Yes, yes, I know, not lost lost because of eternal security and everything. He loseth none of his sheep, he holds them in his hand, and NO they can't jump out of his hand, quit asking all those questions and color your sheep picture.
Still ... lost.
I haven't the faintest clue what I believe any more, and it is surprisingly disconcerting. That's one of the issues with building your life around a framework like this -- when it gets mushy, there's not much left to hold things up.
I had yet another very, very bad day today. It appears that whiskey was a bit more of a coping mechanism than I thought, and the combination of several factors (including sobriety) crashing together in the last few weeks has made me cry more this month than I think I did in the whole year before. I really hate crying, so that is significant.
It started with marriage stuff, but drifted into spiritual stuff, and it's all so interrelated when your marriage and your life and your family is built on the foundation of your spirituality. When the foundation begins to crumble, it's not too surprising when the rest of it starts to go. (What DO unbelievers build on? It must be something, or they would all just be walking around crying all the time.)
I was so sure of everything I knew before, and everyone around me was so sure, and there was no reason to question it. There were lots of reasons not to, that's for sure. We were told so much about how wretchedly unhappy unbelievers were without the Lord as their Rock upon which to build their lives. The funny thing is, I'm not all that sure it's true.
Now that I actually know a few unbelievers as an adult, not just the kids I once knew in high school, I am realizing that I was sold a line of bullshit. They're not miserable! Some of them are pretty damn happy. They do not envy me and my holy lifestyle. They do not want to be just like me. They do not, deep down, wish that they had something more solid to hang onto. They do not appear to have a God-shaped hole in their hearts.
Instead, they look at Christians and the way we act, and they say "Um, thanks but no thanks." And it's not even just the really awful ones, who go blaring about sin and homosexuals and The American Way. Even the nice, normal ones who simply talk about Christian things the way they would in Sunday School end up being offensive just by virtue of what they say.
They say we are judgmental. Well, even if we aren't personally judgmental, our doctrine is by its very nature. It sets forth a standard that nobody meets, so of course people are going to feel like they're being judged -- they ARE. Of course we say it's GOD doing the judging, not us, but since He doesn't seem to talk very loudly and we are the ones saying the actual words, it sure as hell sounds like we're judging.
They say that our religion is exclusive and narrow-minded. It is. They are right. There is no arguing it. It excludes everyone who doesn't believe, because if they don't believe, they are wrong. It is narrow-minded because we walk a narrow path -- being less narrow dilutes the doctrine into something that no longer holds meaning. So they are right, and we have no real defense.
They say that our religion is barbaric. They are right. It is. We do believe that all who don't believe will spend an eternity suffering untold punishment, and (to add insult to severe injury) it's THEIR FAULT. We also believe that some are chosen and some are not, but even for the ones who are not chosen, it's still their fault. There really isn't a nice way to admit that yes, we do believe in a literal hell.
They say that our religion is irrational. They are right, and we have the nerve to take pride in it. We say, "Yes, you must have faith", with the stage-whispered subtext of "I am so wonderful, I have faith." But faith is by definition irrational, and to someone who has no faith, there is nothing to draw them to our belief, nothing to make them WANT to give up rational thought. What even slightly intelligent person would want to try to believe something absurd, an invisible silent God whose plan for your life somehow involves an historical figure who is supposed to have died, but then come back to life in defiance of the laws of physics and nature itself? Where is the appeal?
And I guess that's my question. Why would ANYONE want to become a Christian? From what we believe of election, the only reason people seek God out is that he draws them to him. So why are we so surprised when unbelievers look at us as if we have lost our last remaining marble? We make no sense, and we wave that fact as our battle flag! Why would they want to find out what we mean, what would motivate them to dig into the murky circles of logic by which we find comfort in spite of the various horrors of our belief system?
How, tell me, how is this love? How does this show the love of God, that he set up a system that would repel the curious even as it excludes them? Why is it so offensive? Why are we not angered that it is a stone that makes men stumble and a rock that makes them fall? Why build men's minds for logic, why drench them in sin from their first breath, and then make their only hope of salvation dependent on a faith that requires the abandonment of that logic? Why make them, if only to be destroyed?
Would we honor a mother who killed three of her four children and explained that it was their fault for being bad? Would we expect the surviving child to praise and love her because he was grateful at having been spared? Would he write poetry and sing songs in her honor, and declare her mercy at having not drowned him in the bathtub?
Or would we just arrest her?
I think the framework is real. I think it works for those who can avoid the world outside it. I just don't know if I can do that any more.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
But I Don't WANT To Go To Church on Sunday.
Interesting e-mail exchange with the new unofficial worship pastor (because God forbid we actually hire one). I told him I didn't want to be back on the rotation after all because I am still struggling, and because of how I feel about the church in general, Bethany in particular, and Tim in really particular. He said one of the first actually thoughtful (as in using the brain) things that anyone has said in this whole process:
"I hear what you are saying and you may have every reason to want to pull away from the church, God or whatever."
What? You're kidding! Doubt and anger might be, you know, valid? What a concept!
I call it a process, but that's too formal a word, and that's part of what makes me so fucking mad. There hasn't been a process. I left, for somewhat nebulous reasons, after the first Sunday of April 2005 when I realized that a) I shouldn't be playing for Communion if I couldn't take Communion, b) Tim was never going to listen to me even if I said the exact same thing once a week and put it on a poster in his office in big red letters, and c) no matter what else changed, I was still going to be a girl and Bethany don't do deaconesses, so leadership of a mixed group was going to be right out.
And there was a great outpouring of prayer and support for me in my time of trial, and people surrounded me with love and offered to help with Peter and pray for me and help me have a coherent conversation with Tim. Wow ... it's kind of hard to imagine how differently the last 2.5 years might have panned out if that had happened.
Instead, it was just the occasional "We sure miss seeing you up there!" Which was nice, in its 3-second little way, but I can't help but think it is odd that a person could go from my level of ministry to barely attending services without anybody noticing. I can't help but think that if I didn't take the kids to Sunday School and put money in the offering plate, it would have gotten noticed a little sooner.
So, here it is, almost three years later, and of all things a quick e-mail about the worship team schedule produces the first truly human response to my leaving. (Now there's an odd thought. I typed "human" when I think I meant "godly", but I think maybe I did mean what I typed. Another essay for another day.) And he even has the good sense to acknowledge that a little distance might be understandable. Not sure what to make of that.
I guess what I'm coming down to is that regardless of my struggles, regardless of how I left and what I said then and what people chose to believe (which are not the same thing), they have lost the right to swoop in and make me come back. We are so good at "lovingly confronting" people when we have our little step-by-step instructions. But after nearly three years of floating free without notice or concern, I no longer feel obligated to submit myself to those instructions. Tim is only my pastor in that he is the pastor of the church of which I am a member -- he is no way my pastor. He gave up that right long ago. The deacons and shepherds who watched this servant bow and buckle under the strain of unacknowledged leadership are not my deacons and shepherds. I may claim a few of the church members as family, but I can hardly say the church family as a whole is my church family. They like what I wrote, but what I wrote and who I am are practically separate realities now. In what way am I under their jurisdiction?
I still need to sort out what I do and don't believe, and to what extent I can worship or pray or study. For now though, I want to do that as separately from the church as possible. I don't think it has particularly helped me in the last several years.
They say we shoot our wounded -- how much kinder that would have been. How much more cruel for them to bend over my bleeding, aching body and say, "It's so nice to see you today! We really miss having you carry your part of the load. Hope you can come back some day!"
This is not my army now. They will have to march without me.
"I hear what you are saying and you may have every reason to want to pull away from the church, God or whatever."
What? You're kidding! Doubt and anger might be, you know, valid? What a concept!
I call it a process, but that's too formal a word, and that's part of what makes me so fucking mad. There hasn't been a process. I left, for somewhat nebulous reasons, after the first Sunday of April 2005 when I realized that a) I shouldn't be playing for Communion if I couldn't take Communion, b) Tim was never going to listen to me even if I said the exact same thing once a week and put it on a poster in his office in big red letters, and c) no matter what else changed, I was still going to be a girl and Bethany don't do deaconesses, so leadership of a mixed group was going to be right out.
And there was a great outpouring of prayer and support for me in my time of trial, and people surrounded me with love and offered to help with Peter and pray for me and help me have a coherent conversation with Tim. Wow ... it's kind of hard to imagine how differently the last 2.5 years might have panned out if that had happened.
Instead, it was just the occasional "We sure miss seeing you up there!" Which was nice, in its 3-second little way, but I can't help but think it is odd that a person could go from my level of ministry to barely attending services without anybody noticing. I can't help but think that if I didn't take the kids to Sunday School and put money in the offering plate, it would have gotten noticed a little sooner.
So, here it is, almost three years later, and of all things a quick e-mail about the worship team schedule produces the first truly human response to my leaving. (Now there's an odd thought. I typed "human" when I think I meant "godly", but I think maybe I did mean what I typed. Another essay for another day.) And he even has the good sense to acknowledge that a little distance might be understandable. Not sure what to make of that.
I guess what I'm coming down to is that regardless of my struggles, regardless of how I left and what I said then and what people chose to believe (which are not the same thing), they have lost the right to swoop in and make me come back. We are so good at "lovingly confronting" people when we have our little step-by-step instructions. But after nearly three years of floating free without notice or concern, I no longer feel obligated to submit myself to those instructions. Tim is only my pastor in that he is the pastor of the church of which I am a member -- he is no way my pastor. He gave up that right long ago. The deacons and shepherds who watched this servant bow and buckle under the strain of unacknowledged leadership are not my deacons and shepherds. I may claim a few of the church members as family, but I can hardly say the church family as a whole is my church family. They like what I wrote, but what I wrote and who I am are practically separate realities now. In what way am I under their jurisdiction?
I still need to sort out what I do and don't believe, and to what extent I can worship or pray or study. For now though, I want to do that as separately from the church as possible. I don't think it has particularly helped me in the last several years.
They say we shoot our wounded -- how much kinder that would have been. How much more cruel for them to bend over my bleeding, aching body and say, "It's so nice to see you today! We really miss having you carry your part of the load. Hope you can come back some day!"
This is not my army now. They will have to march without me.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
One Life Two Life Red Life Blue Life
OK, so maybe not a full-on CIA spy secret agent double life. Just a secret life in my brain. The one where my questions go around and around and around, in loops that get smaller and smaller until I shake my head and lose sight of them. I know the rhetoric so well that I can't quite escape it.
I doubt!
God accepts doubt.
But I doubt God!
That is OK, David doubted God too.
No, really, I mean I really doubt.
Ask God for wisdom and He will give it to you.
But how do I ask him for something when I --
He gives to those who ask in faith without any doubting.
Yes, like I said, I --
If you ask for wisdom, you will be free of doubt.
I am quite, quite sure I am not the first person to have noticed this teeny tiny bit of circular logic in the book of James. I remember debating it in youth group in the late 1980's, come to think of it. We didn't come up with an answer for it then either.
One doubt, two doubt.
Red doubt, blue doubt.
Black doubt, blue doubt,
Old doubt, new doubt.
This one has a little star.
This one has a little car.
Say! what a lot of doubts there are.
I doubt!
God accepts doubt.
But I doubt God!
That is OK, David doubted God too.
No, really, I mean I really doubt.
Ask God for wisdom and He will give it to you.
But how do I ask him for something when I --
He gives to those who ask in faith without any doubting.
Yes, like I said, I --
If you ask for wisdom, you will be free of doubt.
I am quite, quite sure I am not the first person to have noticed this teeny tiny bit of circular logic in the book of James. I remember debating it in youth group in the late 1980's, come to think of it. We didn't come up with an answer for it then either.
One doubt, two doubt.
Red doubt, blue doubt.
Black doubt, blue doubt,
Old doubt, new doubt.
This one has a little star.
This one has a little car.
Say! what a lot of doubts there are.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Sunday School, more or less
I tried to get out of Sunday School, but it didn't work. I floated a trial balloon by my husband last night and it pretty much bombed. I told him that it made my skin crawl to think of having to go hear about ways to witness. He frowned and scrunched up his face, which meant I was going to be coming to Sunday School in the morning, at least if I wanted to preserve the peace.
So I went to Sunday School this morning, albeit half an hour late. That was only partly my fault. I definitely took too long of a shower, dawdled over e-mail, and took my time with my hair. But it wasn't my fault that my son was really hard to get out of bed, or that I spilled apple juice all over my clothes and had to go change. I got there at 9:35 and missed the bit where we had to summarize the gospel on our little worksheet. Good thing ... mine probably would have read,
"Ha, ha! Lucky me! You poor bastard!"
Well, OK, maybe not "bastard". That probably would have freaked out Mrs. Winters pretty badly, because I don't think she has ever said anything worse than "darn" in her entire life. But still, that's the basic sentiment.
Why, again, do I want to collar strangers on the street and tell them this? I forget ...
So I went to Sunday School this morning, albeit half an hour late. That was only partly my fault. I definitely took too long of a shower, dawdled over e-mail, and took my time with my hair. But it wasn't my fault that my son was really hard to get out of bed, or that I spilled apple juice all over my clothes and had to go change. I got there at 9:35 and missed the bit where we had to summarize the gospel on our little worksheet. Good thing ... mine probably would have read,
"Ha, ha! Lucky me! You poor bastard!"
Well, OK, maybe not "bastard". That probably would have freaked out Mrs. Winters pretty badly, because I don't think she has ever said anything worse than "darn" in her entire life. But still, that's the basic sentiment.
Why, again, do I want to collar strangers on the street and tell them this? I forget ...
Monday, May 28, 2007
Enabling
I wonder if you can be an enabler for faithful believers, like the wife of an alcoholic who doesn't drink herself, but buys beer for her husband.
I can't worship, not really -- not the way you're supposed to, with all your mind and all your heart and all your strength. I can sing a lot of the words and recognize that they are true, but when the truth makes you angry, it's hard to have that lovin' feelin'.
The thing is, a big part of me is every bit as committed as I ever was to worship in the church, ironically enough. They want me to come back, but if I do, it will require some doublespeak if not outright lying. I do want to make it so other people can worship, even if I can't do it myself right now. If they can have those feelings, I want to make it so they can express them. Myself, I can't get past the walking dead outside our church walls, but that doesn't mean the rest of the church shouldn't sing on Sunday mornings. I don't think that's the attitude the church leadership wants for their worship team, though, and I don't quite have what it takes to just spill it all out there.
Maybe that's the wrong metaphor, the enabler and the alcoholic. Maybe it should be the permanently injured baseball player who sells peanuts at the ballpark because he can't get the game out of his blood.
I can't worship, not really -- not the way you're supposed to, with all your mind and all your heart and all your strength. I can sing a lot of the words and recognize that they are true, but when the truth makes you angry, it's hard to have that lovin' feelin'.
The thing is, a big part of me is every bit as committed as I ever was to worship in the church, ironically enough. They want me to come back, but if I do, it will require some doublespeak if not outright lying. I do want to make it so other people can worship, even if I can't do it myself right now. If they can have those feelings, I want to make it so they can express them. Myself, I can't get past the walking dead outside our church walls, but that doesn't mean the rest of the church shouldn't sing on Sunday mornings. I don't think that's the attitude the church leadership wants for their worship team, though, and I don't quite have what it takes to just spill it all out there.
Maybe that's the wrong metaphor, the enabler and the alcoholic. Maybe it should be the permanently injured baseball player who sells peanuts at the ballpark because he can't get the game out of his blood.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Losing My Religion
I'm supposed to be practicing my offertory this morning, but instead I'm starting a journal that I've been writing in my head for months. I guess everybody's got a tipping point -- mine was a little boy in Chicago named Cameron Smith. His mom's fighting in Iraq, and her boyfriend beat Cameron so badly that he died. Cameron was four, the same as my son. It's not the first time in human history something so horrible has happened, and it won't be the last. It'll probably happen again today, somewhere in the world, only it won't show up on Yahoo news.
This incident, like a few others I've heard about in the last year, caused an internal click when I read it. Cameron, dying alone in his bed in pain. Joshua Minton, age two, suffocating alone in panic when his babysitter taped his mouth shut when he wouldn't be quiet for his nap. Sammy Boehlke, age eight, with the same diagnosis of high-functioning autism as my son, dying alone and cold in the woods of Oregon when he got separated from his dad on a camping trip. All of these made something in my heart snap shut. Something about this is wrong.
I know the rhetoric -- when Adam and Eve sinned, sin came into the world along with its consequences. God chooses not to step in and stop every evil thing from happening. Bad things happening to innocent children is just a side effect of the fall. God doesn't kill people, people kill people.
I just don't know if I can buy the rhetoric any more. Did God hold those little boys close as they died, their systems shutting down and the world going black as their eyes drifted shut? Did he comfort them and tell them they were loved? Then why didn't he alert someone to their presence? Those "miracles" happen every day, when someone steps in just at the right moment to avert a tragedy. Why not these? What kind of love watches a child die instead of calling 911? God is the ultimate emergency service, and he chose to watch these children die rather than save their lives.
I still believe all the basics about him. He is holy, he is just, he died for our sins. But I no longer know how I can come to church and sing about his goodness and his love. I can honor him. But love him? I'm no longer sure how to do that.
Well, church starts in just a little while. I'd better go look through my piano books and find something to play, preferably not something that burbles about the joy of the Christian life. There are three little boys in graves today who never had the chance to live the Christian life, or any life at all.
This incident, like a few others I've heard about in the last year, caused an internal click when I read it. Cameron, dying alone in his bed in pain. Joshua Minton, age two, suffocating alone in panic when his babysitter taped his mouth shut when he wouldn't be quiet for his nap. Sammy Boehlke, age eight, with the same diagnosis of high-functioning autism as my son, dying alone and cold in the woods of Oregon when he got separated from his dad on a camping trip. All of these made something in my heart snap shut. Something about this is wrong.
I know the rhetoric -- when Adam and Eve sinned, sin came into the world along with its consequences. God chooses not to step in and stop every evil thing from happening. Bad things happening to innocent children is just a side effect of the fall. God doesn't kill people, people kill people.
I just don't know if I can buy the rhetoric any more. Did God hold those little boys close as they died, their systems shutting down and the world going black as their eyes drifted shut? Did he comfort them and tell them they were loved? Then why didn't he alert someone to their presence? Those "miracles" happen every day, when someone steps in just at the right moment to avert a tragedy. Why not these? What kind of love watches a child die instead of calling 911? God is the ultimate emergency service, and he chose to watch these children die rather than save their lives.
I still believe all the basics about him. He is holy, he is just, he died for our sins. But I no longer know how I can come to church and sing about his goodness and his love. I can honor him. But love him? I'm no longer sure how to do that.
Well, church starts in just a little while. I'd better go look through my piano books and find something to play, preferably not something that burbles about the joy of the Christian life. There are three little boys in graves today who never had the chance to live the Christian life, or any life at all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)