Tradition. The only measure of quality, apparently.

Yesterday at work I had a conversation with a co-worker who is finding herself dissatisfied with her church. The church has a pastor she doesn’t agree with, and who makes decisions she wouldn’t, and she doesn’t respect those decisions. But she hasn’t stopped going. She has decided not to go consistently, but there wasn’t, in the course of our 10 minute conversation, an acknowledgement that she had made the decision to separate from the church. The justification for staying with it was that she had been going for most of her life. I don’t understand the reasoning that something must be good only because it has continued for X number of years. Solely because of the number of years. There’s nothing in that statement that speaks to the quality of the time, it only acknowledges the quantity. If a mechanic is around for 15 years, it doesn’t mean I will take my car there. I will still base my decision for using that mechanic on the quality of work the shop provides.

After listing the multiple reasons why she doesn’t trust this pastor, I simply said, “Do you realize how many red flags you’ve thrown out?” I wanted her to know that she could say No to something she feels is wrong. If there’s ever anything I want people to embrace, it is for them to have confidence in themselves and decisions they make. Not blind decisions, or uninformed decisions, but decisions based on evidence and research. Educated decisions. If you feel something is off or wrong, TRUST the instinct. There is safety in numbers, you feel better when someone listens to what you have to say and agrees. I know, I’m constantly guilty of being absurdly relieved when someone says, “You’re not crazy, that’s a valid point”, and then I’m all confident and swaggery and say, I KNOW!

And it’s not against church. I don’t want her to stop going to church, I want her to find a place where she does trust the pastor, trusts the people in it, have inspirational services and conversations that help her grow in life. What I think is hard for people to balance is, there are villians in the church too. There are people who prove themselves untrustworthy by their words and actions. Dishonesty is, frustratingly, under rated.

Confessions of a Conformist

It's so easy to just agree with things. Thinking for yourself is.... exhausting. It's so much easier to be carried along by group mentality. It's so comforting to have a posse of people who agree with you and tell you what you think is good and right. I love to be a follower. I love to just agree and not think about all of the ramifications. Sometimes I really miss my old life where I was safely ensconced in a group of people that believed everything that I believed and therefore, I knew we were right. This is basic evolution. There is safety in numbers and my brain knows it. Which is why my brain screams panic and red alert all the time when I push away from the safety of my herd.

This time last year I was starting to really move out of the boundaries of our circle of Christian friends. I became vague and distant, holding them at arm's length. As my frustration grew, my rejection of all the beliefs I grew up with become vehement and angry. I didn't even want to call myself a Christian anymore, and not in the trendy, "I'm a follower of Christ" or hip, "I'm a friend of Jesus" kind of way. In the angry "I don't even believe this religion anymore!" kind of way. And then I calmed down and Christmas came and I realized I didn't want to give up all of my beliefs and I started to drift towards just a quiet disgust with religion. And then I read this thought provoking post by Zack Hunt “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” – The False Dichotomy and I thought to myself, "Sara, you are a major conformist. Way to jump on the bandwagon of blame." Because I had seen that video he talks about before and thought, "Yeah! stupid religion, you ruin everything." Which is just not true.

This is why I sometimes feel scared that I will never arrive at a place of calm or peace in my spiritual life. I don't trust myself, I don't trust religious leaders. I am suspicious, cranky and always looking for signs that I am being emotionally manipulated. I am skeptical and angry, yet I still cry when I read about Mother Teresa or imagine the beauty of true grace.

If you've read any of my other posts you won't be surprised to hear there is only one thing I really believe in right now, and that is love. Call me a hippy, a simpleton, naive or foolish but love, charity, and compassion are the only things that are never wrong. Love is never wrong. Love is always good. There is never too much of it. Everyone needs more. It can and does change the world. And if I believe the Bible at all, and I believe that Jesus did say that the greatest of commands was to love the Lord and love your neighbor, that is something I can get behind. That's something I don't need or want to give up. Because all of the things about the church or Christians or Christianity or whatever that I hate are not the result of love. Being bigots, rejecting  homosexuals and making them second class citizens, judgement and fear are not part of love. We all screw up and I'm guilty of all the things I just listed, but, beloved, let us love one another.

Christmas Time (a bit late)

As usual my husband and I went to our parent's for Christmas. My husband's father is a pastor so every year we attend the Christmas Eve candlelight service and, in spite of the somewhat cranky, skepticism and doubts I have expressed on here, I always enjoy the service. Somehow, everyone holding their candles while we sing "Silent Night" feels holy and peaceful to me. My soul always basks in that moment and I leave feeling soothed.

This year as we sang my favorite Christmas hymn, O Holy Night, I was struck by the lesser-sung line "and in His name all oppression shall cease." As I sang those well-loved words I suddenly had a flood of all of the stories and images of Christians oppressing Muslims, homosexuals and any number of other "sinners" that I have read and seen over the last year. I remembered the hateful vitriol I read posted by many Christians in response to same-sex marriage being legalized in New York and the video I had seen of a gay man crying when a Christian man asked for forgiveness for any hatred the church and other Christians had shown toward him. All of these things and more ran through my mind and I found myself repeating those words again and again in my mind, wondering if it was hope, prayer, a wish or all of the above. That all oppression done in His name would cease. That Christians would cease to be known or thought of as oppressors and instead would be known for emancipation.

When I came home I looked up O Holy Night and came across a literal translation of the French version on Wikipedia (so the accuracy could be suspect) that sent that message home even further. Instead of "in His name all oppression will cease," the original French version said "love unites those that iron had chained." (L'amour unit ceux qu'enchaînait le fer.)  I read that and the flower child in me smiled.

more than a policy

I was reading Looking for Alaska (which I completely recommend by the way) when I ran across this quote:

‘I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.’

I loved this because this year I've been thinking a lot about what drives me to believe in God and to be a Christian. Is it just because that is the way I was raised? Because I truly believe in the God of the Bible? Or is it really because I fear eternal damnation? 

I remember the first time I thought about heaven and hell. My grandfather had died and my grandmother, Catholic through and through, had told me I needed to pray for him every night to help him get out of purgatory. I had no idea at the time what that meant but I did what she asked because I loved my grandfather. However, that is when the fear started. It told me there was clearly something bad that could happen to you when you died and I took to begging God not to let anything happen to me, not to let me go to hell. 

I would be lying if avoidance of hell and wanting to feel secure in my belief that heaven was what waited on the other death wasn't my main motivation the day I "got saved." Even now, in the middle of the night when my brain is sifting through all the thoughts jumbled in my head, I imagine something happening- a vein bursting in my brain, my heart stuttering to a stop, that last frightened breath and.... what? What is next? And I find myself praying, God, have mercy on my soul.

But I don't want my motive for loving God to center around a "life insurance policy." I don't want my life to be centered around avoiding punishment. In Love Wins Rob Bell talks about living our lives here and now to create heaven here on earth. Love now. Change the world here to be the best it can be. Don't just count on the flames of hell and the gates of heaven. I want to love God because I believe he loves us. Unchecked love. Real love. Love that can make you angry because it doesn't make sense. Love for us all. Love because he is love. 

You Can't Take That Away from Me

This weekend I was sitting at my Christmas party discussing God with my Jewish friend, M. Both she and my atheist friend, J, have honestly been the two people who have made me feel like I can still be a Christian in light of my adjusted beliefs. This weekend, as M and I were talking about the religious aspects of our respective December holidays I found myself confessing to her how I had felt this year that if I told people some of the things I'd been thinking- that LGBT people are exactly who they should be, that maybe there are more paths to God than we'd suspected- I wouldn't be allowed to be a Christian anymore. That my religion, my beliefs would be taken away from me. "I want to believe in God," I told M and she said that no one could take God from me.

What I told her is the truth. In spite of all the confusion, upheaval, frustration with the church, etc. I want and I do believe in God. I believe that "God is love and He loves everyone." I believe that my highest duty in life is to love God with my heart, mind and strength and to love my neighbor as myself. I believe God is here with me and I believe that the miracles around me are the work of his hands.

I also believe that we are capable of really screwing things up. And that the world is broken and evil. And that there are questions I can't answer. That the hatred of the world can deeply wound people. That there are many people dying and suffering and I can't say why that should happen to them. I don't blame people who reject the idea of God, I understand why they feel that way. But I can't. I don't want to. I want to believe there's something after this life. I want to believe in the Summer Lands and the world CS Lewis describes in The Last Battle where justice is served and it gets bigger and better and more glorious the further you go in. Where love reigns.

So that's where I stand this Christmas season. I quietly sang Christmas hymns all the way home from work last week in thankfulness when the shooting at Virginia Tech didn't turn into another terrible massacre. I lit the candle that illuminates our holy family nativity and smiled. I prayed for peace and comfort for a family that lost their teenage daughter this weekend. I hoped that I could reclaim and hold onto a God and Savior that has meant so much to me.

I basked in the glow of friendships that have blessed and comforted me this year.

World Weary

is a phrase my friend Andrea and I used to describe days we felt life was out of our control and oppressively hopeless. I have had a world weary week - which is in direct contrast to the joyous hopefulness of my counterpart. I love you for having joyful hopefulness - it means I'll be up again too.
The downside to all this "wrestling with one's salvation" is it gets messy. You see everything in grey and sometimes it's the same shade of grey. There isn't even the benefit of dark gloomy grays versus cheery warm light greys with hints of blue, green, or yellow. It's days like this that make me feel like I'm losing, I'm lost, I have lost. And I'm not even talking about my faith - I'm talking about the effects we have on each other - the every day decisions that we all make that either fuck someone else over or bring happiness. Even my examples tend to the black and white, which apparently I want more of today.
Ben and I had a Huge Discussion this morning in a brand new diner (new to us) by our house, and over french toast and omelettes we...or moreso, I, talked about how overwhelmed I felt with every decision that had to be made, and how, in the course of making this most recent decision, I remembered alllll the other past decisions wherein I had to suck it to get through life. I had to take the proverbial slaps to my face to just be able to move on and live because people suck. People are Awful. I want in my little cave with my comfort people and that's it.
As most of our conversations go, we morphed into how our faith comes in to play - I was raised to not question tradition, or the people in charge - Unless of course, those people in charge disagreed with my father, when, well, naturally, we'd be able to disagree with them. Of course! I was raised to be the biblical sheep - needing protection, needing a shepherd. Ben was raised to be the shepherd - he was taught to be the leader, the protector, the one who questioned and critiqued. Those two differences were never so more apparent than today, because part of my growth as an adult has been to Trust in my decisions - even if they are against the group and I am made unpopular by them. (SO HARD) I've also had to learn when the fight is worth fighting and when it isn't, and Folks, It's easier to NOT fight. It's easier to take the slap, and deal with the post-traumatic stress syndrome later. You know what's hard? Knowing you have to fight, and finding that resolve to carry through and know you're doing what's right.
Because doing what's right and being thoughtful and determined about Life means constantly being on edge and aware and thinking. This is why people want to be led - they don't want to bear the responsibility of being aware. I can't Not be aware anymore, but some days I just want a little assurance. Some days I just want to win. I just want my voice to be acknowledged.
Which is the absolute last thing that will happen, because it isn't a win or lose scenario. It's a work it out and pursue what you know is right scenario. It's something my therapist told me I need to work on, and it's SO TRUE. Life isn't winning or losing, I just haven't figured out what it is. I am still so emotionally stunted in this one (hopefully just one) GLARING inconsistency that it affects everything.
To sum up:
I am learning how to lead....myself.
I get so upset because I still think it's a win/lose/black/white world. It's not.
I have to figure out WHAT that means and how to own it. I can't even formalize in words how to define that.

Something that made me smile

I've spent a lot of time on this blog thus far working through angst, doubts and questions I have about the church. I can be pretty critical of Christians and Christianity on the whole though I really try not to get so cynical. That's why I wanted to share this photo that I found here. I wish I could give the photographer credit but there weren't any photo credits listed for this picture. It was simply captioned "Christians protect Muslims during prayer in Cairo, Egypt." That makes me so happy. That is what I think Jesus would want us to do.