Matt Chandler jokes that there are two tenets to atheism: "There is no God and I hate Him." And last week, or maybe the week before, he discussed it a little in a sermon and pointed out that when bad stuff happens, it's God's fault and when good stuff happens, we own it. If people suffer, then obviously, our God is a cruel God. But that we have life at all? That's science. That's procreation. That's because we do pilates and eat multi-grain bread.
I bring it up today because it was evident with the whole tsunami warning thing. Yesterday, people were so terrified at the threat that prayer requests became trending topics on Twitter. When does that happen? When does something serious about God become a trending topic? When we're helpless and don't know what to do. But then the waves were much smaller than expected and there was no trending topic to reflect what God had done, if it was indeed Him who answered the prayers. There was no "#ThankGod" hashtag trending. No "GodisGood". And definitely no "God answers prayers".
We overreacted, that's all.
Science will prove later why the giant earthquake didn't create the tsunami we all expected.
But when something like this happens in this new world we live in where everything that happens is suddenly received by a massive collective and redistributed by that same collective, it gives us a clearer picture of our attitude towards God. Had that tsunami devastated us, who would we blame?
And when a two year old is dying of cancer and her parents are confident that God will save her simply because of all of the people who have been drawn closer to Him in her suffering, the atheist I used to sometimes be would ask, "What kind of god allows a little girl to suffer her entire life just so other people would ask about him? What kind of god makes a martyr of a sweet, innocent baby? What kind of god strips away her life and crams her body with tumors just to make himself look good?"
If there is no sacred-secular divide and everything is meant to glorify God, then that doesn't just mean the suffering. It means God gave you life. God gave you love. God gave you everything in this short little life that makes you happy. It means all of it, the joy, the pain, the good times and bad, is a gift and to acknowledge that is to glorify God with that gift. (Kind of like how you used the glitter you got from your parents on your sixth birthday to make them the most gaudy card ever to express your excitement about it.)
People think a good God would just give us happiness. But what if experience is more important than happiness? Without a doubt, the more aware we are of the nature of this world, the more we experience. Isn't that what life is about?
I realized this past week that I might have totally misunderstood one of the tenets of Buddhism. Somebody I know claims to be Buddhist (it's really more of a pick-and-choose Buddhism than a profound one..) said to me several times, "Happiness is a life without suffering," and to be honest, that did not appeal to me at all. If that's what happiness was, I didn't want it. While suffering is terrible, the rate of growth we experience from it can't be matched by anything else that might replace it. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, right? So it made no sense to me that an entire faith would be based on an idea that is so counterproductive, and not only that, but also is absolutely impossible in the world we live in. We can't go a day without feeling some sort of suffering. And to pretend we are at that place where we're happy and there is no suffering at all is to have our head jammed so far in the sand that we don't know which way is up anymore.
But this week, I read it differently. "Happiness is the end of suffering." It sounds almost the same, but it hit me in a different way. It didn't say, "Happiness is a lack of suffering." What if it means that happiness is simply the perception of our suffering?
In Christianity, if suffering brings us closer to God, closer to a more complete trust in God, then it becomes a good thing in the end- depending on how much you trust God.
John 12:25 says this:
Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
If God is God, and God is our Creator, and suffering draws us closer to Him, then we should want nothing more. If God is not God, then we should love this life and cling to it and to its events, circumstances and relationships to provide us with fulfillment, happiness and love. If God is not God, then there is no reason at all to endure suffering. I mean, there is rapid growth, but why is rapid growth something we should desire if our goal is to be happy and without suffering? Growth and awareness lead to more suffering which leads to more growth and more awareness. Seems to me, we should be avoiding those at all costs if this life was merely about this life.
When I was younger and a mess, I remember telling somebody that I'd be more proud of getting over something like depression or suicidal tendencies on my own rather than leaning on some god to get me through it. I'd rather build my strength to overcome it at the risk of failure than succeed despite being weak enough to need a god to rely on. I didn't want a crutch. I wanted to conquer on my own merit.
But for what?
To be stronger going into the next struggle for survival? And then the next? And so on and so on until my finite life ended and I was coffin-bound? What for? Why endure everything for nothing? Because life is a gift? What kind of gift is it if it doesn't come from somebody? Life is precious? Why, if it's meaningless?
One of the things I always wondered, long before I became a Christian was, "Why me?" and not "Why did these things happen to me?" but "Of all the people in this world, why was I given the strength to survive these things? Why me?" Things would happen, bad things, one after the other after the other and sometimes, I would feel utterly overwhelmed by how terrible life was. Life was bad at some points. I mean, really bad with no hope of getting better. But I didn't die. I didn't give up living even if I gave up on life. My heart kept beating. I kept going. And then there were the physical injuries and illnesses and I nearly died more times than a lot of people I know. But my heart kept beating. I kept going. And all the while, I was ready to die. I really was. Death never scared me and still doesn't. Deep down, I have always felt temporary and I've always been ok with that. But of all the people, why me? So many people cling to this life, cling to their loved ones' lives and I don't, and for some reason, I've been allowed to keep mine.
Why me?
Why hasn't my time come yet?
Why is my heart still beating?
Why am I still breathing?
Why, after all I've been through, am I able to love?
Is it really because all those years, I stood up on my own and got stronger each time?
Or is it because God is merciful and even when I hated Him without even knowing Him, He showed compassion and became my heartbeat?
Why me? They say if God stops thinking about you, or I guess being aware of you, then you cease to exist. So here I am, invisible girl living a meaningless, invisible life, wondering why the hell I haven't died yet, when the reason is exactly the opposite of everything I know- I'm meaningful, important and visible to the only "person" that matters, even if I didn't believe in Him at all. The fact that I haven't ceased to exist, the fact that my heart kept beating when I didn't want it to, is hindsight proof to me that I am loved. That's not to say people who die are unloved, but just that the way things happened for me, again in hindsight, seems a little more hands-on.
I look back at those things that happened, and if I got through them because I'm strong and I got stronger each time, then theoretically, I could do anything now. I could endure anything. I'd be invincible. But I look back at some of the things, and if they happened again tomorrow, I'm not sure I could handle it. I'm not sure I have the strength to get through those same things now that I endured back then. I'm not sure I'm as strong as my self back then would take credit for.
But it doesn't matter anymore anyway.
There is a God and I love Him. And how weak that makes me is absolutely irrelevant.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
On having your cake and eating it too...
From page 18 of the tiny hardcover version of Tim Keller's Counterfeit Gods:
Am I the only one in the universe who downplays that? Am I the only one who diminishes the sacrifice a little, believing that the sacrifice for me personally on the cross isn't as great as the sacrifice Abraham faced?
Isaac was Abraham's and was a sacrifice to God. Jesus was God's and was a sacrifice to us- to the billions of us. I think I'm not alone when I excuse myself from true faith because I see the sacrifice as a small piece of a huge pie that was disbursed to the world rather than an entire sacrifice for me personally. If my part in the sacrifice is just one slice, my life is not all that important, and so if I don't read my Bible today, or even if I ignore God entirely, that's ok because it's just a slice. It's like I'm Jesus' baby toe. Sure, it would suck to lose a baby toe, but it's not nearly as important as other parts, like, say, the heart.
But that's exactly it. If God knows all the birds by name, then He knows me, and if He knows me, the sacrifice was personal. If I was the only human, would the sacrifice have occurred? Probably, if not eventually. The sacrifice didn't occur because God decided that He wanted the important people in heaven and this was the only politically correct means to the end. It occurred because I, as any other, am broken beyond self-repair.
So what if I am not an infinitely small slice of some universally disbursed pie?
It's a heart issue. To whom, or to what, does my heart belong? The worst case scenario is that it belongs to me and me alone. What kind of heart would that be? And if it wasn't mine, if it belonged to somebody or to a thing, is that somebody or thing really of greater importance than God?
Or maybe my heart's just fearful. Maybe I'm afraid to actually mean something to somebody. Maybe it's more comfortable to be a nobody. But then if God created me and knows me better than I will ever know myself, wouldn't He be what's most comfortable? If God created me and delights in me, wouldn't I already be a somebody, regardless of my self-perception?
So I'm not Jesus' pinky toe.
At worst, I am His whole body, the suffering and the pain.
At best, I am His heart.
And if I'm His heart, shouldn't He have mine?
God saw Abraham's sacrifice and said, "Now I know that you love me, because you did not withhold your only son from me." But how much more can we look at his sacrifice on the Cross, and say to God, "Now, we know that you love us. For you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love, from us."
Am I the only one in the universe who downplays that? Am I the only one who diminishes the sacrifice a little, believing that the sacrifice for me personally on the cross isn't as great as the sacrifice Abraham faced?
Isaac was Abraham's and was a sacrifice to God. Jesus was God's and was a sacrifice to us- to the billions of us. I think I'm not alone when I excuse myself from true faith because I see the sacrifice as a small piece of a huge pie that was disbursed to the world rather than an entire sacrifice for me personally. If my part in the sacrifice is just one slice, my life is not all that important, and so if I don't read my Bible today, or even if I ignore God entirely, that's ok because it's just a slice. It's like I'm Jesus' baby toe. Sure, it would suck to lose a baby toe, but it's not nearly as important as other parts, like, say, the heart.
But that's exactly it. If God knows all the birds by name, then He knows me, and if He knows me, the sacrifice was personal. If I was the only human, would the sacrifice have occurred? Probably, if not eventually. The sacrifice didn't occur because God decided that He wanted the important people in heaven and this was the only politically correct means to the end. It occurred because I, as any other, am broken beyond self-repair.
So what if I am not an infinitely small slice of some universally disbursed pie?
It's a heart issue. To whom, or to what, does my heart belong? The worst case scenario is that it belongs to me and me alone. What kind of heart would that be? And if it wasn't mine, if it belonged to somebody or to a thing, is that somebody or thing really of greater importance than God?
Or maybe my heart's just fearful. Maybe I'm afraid to actually mean something to somebody. Maybe it's more comfortable to be a nobody. But then if God created me and knows me better than I will ever know myself, wouldn't He be what's most comfortable? If God created me and delights in me, wouldn't I already be a somebody, regardless of my self-perception?
So I'm not Jesus' pinky toe.
At worst, I am His whole body, the suffering and the pain.
At best, I am His heart.
And if I'm His heart, shouldn't He have mine?
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
On idols and ambition...
In the introduction to Counterfeit Gods, Tim Keller asks two questions that caught my attention.
1.What is the thing that makes us think, “If I have that, then I'll feel my life has meaning, then I'll know I have value, then I'll feel significant and secure”?
2.What do I fear the most? What, if I lost it, would make life not worth living?
The first, he says, is found in our daydreams. The second, in our nightmares.
At first glance, it seems that these questions are good for us. They're good questions to ask in order to figure out what our idols are, and in what temporary and fleeting things we place our value. I've been trying to figure out my idols a lot lately, partly because I'm trying to figure out why it is that I feel worthless at a basal level. Obviously, if I feel worthless than the things I derive my value from are failing miserably. So what are they?
One thing Matt Chandler whipped out during a sermon he gave a couple weeks ago was that comparison is an idol. It hadn't occurred to me that needing to rate yourself on a scale based on those around you would be a way to derive value, but it's actually a fairly obvious one once you notice it. I do compare myself. Often. If I'm not failing as miserably as somebody I know, then I'm more ok than I would be had I had nobody to compare myself against. The problem with that arises when I surround myself with people who excel at everything I fail at. Suddenly, when surrounded by a successful entourage, my worth diminishes at an astonishing rate.
But what are the things I daydream of? What are the things I imagine will bring me happiness? See, this is where it fails for me. I know most people probably dream of some sort of career or money or stuff or even a relationship, and those dreams make these questions easier to answer. But me? I dream of adventures. I dream of losing everything and being forced to make do with my own survival skills, if I actually have any. I dream of getting married and hating it. I dream of an impossible relationship in which I have the upper hand. I dream of intense suffering along with intense passion. But when I dream, they're more like glimpses of the impossible or highly improbable, rather than dreams of things I aspire to have or experience. They're just short stories in my head.
And my worst nightmare? I don't even know. I'm afraid of so much in my conscious life- heights, throwing up, drowning, rape, spiders... So much. But my worst nightmare? What do I feel life would be impossible to live without? I'd like to say my strength but even that is not mine. Even that is God's gift to me. I didn't do anything to cultivate my strength. I didn't choose it. Through a series of events, some of which were unbelievably painful, I endured, and that's not something I can take credit for. Even before I knew God, I knew the strength I had and in some circumstances, the help I had without asking, were gifts. I knew I was lucky somehow. So by the grace of God am I strong, both physically and mentally, but they're not really things I can possess to lose. I do know that it's hard for me to ask for help and so a potential nightmare would be to have to rely on people, but even that would be an extension of my comfort zone, which is something I strive to do with everything anyway.
But if I don't dream and I have no real nightmares then what is it that makes me feel worthless? What is it that is failing to give me value?
And on the other hand, if everybody were to give up the satisfaction and value they seek in their endeavors, what would ambition look like? Would we have any at all?
I'm not particularly ambitious. At this current crossroads of unemployment, that is one thing that is in my way- the lack of drive towards any particular goal or direction. If I don't need a career to give me value, what motivates me to find one at all rather than just a job?
Or as an entirely different analogy, if I don't need to wear the latest fashion to feel beautiful, what drives me to spend that kind of money, time and effort on it?
In other words, if the things we idolize are essentially good things and there is nothing wrong with striving for them, where does the boundary between healthy pursuit and obsession lie? What is healthy pursuit? Is it simply in the reasons for which we pursue things? If we are driven and ambitious and say we're trying to glorify God in our endeavors is that healthy? And on the flip side, where is the line between giving up idols and just plain giving up?
The other concern I have is looking at people who turn their obsessions over to God also seem to end up in a certain level of poor mental health. In particular, I'm thinking of the girl who feels the need to save everybody. Her every word is Jesus-related. Her life revolves around Jesus and from several pastors' messages, that would seem the ideal, but to be in her presence is to sense this enormous defect. It's this deep-seeded loneliness that she drowns out with missions and God. She uses God as an idol, rather than as the true God deserving of worship, if that makes any sense. It leads a person to wonder if she actually does believe or if she just uses the role of a Christian to give herself worth. And the worst part about it is the day she realizes it's not working is the day she will lose God entirely, even though He's not actually the one she's worshiping.
Are we capable of healthy pursuit? Or are we better off seeking balance instead?
When I was studying Scripture intensely and listening to upwards of forty hours of sermons a week, I did start to feel unbalanced. Even a pursuit of God can turn into an unhealthy obsession. Lately, I've been taking it easy and focusing on prayer, just to take a break, even things out. I feel I need balance, but supposedly, I don't when it comes to the pursuit of God and I don't get that.
How will we be of any use if we are so specialized in one train of thought? I've always been a believer of John Stuart Mill's idea of a university providing a universal education, and in this time, we're striving for specialization more and more, going after double PhDs and whatnot in one very particular domain and that, Mill says, makes us less useful to the humans around us and the world around us than if we had chosen to learn a little of everything. What good is having a passion for God if you aren't well-rounded enough to be able to present it in such a way that anybody can benefit from it? We do need balance. We need balance to be effective in most things.
So what is healthy pursuit?
What is ambition without idols?
What is motivation without dreams?
Ever since I lost my job, I've been trying to figure out what my dreams are in an effort to give me some sort of direction, some sort of drive towards a future that won't suck the soul out of me. I'm not looking for fulfillment, per se- I just want to be able to get out of bed in the morning. I want to be passionate about what I do. But what kind of career path will I end up facing if I am not allowed to dream or if dreaming is idolatry? How are we supposed to be effective if we're not supposed to be driven by our passions?
How are we supposed to feel alive when we aren't using our gifts to their utmost? If we are given these gifts and no outlet by which to make use of them, then why were we given them at all?
Therein lies my idol, I guess. I can't find what it is that allows me to use everything I have. And that makes me feel useless. That's why I want one particular multi-faceted job so badly and dread getting called by all the others, even though I do need a job- any job- and should be grateful for any calls I get.
Instead of wanting a job where I can be useful, I want a job where I feel useful.
But again, without passionate things to strive for, what becomes the motivation to strive at all? Shouldn't we be happy with the bare minimum? Where does the ambition come from if not from false hope and the empty promises we pretend these things hold for us?
What does healthy pursuit without idolatry look like?
I guess I have to finish the book...
1.What is the thing that makes us think, “If I have that, then I'll feel my life has meaning, then I'll know I have value, then I'll feel significant and secure”?
2.What do I fear the most? What, if I lost it, would make life not worth living?
The first, he says, is found in our daydreams. The second, in our nightmares.
At first glance, it seems that these questions are good for us. They're good questions to ask in order to figure out what our idols are, and in what temporary and fleeting things we place our value. I've been trying to figure out my idols a lot lately, partly because I'm trying to figure out why it is that I feel worthless at a basal level. Obviously, if I feel worthless than the things I derive my value from are failing miserably. So what are they?
One thing Matt Chandler whipped out during a sermon he gave a couple weeks ago was that comparison is an idol. It hadn't occurred to me that needing to rate yourself on a scale based on those around you would be a way to derive value, but it's actually a fairly obvious one once you notice it. I do compare myself. Often. If I'm not failing as miserably as somebody I know, then I'm more ok than I would be had I had nobody to compare myself against. The problem with that arises when I surround myself with people who excel at everything I fail at. Suddenly, when surrounded by a successful entourage, my worth diminishes at an astonishing rate.
But what are the things I daydream of? What are the things I imagine will bring me happiness? See, this is where it fails for me. I know most people probably dream of some sort of career or money or stuff or even a relationship, and those dreams make these questions easier to answer. But me? I dream of adventures. I dream of losing everything and being forced to make do with my own survival skills, if I actually have any. I dream of getting married and hating it. I dream of an impossible relationship in which I have the upper hand. I dream of intense suffering along with intense passion. But when I dream, they're more like glimpses of the impossible or highly improbable, rather than dreams of things I aspire to have or experience. They're just short stories in my head.
And my worst nightmare? I don't even know. I'm afraid of so much in my conscious life- heights, throwing up, drowning, rape, spiders... So much. But my worst nightmare? What do I feel life would be impossible to live without? I'd like to say my strength but even that is not mine. Even that is God's gift to me. I didn't do anything to cultivate my strength. I didn't choose it. Through a series of events, some of which were unbelievably painful, I endured, and that's not something I can take credit for. Even before I knew God, I knew the strength I had and in some circumstances, the help I had without asking, were gifts. I knew I was lucky somehow. So by the grace of God am I strong, both physically and mentally, but they're not really things I can possess to lose. I do know that it's hard for me to ask for help and so a potential nightmare would be to have to rely on people, but even that would be an extension of my comfort zone, which is something I strive to do with everything anyway.
But if I don't dream and I have no real nightmares then what is it that makes me feel worthless? What is it that is failing to give me value?
And on the other hand, if everybody were to give up the satisfaction and value they seek in their endeavors, what would ambition look like? Would we have any at all?
I'm not particularly ambitious. At this current crossroads of unemployment, that is one thing that is in my way- the lack of drive towards any particular goal or direction. If I don't need a career to give me value, what motivates me to find one at all rather than just a job?
Or as an entirely different analogy, if I don't need to wear the latest fashion to feel beautiful, what drives me to spend that kind of money, time and effort on it?
In other words, if the things we idolize are essentially good things and there is nothing wrong with striving for them, where does the boundary between healthy pursuit and obsession lie? What is healthy pursuit? Is it simply in the reasons for which we pursue things? If we are driven and ambitious and say we're trying to glorify God in our endeavors is that healthy? And on the flip side, where is the line between giving up idols and just plain giving up?
The other concern I have is looking at people who turn their obsessions over to God also seem to end up in a certain level of poor mental health. In particular, I'm thinking of the girl who feels the need to save everybody. Her every word is Jesus-related. Her life revolves around Jesus and from several pastors' messages, that would seem the ideal, but to be in her presence is to sense this enormous defect. It's this deep-seeded loneliness that she drowns out with missions and God. She uses God as an idol, rather than as the true God deserving of worship, if that makes any sense. It leads a person to wonder if she actually does believe or if she just uses the role of a Christian to give herself worth. And the worst part about it is the day she realizes it's not working is the day she will lose God entirely, even though He's not actually the one she's worshiping.
Are we capable of healthy pursuit? Or are we better off seeking balance instead?
When I was studying Scripture intensely and listening to upwards of forty hours of sermons a week, I did start to feel unbalanced. Even a pursuit of God can turn into an unhealthy obsession. Lately, I've been taking it easy and focusing on prayer, just to take a break, even things out. I feel I need balance, but supposedly, I don't when it comes to the pursuit of God and I don't get that.
How will we be of any use if we are so specialized in one train of thought? I've always been a believer of John Stuart Mill's idea of a university providing a universal education, and in this time, we're striving for specialization more and more, going after double PhDs and whatnot in one very particular domain and that, Mill says, makes us less useful to the humans around us and the world around us than if we had chosen to learn a little of everything. What good is having a passion for God if you aren't well-rounded enough to be able to present it in such a way that anybody can benefit from it? We do need balance. We need balance to be effective in most things.
So what is healthy pursuit?
What is ambition without idols?
What is motivation without dreams?
Ever since I lost my job, I've been trying to figure out what my dreams are in an effort to give me some sort of direction, some sort of drive towards a future that won't suck the soul out of me. I'm not looking for fulfillment, per se- I just want to be able to get out of bed in the morning. I want to be passionate about what I do. But what kind of career path will I end up facing if I am not allowed to dream or if dreaming is idolatry? How are we supposed to be effective if we're not supposed to be driven by our passions?
How are we supposed to feel alive when we aren't using our gifts to their utmost? If we are given these gifts and no outlet by which to make use of them, then why were we given them at all?
Therein lies my idol, I guess. I can't find what it is that allows me to use everything I have. And that makes me feel useless. That's why I want one particular multi-faceted job so badly and dread getting called by all the others, even though I do need a job- any job- and should be grateful for any calls I get.
Instead of wanting a job where I can be useful, I want a job where I feel useful.
But again, without passionate things to strive for, what becomes the motivation to strive at all? Shouldn't we be happy with the bare minimum? Where does the ambition come from if not from false hope and the empty promises we pretend these things hold for us?
What does healthy pursuit without idolatry look like?
I guess I have to finish the book...
Sunday, January 31, 2010
On toothbrushes and the need for prayer ...
I suppose I should post something on here every now and then.
Lately, as a result of my lack of employment and lack of direction, my focus has waned from theology-driven inspiration and moved towards self-preservation. There's one thing I've been meaning to discuss for a while though- Adam & Eve.
So if those of us who believe in evolution decide that we can't take the story of Adam and Eve exactly literally, then that means we have to figure out how that fits into human history. Was there some point in our history when we made a deliberate choice that gave us what we felt was a more direct control over our fate and consequently altered our evolutionary path?
Twice in the month of December, I somehow found rocks in my restaurant food. It happens to me fairly often and I've come to chewing more delicately in restaurants just in case. I remember my dentist explaining the disproportionate strength in the jaw and the slow reaction time when we hit something unexpected, and the result is cracked teeth. Being that I'm unemployed and have no dental insurance anymore, my cracked teeth have been left festering and probably slowly destructing at the hands (or unrelenting enzymes) of not-so-friendly oral bacteria as I negotiate with myself about whether or not I can endure the discomfort for yet another month.
Why are our teeth so fragile, I wondered.
I remember in my first year of biology, one of my evolution profs was explaining things and mixed into his explanations was that our ancestors and tooth decay were mortal enemies (although, I can't seem to find evidence of that on the interwebs to provide adequate back up, so for argument's sake, let's just use it as a metaphor). So supposedly, ancient variations of ourselves were prone to cavities and tooth decay and eventually, the oral rot would poison the blood and cause premature death, which makes sense since poor oral hygiene can still do that today.
And then we invented the toothbrush. Or at least a wooden variation of what would become the toothbrush sometime in the twentieth century.
Had we not invented the toothbrush, survival of the fittest would have meant those least prone to tooth decay would have flourished and those with weaker teeth would have died out.
But, in adopting teeth cleaning methods as a way of preventing our demise, we may have chosen intelligence over physical fitness. That may have been our fruit in the garden of eden.
Think about it. Do animals know what is good and what is evil? Are they cognitive enough to realize the difference? I wouldn't say animals are evil, but would they recognize it? Some dogs do, I guess, but it's on more of a personal level. While they might recognize a certain person as being evil, I'd bet that they don't sit safely at home and wonder why the world is so full of evil. But if we selected for ourselves a path of evolution that favored intelligence rather than strengths of a more physical nature, then we also chose a path that would lead us to become more aware of ourselves and of the world around us.
While we could have remained blissfully unaware, by opening ourselves up to learning the truths of the universe through favoring intelligence, we become image bearers of God because all of a sudden, we've placed ourselves on a path to know. Knowing the difference between good and evil might create in us a sense of justice, which Christians seem to believe is an innate attribute that humans have as a result of being image bearers of God.
Obviously, we were image bearers before we chose anything (according to the Bible), but then God being all-sovereign knew that we'd choose this path, right? And He also knew how much it would affect us.
As we progress, the world becomes smaller and smaller and we become more and more aware of the worldly suffering, hardship and evil. And it's not just ours either. We see the animals suffering. We see the brutality of the natural order of things and we somehow decided we're apart from it, even though we have our own massive examples of human cruelty and torture.
We chose to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What if that was us choosing an intelligence-driven evolutionary path? We chose knowledge over the rules of fitness by which everybody else with whom we share this planet abide. We chose to know and knowing means becoming aware of the good and evil in this world.
If it's not the toothbrush, it might be something else. But really, how come other animals' fitness doesn't seem to be based on one evolutionary characteristic? They're fit overall, whereas we use our intelligence to overcome our physical weaknesses.
And what if God gave us prayer so that when we did start to learn of the misery and suffering of this world, we could feel a little less powerless? Maybe He gave us prayer because He knew we'd often get to a point where we'd know too much and could do nothing about it.
Choosing intelligence would give us this overall sense of empowerment and authority over our existence that we absolutely don't possess. Prayer is for those moments when we humble ourselves and realize that.
I've been praying a lot more for me lately. For my faith and so that I won't give up praying for others. It just seems so futile sometimes. You pray for a friend to have the strength to get through the heartbreaks of the day, and tomorrow, they're faced with a whole slew of new heartbreaks to face. It never ends. I used to know a couple of people who were lucky and now I don't (lucky people tend to just hide their sufferings better than others), and where those lucky people used to give me hope, now, the only hope is from God and God alone. There's no other source of hope. Without God, the world really is this merciless place of endless suffering and anybody who sees it as anything else should open themselves up to empathizing with those around them. There is so much suffering. So much grief. And when prayer feels futile, when everything seems overwhelmed by the brokenness, then there is no hope, there is no God. But somewhere deep in our soul, regardless of what we face, we just know that's not true. We know there is hope.
And that is impossible in a random, merciless universe without God.
Thank God He knew us before we ever will and prepared us for the consequences of the choices we made and still make every day to our own detriment.
Thank God for prayer.
Lately, as a result of my lack of employment and lack of direction, my focus has waned from theology-driven inspiration and moved towards self-preservation. There's one thing I've been meaning to discuss for a while though- Adam & Eve.
So if those of us who believe in evolution decide that we can't take the story of Adam and Eve exactly literally, then that means we have to figure out how that fits into human history. Was there some point in our history when we made a deliberate choice that gave us what we felt was a more direct control over our fate and consequently altered our evolutionary path?
Twice in the month of December, I somehow found rocks in my restaurant food. It happens to me fairly often and I've come to chewing more delicately in restaurants just in case. I remember my dentist explaining the disproportionate strength in the jaw and the slow reaction time when we hit something unexpected, and the result is cracked teeth. Being that I'm unemployed and have no dental insurance anymore, my cracked teeth have been left festering and probably slowly destructing at the hands (or unrelenting enzymes) of not-so-friendly oral bacteria as I negotiate with myself about whether or not I can endure the discomfort for yet another month.
Why are our teeth so fragile, I wondered.
I remember in my first year of biology, one of my evolution profs was explaining things and mixed into his explanations was that our ancestors and tooth decay were mortal enemies (although, I can't seem to find evidence of that on the interwebs to provide adequate back up, so for argument's sake, let's just use it as a metaphor). So supposedly, ancient variations of ourselves were prone to cavities and tooth decay and eventually, the oral rot would poison the blood and cause premature death, which makes sense since poor oral hygiene can still do that today.
And then we invented the toothbrush. Or at least a wooden variation of what would become the toothbrush sometime in the twentieth century.
Had we not invented the toothbrush, survival of the fittest would have meant those least prone to tooth decay would have flourished and those with weaker teeth would have died out.
But, in adopting teeth cleaning methods as a way of preventing our demise, we may have chosen intelligence over physical fitness. That may have been our fruit in the garden of eden.
Think about it. Do animals know what is good and what is evil? Are they cognitive enough to realize the difference? I wouldn't say animals are evil, but would they recognize it? Some dogs do, I guess, but it's on more of a personal level. While they might recognize a certain person as being evil, I'd bet that they don't sit safely at home and wonder why the world is so full of evil. But if we selected for ourselves a path of evolution that favored intelligence rather than strengths of a more physical nature, then we also chose a path that would lead us to become more aware of ourselves and of the world around us.
While we could have remained blissfully unaware, by opening ourselves up to learning the truths of the universe through favoring intelligence, we become image bearers of God because all of a sudden, we've placed ourselves on a path to know. Knowing the difference between good and evil might create in us a sense of justice, which Christians seem to believe is an innate attribute that humans have as a result of being image bearers of God.
Obviously, we were image bearers before we chose anything (according to the Bible), but then God being all-sovereign knew that we'd choose this path, right? And He also knew how much it would affect us.
As we progress, the world becomes smaller and smaller and we become more and more aware of the worldly suffering, hardship and evil. And it's not just ours either. We see the animals suffering. We see the brutality of the natural order of things and we somehow decided we're apart from it, even though we have our own massive examples of human cruelty and torture.
We chose to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What if that was us choosing an intelligence-driven evolutionary path? We chose knowledge over the rules of fitness by which everybody else with whom we share this planet abide. We chose to know and knowing means becoming aware of the good and evil in this world.
If it's not the toothbrush, it might be something else. But really, how come other animals' fitness doesn't seem to be based on one evolutionary characteristic? They're fit overall, whereas we use our intelligence to overcome our physical weaknesses.
And what if God gave us prayer so that when we did start to learn of the misery and suffering of this world, we could feel a little less powerless? Maybe He gave us prayer because He knew we'd often get to a point where we'd know too much and could do nothing about it.
Choosing intelligence would give us this overall sense of empowerment and authority over our existence that we absolutely don't possess. Prayer is for those moments when we humble ourselves and realize that.
I've been praying a lot more for me lately. For my faith and so that I won't give up praying for others. It just seems so futile sometimes. You pray for a friend to have the strength to get through the heartbreaks of the day, and tomorrow, they're faced with a whole slew of new heartbreaks to face. It never ends. I used to know a couple of people who were lucky and now I don't (lucky people tend to just hide their sufferings better than others), and where those lucky people used to give me hope, now, the only hope is from God and God alone. There's no other source of hope. Without God, the world really is this merciless place of endless suffering and anybody who sees it as anything else should open themselves up to empathizing with those around them. There is so much suffering. So much grief. And when prayer feels futile, when everything seems overwhelmed by the brokenness, then there is no hope, there is no God. But somewhere deep in our soul, regardless of what we face, we just know that's not true. We know there is hope.
And that is impossible in a random, merciless universe without God.
Thank God He knew us before we ever will and prepared us for the consequences of the choices we made and still make every day to our own detriment.
Thank God for prayer.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Things I learned this week...
It's far easier for me to keep my faith around non-Christians than it is around Christians. I think it's partly because the atheists and agnostics I know are the most loving, caring, beautiful people and God's goodness shines out of them. It's also partly because they seem to have their priorities straight. Something about striving to be a good person just to be a good person and just to love those around you seems more genuine than a forced Christian niceness. It's more of a reflection of a changed heart, even if that heart doesn't realize all good is from God. It's what is truly godly, in my opinion- to love for the sake of loving rather than through obligation or as the fulfillment of some sort of set of rules.
But by the grace of God am I saved and consequently, I can't know who is saved and who isn't. In consequence, those I might use as role models might not be what God wants us to strive for at all.
Is a Christian who makes me loathe Christianity a Christian at all?
Or am I just soft and expect God to conform to my standards?
All I know is when I share the goodness of God with people who don't know Him at all, my faith is restored. My faith is restored by the challenges they give me, by having to prove why God is God.
When I talk shop with Christians, it tends to stray away from that and focus on me. Am I good enough for God? Am I devoted enough? Am I Christian enough?
Well, Christians, no, I'm not. I'm none of those things. I never will be. But that's ok because God loved me before I even tried. God's goodness poured out of me before I even knew Him.
If an atheist plants wheat, the wheat will only grow in the way God intended it to grow. The atheist's wheat is still sacred. Everything is sacred. Everything is of God. There's no division between us and them. If this canyon between Christians and non-believers is filled up by one sentence uttered at an alter call, is that really an eternal divide?
Or is it in our darkest, most alone moments, when even the atheist feels God?
If no one enters the kingdom of heaven but through Jesus, and Jesus healed and taught the dregs of society, then what difference is a few words when He knows our soul?
Christians tend to be afraid of universalism and that's fine. But even if you think some get in and some don't, maybe it'd be wise to be a little less certain of the criteria and a little more certain that you're not loving those around you enough.
We're all broken. We all have baggage and betrayals and traumas and hurts. But if we are selective and protective in the way we love, we aren't truly loving at all. If you can't pray for your enemy, or for a person who just icks you out, that's the divide right there. That's the heart that Jesus knows.
Alter call words aside, are you ok with Jesus knowing who you really are?
Saturday, January 23, 2010
On the lung cancer debate, drowning and the real issues.
This will be a short rant in the form of an analogy.
Lung cancer kills a lot of people annually. Life is sacred and if lung cancer is killing people, then we should ban lung cancer entirely. Problem solved.
Except that people start smoking, and then years go by and all of a sudden, they find themselves in a situation that they sort of knew was among the risks of smoking, and yet, their need for a cigarette for whatever reason outweighed that risk at the time, or rather, each time they lit up.
But if we ban lung cancer and remove all treatments, where will these people go? What will they do? Will they have to get black market drugs and treatments? Will they have to see fraudulent "doctors" in back alleys?
Banning lung cancer doesn't get rid of lung cancer. It just takes away any safety surrounding it.
If you want to prevent lung cancer to the utmost of your ability, you have to go back to when this person was a child and teach them and love them and teach them to love their body also. You have to teach them what they are worth. You have to show them with all your being that that is true. You have to guide them and be involved. You have to love them unconditionally such that if they do dip their toes into troublesome things, they'll come to you anyway. You have to teach them that even if they make mistakes, if they take responsibility and work hard to right things, there is always a possibility of forgiveness and healing.
On the other hand, if you close all the doors of communication, show no support nor love to this person and they wind up in trouble, don't go after the one person who is trying to keep them safe. It may not seem that way, but if a person gets themselves into enough trouble to feel cornered, trapped and past the point of no return, then yes, the person carrying the horrible drugs that are the only possible remedy for the situation (in this case, lung cancer) becomes the only person who is trying to keep them safe.
What I'm trying to say is if a person feels so vulnerable and exposed as a result of your lack of guidance, love and support and feels there is no way out but through means you deem to be horrible, well, it's too late for your opinion to matter.
Or to put it an entirely different way, if somebody is already drowning, they don't want you to teach them how to swim. They just want you to pull them out. Banning lifeguards won't stop people from drowning.
Banning abortions doesn't stop women from the desperation that got them into that waiting room to begin with.
If you do it right, if you handle the issue right from beginning to end, whether abortion is legal or not shouldn't even matter.
Just sayin'.
Lung cancer kills a lot of people annually. Life is sacred and if lung cancer is killing people, then we should ban lung cancer entirely. Problem solved.
Except that people start smoking, and then years go by and all of a sudden, they find themselves in a situation that they sort of knew was among the risks of smoking, and yet, their need for a cigarette for whatever reason outweighed that risk at the time, or rather, each time they lit up.
But if we ban lung cancer and remove all treatments, where will these people go? What will they do? Will they have to get black market drugs and treatments? Will they have to see fraudulent "doctors" in back alleys?
Banning lung cancer doesn't get rid of lung cancer. It just takes away any safety surrounding it.
If you want to prevent lung cancer to the utmost of your ability, you have to go back to when this person was a child and teach them and love them and teach them to love their body also. You have to teach them what they are worth. You have to show them with all your being that that is true. You have to guide them and be involved. You have to love them unconditionally such that if they do dip their toes into troublesome things, they'll come to you anyway. You have to teach them that even if they make mistakes, if they take responsibility and work hard to right things, there is always a possibility of forgiveness and healing.
On the other hand, if you close all the doors of communication, show no support nor love to this person and they wind up in trouble, don't go after the one person who is trying to keep them safe. It may not seem that way, but if a person gets themselves into enough trouble to feel cornered, trapped and past the point of no return, then yes, the person carrying the horrible drugs that are the only possible remedy for the situation (in this case, lung cancer) becomes the only person who is trying to keep them safe.
What I'm trying to say is if a person feels so vulnerable and exposed as a result of your lack of guidance, love and support and feels there is no way out but through means you deem to be horrible, well, it's too late for your opinion to matter.
Or to put it an entirely different way, if somebody is already drowning, they don't want you to teach them how to swim. They just want you to pull them out. Banning lifeguards won't stop people from drowning.
Banning abortions doesn't stop women from the desperation that got them into that waiting room to begin with.
If you do it right, if you handle the issue right from beginning to end, whether abortion is legal or not shouldn't even matter.
Just sayin'.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
On "real" Christianity and the evidence thereof.
Christianity is about following Jesus. It's about being a disciple of Jesus, growing and learning through faith and through the teachings of the Bible. When I first started to learn about it, the Christians I talked to were all, "It's all about Jesus. Just Jesus." They threw out the usual line about how if I accepted Jesus as my savior, I'd be saved.
Over the past year or so, probably closer to two now, I've immersed myself in Christianity, even getting to the point of driving fourteen hours to get baptized at the church I loved in North Carolina. I thought I was in. I had Jesus, I believed in Him and in God. I also believed in Jesus' story in the Bible too.
If it's really "Just Jesus", I thought, then I guess somehow, against my better judgment, I ended up a Christian.
Unfortunately, what I've learned in the past couple of months is it's not as simple as "Just Jesus".
The human world is all about the filters.
When I started my degree in exercise science with a specialization in athletic therapy, I was told it would be a good gateway program to get into vet school later on. The problem was that I got filtered out. See, it's a small program and the ones who are passionate enough to go on to be athletic therapists are easy to spot. They're kind of jocky, but also super scientific and practical. I'm scientific and practical, but I'm not jocky. Even if at one point I craved a snowboarding career (I still do, but I stifle those dreams appropriately), I was nowhere near the build of my fellow classmates, nor did I know nearly enough sports trivia to even try to compete. The profs knew that. They picked me and a couple of other med school wannabes out of the crowd and gave us a really hard time. Why should we be there sucking up their resources when all we want is the piece of paper?
So I got filtered out. If there's one way to get rid of med/vet school wannabes it's to threaten their GPA. No matter what I did, no matter what I learned, I barely passed any of my classes in my second semester. My taping jobs were perfect. I'd practiced on my cadaver-esque ex as he lay passed out on the sofa every evening. I'm not even kidding. I taped him up good'n'proper every day. Elastic bandages to keep his pulled quads tight. Tape around his sprained ankle so he could get back on the field and continue playing... I taped every articulation and muscle on his passed out body. I even did my emergency care procedures on him too. But still, when the test day came around, I'd end up with a C.
C is for Christianity... :D
Definitely feels similar sometimes.
The last time I went to church was sometime in November. I sat down in my "usual" seat, usual being any seat on an aisle and close to the door. One of the regulars sat in the seat in front of mine. "Why don't you come sit here?" she asked pointing to the seat beside her, a mid-row seat. "Or is that too drastic a change?" (sarcasm)
I wondered why. I mean, I was sitting here first, right? So... How does it make any sense?
"I'm fine here," I said.
She kind of stopped talking to me after that.
We stood up, sang the usual songs that make me squint in my usual "wtf?" way and at the end of it all, there was the bread breaking, and the usual glares in my direction because I don't get in line.
Maybe it's just this church, I thought. Maybe we just don't get along?
So I took a break.
There was another more informal church that met downtown at 4PM. Since I'm a night owl, that time was more convenient for me. But I still didn't go.
Christmas came around and that's one of those times when everybody and their atheist nephew go to church. But I didn't.
After Matt Chandler's brain things happened (on the US thanksgiving), I went into hyper-prayer mode for a couple of weeks and then they found out he had brain cancer and I just kind of put everything on hold. I kept praying, and kept thinking about things, but suddenly, I felt as though my priorities were wrong.
The local church might create a community of Christians, sure. But the church I was going to felt like a forced community. It felt like a lot of people there were only there because church gave them some sort of validation and not only that, but it quelled a sort of loneliness within them. Christianity is supposed to do that, yes. Jesus is supposed to fill the void we may feel. But church isn't. You know what I mean? It's like the difference between meeting a godly person to marry at church versus going to church because it's a single people meatmarket.
I'm a magnet for lonely people. I wouldn't consider myself lonely, probably because I take for granted that I have so many people ready to be there for me should I ever be in need. But the lonelies flock to me. It's like they see something in me that they don't see in themselves. But in the case of this church, they seemed to want to fix whatever it was in me that they saw. They clung to me like I was teetering on the edge of suicide or something.
I may have a past that's nasty in some respects, but it's by no means any sort of sympathy generator. Just because your childhood wasn't so bad doesn't mean there's something wrong with me nor that you should feel responsible to have to nurture me to death. I'm fine.
Well, clingy people freak me out... but aside from that, I'm fine.
Anyway, the point being, here I was trying to wedge myself into this fabricated community and as I grew more and more uncomfortable and felt more and more controlled, I felt the need to get out of there.
But the Bible says we need community. The church I adore in NC is all about the local church. They've got forty year plans to reshape the community and stuff. It's great. And it made me pray for months to get an Acts 29 plant here. And finally, in my period of church abstinence, one of the Acts 29 guys tweeted that sure enough, somebody got approved for the Montreal area. Immediately, I emailed him.
In the meantime, I had offered to edit the membership course curriculum for the NC church. I'm good at editing and in the process, I could learn something, so why not? Even if it was fifty-six pages long. :-O
So on the one hand, I was reading and editing this enormous thing about the whys and shoulds about church committing, and on the other hand, I had emails coming back to me about gathering finances and networking and committing to this new church plant.
Whoa.
No, I thought. I can't do it. I can commit my time, I can commit my spirit, but committing my body is another thing entirely. I emailed back saying (paraphrased), "Look, I'll help, but for reasons I won't go into to spare us both the novel, I have a lot of trouble with commitment. I'll help any way I can, but I am quite limited." I didn't get a reply to that email.
Of course, being that I'm analytical about me, I had to figure out why I had so much trouble committing my body. As a kid, I had headaches all the time. I thought I had a brain tumor, but they never found anything. From there, I moved on to lung problems and throat problems and even had my very own voice doctor. One or two attempted sexual assaults caused me to drown any consciousness and awareness in alcohol. After I got out of that, I dabbled in anorexia, was held hostage for a few hours in another sexual assault attempt and then suffered a pretty severe brain trauma in which I lost my perfect eyesight and required glasses after that. I entered an abusive relationship, gained forty pounds in a few months and ended up nearly dying of an autoimmune disorder. I got out of that and ended up with a two year long migraine. Add to all that the fact that I had had panic attacks nearly from birth on until fairly recently and that I have severe food intolerances to nearly the entire world's menu, and the end result is my body and I don't fare very well in social situations. I don't like to commit my body to anything because it has a hard time being ok. It can't eat properly, it feels trapped easily and just for fun, it throws in some massive amounts of pain whenever it pleases.
I can handle emotional trauma. I've got coping mechanisms for that. But when your body shuts down, there's nothing you can do. I'm supposed to avoid stress at all costs. If I get stressed, my body is likely to start devouring itself again, either in the same form as last time or in a new form, like arthritis or MS (although, new research seems to have distanced MS from autoimmune things, so that's good news for me... if it's true). Trapping my body in any situation stresses me. You see?
Anyway, add to that that the new church planter and his wife remind me of the most terrible set of people I know (I'm not even kidding, the pastor had my betrayer's favorite song as his license plate, wtf? And his wife is identical to the betrayer's too. It's freaky.) and suddenly, I'm trust into an awkward situation. One, which, if you recall in spite of the absurd length this post has already attained, I've prayed for for months. Great.
When a couple of the Christian people I talk to online got wind that I wasn't going to church, all of a sudden, I was doing something wrong. And that's when the whole "Just Jesus" thing started to crumble and I started to get filtered out of Christianity.
Over the past few weeks, I've been told, "So then you're not really a Christian," several times by several people.
I guess that means I'm not.
Christians have this thing where they feel the need to panic about your salvation constantly. It's like everybody is teetering on the brink of losing their faith and so it's imperative that risky stuff gets pointed out as soon as it comes up. There's no benefit of the doubt here, because the stakes are too high. You know, eternity and whatnot.
And so, here are the few reasons my behavior as a Christian shows that my heart isn't really changed and therefore, I'm not a real Christian (or so I've been told):
- I'm not a member of a local church. Regardless of my reasons, regardless of the circumstance, if we want to be disciples of Jesus, we must care for His "bride", the local church. (Although, I'm still trying to figure out where in the Bible the word "local" characterizes the church..)
- I don't do communion. It's not important to me that Jesus sacrificed Himself. I spitefully (oh yes, spitefully, even if my body is physically unable to handle it) decline the powerful symbol and that's very telling.
- How did they put it today on twitter? Something like, Christians who want to warp the scriptures to suit their agenda focus on the vague scriptures rather than the clear explanations of scripture? I love the gays. And I can't pick and choose what I believe and what I don't in the Bible, so something's gotta give. Either we're interpreting Romans 1 wrong or oversimplifying it or...
- If I truly understood the sacrifice of the cross and the forgiveness it bestowed upon me, I'd easily forgive the three or four men who have assaulted me over the past sixteen years. Obviously, my lack of forgiveness towards them means something. As does my lack of forgiveness towards my mother who left when I was two and only returns when she's in some sort of danger or trauma (usually involving people of a criminal nature). And of course, not being able to forgive my betrayer for raping my soul falls into this category also.
- If I can't be godly and find godliness in a purely capitalistic, unethical work environment, then my faith is probably weak and I give in to temptation far too easily. Maybe other people can do it- maybe it's just me who can't trample people to get to the top in a godly way. Who knows?
- When I feel I fully grasp the gospel, that is when I actually grasp it the least.
- Conversely, if I say I don't know God, even if my basis for that seemingly agnostic statement is that God is so great that there is no way my inadequate human faculties can properly grasp Him, then evidently, I don't know God at all, and therefore, my Christianity is empty.
- If I feel God chooses those He saves and devote myself to prayer and answering questions in response to that, then by not preaching the gospel to the atheists around me every chance I get, I am not playing an active role in the salvation of others and I probably don't understand how important it is.
- Similarly, if I'm not constantly correcting my fellow Christians, I have no concern for their faith nor their salvation. If I really cared, I'd hold them accountable until they cut me out of their lives completely.
- Same goes for the gays.
- If I fall asleep before praying, it shows something clear about my heart for Jesus.
- If I pray that God take a suffering little girl to end her suffering, I underestimate His power for healing.
- If I love my own life, I don't trust God nor do I value the big picture that is His plan.
- If I don't see myself ever getting married, it's only because I don't think the God I worship is a good God who provides.
- If I feel deserving of anything, I don't understand God's mercy. But if I feel I don't deserve anything, I underestimate God's grace.
It goes on and on, and in the end, I feel filtered out. I'm not a Christian. My heart clearly shows that it is inadequate for Christianity.
Nevermind the love. Nevermind that Jesus loves me and vice versa. Sometimes, like they say, love just isn't enough.
But hey, at least the community I do have, the one that doesn't count because it's outside church, knows my heart. They know I've already committed myself to them, even though I commit to nothing. They know if they need anything, I'll sacrifice my entire being to make sure they get what they need. In turn, they know I'm not perfect, but they also know that I try harder than most people. They know my past and have loved me through it and vice versa. They know my mistakes before I make them, and yet, even though they wasted energy warning me, they're there to help me up after I've fallen (again) anyway. And they know I'll be there too.
I may not be a real Christian, but I do know how to love people. I do know community. I do know forgiveness, however difficult it really is in the hardest of circumstances.
And I do know that the God I worship is good in such a powerful way that we don't even have a word to describe that kind of goodness. And that, to me, is evidence enough that the judgment, constant criticism and just plain wrongs we commit to each other in the name of Christianity is not the way to godliness.
Over the past year or so, probably closer to two now, I've immersed myself in Christianity, even getting to the point of driving fourteen hours to get baptized at the church I loved in North Carolina. I thought I was in. I had Jesus, I believed in Him and in God. I also believed in Jesus' story in the Bible too.
If it's really "Just Jesus", I thought, then I guess somehow, against my better judgment, I ended up a Christian.
Unfortunately, what I've learned in the past couple of months is it's not as simple as "Just Jesus".
The human world is all about the filters.
When I started my degree in exercise science with a specialization in athletic therapy, I was told it would be a good gateway program to get into vet school later on. The problem was that I got filtered out. See, it's a small program and the ones who are passionate enough to go on to be athletic therapists are easy to spot. They're kind of jocky, but also super scientific and practical. I'm scientific and practical, but I'm not jocky. Even if at one point I craved a snowboarding career (I still do, but I stifle those dreams appropriately), I was nowhere near the build of my fellow classmates, nor did I know nearly enough sports trivia to even try to compete. The profs knew that. They picked me and a couple of other med school wannabes out of the crowd and gave us a really hard time. Why should we be there sucking up their resources when all we want is the piece of paper?
So I got filtered out. If there's one way to get rid of med/vet school wannabes it's to threaten their GPA. No matter what I did, no matter what I learned, I barely passed any of my classes in my second semester. My taping jobs were perfect. I'd practiced on my cadaver-esque ex as he lay passed out on the sofa every evening. I'm not even kidding. I taped him up good'n'proper every day. Elastic bandages to keep his pulled quads tight. Tape around his sprained ankle so he could get back on the field and continue playing... I taped every articulation and muscle on his passed out body. I even did my emergency care procedures on him too. But still, when the test day came around, I'd end up with a C.
C is for Christianity... :D
Definitely feels similar sometimes.
The last time I went to church was sometime in November. I sat down in my "usual" seat, usual being any seat on an aisle and close to the door. One of the regulars sat in the seat in front of mine. "Why don't you come sit here?" she asked pointing to the seat beside her, a mid-row seat. "Or is that too drastic a change?" (sarcasm)
I wondered why. I mean, I was sitting here first, right? So... How does it make any sense?
"I'm fine here," I said.
She kind of stopped talking to me after that.
We stood up, sang the usual songs that make me squint in my usual "wtf?" way and at the end of it all, there was the bread breaking, and the usual glares in my direction because I don't get in line.
Maybe it's just this church, I thought. Maybe we just don't get along?
So I took a break.
There was another more informal church that met downtown at 4PM. Since I'm a night owl, that time was more convenient for me. But I still didn't go.
Christmas came around and that's one of those times when everybody and their atheist nephew go to church. But I didn't.
After Matt Chandler's brain things happened (on the US thanksgiving), I went into hyper-prayer mode for a couple of weeks and then they found out he had brain cancer and I just kind of put everything on hold. I kept praying, and kept thinking about things, but suddenly, I felt as though my priorities were wrong.
The local church might create a community of Christians, sure. But the church I was going to felt like a forced community. It felt like a lot of people there were only there because church gave them some sort of validation and not only that, but it quelled a sort of loneliness within them. Christianity is supposed to do that, yes. Jesus is supposed to fill the void we may feel. But church isn't. You know what I mean? It's like the difference between meeting a godly person to marry at church versus going to church because it's a single people meatmarket.
I'm a magnet for lonely people. I wouldn't consider myself lonely, probably because I take for granted that I have so many people ready to be there for me should I ever be in need. But the lonelies flock to me. It's like they see something in me that they don't see in themselves. But in the case of this church, they seemed to want to fix whatever it was in me that they saw. They clung to me like I was teetering on the edge of suicide or something.
I may have a past that's nasty in some respects, but it's by no means any sort of sympathy generator. Just because your childhood wasn't so bad doesn't mean there's something wrong with me nor that you should feel responsible to have to nurture me to death. I'm fine.
Well, clingy people freak me out... but aside from that, I'm fine.
Anyway, the point being, here I was trying to wedge myself into this fabricated community and as I grew more and more uncomfortable and felt more and more controlled, I felt the need to get out of there.
But the Bible says we need community. The church I adore in NC is all about the local church. They've got forty year plans to reshape the community and stuff. It's great. And it made me pray for months to get an Acts 29 plant here. And finally, in my period of church abstinence, one of the Acts 29 guys tweeted that sure enough, somebody got approved for the Montreal area. Immediately, I emailed him.
In the meantime, I had offered to edit the membership course curriculum for the NC church. I'm good at editing and in the process, I could learn something, so why not? Even if it was fifty-six pages long. :-O
So on the one hand, I was reading and editing this enormous thing about the whys and shoulds about church committing, and on the other hand, I had emails coming back to me about gathering finances and networking and committing to this new church plant.
Whoa.
No, I thought. I can't do it. I can commit my time, I can commit my spirit, but committing my body is another thing entirely. I emailed back saying (paraphrased), "Look, I'll help, but for reasons I won't go into to spare us both the novel, I have a lot of trouble with commitment. I'll help any way I can, but I am quite limited." I didn't get a reply to that email.
Of course, being that I'm analytical about me, I had to figure out why I had so much trouble committing my body. As a kid, I had headaches all the time. I thought I had a brain tumor, but they never found anything. From there, I moved on to lung problems and throat problems and even had my very own voice doctor. One or two attempted sexual assaults caused me to drown any consciousness and awareness in alcohol. After I got out of that, I dabbled in anorexia, was held hostage for a few hours in another sexual assault attempt and then suffered a pretty severe brain trauma in which I lost my perfect eyesight and required glasses after that. I entered an abusive relationship, gained forty pounds in a few months and ended up nearly dying of an autoimmune disorder. I got out of that and ended up with a two year long migraine. Add to all that the fact that I had had panic attacks nearly from birth on until fairly recently and that I have severe food intolerances to nearly the entire world's menu, and the end result is my body and I don't fare very well in social situations. I don't like to commit my body to anything because it has a hard time being ok. It can't eat properly, it feels trapped easily and just for fun, it throws in some massive amounts of pain whenever it pleases.
I can handle emotional trauma. I've got coping mechanisms for that. But when your body shuts down, there's nothing you can do. I'm supposed to avoid stress at all costs. If I get stressed, my body is likely to start devouring itself again, either in the same form as last time or in a new form, like arthritis or MS (although, new research seems to have distanced MS from autoimmune things, so that's good news for me... if it's true). Trapping my body in any situation stresses me. You see?
Anyway, add to that that the new church planter and his wife remind me of the most terrible set of people I know (I'm not even kidding, the pastor had my betrayer's favorite song as his license plate, wtf? And his wife is identical to the betrayer's too. It's freaky.) and suddenly, I'm trust into an awkward situation. One, which, if you recall in spite of the absurd length this post has already attained, I've prayed for for months. Great.
When a couple of the Christian people I talk to online got wind that I wasn't going to church, all of a sudden, I was doing something wrong. And that's when the whole "Just Jesus" thing started to crumble and I started to get filtered out of Christianity.
Over the past few weeks, I've been told, "So then you're not really a Christian," several times by several people.
I guess that means I'm not.
Christians have this thing where they feel the need to panic about your salvation constantly. It's like everybody is teetering on the brink of losing their faith and so it's imperative that risky stuff gets pointed out as soon as it comes up. There's no benefit of the doubt here, because the stakes are too high. You know, eternity and whatnot.
And so, here are the few reasons my behavior as a Christian shows that my heart isn't really changed and therefore, I'm not a real Christian (or so I've been told):
- I'm not a member of a local church. Regardless of my reasons, regardless of the circumstance, if we want to be disciples of Jesus, we must care for His "bride", the local church. (Although, I'm still trying to figure out where in the Bible the word "local" characterizes the church..)
- I don't do communion. It's not important to me that Jesus sacrificed Himself. I spitefully (oh yes, spitefully, even if my body is physically unable to handle it) decline the powerful symbol and that's very telling.
- How did they put it today on twitter? Something like, Christians who want to warp the scriptures to suit their agenda focus on the vague scriptures rather than the clear explanations of scripture? I love the gays. And I can't pick and choose what I believe and what I don't in the Bible, so something's gotta give. Either we're interpreting Romans 1 wrong or oversimplifying it or...
- If I truly understood the sacrifice of the cross and the forgiveness it bestowed upon me, I'd easily forgive the three or four men who have assaulted me over the past sixteen years. Obviously, my lack of forgiveness towards them means something. As does my lack of forgiveness towards my mother who left when I was two and only returns when she's in some sort of danger or trauma (usually involving people of a criminal nature). And of course, not being able to forgive my betrayer for raping my soul falls into this category also.
- If I can't be godly and find godliness in a purely capitalistic, unethical work environment, then my faith is probably weak and I give in to temptation far too easily. Maybe other people can do it- maybe it's just me who can't trample people to get to the top in a godly way. Who knows?
- When I feel I fully grasp the gospel, that is when I actually grasp it the least.
- Conversely, if I say I don't know God, even if my basis for that seemingly agnostic statement is that God is so great that there is no way my inadequate human faculties can properly grasp Him, then evidently, I don't know God at all, and therefore, my Christianity is empty.
- If I feel God chooses those He saves and devote myself to prayer and answering questions in response to that, then by not preaching the gospel to the atheists around me every chance I get, I am not playing an active role in the salvation of others and I probably don't understand how important it is.
- Similarly, if I'm not constantly correcting my fellow Christians, I have no concern for their faith nor their salvation. If I really cared, I'd hold them accountable until they cut me out of their lives completely.
- Same goes for the gays.
- If I fall asleep before praying, it shows something clear about my heart for Jesus.
- If I pray that God take a suffering little girl to end her suffering, I underestimate His power for healing.
- If I love my own life, I don't trust God nor do I value the big picture that is His plan.
- If I don't see myself ever getting married, it's only because I don't think the God I worship is a good God who provides.
- If I feel deserving of anything, I don't understand God's mercy. But if I feel I don't deserve anything, I underestimate God's grace.
It goes on and on, and in the end, I feel filtered out. I'm not a Christian. My heart clearly shows that it is inadequate for Christianity.
Nevermind the love. Nevermind that Jesus loves me and vice versa. Sometimes, like they say, love just isn't enough.
But hey, at least the community I do have, the one that doesn't count because it's outside church, knows my heart. They know I've already committed myself to them, even though I commit to nothing. They know if they need anything, I'll sacrifice my entire being to make sure they get what they need. In turn, they know I'm not perfect, but they also know that I try harder than most people. They know my past and have loved me through it and vice versa. They know my mistakes before I make them, and yet, even though they wasted energy warning me, they're there to help me up after I've fallen (again) anyway. And they know I'll be there too.
I may not be a real Christian, but I do know how to love people. I do know community. I do know forgiveness, however difficult it really is in the hardest of circumstances.
And I do know that the God I worship is good in such a powerful way that we don't even have a word to describe that kind of goodness. And that, to me, is evidence enough that the judgment, constant criticism and just plain wrongs we commit to each other in the name of Christianity is not the way to godliness.
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