may think it does.

I don't read the Bible like most of you do.

That, I think, is the hardest part.  It's hard not because I believe in my heart of hearts that I have fallen from God, but because it makes it almost impossible to even have the conversation with fellow believers about why I believe what I believe.  Ask a person who has learned to use the Bible as a manual to life to debate the issue of women in the church, and you'll get the typical responses: 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Timothy, Ephesians 5, Genesis 1-2.  And to that person, the Bible is clearly self-evident.  Anyone can read and understand it.  It clearly says, "Wives, submit."  Case closed.

Problem is, it's not case closed.  Please, do the research.  You'll find a much murkier situation indeed.  What I found when I did a google search is a couple guys like John Piper and Wayne Grudem making huge assumptions ("The Bible says women should submit, and it just makes sense, I mean, women like babies and the kitchen and stuff!") while other people offered serious exegetical basis for their claims.  What's more, some took the time to consider what the people originally receiving Paul's letters would have thought based on what their culture was rather than just reading Paul's words into the current day.  I'm a historian, so the differences I just mentioned mean a lot to me.

[And, admittedly, I'm sure that there's some serious scholarship on the Piper/Grudem side of the fence.  After all, those two came out with this huge book about Biblical Manhood and Womanhood or something like that.  So there's scholarship.  It's just hidden somewhere and I'm not sure how to find it easily.  And ultimately, I'm lazy.  Let's face it.  I remember reading the first chapter of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (or whatever it's called) a couple months ago and almost throwing my Kindle across the room in anger.]

Yes, to me historical context is extremely important.  If we don't understand why Paul wrote what he wrote about women covering their heads and men being the head of their wives, we can't understand the bounded nature of what he wrote.  When you try to quote verses at me, I shut down.  I don't shut down because I don't respect the Bible.  Trust me when I say that the Bible is everything to me.  I shut down because until we understand why Paul wrote what he wrote and how the people who read it read it, we cannot even begin to understand what God may or may not be saying to us today.

Let the firestorm begin.

confessions of she who is perpetually single

I remember being twenty-one.  It was a strange time in life, I felt so old and yet I was so young.  I felt so much pressure when in reality there was so little.  I remember feeling left behind when really I was running with the pack.  I remember the pain of loving and letting go, the pain of the first glimpses of the perpetual reality of my single hood.

That was nowhere near the beginning, though.

I remember being fourteen.  I remember making a decision not to date in high school.  I was not even in high school yet, but it was the "holy" thing to do, so I made the commitment   I would not be dating until I walked across the stage for my diploma.  High school was easy in the boy arena.  I wasn't looking, and so it whisked by in a blur of light-hearted crushes and hope for the future.

That wasn't even the beginning.

I remember being eleven.  I remember my friends developing crushes, getting boyfriends.  I remember not "getting it."  At all.  Why were these girls dating boys?  We were eleven, for goodness' sake.  We were just beginning and yet we were acting like adults.  I knew even then that dating, for me, would always be about finding "the one."

Maybe that was the beginning.  Those opening years of adolescence, when my way-too-old soul decided that dating was not just a casual activity.  I remember the painful transition from "not looking" to "looking" as I moved away from home to go to college.  I remember coming to terms with the fact that my college years were slipping by and I had yet to even go on a date.  I remember knowing for the first time that I would graduate from school without a single prospect of a husband.

I remember conversations with friends.  Conversations about how God was preparing me, how I wasn't ready yet, how I needed to be content.  Only when I was fully satisfied in God would He give me a husband.  I remember thinking how ridiculous that felt to me.  "Okay, God, I'm satisfied, fully satisfied, in You.  Now, can I have a husband?  I mean, I'm satisfied, I promise.  But I want a husband.  Not more than I want You, of course.  Of course not.  That would just be silly.  Oh, crap, God...make me truly satisfied in You, not just satisfied in You so You'll bring me a man."

It was all so stupid.

You know, I don't think I ever became fully satisfied in God.

Instead, I continued striving to love God with my whole life, and in the meantime, life happened.  I moved thousands of miles from home and pursued something I was passionate about.  And I think it was during my two years in graduate school that I first came to appreciate the beauty of the single life.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have spent all but two and a half weeks of my life single, unless a casual date or two counts as "not single."  I say this not for pity, but so that you understand.  I've learned how to be alone.  I've learned the painful reality of unrequited interest.  I've learned to appreciate what life has to offer outside the arena of men.  I've learned to be a stellar friend, how to take care of myself, and how to navigate this world alone.

There are beautiful things to be had from life, regardless of whether or not God ever places a man in my life.  I want that more than I want most other things, and yet, I am starting to imagine a life where I seek God and follow Him no matter what, and that imagining doesn't always include a guy.  It's beginning to include dreams of potential careers, potential locations.

Because here's the thing.

I think from the beginning, or at least from the moment when my friends started having boyfriends, I walked down a different path.  A path that didn't include boys, at least in the same way as most of my friends.  I chose to see dating as a very serious thing indeed.  And then I chose to not partake until I was an adult.  And by the time I became adult, it was too late.  Too late for flirtation and casual dates and a carefree approach.  Does part of me regret this?  Sure.  I'd love to be married.

And yet, marriage is not the only way to live a fulfilling life.I never realized this as an adolescent and younger adult.

I thought the older single ladies at my church were probably sad and lonely.
I thought that I'd never be able to cope in the big wide world without a man to take care of me.
I thought God surely had someone waiting for me, because I deserved it or something.

Boy, was I wrong.

And I'm happy.  Lonely sometimes, longing for more out of life sometimes, uncertain about where I'm headed sometimes, scared sometimes.  But I'm realizing more and more that being married would fix none of this.

Life sucks, my friends.

But it's beautiful, too, and I know for certain that I don't want to wait to find "the one" for my life to begin.

It has already begun.