What I was Looking For

Every once in awhile I read something that resonates with me so deeply that I begin to wonder if the author climbed inside my head. This post is one of those. It so beautifully states how the author came to take the role of a cynic in the church and why that is a place of pain in light of our expectations of Christian community. Particularly, my heart broke ever so slightly at the last section:

"What I'm saying is that once there was a paralytic. And there were people who picked up the edges of the mat where he was lying and carried him through the crowds. In order for him to be healed, someone had to take on that weight. Someone had to haul him to the top of the roof, and lower him straight down through so that he could get to Jesus.

And before the Church is anything else, it has to be that.

People who see. People who carry.

People who will grab onto each other's sharp edges and lift."

In all those moments when I walked away from the Christian communities I'd known, the moment in which my heart felt shattered into an irreparable state, and I couldn't articulate what it was that was so heartbreaking, it was this. It was the fact that I wondered if I had taken the gospels too literally. I wondered if the stories of people carrying others, overlooking their shame and condemnation, and accepting them where they were had been written for another time. Because everywhere I went, I had to clear the hurdles of the expectations of Christian living before people would believe that I possessed a faith worthy of their investment. 

When I fell apart, becoming a spiritual paralytic, there was no one to carry me. My sharp edges were a burden too great to bear. As my struggles spiraled into a depressive grief, it was too much to ask for someone to sit in the ashes with me. Instead they visited briefly, peppering me with questions that would assign fault to me so that they would be justified in their lack of helpfulness. 

"Have you been doing your quiet time lately?" 

"How is your prayer life?" 

"Have you been reading your Bible?"

A laundry list of things to do that would supposedly fix me. Another burden that was placed solely on my shoulders. The problem is that when you can't walk, each of those burdens simply becomes another weight pressing you further into the depths of the dirt. Another question, another item to feel inadequate about. Another seed of shame and guilt sown in the depths of my heart. 

In those times I wondered what I had done wrong. I wondered if I had read the Bible incorrectly. Here I was expecting Christian community to be filled with the friends of the paralytic and instead all I encountered were the friends of Job. This must have been my fault. I must have made some mistake. My faith must not be as strong as theirs. I must not be right with God, whatever that means. 

But once again, as with so many times previously, this "help" only caused me to walk away. I couldn't find any way to heal when I felt like I was being introduced to a new sickness with each encounter. I wanted to put myself in quarantine until I could figure out how to find a place that isn't full of such pervasive condemnation. I could no longer walk and I was desperate for someone to carry me. When such help didn't arrive, I fell and when I fell, I fell away from those communities to which I thought I would always belong. 

In my darkest moments, I was looking for those people willing to carry me. Perhaps in many ways I still am. Brokenness makes you realize that faith is a state of shared community rather than one of personal devotion. We are all constantly carrying or needing to be carried. If we want to see healing, we need to take on one another's weight.

Unreading the Bible for Lent

Those of you who've read other posts on this site probably realize that I'm a big fan of the contemplative seasons of the church calendar. Lent is perhaps the best known of these. (Although this knowledge may still be lacking as most would probably identify it as the season of countless fish sandwich commercials and listening to friends frequently proclaim that they can't eat any sweets.) The most obvious way for people to return to Christian contemplative traditions is through prayer and time spent reading Biblical text. I've noticed that in the years since my Evangelical exodus, this is no easy task. I still have a Bible by my bedside and will often pick it up. But as I open the pages, I freeze. It isn't fear or anxiety that paralyze me at that moment....It's the fact that when I read the words within they leave me cold. I struggle to find what is actually there. Thick lenses of Christian culture linger, distorting the beautiful poetry within, twisting and reshaping it into the rigid and impersonal structure of an owner's manual or a to-do list. 

The words ring hollow, devoid of meaning due to the trivial ways they were employed. Worse yet, they violently lash out bringing with them their former usage, intent on shame and self-doubt within those they were used against. Every time the Bible becomes a brick to bludgeon others, more and more of its beauty is locked away, hidden from sight. The longer this continues, the more difficult that beauty becomes to recover. Sometimes I stare at the book within my hands and it seems as though its pages have been covered with mud. How do you remove such filth from paper without destroying it altogether and losing everything? 

That is why in this season of Lent, I cannot make the promise that many others do to spend more time reading my Bible. Such efforts have merely become a propagation of the abuse these words carried in my past. Rather, these 40 days will be those where I finally unread my Bible. A time where I confront the filth and misuse that has enveloped these words for so long, deconstructing what they have been fashioned into in hopes of recovering what they actually are, and in the process catching a glimpse of the beauty they once carried. 

Bitterness?

I am a follower and a fan of Stuff Christian Culture Likes. Stephanie, the blog's author, often shares excerpts from emails she receives on the blog's facebook page. Sometimes they are complimentary. Sometimes they remind me why her blog exists in the first place. This week she shared one in which the writer said "The best general message of your blog: you can heal." Needless to say, a lot of the regular readers heartily agreed. But in the midst of the affirmation, there was a lone dissenting voice who claimed that such as statement has an "echo of bitterness and resentment."

If you have left a church or Christian group or ever questioned one in any way, I'd be willing to bet that you have been told "You're just bitter." I think that the thing that breaks my heart even more than the number of people who have been hurt by the church is how callously the perpetrators of such pain respond when the victims have the courage to call them on it. SCCL previously addressed the matter here.

The irony is that when you live in Christian Culture, they tell you constantly about the need to be honest, confess your sin, and to seek forgiveness and the resolution your problems with others. I guess they just don't think that applies to themselves. I was at a church service a few years ago where the pastor asked people to form small groups with those around them and discuss the question "Why do you think some people feel so hurt by the church?" It was one of the first times I had visited this particular church. It was during the time that I was debating my decision to move on from American Evangelical Culture and hearing that gave me hope that there were churches out there that got it. They understood. My hope was quickly crushed as those around me gave their answers to the question. A women boldly proclaimed "Nobody is perfect except Jesus. I think too many people expect us to be perfect and that's just unrealistic." The rest of the people nodded in agreement and provided answers that were essentially only rephrasing hers. I don't remember what I said. I think it had something to do with the fact that it's so difficult for churches and Christians to admit their mistakes. Honestly, I think I don't remember because my mind was racing. It was yet another moment where my anxiety rose as my own experiences where unknowingly invalidated yet again. It was the same response I'd heard so many times before. The response Christians give so often in Evangelical settings because they seem to have this assumption that it's only atheists and skeptics who've claimed to be hurt by believers. They loudly proclaim that people expect too much from them while the spiritually wounded that surround them die a little more inside and continue to reconsider their place in the body of Christ.

When you are hurt, you need to heal. It's not a complicated concept. To refer to that as bitter or resentful is naive, misguided, and extremely short-sighted. Even worse, as Stephanie and many others have pointed out, it's a silencing tactic. It's a tactic that proclaims "We don't know what to deal with your pain and frankly it makes us uncomfortable. So rather than wrestle with what the Christian response should be, we are going to try to shame you into dropping the issue. It's just easier that way. To achieve that, we will use a lot of spiritual words and quote a few Bible verses out of context to try to convince you that we are right."

I understand the importance of forgiveness, but I have trouble accepting that that means you just blindly accept any hurt from others or justify your own mistreatment of people as long as it's done in the name of the Lord. And since when does recognizing that you've been hurt and are in need of healing qualify as bitterness? As long as churches and Christians continue to hide behind declarations of "bitterness" and their own imperfection they will continue to be unable to develop the type of genuine relationships that truly bring healing. Unfortunately, rather than contemplate what that would mean, I'm sure anyone immersed in the world of American Evangelical Culture who is reading this is too preoccupied developing theories as to what could have possibly made me so bitter.

Christian Culture, you need a new argument.

Just Be Honest

I've had a melancholy sort of week. It was a state of mind that led to a lot of reflection and looking back over the years. I was thinking of my time in American Evangelical Culture, the people I met there, the ones I'm still in contact with, the bridges I burned with others, those who burned the bridges in my direction, churches I visited, churches I attended, churches I left, etc. I have two bad habits when I spend a lot of time in thought. I overanalyze simple things and simplify complex ones. As I continued to reflect, I tried to think of the one piece of advice I would give to people/churches/organizations that exist within that culture. Could I boil it down to one thing?

At first I assumed that it would be something about treating others with love and compassion. But there are plenty of people in that culture who do behave with love. And when it comes to those who don't, they usually claim that they are. So that wouldn't really work. I let all the faces, places, and experiences I had in that world flip through my mind's eye one by one. As I did, the emotions of those experiences, good and bad, rushed back. It became a more personal challenge now. It wasn't just about the advice that I would give to the culture in general. What advice would I give if I had the chance to give it to those I had personally encountered?

Just be honest.