My religion, my fear

I am coming to the conclusion that a significant portion of the stress, anxiety, and fear that I have experienced in 33 years of life has been a direct result of my religious beliefs and experiences.

As a child, I was terrified of hell. It is a fear that plagued me in my nightmares, haunted me as I lay awake at night, and followed me through adolescence and into adulthood. Even today, burning to death is my top irrational fear.

The fear of being “left behind” attacked me from time to time. Occasionally, I would be surprised to find myself left alone in the house. Rather than rationally assume that the others had stepped outside or gone to the store, I would panic and frantically search everywhere for them in order to reassure myself that I had not missed the rapture. The terror was real. I also worried that my family might be excommunicated if the pastor ever discovered that my dad dipped Skoal. Then what would happen to us if the rapture took place before we could become members of another congregation?

I remember the visiting evangelists, not so different from Jonathan Edwards, asking us night after night during revival services “do you know that you know that you know?” that you are saved. I asked God for forgiveness and salvation on multiple occasions because of my uncertainty and dread. A continual barrage of hell-and-guilt messages directed toward a compliant child with a vivid imagination is immoral.

Through the years, I understood God to be an all-seeing policeman and the Christian life to be a list of rules to follow and sins to avoid. And, in spite of my best efforts to meet these standards, I found myself regularly guilt-ridden, ashamed, afraid, and disappointed.

In my early twenties, I became convinced that God could be known intimately, if we seek, seek, seek him with enough intensity, effort, and commitment. And although in many ways this became the quest of my life, I also spent years writhing in self-doubt and frustration. Where are you, God? What do I need to do to be worthy of your presence, your voice? Why can’t I hear you? Why can’t I feel you?

When Madeleine, my younger daughter, was born with significant health problems, we had to return to the States, giving up our life-long missionary plans in Central Asia. My theology had no answers for me. In the days and weeks and months that followed, my one thought toward God was “Betrayed!” Rather than a comfort when it was most desperately needed, his unwillingness or inability to help was a dagger in my back. As I sorted through the pain and confusion, I decided that either God was an asshole or my understanding of him was woefully inadequate and inaccurate. I eventually tended toward the second option and embraced my ignorance. But this was hardly more comforting. Like falling dominoes or a pulled sweater’s thread, once one belief was shaken another would follow, and then another. “If this belief is false, then what else have I believed that is wrong?” The impact of a worldview and belief system caving in on itself is exceptionally painful emotionally and mentally. Little is left. So much that brought certainty and security vanishes as a vapor.

There is a huge difference between the life of Jesus and all the religious systems we mistake for him. After writing this tonight, I’m asking myself two questions: How can I continue to move away from a religion of fear and toward a life of joy, love, and community? How might I raise my girls with healthier perceptions of life and God than I had?

I just can't believe

I woke up this morning with Third Day’s song “Anything” playing in my head. As I readied myself for work, one couplet stood out:

I just can’t believe, I can’t believe that You would love me

After everything, after everything I’ve done.

Read those lines again. I suspect the general Christian community would embrace this verse as both a proper perspective on our own unworthiness and sinfulness and a grand celebration of God’s incredible (literally “not-believe-able”) love for us and condescension toward us in spite of the aforementioned unworthiness and sinfulness. Haven’t you heard people express feelings like this? “When I think about all the bad things I’ve done, I can’t believe God still loves me.” “I’m so thankful for a God who loves me even though I’m this messed up.” “How can God love me when I’ve sinned so much?” Haven’t you and I said almost the exact same words in times of prayer or worship or repentance?

Well, that perspective is wrong. Rather than honor God, it lowers the love of God to a force only slightly more potent than our personal crimes of mind, word, and act. I know that if we totaled up all my brain-sins and word-sins and attitude-sins and decision-sins and omission-sins and commission-sins, we would have a nasty pile of filth and evil. But. But to say that this pile can just be barely overcome, and with great incredulity and surprise on our part, by God and His love is nonsense. By establishing our sinfulness and subsequent unworthiness as a formidable foe to God’s love, we propel ourselves to the forefront of the issue and diminish the merit and efficacy of God’s goodness. God’s love for us is completely independent of our sin, of “everything I’ve done.” There is no correlation or inverse relationship. Sin is a non-issue in the question “Does God love me?”

You might disagree with me. I understand that this goes against some of our common perceptions. [I think much of this comes from the hell-fire-and-brimstone, Jonathan Edwards-style terror tactics that some may still embrace and many of us are deeply scarred from.] We have mistakenly emphasized a false humility that grovels in our own worminess and unworthiness. We have thought that this perspective pleases God. I do not think it does. By continually tempering God’s love with our own sins, we dishonor God in at least four ways. First, we measure and limit the immeasurable and limitless love of God. Second, by regularly declaring ourselves filthy and lowly, we draw attention away from the beauty of God’s creation in us and in each other. Third, we often completely ignore the fact that we are forgiven. You are forgiven. It’s done. Move on. Move forward. You did not need to be forgiven for God to love you. You needed to be forgiven so you could stop living under the weight of your sins and so you could wake up to the reality of His love and presence. Wake up. Fourth, by continually harping on our own unworthiness, we refuse to celebrate God’s work of new creation in us and His present and future activity of making us more and more like Jesus.

Much is at stake. Much has been lost by our pious and determined efforts to doubt the love of God. We need to reconsider our assumptions. We need to reframe the ways we think and speak and sing about God’s love for us.

I now can believe, I can believe that You would love me

After everything, after everything You’ve done.

Beyond obedience

I have two daughters, ages seven and four. I expect them to obey. I expect them to obey quickly and completely. However, this obedience is not due to my greatness or their debt toward me. The purpose of the obedience is to protect them and form habits, behaviors, values, and character in their lives. As children, they are being molded into people with purpose, self-awareness, and character. I do not expect them to obey me forever. I would not want that. When my daughters are 24 and 21, or even 18 and 15, my demands for complete obedience will be inappropriate. If I father them appropriately…if the discipline of obedience is blended with discussions of values and explanations of reasons and lives properly modeled…then once they reach a certain age, those external efforts should result in internal qualities. I hope to look at each of my daughters at 18 knowing that her mother and I have fulfilled our primary responsibility of guiding the formation of her inner person so that we can release her to make decisions for her own life. She will spend most of her life in self-guidance rather than obedience. Obedience is a formative stage. If I demand obedience when she is 20 or 30, then I am not releasing her to the fullness of life. Will she make mistakes? Yes, but that is life. And if her inner works have been formed properly, she will avoid many of the pitfalls we so often fear and will heal and learn from her mistakes.

For years I believed that Christian maturity was complete obedience to the voice of God. Listen. Hear. Obey completely. That is a spiritual person. But I’ve had a shift in my thinking. Compare the example above. If we are truly being made in His image and being formed into the fullness of the stature of Christ, then maybe there is something beyond obedience. Obedience is formative. We listen and obey, so we know His heart and we act accordingly. But over time these principles and values are internalized. They become our own treasures and worldview. The line between His will and our own blurs. Our hearts grow good. One day we wake up realizing…Wow, I want the things of God. His heart is mine. The years of obedience have served their purpose, have turned stone to flesh. My desires are true and pure. I just want to love and serve and bless. At that point, we are no longer bound to the rule of obedience. Instead, God says, “Your heart is good. I have done well with you. What is on your heart? Follow what is in you. I—the God of the universe and your Father—trust you.” That is an unorthodox picture. My faith in Him is met by His faith in me. I am released to live my life, to make choices, to fall, to get up again, to change directions. He watches, not abandoning, but not controlling either. He is enjoying the show that is my life. Like my Father, I create out of love. This is beautiful to Him—the life of His child all grown up…a man.

NOTE: This idea began with a discussion with a good friend in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in 2004. This particular version was updated March 2009.

Where do you go to church?

DISCLAIMER: This is not an attack on the spiritual life or practices of others. This is an attempt to provide a personal answer to a specific question. I do not wish to cast shadow or doubt on activities that others find valuable and life-giving. This is simply a description of my own journey.

“Where do you go to church?” I am regularly asked this question by students, co-workers, and acquaintances, new and old. The question is simple, straightforward, and seemingly innocent. However, the question, no matter how casually posed, makes me nervous every time. I know that behind the conversational tone of the question lie assumptions, expectations, and judgments. I know that my answer may result in openings and closings, definitions and boxes. I will be labeled, categorized, defined. I may be embraced with a smile, rejected with forced niceties, stared at in bewilderment, or later vilified behind my back. All of these have been my experience.

Sometimes I simply give the name of a church down the street. This is the answer that most often satisfies the interlocutor. It is a portion of the truth; certainly the most easily understood and accepted version. When we go to a church building on a Sunday morning—once or twice a month—that is the congregation we join. We have several friends there. My girls enjoy the classes. The church has a global focus and an excellent guitarist.

But, honestly, merely giving the name of an institutional church betrays the complexity of the issue and the years I have spent wrestling with the nature of the church. I spent my first 27 years in a variety of church settings: fundamentalist, evangelical, Baptist, not-so-Baptist, charismatic, non-denominational, community, home groups. When we moved to Central Asia, we lived without the structures of Sunday services, church buildings, and paid clergy. In Kyrgyzstan, friends and friends of friends came to our home, ate meals with us, slept in our guestrooms and on our couches, talked about the mysteries and trivialities of life, played with our daughter, read the Bible or watched movies or washed dishes with us. We shared life together. It was natural and mostly unintentional. When we returned home to Texas, forced to stay due to family health, we tried to slide back into the Sunday morning church routine. We tried. It didn’t fit anymore. It didn’t satisfy. The dissatisfaction, of course, was accompanied by the necessary guilt and the requisite confusion. Anger, cynicism, doubt, despondency, obligation, fear. I sat through a year’s worth of sermons, suppressing my critical spirit and grappling with the question: “If we jump ship, where will we land?” If we leave the institutional church (there was no thought of leaving one for another), what kind of Christians will we become? Will we survive? Can we find relationship and wholeness outside the four walls of a church building? One Sunday morning, on the drive home from a service, I said in peace, “I’m done.” The clouds of confusion and fear had lifted and I felt free to step away.

“Where do you go to church?” Today I have a broader definition of the church than the preponderant cultural understanding that is closely tied to buildings, scheduled meetings, hierarchical relationships, and set doctrinal statements. My church life is a patchwork experience, an open adventure of meals and conversations and shared experience, an unpredictable blend of e-mails and phone calls and houseguests and dinners and cry sessions and laugh-fests. Hanging out at the Thai restaurant with three guys, quoting Tommy Boy and Thessalonians. Phoning a friend who is struggling to see the next step forward. Sitting, during my lunch break, with a student who is being brave through his parents’ divorce or her dad’s unemployment. Asking questions. Encouraging my students to think critically, creatively, and compassionately about themselves and the world. Getting up early on Saturday mornings to dialogue with a few guys who share a common interest to positively impact the world. Listening. Traveling to Colorado, South Dakota, South Carolina, and England to see scattered and beloved friends. Inviting folks for dinner. Attending a Sunday morning church service. Hanging out with friends at a festival. Dancing and singing and playing with my girls. Giving missionary friends space to voice their greatest joys and deepest frustrations. Playing tennis with a co-worker. This is my life. This is church for me.

The church is relationship. The church is shared life. The church is loving God with others. “Where do you go to church?” Where should I start?