fundamentalism
yep, i guess i’m a heretic
heretic [her-i-tik] 1. a professed believer who maintains religious opinions contrary to those accepted by his or her church or rejects doctrines prescribed by that church. 2. anyone who doesn’t conform to an established attitude, doctrine, or principle. synonyms: apostate, backslider, recreant, dissenter, skeptic, freethinker. (those made me laugh!)
my post up at rachel held evans’ blog last week–insecure christians–got some great comments, both positive ones & negative ones. the negative ones tended to come from the perspective that by me saying there is something good in us (because we are originally created in the image of God) that it somehow devalues the work of Christ in our lives. i’m personally so confused by this fear, that if we have even a little bit of good in us, it somehow untangles the whole rest of the story. to me, it enhances the Story and the work of God in this beautiful, messed up world. it doesn’t dismiss the power of sin and the reality of its presence in each of us from the moment we step into this Genesis 3 world. but it isn’t our starting place.
and i guess sometimes these i-honestly-don’t-think-they’re-all-that-crazy-when-you-read-the-gospels ideas make me a heretic.
i’m called one now and then.
and for the most part i always take it as a compliment.
it’s part of the cost of being a dreamer, lover, and status-quo rocker.
honestly, if believing that there’s some shred of good in every human being because we were created in God’s image makes me a heretic, then yep, I guess i am.
if thinking that even though we are full of brokenness, we are also beautiful no matter what we believe makes me a heretic, then yep, I guess I am.
if holding that women should be fully equal with men and free to lead fully and completely in whatever way God is calling them to lead makes me a heretic, then yep, I guess I am.
if refusing to build entire oppressive & mean systems of belief about homosexuality based on a few passages in the Bible and loving my gay friends freely & fully makes me a heretic, then yep, I guess I am.
if valuing practicing the ways of Jesus over nitpicking about doctrine makes me a heretic, then yep, i guess i am.
if being convinced that it’s possible that men and women can be true brothers & sisters & soul friends without all kinds of sexual weirdness and fear makes me a heretic, then yep, i guess i am.
if passionately believing that a lot of the modern church has been built on power, put-togetherness & serving itself instead of extending the tangible love of Jesus & restoring dignity to hurting people makes me a heretic, then yep, i guess i am.
if loving & valuing the Bible without making it more important than the wild-and-mysterious-Holy-Spirit-at-work-in-people’s-lives makes me a heretic, then yep, i guess i am.
i have a feeling a lot of you are heretics, too!
it can feel scary & lonely to be a heretic. i experienced the weirdest feeling when i was reading some of those comments over at rachel’s blog–a feeling of being an outsider. of being someone who no longer is part of a system that many still ascribe to and i used to fully embrace. it was mildly painful on a weird level but a huge relief on another. i respect the beliefs of some of the commenters and our differences; the world needs all different shapes & sizes of christianity. but it made it even more apparent how “out” of those particular traditional evangelical circles i really am.
i live in a different more grace & hope-filled world than ever before and i love it.
i have tasted “goodness in the land of the living” (psalm 27:13, i love that psalm) and there’s no turning back.
i do not want to raise my kids in the former system i was in & i don’t want them to believe that being a miserable wretch is their primary starting place. they, like most human beings, will probably have the same basic reflex toward shame and somehow feeling like they are falling short despite all their efforts. what i would like for them, for me, and for all-those-i-know-who-struggle-with-believing-they-are-worthy-of-anything-good to know is we are loved fully and completely by God just as we are–in all our mess & all our glory, in all our goodness & all our badness, in all our strength & all our weakness, all our beauty & all our ugliness–no matter what small or big faith we might have.
yep, i guess i’m a heretic.
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insecure christians
this was a guest post i wrote for rachel held evans‘ blog last week (see, i do know how to use capital letters!). i wanted to re-post it here so i had in my archives; plus, some of you may not have seen it or wanted to comment over there because there were loads of them. anyway, i’d love any thoughts you wanted to add to it.
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I had an amazing conversation last week with a non-Christian counseling grad student who had a project in this class to “move toward something in their culture they were uncomfortable with.” He chose Christianity. His experience with it wasn’t a positive one so he was trying to bravely explore it. We had a delightful conversation because he asked the best questions, the kind where trite Christian answers won’t quite do. He wasn’t talking about atonement theories or biblical interpretation of certain passages (for the most part, I think only Christian insiders give a rip about that kind of stuff).
He asked–Why do Christians never seem to feel very good about themselves?
I laughed that he had hit the nail on the head. The basic premise of Christianity is that there is nothing good in us. That original sin has ruined us and we are miserable sinners, unworthy of anything good without the blood of Jesus. That depravity is our essence.
With that as our starting place, my experience has been that despite all of the “God loves me” messages that get tossed around in church services and Bible studies, nothing completely fills in the cracks of that deep chasm. That somehow, no matter what, we just aren’t good. We aren’t worthy. We aren’t secure. We aren’t loveable. We are fatally flawed as human beings.
I know this well in my own life. I come from a liberal, non-churchy family that believed in the basic goodness of people (we were those people who evangelical Christians worried about!). When I opened my heart to following Christ, I needed a real, tangible God and was strangely and beautifully drawn to Jesus. I always say that if I had just stuck with that and never became involved in the kinds of churches I ended up attending, I would have been better off in the security-as-a-person department. But alas, that is not my story, and the rigidity and rules sucked me in, and I learned about what a miserable person I was without the cross of Christ. I ended up feeling worse about myself than when I started, and I brought a lot of shame and guilt to the table from the beginning! Christianity seemed to cement in me my badness. It reminded me constantly how much I fell short and how unworthy I was without God in my life.
About 17 years ago a wise and beautiful friend rocked my world with an important theological twist that some of you might say “duh!” at, but it was never taught to me in my hyper-conservative-evangelical circles. We were made in the image of God. That goodness is in us from the beginning. Sure, sin and brokenness has infiltrated this Genesis 3 world, but we must remember it all started with Genesis 1. Man and woman, created in the original image of God. That is our essence even though brokenness buries it.
I think that the spiritual journey is to uncover God’s image that was originally placed there.
I know from experience in my own life and journeying alongside many others that this is no easy task. It makes it far worse when the starting place is “I am really a miserable wretch.”
The Apostle Paul in Romans 7 talks about the struggle of our humanity to lean into sin. This passage is used all the time to hold up basic depravity, but we forget the twist that is there–”It’s not me, but the sin that lives in me” (vs. 7:12).
As a mother of five, the last thing in the world I want my kids to think is that they basically suck and are unworthy, unlovable. I want them to know they are beautiful, created in the original image of God with his imprint built into every fiber of their being. I want them to know they are worthy, secure, free. With a great human capacity to sin, fall, fail and really mess things up, sure. But I do not want a faith that forces me to build in them a basic insecurity from the start. That feels cruel. And completely counter to what I know about being a loving parent, and I’m only a human one.
My experience in working with people in pain in the church is that there’s an awful lot of insecurity going around in a system that is supposed to be built upon freedom, healing, and wholeness. Far too much fear, depression, inadequacy, unworthiness exists in countless Christ-followers when they have a chance to be really honest. Something is gravely wrong with this!
But the systems we’ve created and the theologies we’ve clung to perpetuate it.
Ultimately it not only damages us personally and relationally, but keeps the real power of the church paralyzed and stuck.
And really insecure.
Read Morethere’s a difference between believing & “right belief”
one of the things i love the most about our little wild & crazy refuge community is we can hold the space for a lot of divergent views about the Bible & life & faith. it’s not an easy task, i must say, and sometimes i get asked “so, just what does the refuge believe about _______.” (it’s usually not issues that are on this list, though, they are usually questions far, far more specific.)
this is a typical question of most every church. and usually churches can answer it because there are a lot of clear-cut statements of faith or a creed or something floating around that somehow helps people “know” more clearly where everyone who identify themselves as part of it stands on particular beliefs.
i respect that these kinds of statements can be helpful to people. oh, they do make things easier! but i have trouble with them, too. people in our community have the freedom to believe lots of different things about God/Jesus/faith, and so i often respond “well, i am glad to tell you what i believe but i can’t speak for everyone else.”
you might be cringing when you hear that. what kind of leader are you, some might say? and i’d say “i’m a leader who’s trying to trust God with the technicalities & do my best to lead people to consider & wrestle with & tangibly live out what i believe are the fundamentals.”
Jesus didn’t seem too concerned with these kinds of “here’s exactly what you need to believe to follow me.” rather, he was calling people into a way of participating in the kingdom of God in the here and now, challenging us to embrace humility & spiritual poverty in a world bent on knowledge & pride, encouraging us to follow his way of sacrifice and lay down our lives for others, feed the hungry, visit the sick, love the unlovely, and take the much harder path of practicing love instead of theologizing about love. he also said this kind of faith was going to be much more difficult than knowledge.
we can passionately be believers, without getting caught up in the human-made trap of “right belief”. they are different things.
i believe wholeheartedly in the power & beauty & wisdom of the Bible and that there are many different interpretations of it that matter deeply.
one thing that has helped me immensely on my faith journey over the past chunk of years is discovering how many incredible, diverse, smart, and amazing people see the Bible very differently from each other but somehow are heading toward the same God. it’s been a mind & heart bender for sure, especially when i came from a pretty conservative faith persuasion for many years that seemed to throw “this is what the Bible for sure says” around a lot.
at this stage of my faith journey, i might not agree with some people’s interpretations of the Bible, but i deeply respect why and how they might see it a certain way. i also remain deeply committed to not trying to convince someone to believe “my way” and like to hold the tension of disagreement on the technicalities.
the need to convince each other to see it the way we see it is what divides and separates us, splits churches, and creates all sorts of pain & hurt in the world. as far as i can tell, Jesus never called us to do that. believing in him must look like something else. maybe it looks like trusting the first & greatest commandment and keeping it in our hearts and bringing it everywhere we go–to love God & others.
one of the things we are trying to hold on to in the refuge community is that we can disagree on Bible verses but that we must, at all costs, respect our differences and treat each other with love and kindness. to me, it’s a willingness to lay down “our way” and trust God to be God since we’re not. it’s a gorgeous but challenging thing to witness because somehow it forces us all to look beyond our interpretation of particular passages and center in on the most important thing–love. i can love my sisters and brothers who see the Bible differently, and i am so grateful that they love me even when they disagree with me, too.
i think that’s the task at hand for a more inclusive, diverse, and Jesus-centered church.
i don’t think people are supposed to water down their beliefs to adjust to others in either direction. the tricky part is learning to hold a space for all of us, in all our differences.
there’s no question, it takes a lot of grace, courage, steadfastness & finesse to truly put relationship above doctrine and respect the difference between believing & “right belief.”
and honestly, i think that’s what Jesus embodied.
it’s also a brutally difficult task in a world that clamors for uniformity & clarity on who’s in, who’s out, who believes this and who believes that, who thinks this is wrong and who thinks this is right. often, both the left and the right are just as passionate about these dividing lines.
i’ve been thinking about this a lot lately & it reminds me of how much easier it is to build a church than cultivate community. yeah, it’s easier to divide and separate based on Bible beliefs instead of learning to live together in the tension of seeing it differently but remaining united in love.
God, show us how to live in the beautiful, trusting tension of disagreeing on all kinds of things but agreeing on love & respect not just in theory or from afar, but up-close- and-personal in real community together.
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ps: i had already written this post when i saw this recycle your faith video this morning–it’s called the final apologetic. i don’t agree with every point in it but i think it fleshes some of this same thought out, too.
ppss: here’s a post i wrote this week for the refuge blog about walking wounded: hope for those hurt by church, a gathering we’re hosting october 21st & 22nd in denver–it’s called stopping for the wounded.
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the great distraction
a few weeks ago i was in a conversation with a friend about the use of the Bible in our Christian faith. i sometimes get criticized for not using the Bible enough, in that i am not that excited about exegeting passages intellectually. i definitely believe in the value, challenge, and beauty in the Bible, but i will be honest–i think we waste valuable time focused on picking apart passages and talking about the Bible that could be better spent on actually living the Bible.
Jesus–God incarnate and a Jew–obviously had a high value of the scriptures. he referenced them often in the gospels. yet, so often when he did he used it to make a point to the pharisees and those clinging to religiosity–the law is easier than love. it just is. it is much easier to have a rule book of the do’s and don’t and hold others to that first (and usually ourselves second) instead of practice the ways of tangible love. he talked about God desiring mercy over sacrifice (hosea 6:6), setting captives free (luke 4:18), and loving God and our neighbors (luke 10:27). he called out people who elevated a long list of rules above restoring dignity. he pointed out the travesty of judging others & hypocrisy by calling us to our own log instead of our brother’s speck. he made clear that he came to set people free of the law to fulfill the law (as Love set in motion) instead of keeping them entrapped to its constant snare of self-righteousness. one of his most pointed & angry discourses is in matthew 23, the “woes to the pharisees”. here’s some of what he says:
“They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden” (v. 4).
“Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra long tassels. And they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues” (v. 5-6).
“Don’t let anyone call you ‘Rabbi,’ for you have only one teacher, and all of you are equal as brothers and sisters. The greatest among you must be a servant. 12 But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (vs. 8, 11-12).
“Hypocrites! For you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either” (v. 13).
“For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith…You strain your water so you won’t accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel!” (vs. 23, 24).
“First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too. Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness” (vs. 26, 28).
yikes, those are some strong words. words i think we all should consider listening to because none of us are exempt from the tendency to control people & limit God.
i think the most powerful one is: “for you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces. You won’t go in yourselves, and you don’t let others enter either.”
i do think the enemy–Satan, the evil one, whatever-you-want-to-call-the-forces-of-evil-against-the world–is often gloating at how much time we spend picking apart & defending passages of the Bible. it’s a great distraction that prevents us from opening the door to the Kingdom of God. as i’ve said before, while we’re talking about theology, the world is crying out for hope. yeah, it’s much easier to spend a lot of time talking about the greek word for “pastor” than actually engaging in in-the-flesh relationships with people. it protects us. it insulates us. it gives us something to focus our mind & energies on.
but ultimately it distracts us from the bigger work at hand–bringing resurrection & hope to dark places in this world. intense dialogue on different opinions about Bible verses tend to be dead ends. it’s why i usually don’t spend much time on them; going toe-to-toe on scripture only usually lands people in a nasty place and i’m just tired of spending time on it when there are many more important things to focus on.
we make a lot more room for the Kingdom of God when we suspend our need to defend correct doctrine & center our hearts, attention, and practices on loving other people, humbling ourselves, and sacrificing our need to be “right”.
we honor the Word of God by offering presence and cups of cold water and taking our hands off the need to control or convince–trusting the Holy Spirit & and that some kind of transformation, no matter how big or small, usually happens.
people are set free.
honestly, i think that was what Jesus was getting at in the gospels–turning our tendency toward being distracted by rules & regulations & doctrine upside down.
over and over he said his ways were going to be way harder and would require more of us than following the letter of the law. loving our enemies, setting down our stones, touching lepers, advocating for the voiceless, giving up our power & ego & need to be right, receiving and giving grace is heavy lifting.
but what Jesus challenges us toward.
i don’t want to be caught up by minutia, distracted by defending things that don’t matter.
i don’t want to get caught up in conversations & time-suckers & online theological disagreements that distract me from hanging out with people who are looking for love & hope, not scriptural discourses.
i don’t want to only talk about the Bible & what this or that passage means to whoever’s interpreting it.
it’s not that those things have no value at all, but they can tend to be great distractions to Love. and honestly, i think the world is tired of it and are waiting for Christ-followers to set down their Bibles and start living what’s in there instead.
i’d much rather engage in living the Bible face to face, heart to heart, life to life–with all its risks, all its dangers. yeah, i want a practical theology.
God, help us stay focused on you and not be distracted by details that draw us away from Christ’s love & life & hope.
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the golden rule
**this post is part of rachel held evans’ synchroblog this week on the rally to restore unity. there’s some fun stuff over there this week!
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when i was a kid my mom had a plaque on her wall that said “whoever has the gold makes the rules”. looking back, oh how true those words can sometimes be in the systems that we live in! it was years later before i read the real golden rule, Jesus’ words in the sermon on the mount–“do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (matthew 7:12).
every other world religion has something else close to the same idea:
- hinduism – “this is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.” – mahabharata 5:1517
- islam – “none of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” number 13 of imam al-nawawi’s forty hadiths
- judaism – “what is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. this is the law: all the rest is commentary.” talmud, shabbat 31a.
- confucianism – “tse-kung asked, ‘is there one word that can serve as a principle of conduct for life?’ confucius replied, ‘it is the word ‘shu’ — reciprocity. do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.’” doctrine of the mean 13.3
- baha’i – “ascribe not to any soul that which thou wouldst not have ascribed to thee, and say not that which thou doest not…blessed is he who preferreth his brother before himself.” – baha’u'llah
- taoism – the sage has no interest of his own, but takes the interests of the people as his own. he is kind to the kind; he is also kind to the unkind: for virtue is kind. he is faithful to the faithful; he is also faithful to the unfaithful: for virtue is faithful. - tao teh ching, chapter 49
the world would be a different place if we honored those words.
but i wonder also if a huge part of the divide between people is that inside we don’t like ourselves, either. if we don’t like ourselves, how in the world can we like anyone else? if we hate ourselves, then we pass on hate. if we’re used to being treated poorly, then that’s what we pass on to others. if we have a God of doctrine & dogma, then we will pass on that God to others.
we all know that bullies are bullies because inside they feel insecure somehow. unloved. unvaluable. somehow lacking.
my experience in christianity is that most people don’t really love themselves very well, either. we actually are “loving our neighbor as ourselves” and that often means “not too nicely”. for many, there’s a deep insecurity inside, some kind of void that leaves a lot of room for defensiveness and fear. (oh, i lived this way for a long time & did my share of unity-destruction, that’s for sure). the “i’ve-got-to-prove-this-or-else-i’ve-got-nothing-left” mentality that robs joy, life, and free relationship with other people. many of us are indeed loving our neighbors as ourselves–out of fear, anger and hate instead of love, hope, and peace.
my hope for unity is that we’d all become people with a deep sense of love in our core, a strong sense of knowing who we really are as people–accepted and free. and that out of that quiet strength, we’d be able to roll with others’ differences, not need to defend what doesn’t really need defending, and retain our own identity. that we’d be secure people who have nothing to prove.
open people, willing to listen. kind people, willing to agree to disagree. loving people, willing to respect others’ dignity.
when we have nothing to prove, we are released to love others more freely, more fully. no agenda. no bullying. just a desire for mutual respect.
God, let us know the true love that you have for us. help us to accept it as our own so that we may give it freely to others.
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ps: more coming soon on this, too, but i wanted to let you know that we are in the final stages of production for down we go: living out the wild ways of Jesus. i am very excited about this project for all kinds of reasons, mainly because it’s the topic i’m most passionate about–the weird wild beautiful upside down ways of Jesus. there’s now a facebook page which will be updated with info about it. it’d be great if you could go over there and “like” it when you have a chance.
why sometimes i get sad
last month a mainline pastor from a small town outside of denver got in touch with me to see if i would be willing to come speak to their high school’s baccalaureate service in may. they were looking for a female pastor, someone who would inspire the kids & open up some doors that hadn’t been opened previously by some of the standard baccalaureate sermons/messages.
i really appreciated his enthusiasm & desire to press the envelope a little (and the date worked for jose & i to go together & have a fun night away afterward) so i said yes.
yesterday i got an email from him letting me know that unfortunately when the other pastors and leaders found out that a female pastor was speaking, they banded together to reject the idea. they said they couldn’t listen to someone they didn’t agree with and strong-armed a very conservative evangelical into the spot instead.
his email was so kind, and he was so sad that his hope got hijacked. he tried to fight the good fight and just couldn’t make it happen. i ended up talking to him on the phone just to make sure i was clear what he was really saying and didn’t misunderstand. i asked, “so, is it really just the woman pastor thing or is it about my beliefs or ?“ he said that the woman thing was definitely the main issue, the deal breaker, and anything that remotely is connected to the word “emerging” was just icing on the cake.
we had a nice conversation & i really felt bad for him, really. it’s a drag when you can see a different way & have hope for what could be and tradition & power sucks everyone back under.
for me, it’s now just one less thing to do in a busy month. but, it hurts. it just does. it’s hard to not have it hurt. one of the reason is it’s not one isolated incident. it comes upon a long string of these over the years that get really tiring and discouraging.
the system is broken, my friends. it truly is. it’s so easy for people to think that we’ve come a long way but everyone needs to know how far we still have to go.
the insidious-ness of gender inequality is ugly. and deep. in the big scheme, it has nothing to do with baccalaureate speakers. it has everything to do with power & oppression & stripping women of their dignity & silencing voices that were created by God to speak, to create, to dream, to inspire, to partner, to nurture, to build, to love freely.
so, that’s why i’m a little sad this week. a little beat-up, a little burned out. a little sick to my stomach.
and very grateful that i never, ever feel this in my community or in my marriage or with those on the fringes. i am so thankful. they help me hold on to hope. men & women alongside each other as equals is a beautiful thing.
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