Being Christ to the Creeper, Part II

Perhaps it boils down to this: What would Christ have me do here and now?  This poor dude has fallen in my path, and I am supposed to be a good neighbor and love extravagantly.  I'm supposed to meet his needs somehow because I am, as they say, the man on the ground at this moment.  This strikes me as a tad absurd because, frankly, I would say this kid does NOT need ME to try to teach him to be SOCIAL. 

I am an introverted, lonerish, antisocial person by inclination.  I LIKE being this way.  I suppose I could teach him how to repel people less obnoxiously, but obviously, he doesn't need my help overall with that.  He needs friends his own age to help him understand what is appropriate and what is not.  But let's be serious: how many 18-year-olds  at anime clubs do you know who have the sensitivity to notice this situation and the ability to do something to improve it? 

I'm not saying they're non-existent, but when I was in college as an upperclassman leading orientation groups, I had to reach out to some of my freshman to give them people to hang out with because their own peers couldn't do so.  I tried approaching the leadership of the club to ask them to take on this responsibility (I figure it's theirs), and that . . . didn't really work.  Maybe they need someone to teach them how.  : )  But I was a completely different person back then in a different place, and I had that to offer.  Now I don't. 

So we circle back to the question again: what would Jesus have me do besides pray for someone else to intervene?  Lacking any clear messages in 30-foot letters of fire, I turn to the gallery.  Your thoughts on what it means to love my neighbor in this case?

Being Christ to the Creeper

Once upon a time when I was younger and less physically broken, one of my jobs was befriending the lonely ones, the ones left outside the circle, the ones no one wanted.  I would protect them, the pasty and overweight ones, the socially awkward, the prickly, the unattractive.  Since I did not need friends or popularity or fitting in, I was free to be friends with those who needed friends but, for whatever reason, couldn't seem to make it with the regular people.  I felt like it was some sort of gifting or calling, a way to use my comfortable introversion to love people like Christ commands us to.  Now I am older, more physically broken and exhausted, and I don't have the energy to use this freedom any more, which is unfortunate because there's a guy at the anime club this semester who is starting to really creep me out.

In the anime club, I have always been there for the anime.  I have never been there to make friends, be part of the community, or fit in.  I don't live on campus; I'm not a student.  I do not need any friends in the club to have a nice time.  This has always worked out well (once the super-friendly folks have learned to leave me alone each semester) because it's good for these kids to make friends with their peers.  I have not needed to actually reach out and show kindness to an outcast when I have pretty much nothing to give.  With one notable exception, I have made no friends there, and it has been lovely.

Many of the folks in the anime club are a bit socially awkward.  This stereotype exists because it is based in observable fact.  Many of them are bad at eye contact and reading body language and understanding personal space, but they usually figure things out by the time they graduate.  Most of them find their tribes, even the ones who are incredibly annoying and awkward.  As a sort of maiden aunt, I watch all of this at a distance and am glad things work out, even if I am sometimes mystified. 

This semester has been different.  This semester has been incredibly uncomfortable.  This semester there is a guy who hasn't found his tribe, and he seems to want me to be his tribe because all the other natives flee screaming at his approach.

I have never met anyone so terrible at understanding body language and personal space.  He seems to take me scrunching up, leaning and moving away, refusing eye contact, and reluctantly talking brusquely in short answers when absolutely necessary as amazing encouragement to sit down, move cloers, be friends and talk and talk and talk about the same things 4 over and over and over again.  (At least he hasn't used the words "scrotum" and "anus" since the first time he opened his mouth to talk to me several weeks ago.)  He talks about his anime that he will make some day and its badass, junior-high-school-boy-humor-liking female main character and what he doesn't like about X, Y, and Z anime and about why he likes the Devil May Cry anime but hates Black Lagoon, etc., ad nauseum.  (If you're an anime fan, this will seem even more annoying to you than if you aren't.)  He does this to anyone who has a pulse and doesn't actually get up and just walk away.

Recently, because no one else will even talk to him, he has taken to following me out to my car, chattering all the way, and ignoring my LEAVE ME ALONE PLEASE body language and really fast pace because he is that desperate to connect.

I know that if I want him to leave me alone, I need to just completely ignore him and not respond at all.  However, he is so lonely and sad that my old reflexes kick in, and I talk sometimes, un-encouragingly and grudgingly, because I don't want him to be completely alone in silence.  He is so young and so awkward, and I think he may not ever find any friends if he doesn't come across the college student equivalent of the old me soon.

I probably don't have to tell you that the following me to my car thing makes me really nervous.  Men I don't know in general make me wary and having to be trailed by one as I walk half a mile away to my car where there might not be anyone else around does not help.  I think that I probably need to just have the creeper talk with him or ask the club admins to intervene, but maybe I've been living in Minnesota too long (land of 10,000 ways to passive-aggressively indicate things instead of just saying them) or maybe I'm trying in a sort of half-assed way to be Jesus to this poor kid.  I mean, everyone avoids him, and that's really sad (even if I totally understand why they avoid him).  I was hoping someone would take him under their wing and help him understand the basics of body language, but they haven't even this far in to the semester. 

As maybe one of the few believers who attend the club, do I have some sort of responsibility toward him?  Because I'm sure acting like I do.  And as long as I sub-consciously feel responsible, I won't be able to just tell him leave me alone or ask the folks in charge of the club to intervene.  Thus far, the best I've been able to do is drag my poor friend to the club to try to act as a buffer and escort to my car, and that's not fair to him.

So, Christians, your thoughts?  Everyone, your strategies?

Losing your life to gain what

When she started to follow Jesus seriously, she gave up the thing she was best at and loved most: writing about music.  Recently, as we were studying Luke 9, she wondered if that counted as laying down her life to save it.  At the time, she thought it was.  She couldn't see any way that her writing about secular music could lead anyone to Jesus, so she left it behind.  (Oh, hyper-evangelicalism, you make me so sad.)  As far as I can tell, she didn't really replace it with anything.  So now she is not doing what she loves and not necessarily leading anyone to Jesus that she can see, and she is miserable (for this and many additional reasons). 

It seems like she is more miserable because a couple of people in the group ARE writers and see that as part of who they are in Christ.  And it kindles this longing inside her that she isn't sure she shouldn't smother. 

I had to resist the urge to respond right away, though several things came to mind.

• The Bible doesn't necessarily indicate that we need to leave behind anything that isn't directly related to leading souls to the kingdom or whatever evangelical, Christianese phrase you prefer.
• Jesus didn't tell soldiers or tax collectors to stop what they did, drop everything, and go become full-time preachers.
• The Bible does say we should work heartily as unto the Lord, not for men or praise. 
• The Bible doesn't really indicate that vocation and avocation must be the same and anything that is not avocation must be abandoned.
• God loves beauty and beautiful things, and good art is beautiful.
• God sees beauty in broken things/people other people think are worthless and dirty.
• It's okay to work hard at a craft and create beautiful things; we serve a creator God.
• What exactly did stopping writing about what you love do to help you gain abundant life?

I shut my mouth firmly and resisted the urge to say anything or even follow up because she was Not Making Eye Contact in that skittish way she has of offhandedly revealing truths about her life that she is deathly afraid will get her judged in some way.   Normally, I would not have the presence of mind to notice the body language and think thoughts and stop myself from saying them.  Perhaps this gluten-free thing my doctor is having me do is a good idea.  Or maybe the Holy Spirit hit the brakes for me?

I really need to ask a lot of follow-up questions to get a better understanding of the situation before I start throwing out statements that she could take as judgments.  (She can twist almost any statement into something she perceives as a judgment. : )  If I understand the situation better, maybe I can ease things slowly into a direction where she can think things through and make a different decision now.

Things I want to know

• What did she write? 
• Who was her audience? 
• When did she make this decision? 
• Why, exactly did she give it up (there had to be multiple reasons beyond the simple one she tossed out there)? 
• Does she feel the same way about these reasons now? 
• Can she see a way she might be able to use her writing for a purpose she feels is more redemptive? 

Any other questions you can think of that I can try to slowly and slyly trot out there so as not to scare this fragile honesty away?

Bully for you

Once upon a time when I worked for TSA, there weren't really any supervisors.  We were all new, and we all took turns, so they could figure out who to promote later.  Whenever I was in charge of the assignments, I ended up working at the busiest counter, the one no one wanted to work at, and I always assigned Mr. Bully to work there, too.  Mr. Bully was a big man, a veteran built like a tank.  He was gruff and mean and had a chip on his shoulder, and his method of "winning" an argument was to shout the other party down. 

I didn't really like Mr. Bully.  And I hated that in order to keep his grumbling to a minimum, I always had to work the busy airline, too.  But I just couldn't let the injustice of him never having to work the busy counter pass, so I put up with it.  When he asked me why I picked on him, I told him I wasn't picking on him; I was just trying to be fair and make sure that everyone rotated the duty we didn't like, so certain people didn't always end up getting stuck with it.  He still grumbled.

It was just another brick in my "I never want to be a manager/in charge" wall.  I do not deal well with difficult people.  They require finesse and communication skills and concentration and careful handling.  These are things I lack even more since I started to deal with chronic pain and insomnia. 

And now I have a difficult person in a group I'm in charge of, and I'm afraid it's going to be Mr. Bully all over again.  I'm the one who almost always has to step in and interrupt the story I've heard several times (she doesn't want help fixing the problem; she just wants to complain about it) or steer things back to the topic we're there to discuss.  She acts very defensively a lot of the time and makes passive aggressive comments about feeling like I'm judging her.  (I'm actually not.)  I'm sort of anticipating a "Why are you picking on me?" 

Only this time, I don't really have an answer, at least not one that is calm and logical and polite and firm and non-threatening.  I just don't have the bandwidth. 

If she asks, I will probably tell her the truth, "I'm not picking on you.  I'm just trying to redirect things, so your troubles (and they are real and significant) don't take over this group of people who hate confrontation and won't stop you.  I'm technically the leader, and this is my job."  I cringe about this confrontation and the growing passive-aggressive grumblings.  I am concerned about how these perceived clashes might hurt the group.  I do not have the bandwidth for this.  I don't want to be the "leader."

Then again, it's not like this has to end in tears.  Mr. Bully turned out to be a lot more bluster than bite.  I found that out when he surprised me by being the only one who stepped in to help when I was being sexually harassed by a female co-worker.  Not the casual friends I got along with, not the nice older ladies, but the bully I thought hated and resented me.  There's a lesson in there, I think.  I'm just not sure what it is . . .

Any suggestions?

"Trying to change unfair behavior with submissive niceness"

"The problem is that trying to change unfair behavior with submissive niceness is like trying to smother a fire with gunpowder. It isn't the high road; it's the grim, well-trod path that leads from aggressive to passive, through long, horrible stretches of passive-aggressive. The real high road requires something quite different: the courage to know and follow your own truth. If anyone in your life is exploiting your courtesy and goodwill, it's time you learned how all of this works." - Martha Beck 

So.  Thoughts on the intersection of this and Christianity?  (Especially the bits of common wisdom in the evangelical culture today?)

In my experience, this quote is correct.  I worked with some amazingly terrible and toxic bosses at my last job.  I did try the old Christian standby of being humbly submissive.  It didn't work.  I went down that crappy path and in the end found myself loathing the schadenfreude I felt when my bosses' incompetence caused them additional problems (and no only because their problems caused more problems for my beleaguered co-workers).  It was a very bad place to be in.  I don't recommend it.  But how do we reconcile our desire to stand up for the oppressed (ourselves and our co-workers) with the command to turn the other cheek?  It's a tough balance to try to figure out. 

Any thoughts or experiences you've had that you can share?

A good thought to keep in mind

Sexual promiscuity is not the unforgiveable sin. Let's not forget those featured in Jesus' genealogy (Judah, the man who slept with his daughter-in-law, mistaking her for a prostitute; David, the king who murdered the husband of his mistress), nor those winning mention in the Hebrews 11 Hall of Faith (Rahab, the prostitute who sheltered the Israelite spies, and Samson, the man with a weakness for beautiful women). The Bible, in weaving its long history of redemption, is not a storybook of heroes. Failure, even sexual mistakes, has not once tied God's hands. He accomplishes what he wills through the worst of us.
. . .
Virginity is not a moral merit badge. Whether or not we have had sex before marriage, we are all lawbreakers (James 2:10). None can feel superior, not even the virgins among us.

- Jen Pollack Michel

I like the title of this article.  (And the article, which you should read.)  And the author's exasperation.  Because I share it.  Lately, I've been running into numerous articles where it is obvious that to some Christians, virginity (at least in women) IS considered something akin to our Holy Grail.  It's the thing that gives us worth, the most important thing to protect!  We can be ignorant or mean or liars or gossips, but heaven forbid we fornicate because there is NO GOING BACK. 

Seriously?  Is that really, truly what church leaders think, or are they just going overboard trying to get their point across (badly)?  I do understand that sexual sin is slightly different (the only one a person can commit against their own body, I believe is sort of how it was described), but why do we glorify it like this?  Come on, people.

Yeah, I know, odd coming from someone who hasn't fornicated or even wanted to, but I really feel that some of the messages we are giving are really twisted all out of biblical proportion.  And we are really hurting people by our ignorance and cruelty here.  How should we deal with it?  Good question.  Any good answers?

Do what you know

“We’re all dying because of chronic disease because of bad behavior. It’s not enough to go see the doctor once a year and have him tell you what to do. It’s not that people don’t know what to do, it’s that they don’t do what they know,” says Lavoie, co-director of the Montreal Behavioural Medicine Centre in Canada.

When I read the above article (part of keeping up on current med-tech trends for work), I found myself struck by the above statement.  And how much it made me think of a Bible passage where the writer talks about how the one who believes will keep Christ's commandments, not just talk about them.  And that passage in the Bible where the writer talks about how frustrating it is that we don't do the things we want to/should do (but instead do the things we don't want to do because we are trapped in this body of death).

To paraphrase: It's not enough to go to church every Sunday (even a doctrinally solid church) and be told what to do.  We know what to do, really.  We just don't do it.  Do we not really believe it?  Are we being lazy?  I think that one passage about doing what we don't want to do and who can save us from this body of death ends with one of those long, rolling, buoying passages about how Christ saved us, will save us, is saving us, and all praise to Him.  Amen.  But we're also told to work out our salvation in fear and trembling.  We are told to do what He commanded.  We are told our actions should reflect where are hearts are, what we really, truly believe.  Sometimes, our actions mostly reflect laziness and sloppy thinking.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed by all the health research and study results.  Today, They definitely conclude that this behavior Will Kill You.  In two years, They will proclaim that this behavior is The Best Ever.  It's hard to know what's really healthy sometimes.

But we all know the basics.

• eat more unprocessed foods, especially whole grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables.
• move more (get up and walk around, challenge your muscles and your cardiovascular system).
• don't stress yourself out over things you can't control.
• do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.
• be a good steward.
• love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
• love your neighbor as yourself.

We know the basics, but do we do them?

If we really believe they are important, won't our actions and behaviors change to reflect what we really believe?  I pray it may be so for me.

There is no going back, only forward

There's a man in my small group who is older than me and is one of those sunny, happy, jolly, slightly oblivious people very much like good-natured, adolescent puppies.  When some of us begin talking honestly about the flaws in our church, it makes him sad.  His wife says that before he met us, he was unaware that our church had any warts.  And that is okay.  I think it is just fine for him to see and praise the positive things in the church, to be so focused on what he can do to help that he doesn't notice that things aren't even close to perfect.  People that see the church like he does are necessary to keep the church body from exploding under the forces of cynicism and discontent (or continue to splinter until every building was its own denomination).  Frankly, I sort of envy him his way of looking at the church.  I wish I could go back to the time when I was that positive about the church.  I liked myself and the church better back then.

I want to go back before I thought that my church was too big to be a family, too wealthy and suburban to give a crap and organize to help hurting and broken people in need inside the body and in the surrounding community.

I want to go back to the time before I tried to make a difference and got involved and became a member and tried to fit into the communion of the saints even though it was more like the brunch at the country club, before I tried to improve things and got stonewalled or tried to participate but couldn't stand the crappy Baptist choir CCM after all that glorious Latin in the mini-cathedral at my previous doctrinally unsound church, before I joined a small group of very nice young ladies who were single and very nice and as bland as a Scandinavian casserole and so shy and slow about saying anything real or honest that I just couldn't take it anymore, before I gave up on attending Sunday services at all, before I despaired of ever being able to minister in any biblical way in my local body and accepted that "leading" a small group of quirky, interesting people was all I was going to get from this fellowship. 

I want to go back to the time before I picked my current church because the doctrine they preached was acceptable to me and would pass muster with my alma mater in case I got the chance to try to teach there and because it was so big that no one would bother me when I snuck into the back always late and dressed shabbily and no one even noticed me because there were just so many people who attended and because it didn't demand anything of me when I had absolutely nothing left to give from the bottom of my well of chronic pain, exhaustion, and discouragement. 

I want to go back to before I had to leave the beautiful neo-Gothic church with the amazing organ and the outstanding chancel choir, before the organist got booted even though she was incredibly talented and passionate because she was "too high-church" for the powers-that-be, too invested in beauty and the meaning of rituals to let things slide, before I realized that I couldn't stay in a place where they preached doctrine that just didn't jive with the Bible as I interpreted it. 

I want to go back to before college, where the church choices were limited and terrible for shy folks without vehicles, before it became somewhere I went because I didn't want demerits, before it became a soul-sucking experience you survived, so you could go to Sunday lunch in the cafeteria, which was always excellent. 

I want to go back to how I saw my church before all those crazy, passionate, Jesus freak college kids got older, before they took down all the lovely and rough art created by congregation members, before they redecorated so things looked expensive and fancy (including the chairs), before everyone grew up and moved away, and there were only strangers there. 

I want to go back to the time before I had to avoid my best friend because she didn't want anyone else to know we hung around a lot outside of school and church, before our pastor committed adultery, before I realized that the other churches in our town treated ours with derision because it was founded by a bunch of fumbling college kids who got saved in the Jesus movement and tried to follow the Bible by making a church, man, because they were so in love with Jesus and His people. 

I wish I were back in that time before I knew too much, back when church was just a good and safe place full of adopted, extended family who loved to sing and praise the Lord for hours and pray for my mom for years while she was dying and make terrible pasta dishes for us when she was in the hospital and just generally generously help each other. 

I want to go back. 

But the only way out is forward and through. 

And I was not called to be successful, just to try, to keep trying, to keep going and never completely lose hope in this beautiful, messy, too-human, flawed, filthy, in-the-process-of-redemption body of which I am part whether I really like them or not.  (Family is always like that.)  Sometimes, it's just really hard. 

Maybe it's a good thing that I am pathologically incapable of quitting forever.  Maybe that just means I grind myself down faster against the rough edges of the folks around me. 

Maybe it means I long for heaven, for future perfection, for complete redemption that much more.  Some day.  Hope.  Keep walking forward, one foot in front of the other.  Be glad when when people walk beside me.  Be gracious when they fall and trip me and send me sprawling (and pray they do the same when Ifall).  Don't spend too much time looking back.  Walk on.

Truth and Imperfection in the Church

"Unfortunately, though, the ramifications of telling the truth shouldn’t be considered. The only thing that should be considered is obedience to God. And He wants us to tell the truth." - Donald Miller

"Paul criticized the church, as did John and Christ Himself. We want to deify the church, or, more honestly, market the church. We shouldn’t. We should confess our sins and be open and honest about our depravity, both individually and collectively. Those who walk in the light have more, not less of their sins exposed. The very idea that those who make up the church pretend to be perfect indicates they do not walk in the light."  - Donald Miller

My small group at church is wending its way through Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.  Next week we'll be talking about chapter 12, which is about how Miller, who dislikes organizations, came to stop disliking church.  Blue Like Jazz was published in 2003, so it's probably been ten years, and I found it interesting to read the above post on what Miller thinks of the church now.  The post also identified some of the reasons why I was feeling so enraged when my alma mater was trying to have it both ways (get away with things the church gets away with while simultaneously pretending it's a business and thus can't be held accountable like a church).

I also find it interesting (and sad and maybe a bit ironic) that this is yet another post that got yanked after being published.  Maybe he just realized he wanted to use it in a book.  Maybe the comments got out of hand.  Maybe his publisher made him pull it down because of pressure from the church.  I should remember to copy the entire contents of his posts and save them somewhere for later use in case I try to refer to them, and they are gone.

In chapter 12 of Blue Like Jazz, Miller talks about a pastor he knew who basically restored his faith in the church as the church he was going to wounded that faith simultaneously.  This pastor was doing really great loving and acts of service, but Miller's church friends were telling him to avoid the guy because this pastor swore.  This pastor was doing God's will in terms of loving his neighbor. Meanwhile, Miller's neighbors were stumbling over cusswords and missing the truth coming out of the cussing pastor's mouth.

I want to be someone who values truth over superficial conformity, reality over appearance, actions over words.  I think Jesus wants me to do this.  I think He was pretty clear about this during His life in both His words and actions.  This belief alienates me from some people in the church, and that breaks my heart a little (but not that much since I am not a big people person).  I think my philosophy that God puts you around all sorts of people who need you and can teach you if you just look around applies here.  The ones I'm here for aren't the ones who are "healthy."  They can keep themselves company.  I'm okay offending them by doing God's will.  But it sure makes it hard to really feel like part of my current local church.

I've found a church I'm going to try on recommendation.  Honestly, I'm pretty iffy on them because their "doctrinal statement" is pretty mushy, and that's somewhat important to me.  I guess the question may be whether a church with true but very basic doctrine will be where I can fit and be needed or whether it will make me a little crazy like the bad doctrine at my previous church did.

I'm game to find out because I think I agree with Derek Webb's song that says, "If you love Me, you will love the church."  I'm trying, God, but right now, love is feeling a lot like duty, and my duty muscles are severely strained . . . 

Challenging Horizons and Stuff, Part II

So people might be watching me, and they might potentially do what I do without thinking it is sin--even if they think it's wrong--just because I'm doing it, and that would mean they are sinning.  (If you missed Part I, be sure to read that first.)  How am I supposed to live with that in mind?

Should I stop doing anything that might cause anyone to stumble?  No more art museums, no more science fiction and fantasy, no more theater, no more anime or manga, no more Monty Python, no more gay friends, no more poetry, no more drinking (root beer because alcohol smells gross and is expensive) at bars with classmates after a reading, no more music, no more MPR, no more movies, no more trousers . . . ? 

It gets ridiculous fast. If I'm not allowed to engage with anything or anyone for fear of it causing someone else to sin, then I really need to go to a monastery.  In fact, we all do.  Except there will be people there, and people are sinful and . . .  Solitary confinement for life seems the only way to go.

My contention that if someone thinks something is wrong, s/he should voice that they are not comfortable with it and then not participate is shot down by those who are or know those who are incapable of such standing up for their beliefs/personal convictions.  I respect people who take that stand and say, "This is not appropriate for me.  I'll see you later."  I've seen it happen, and I've told people who did it how much I respect them whether I personally find the thing they object to sinful or not. I think it's maybe part of being salt and light if it's done right.

When people make a big, public deal about it and deny the challenging, learning, and growing that could have belonged to others sans sin, I get angry and sad.  Why do others have to get dragged down to the lowest common denominator?  Just because it is your struggle does not mean it is everyone's struggle.  Just because it is sin to you does not mean it is sin to everyone.  This sounds postmodern, but it's biblical.

The arts always get a lot of flak for this, especially in conservative Christian circles.  Often the assumption seems to be that all artists are liberals (unless they're propaganda artists or PR folks).  Some artists are about pushing boundaries and making people uncomfortable and trying to force them to think in unfamiliar ways; that's certainly true.  But really, what is so inherently wrong with wrestling critically with ideas?

I look back on who I was in college and how (yes) liberal I must appear now.  I remember how I used to organize and sponsor these critical thinking and engagement forums where the honors student organization would partner with another organization and bring speakers from different perspectives on an issue to campus and invite students to listen and bring questions (faith and politics, faith and Harry Potter, ect.).  One of these events was a failure in terms of turnout because our location kept getting moved around and then we were forced to change the date at the last minute due to scheduling problems with the rooms, and the new date was right before a break or midterms/finals or something.  That was the forum on faith and art. 

One professor and a working actor he knew were all we could get in terms of speakers, and only a handful of students showed up.  Technically it was a failure, but it was incredibly valuable to me.  I spent a lot of time talking to that actor.  One thing I still remember is how he said that if a role came up that he liked and thought said something important, he wouldn't care if that role was a homosexual one, and that blew my mind.  I still lived in a subculture where the underlying assumption seemed to be that depiction = endorsement, and the fact that a thinking Christian could believe otherwise had never come over my horizon. 

I was getting increasingly uncomfortable with that depiction = endorsement equation because if this assumption were true, it meant that, as an artist, it wouldn't be okay for me to wrestle with important ideas and questions or have characters who were realistic.  And I wanted to challenge people (including myself) to think critically no matter what I did.

One of my writing professors said my work at the time was too liberal for the conservatives and too conservative for the liberals.  I think that's still true.  But since I'm not writing for the liberals or conservatives, it doesn't really matter to me. 

I guess I'll end this ramble with a paraphrase of the words of a wise man (found in Matthew 15 and Mark 7): What you take in isn't what makes you unclean; it's what you do with it, how you act on it.  As a teacher and a writer, I encourage people (including me) to think about the hard stuff and then do right things, so that what we do matches what we say we believe.  Good luck with that.

Any thoughts on the whole depiction = endorsement thing or how you practically deal with the catering to the weaker brother out of love or any of the other myriad topics brought up here? : )

Showing love while saying "Go and sin no more"

So I read this article.  It's long, but I recommend you take some time and do the same.  It's pretty heavily slanted at times, and I have no idea why everything has to be tied in to a politician.  I guess because it's in the political section?  That seems dumb because I think the story itself can stand on its own as an Important News Topic without dragging in whatever politician it's currently en vogue to bash, but maybe that's just me.  Maybe some people wouldn't read this story without being tossed a politician.  Fine.

Recently, my pastor did a sermon on a particular story from John about when a bunch of people brought a woman caught in the act of adultery to Jesus, trying to trip him up into making some sort of religious statement that would get him in trouble.  Jesus didn't end up getting embarrassed, and he didn't get tricked into making some statement they could condemn him for.  No, he just did some slightly inexplicable things and suggested that whoever was without sin should be the first one to throw a stone at her to start the traditional punishment.  They all left because I guess there are some kinds of hypocritical it's hard to be in the face of that straight line.  Then Jesus looked up and asked where everyone went, and she said they're gone.  He said he wouldn't condemn her either, and she should go and sin no more.  He saved her life.

When we start to look more like the crowd wanting to stone the person than we look like Jesus, I suspect that there is a very big problem with our behavior.

I'm not saying that how Christians ought to deal with homosexual sin isn't a tough issue.  It is.  If you take your Bible literally, you believe that homosexual behavior is a sin (just like adultery, fornication, lying, gossip, and stirring up dissent).  If you take your Bible literally, a lifestyle of flagrant sin without repentance is not something that should pass without judgment (with the motive of eventual restoration) in a local church body.  If you take your Bible literally, you know that those outside the church are not to be held to the lifestyle and behavioral standards of those in the church; they are to be loved, the way Jesus loved. 

What does that look practically speaking when carried out in this present world by people who are not God incarnate?  I don't really know.  I do know it most likely doesn't look like this.

It really is a fraught issue.  So.  What do you think the role of believers should be in these communities?  How should they love?  Are they allowed to love without making a big deal about how they disagree with homosexual behavior?  How do they save lives and still say, "Go and sin no more"?  Are they allowed, as sinners, to say this in the first place?  How could they create a space where people can be honest and ask questions or just be loved as people made in the image of God in a way that doesn't ignore right and wrong?  How would your church handle it?  How would you?  What would you say to these kids (the dead and the living in pain)?

I think it's finally time to go church-hunting again (for real).

I read this parable and finally decided I'm really going to find a new church. 

"It's an unprecedented cultural moment for Christians, to see if we can act less like individual consumers of spirituality and more like the family of God." - a CT editorial

What does it mean to be part of a/the "church"?  What sort of participation is required of/beneficial to believers?  What is (most) important when looking for a church body to join?  I thought I'd get the easy questions out of the way.

"This is just a church service. Church is actually about caring for one another, and serving one another, and speaking truth to one another in love. Don't get the two confused." - don't discount everything he said just because he's heretical in one belief

My last church had wonky doctrine/theology.  My current church most resembles a benevolent country club with great theological theory but what seems like few opportunities to practice dentistry.  (See above). 

"I was reminded of churches where people are nice, reasonably polite, and cooperative. But with some regularity, one learns that underneath this appearance of religious composure, this person or that one is hurting terribly: firings, divorces, personal failures, doubt, addictions, sexual identity issues … the list is long. But no one speaks: neither the person in trouble nor the ones who know of the trouble. Why? Because that would threaten the fantasy that everyone's fine. This kind of church culture starts with the idea that everyone is presumed fine until they prove differently." - Gordon MacDonald from Leadership Journal

I would like a church in a community I belong to (where I live or work).  I know neighbors are anyone we come in contact with, but I think maybe I should also be getting involved with the people who live near where I live or work.  I know that I need doctrine I can nod my head to, but I think I also need chances to disciple/mentor and be discipled/mentored.  I would like to find a church body that needs my gifts but won't suck the life and energy completely out of me (not much energy to suck, honestly).  I would like a community of believers who are (at least sometimes) honest with each other, who speak truth to each other, who are like a family (with the good and bad that comes with that status). 

Now maybe this is the Ideal Church, the one that can't really exist in a fallen world.  Maybe I am a big silly dreamer who needs to have more realistic expectations.  Don't hold back if you think I should adjust my aim.  Let me know what YOU think is important on a search like this.

(You may have noticed I don't mention worship style.  I've found great joy and communion in high church-type worship and in contemporary worship.  That part I don't really care as much about as the other things that are more important.)

So what advice can you give me about the proper way to go about this search for a new branch of the family to join?  Let my fingers do the walking first to check out doctrine and churches in my area?  Just start going to random services?  Going back if I get a good feeling?

It doesn't seem very spiritual, but I think I may need to start another spreadsheet . . .

What are your experiences with this process?  How did you come to find your current church body?  Why is it a great place for you to be?  What wisdom can you share with this seeker?

Rhymes with respect, I think

I was thinking the other day about what is required of us as believers.  We are called to extravagant, even ridiculous, love that isn't given only to the deserving and those who will appreciate it and thank us.  It's supposed to be like the outrageous love that has been given to us (while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us).  What a mystery the love of God for His fallen creation is.

Came across this definition from Gina Dalfonzo while catching up on email from the past, er, five years.  It made me think.  I really need to remember this when I'm getting irritated at my noisy cube neighbor or when someone is talking my ear off even though I am shouting with every kind of body language known to man that I want to be left alone or when I'm in a bad mood and am tempted to return a snide comment in kind.

"Christian courtesy is rooted and grounded in the idea that every person—however much we may dislike him or her—is made in the image of God and precious in his sight. It is an ideal that we may struggle to live up to, but the struggle makes us better people; it reminds us to show kindness when every impulse and instinct is urging us to do the opposite. It requires of us something deeper than a rally or a video, something more than the obligatory apology that follows most celebrity catfights. It's a lifestyle that has to be consciously lived every day."

I really wonder what this looks like.  I don't think it's quite the same as kindness.  If it's something we're supposed to imitate from Jesus' life, I think there are certain times when the gloves are supposed to come off (He had a real problem with people cloaking their agendas in the trappings of religious holiness, for instance), but I do wonder how my behavior would change if I was able to see each and every person in this light of truth

Serious political mudslinging season is nigh.  If the politicians who claim to be believers would practice Christian courtesy towards their opponents, well, wow.  What would that be like?

Six assorted quotes that made me think

Numbered for your commenting convenience.

1. "Miracles happen and people get visions for sure. But mostly God gives us a hoe and some seeds and introduces us to the miracle of work and a lot of common sense."

Stumbled on this while reading Just Do Something, a short and thought-provoking look at why we have such a lot of trouble "discerning the will of God for our lives."  (Hint: sloppy definition and theology have a lot to do with it.)

2. "Serve not to convert," says Roberts. "Serve because you are converted." 

What do you think of churches that say Christians shouldn't help out any humanitarian effort unless we're allowed to directly preach the gospel with words?  It's worthless if we don't share the gospel, is their claim, and they really seem to believe it.

3. "Clearly in the Bible spiritual leaders found ways to get people to pay attention. The prophets would use props such as plumb lines and cisterns. They would set a record for most days spent lying on one side. They would bury and dig up undergarments. They would marry women with shady reputations. Their lives often looked like something between performance art and reality TV."

This is one of the reasons why I love the Old Testament . . .

4. "Scheduling is no small matter. Attending takes time without offering quantifiable results. It requires stillness in a culture that rewards industriousness. It's inefficient in a world that considers getting things done next to godliness. A pastor who refuses to be slothful in the areas of silence and reflection stands a good chance of getting fired."

Someone referred to it as the cult of efficiency, a startling descriptor.

5. "While it may appear as though theological debate today is more polarized than ever, in fact it is perhaps as civil as it's ever been. There are still charges of heresy here and there, but at least we're no longer burning each other at the stake. There is occasional name-calling, but as Luther famously pointed out even Jesus and Paul were fond of coming up with clever names for false teachers."

There's some excellent witty repartee in the gospels between Jesus and said hypocrites and false teachers!

6. And last but not least.

"Spiritual maturity is the capacity to see God in the ordinary. And if you receive that capacity, if you become someone with eyes that can see and ears that can hear, you are given a gift.
It is life beyond boredom. Beyond amusement. Beyond attentive.
It is resurrection"

Discuss.  :)

Church/Business

A friend in need of a steady job applied for a seemingly providentially open music position in his church, but the church, like most modern US churches, decided to form a search committee to look for the best qualified candidate (in theory both inside and outside the church).  The search committee (as they most always do) ended up hiring one of these outside people  who is now moving here.  They just have to pray she works out.  They don't really know if she will because, you see, she's not an active member of their church body, and they've never lived alongside her.  Apparently it's an acceptable risk.  As a result, an active member of their church body who was equipped for that ministry is now once again trying to find a job to help support his family.

Some churches do this because they want to be taken seriously.  They want to show that they are seeking high quality.  They don't want to be tied just to their own small talent pools.  They want to bring in new blood and not just stagnate with the people they have on hand.  They want to be like businesses, more or less. 

I guess they don't know that this strategy often doesn't work in businesses either.  Many businesses say they promote internally, but most who say that still hire externally.  When they do, they hire people who take a ton of time to train up to speed when a competent, tested candidate already exists inside the business.  There's a lot of irritation and frustration in these situations, as there often are when upper management dictates policies that work poorly on the front lines.

What I can't understand is why the local church wants to act like a business anyway.  We're supposed to be a body of believers with a common purpose.  The Holy Spirit equips us all for ministry to each other and to the world.  I guess it just seems odd to me that we're so unwilling to trust that the Holy Spirit equips each church body to sustain itself.

It's not that I think local churches should never allow "outsiders" in.  However, don't you think the Holy Spirit brings in/provides who is needed to support the local body from within the local body itself?  Shouldn't the church look within to find who they can train and equip for necessary ministries?  If there is no one, then it would make sense to look out in the wider body. 

When we start acting like a business first, we lose sight of the fact that we are supposed to be first of all a community, a family of believers made up of many members who all function as a whole.  When we take matters into our own hands, it's like we don't trust God to get it right.  We end up leaving our own in need out in the cold when we had it within our power to help them by letting them use their gifts to benefit the body as a whole.  Isn't that what the church should be?  Why should we quench their use of that spiritual gift in our quest for "legitimacy" and "being taken seriously" by the world.  Is that right?  Is that where our focus should be?

Why Jesus wept the second time

In the short-term Sunday school class our church held for Lent, I learned that those palm branches on Palm Sunday were actually a symbol of political freedom/rebellion, and that whole Hosanna thing was a cry to be saved by a king from political affliction.

No wonder Jesus cried.  He was there to save them from something much bigger than subservience to Rome, but that's not what they wanted.  And sometimes it seems like that's not what the church in the U.S. wants, either.

Jesus came to forgive us our debts, but nowadays we often seem more interested in asking Jesus to save us from debt.  We want Him to make us healthy and wealthy.  We want Him to grant us good fortune in business and better church attendance numbers.  We want Him to keep pain and conflict away from us and our children.  We want Him to make us comfortable. He wants to make us holy.  Rather incompatible desires.

Sometimes I wonder if we still think we're living in the Old Covenant, the one where obedience = physical blessing.  We think that prosperity and comfort is a sign that we are doing the right thing.  It's not.  By that standard, Jesus definitely didn't seem to be doing the right thing.  It's a good thing he brought a new covenant.  The Old Covenant didn't work out too well for God's people in terms of overall comfort, either.  Thank the Lord we live under the New Covenant.  I could never keep the law well enough to earn blessing under the Old Covenant, but it has been made available to me eternally through the gracious and terrible sacrifice of Christ who calls us to be like Him.

Personal comfort is not what He came to save us for.  It's not what He's called us to.  If people who call themselves "Christians" but pursue lives of ease and comfort and seem just as interested in worldly success as the world, how are they followers of Christ?  When the church lets the world define success for us, we fail.  God wants to give His children things that are much more than the American dream.  Why are we so eager to settle for less?

Laura Story has a new song called "Blessings."  She asks some good questions in it; it deserves an attentive listen.  (If you know anything about her life, you will find that she is testifying from personal experience.)  "You love us way to much to give us lesser things," she says.  The easy way of comfort is not the way we are called toward.  We are called to something greater.

The biblical Jesus never promised us comfort.  In fact, He called us to take up our crosses and follow Him. (He went on to unfair torture and death [and resurrection]).  He called us to love and to give and to serve and to sacrifice.  He called us to a life of persecution and disfavor.  He called us to be crazy as far as the world is concerned.  He did not call us to be happy.  He did not call us to charmed lives where nothing ever goes wrong.  This is not how He shows His favor under the New Covenant.  Prosperity is not how people can tell to whom we belong.

If you're getting too comfortable, maybe it's time to rethink, reread, and do some serious praying.  Which is what I'm doing right now.  Care to join me?

Chronological Snobbery in the Church

My small group at church is considered kind of anomalously radical because we have college students, a newly married couple, a couple with two kids, and a happily single woman.  Our age range is all of 12 years, but it's quite unheard of at our church where Sunday fellowship is pretty much segregated by age or life stage.  We all think this is quite silly.

We decided to start up a Sunday school class where we actively invite everyone especially if they aren't in our age group or life stage or whatever.  As one woman in my small group says, "I don't need people to commiserate with at church; I need people to learn from."  Amen.  I want the wisdom of people who didn't grow up in my generation (whatever that is) or even my parents' generation.  I want to know how people are walking the Christian life even if we don't have "life stage" in common.  We need people to learn from.

And people who can learn from us.  We admit we're hardly masters of the faith at our ages, but interacting with college students, high schoolers, and anyone younger than us seems like it could be mutually beneficial.  There has to be something our experience can teach them, such as, "No, really, don't do that because look what happened to me."

"I want to be part of a chain of discipleship."  Isn't that what the family of God is?

Our college student members are enthusiastic about this.  They both live not-so-close to where they attend college, so they don't go home all the time.  They miss, "things like hanging out with grandparents and playing with animals and tripping over children" and other stuff they don't get to do on campus.  They want to belong to a family of believers.  But at our church, where The Way Things Are doesn't change very fast, and we don't have a lot of time (they'll both be seniors next year), we're finding it takes a lot of hard work to make a family.

Here's an interesting article I found by Mollie Ziegler Hemingway about age segregation in churches.  (If the CT site gets up again soon, you might even be able to read it.)  Probably your church isn't as extreme as these examples (and I hope it isn't even as extreme as my church), but the article as a whole did make me think more about the topic.

Anyway, our class starts next Sunday, and we have NO IDEA if anyone is going to show up.  So, if you get the chance, please pray with us that the Spirit will move people into getting out there and learning from and having fellowship with Others Unlike Them (maybe at our class, for example :).  I kind of want to make a Bible study with O.U.T. as the acronym now . . .

I'm curious about how this has worked at churches you've attended.  Is there a natural intermixing of ages/life stages, or do things naturally settle out along ageist lines?  Why?  How do you make sure you interact with your elders and those younger than you?  Do you think this should be a priority?  Should it be something natural, or do you think it necessarily requires work?  Any other thoughts on the subject? (Extra points if you know where the term in the title came from.)

Liz on discipleship, also other questions

I was so impressed with Liz's response to last week's post and the way it made me think that I decided it needed to be posted a bit more prominently for those who may not read comments.

"I think the idea of making disciples is a bit terrifying. I suspect that it is supposed to be like the way I understand draft horses are trained: you take an inexperienced horse, hitch him up alongside a mature, trained one, and then keep them working/moving together until the new one gets the hang of things. If you make disciples that way, you're looking at dedicating yourself to running parallel to somebody else for a long time. You might not even really like the person, but who are you to judge, if you're open to helping whoever needs it, whoever God brings you? Which of course you should be, if you trust him and really want to do his will and work. And think about the people who have put up with you in the past. Think about the people Jesus put up with, even among his closest friends, the twelve. If find it exhausting just to think about it, let alone live it.

"If you just go someplace for a week and harass people you don't know and will never see again, you can come back and live your life however you please and feel good about yourself for it."

As a follow-up question to everyone: What is the difference between discipleship and mentorship? 

If discipleship is partnering up with whoever gets hitched to your harness, is mentorship about seeking out someone of a different age but a like mind?  Is there a place for that in the church, as well?  Is it mandated or just a good idea?  And how do we go about getting hitched into someone else's more experienced harness and get someone less experienced hitched into our slightly more experienced harness?  Any examples, ideas, or suggestions?  How exactly does love go and make disciples?

Something important I figured out about why "evangelism" makes my skin crawl

I have always been uncomfortable with the way the evangelical church defines evangelism. They equate it to the Great Commission and indicate that real Christians are ready and willing to evangelize (do drive-by evangelism, hand out tracts at the drop of a hat, and preach at anyone who breathes and enters their radius). I've never been comfortable with that.

For a long time, I harbored guilt about my unease. Obviously I wasn't a real Christian if I didn't like participating in these activities. Along with making me uncomfortable, they seemed ineffective.

I didn't know how ineffective until I was reading The Unlikely Disciple, where the hardest chapter for me to read wasn't the one about masturbation or the one about homosexuality, but the one where the author signed up to do a spring break evangelism trip. I knew the chapter would be mortifyingly embarrassing to me as an evangelical (and it really was). I didn't want to read it, but I knew I couldn't skip it.  I stalled out at that point for two weeks.

Part of my discomfort came from knowing that this kind of "evangelism" was pointless. Even someone who does not relate to others normally knows that the tactics we teach to evanglize are not the most effective way to tell others about our faith and beliefs.  We are called to love God and our neighbors, and we do that best by having relationships with people and living out our love for God and them among them. However, I wasn't comfortable with the kind of "life-style evangelism" that didn't ever involve telling people why we do what we do and what we believe that motivates us to do what we do. (Another balance issue?!)

Recently, I figured out that the root of my unease with what evangelicals refer to as evangelism has to do with the meaning of words. Matthew 28:19-20 is called the Great Commission and is used by Evangelicals to describe their mandate to evangelize. Leaving aside concerns about whether Christ was speaking to that specific audience or a broader one (and assuming He was addressing a broader one including all believers), I am not satisfied that we are reading this verse right. My Bible doesn't say, "Go preach at people" or "Go tell them the gospel, get a prayer of confession, and mark them down as a statistic.  My Bible says, "Go therefore and make disciples . . .."

What we describe as evangelism seems to me to have less in common with biblical discipleship and more in common with historical practices like forced conversions, the Crusades, and the Inquisition. In the past, the church had political authority and power, and we could bludgeon people into doing our will. That's not very biblical, but we did it a lot. For a really long time. Power corrupts and all that.

I wonder if some of our mindsets about missions and evangelism today still reflect the distortions of past (colonialism, HRE stuff) instead of reflecting a more biblical focus. It wouldn't surprise me if this is a case of not knowing our history and continuing to repeat it ad nauseum.

So now I'm really curious about what it means to make disciples.  What does the Great Commission really tell us to do?  what does it mean to make disciples?  Any thoughts?