identity
comfortable in our own skin
one of the things i’ve always tried to do here is write from my heart. to be as honest as i could. to not worry about who would think what. it’s pretty hard to do! there are so many different tribes out here in online-land with different passions & people & ways-of-living-out-their-faith. for the past five years, i have always struggled with not fully connecting with any of them. for some folks, i’m not sufficiently theological or liturgical or serious or christian or universalist or denominational or missional enough..to feel like i’m tracking all the way. i love & value them all and appreciate the various expressions more than i can say. but sometimes it can just feel..weird. off, somehow. like i don’t fully have a place in any of them.
and at any moment something i say here can bug pretty much any of them for one reason or another.
this is a really familiar feeling for me. all through middle & high school & college & pretty much all of my adult life i have always been friends with a bunch of different people that rarely all come together in the same place. i love it because i know such beautiful, diverse, amazing people. but it can also feel unsettling & uncomfortable. i miss some of what you get when you are deeply embedded in a particular tribe. i think one of the things that i appreciated about being on a mega-church staff for those couple of years is that it’s so big that you don’t really need anyone else. it’s its own island and a really clear tribe with no room, or apparent need, really, for much else. now, out here floating around on a lifeboat for the past five years clinging for dear life i have had to learn something that i knew i needed to learn–how to be comfortable in my own skin.
my skin.
not someone else’s.
not what this group is doing or that group is doing. not what this church is doing or that church is doing. not what this ministry is doing or that ministry is doing. not what this person is doing or that person is doing.
i’m learning to become more comfortable with what i believe.
not what this group believes or that group believes. not what this friend believes or that friend believes. not what this blogger believes or that blogger believes.
yikes, it’s hard to do! the systems of the world are built upon people conforming to each other somehow. my friend & awesome refuge teammate karl always says that we mistake uniformity for unity. true unity is diversity, bound together with a common thread. to me, when it comes to issues around “church”, that thread is God. but we’ve built systems that call for uniformity, that we need to be like “them”, whatever the them is, in order to belong.
i do not think that any of the things i believe are really very heretical! they’re just one expression of faith that i feel dearly and passionately about, and stem from how i view the gospels & the Bible & what God has stirred up in me through the years. my point in my last post, yep, i guess i’m a heretic, is that by believing & practicing these, somehow i’m “out” of certain circles because of their interpretation of theological truth. that’s so bizarre to me. and sad.
but alas, my responsibility is not to change that system or anyone’s minds.
my responsibility is to learn to be comfortable in my own skin.
my skin, not someone else’s.
but the skin God made that’s me.
this is maturity. this is healing. this is transformation.
and this doesn’t have to have to be perceived as something that only has to do with faith or church or anything “spiritual”. it has to do with becoming better human beings, stronger, more secure, more free men & women, who discover who we each are in deep places of our hearts & practices.
one of the things i love about the christmas story and this time of year is the reminder of Jesus’ humanness. he had to learn to be in his skin just like us. and obviously, many, many people didn’t really like his skin. he had to have his feet on the ground & his head in the clouds in order to walk out the journey he was on here on earth. he had a huge advantage, being God and all, but i take great solace in knowing that Jesus understands humanness.
in all its mess & all its glory. in all its struggle & all its joy. in all its reality & all its beauty.
the wise & prophetic father richard rohr says that other “a” words for advent are: alert, awake, alive, attentive, aware. i’m not big on alliteration but i love these words! this season i am trying to be awake, aware, attentive to my story, God’s story-in-me.
and i think it’s a story of growing up somehow, of learning to be comfortable in my own skin. learning to be be less codependent & independent and more interdependent. to be more free. to be less afraid. to be more clear, even if its only about a few important things. to be more brave. to be more weak in some areas & stronger in others. to care less about what people think & more about what God might think.
God knows our struggle to be comfortable in our own skin. God is E/Immanuel, with us. here, now. down here in the muck and mire of our real lives, our real struggles with life & faith & relationships & all that it means to be human, created in the image of God, living in this broken weird wild world.
enthusiastically wanting to teach us to be comfortable in our own skin.
i’m trying to listen.
* * * * *
ps: i stumbled upon this original advent song this weekend by matt staniz. i loved it & thought i’d pass it on to you today as we reflect on our skin, God’s skin.
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.
Read More
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.
* * * * *
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 Morethe stranger (who’s a little too familiar) & the shepherd
**this post is part of the september synchroblog, a diverse group of bloggers writing on the same topic. this month’s is called “the devil made me do it” and is centered on “what are some weird, wacky or just plain different things you’ve heard taught about Satan? what do you think of those ideas? how have they shaped your perspective (or not) about Jesus?” i’ll add links to other bloggers’ posts once they come in today so you can read some different pieces.
* * * * *
there are a few things that i want to get out of the way from the start–i believe there is a spiritual battle for people”s hearts being waged here on earth. i believe there are forces working against people feeling love, hope, connection, peace, and freedom. i believe God’s heart and desire for us is to experience life this side of heaven. i believe that when Jesus said “i came that you might have life and have it to the full” that he was calling us all into a deep and free-ing story, deeper and more freeing than we even know. i also believe there’s a “stranger” who’s purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy us, bent on robbing humans of life.
and i also believe that for some, the “stranger”–the enemy, the evil one, Satan, the devil, whatever you want to call it–is not a stranger at all but actually the more familiar voice that we hear.
in john 10, Jesus says that the sheep know my voice and they follow me. they won’t run off with the stranger because they do not recognize his voice. but the truth is that for many of us, the stranger’s voice is what we follow, thinking it is God’s. those who were raised in systems that used a lot of condemnation and fear in their teaching and practices know what i’m talking about. we hear in our heads often “you’re not this enough or that enough. if you really believed, then you’d be here instead of there. God hates…. God won’t listen to you unless you are pure before him. God is tired of you never getting it right. if you’d just get yourself right before God then everything wouldn’t be so hard. pray harder. try harder. do more. get it right.”
for me, not being raised in an overtly christian home or going to church as a kid, i didn’t really have a lot of God baggage before i entered church. from an early age i was strangely drawn to Jesus and his power and healing after reading about him in a little white Bible someone gave me. then, after experiencing a lot of shame from things done to me & things i did, i did turn to God and church in a more intentional way to help me. i cried out to God for forgiveness, for help, for healing. the voice that i often heard back was not the voice of love but the voice of condemnation. i do not believe that was God’s voice. i believe it was the “stranger’s” voice trying to become the more familiar one in my life. the one i’d follow. the one i’d listen to. the one i’d leave the green pastures for.
i spent a lot of years thinking that voice was God’s and that somehow God was constantly mad at me for never being holy enough, pure enough, or whatever enough. i didn’t really know what God’s real voice sounded like.
then, i started into a more intentional healing journey to get free of some of the crazy shame baggage i was carrying. during this process i started to hear a different voice–a voice of love and hope and freedom. a voice that brought life instead of death and peace instead of despair. i realized that for so long i was always running off with the stranger, thinking it was God.
my friend and co-author of come with me, elaine hamilton & i developed this chart for the material that helps discern the difference between the condemnation of the evil one (the stranger) and the conviction of the holy spirit (the shepherd).
it can be really helpful when we’re learning to strain to follow the shepherd instead of that oh-too-familiar stranger. in reflecting on this today i look at the “stranger” side and think how familiar these voices used to be & how i could go to church, be in countless Bible studies, and not really know the shepherd’s voice.
that’s messed up!
i know some people in church like to spend a lot of energy focusing on satan and spiritual warfare and the battle being waged against us. i’m not dismissing its importance. i see it up close and personal all the time, my dear-friends-on-the-journey-who-only-hear-an-ugly-brutal-voice-in-their-head-telling-them-they’re-worth-nothing. my hope, though, is that instead of spending a lot of energy yelling at the stranger to leave us alone that maybe we need to spend more of our time & practices helping people learn to hear the shepherd’s voice more clearly so it becomes far more familiar.
i’d love to hear some of your thoughts on this.
* * * * *
other bloggers participating, check out their posts:
- Jeremy Myers at Till He Comes – The Devil Made Me Go To Church
- K.W. Leslie at More Christ – Devilish Misinformation
- Marta Layton at Fidesquarens – The Christian Jihad
- Sonnie Swenston-Forbes at A Piece Of My Mind – The Devil Made Me Do It
- Bill Sahlman at Creative Reflections – The [one who will go unnamed] Made Me Do It
- Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – Have You Inhaled Demon Spirits?
- Leah Chang at desert spirit’s fire – devils, demons, et al
Read More
freedom.
“the spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
they will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. “
- isaiah 61:1-3
* * * * *
this is one of my all-time favorite passages in the entire Bible. when i first moved to colorado 14 years ago i was in a crazy hard season of intentional healing from a lot of shame & these words entered into my heart more deeply and somehow helped set me free from shame. it really was supernatural, and i love that Jesus lead with them when his public ministry started in luke 4, essentially saying “here we go, i’m here to set you free, like really free.”
over 2,000 years later rules and religion still have people in bondage.
and freedom–real and deep freedom, the kind i think God meant for us–seems to remain very elusive for many of us no matter how long we’ve gone to church.
in fact, i’ve come to believe that the longer we’ve gone, the harder it is to be free.
i also believe that real freedom is scary.
i have fleeting moments where i feel it in my bones, in every fiber of my being. where grace and peace and a security in who i am intersect in some wild way in my spirit and i truly feel free.
free of needing to please anyone.
free of systems that tell me what i can and cannot do, believe and cannot believe.
free of insecurity about my worth and value.
then what sometimes happens to me is i read too much on the internet.
or i look up and away from what’s right in front of me and begin to compare myself to others.
or i make a dumb mistake.
i see people who seem more spiritual than me.
more certain than me.
more gracious and humble than me.
more talented than me.
more all kinds of things than me.
and just like that, my freedom slips away and i’m back in egypt.
a slave.
i don’t want to be a slave.
and i don’t want my friends to be slaves, either.
so i keep fighting for my freedom.
and for the freedom of others, too.
toni morrison says, “the function of our freedom is to free someone else.”
years ago when my kids were little and i started making some significant shifts in my spiritual journey and becoming more honest, i remember saying to my friends “my kids are what keep my butt in the chair every week, trying to grow and change. i don’t want them to be stuck or feel the way i feel about myself. i want them to be free.” and now, as they are getting older, this feels clear–they are indeed free-er than me.
and even though my freedom can feel elusive sometimes, something has indeed “tipped” over the past chunk of years and i feel more free, more of the time, than i’ve ever felt before.
free to be me, just me.
free to receive God’s love without having to work for it.
free to lead freely as a woman in my little wild faith community, the refuge, and i know that’s a gift in “the church.”
free to share my sin & shame & pain & struggles without fear of judgment or rejection.
free to be loved by all kinds of beautiful people in all kinds of beautiful ways.
free to offer love to others without trying to change them.
and free to call others to freedom, too, to use my freedom to help free someone else.
to make room for others to lead and find their voice, their creativity, their passion.
to be safe enough to hear another person’s sin & shame & pain & struggle and do what i can to offer unconditional love and acceptance.
to play whatever small part i can in passing on love to those who feel unlovable, to making the invisible visible.
to encourage others to be free to be themselves, too.
none of this is possible on our own. oh, how we need God’s spirit to move in our hearts & lives to reveal to us what deep, real freedom really is! to make sure we don’t mistake freedom for a bigger cage.
then we must accept it. lean into it. practice it. trust it. re-new it, again and again and again.
and use it–however we can, whenever we can–to free someone else, too.
* * * * *
ps: down we go’s been doing well & i always love hearing the stories on what it stirs up so keep ‘em coming! here are a few things swirling around out there about it:
- today there’s a video about downward mobility on recycle your faith.
- my friend & awesome blogger/artist/pastor david hayward paired down we go with this cool print for a giveaway. i wish i would have won the print!
- i’m really excited to be part of sheloves magazine with a monthly piece on downward mobility in the sheloves God column. here’s the first post: down we go: practicing the wild ways of Jesus.
- and here’s an interview about the book with my friend jeremy myers
Read More
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!
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.
recent comments.