Monday, December 28, 2009

Why I wouldn’t want to attend an "open and affirming" church

A few opening words. First, the title of this blog was intentionally worded to elicit an emotional reaction, and I'm betting it did its job for most of you. Before you read further, take a moment to register what your initial thoughts and feelings were upon reading the title. Tuck that away in the back of your mind, and keep reading.

Second, this blog is one I think I meant to write years ago. I did write something that was a pitiful attempt at this, but it was clumsily conceived and written, and it hurt some people. For that I am sorry. This entry is an attempt at an apology and a rewrite. Hopefully this time, what I meant to say will come through more clearly.

With the disclaimers out of the way, I should warn you that if you do not share the basic assumptions I am working with, reading this blog is pointless. So let's get that straight from the get-go, OK? Here are the givens on which my thoughts depend:

• Homosexuals are members of the body of Christ
• Heterosexuals who support LGBT rights are members of the body of Christ
• Heterosexuals who do not support LGBT rights are members of the body of Christ

If you disagree with any of those statements, or think that any one of them is more important than the others, you should proceed with caution, or at least keeping in mind that we might not see eye-to-eye on our basic assumptions. Also, I've had to simplify my categories for the sake of brevity—I am fully aware that there are heterosexuals who do not think homosexuality is a sin but who do not support gay marriage, and that there are plenty of other in-betweens. Forgive me the lack of nuance, and if you don't seem to fit into one of the three groups above, I'd be more than happy to talk with you more individually if you so desire. My thoughts on this subject are continually developing, and I have much to learn.

I also want to say upfront: homosexuality is not an "issue." It has to do with people. And we aren't just talking about behaviors—we're talking about identities. Heterosexuals on both sides of the "issue" (there I go already) sometimes forget that.

So let’s get down to business, shall we? Back to the title of my blog. I would not want to attend an "open and affirming" church. To begin to articulate my thoughts on this, I'll share a bit about one church with which I am fairly familiar. It's a large, mainline Protestant church, historically white and upper-middle-class but recently becoming wonderfully diverse in many ways. There are a number of members who are gay, but the church has not declared itself "open and affirming."

Recently, a few people (who I believe were relatively new to the congregation) began to lobby the pastor to make this move. The pastor dissuaded them. Why? Because if that church were to be branded "open and affirming" or "gay friendly," the one or two members staunchly opposed to homosexuality would come out in full force, and deeply hurtful things would be said. Right now, the church is doing fine at welcoming gays, whether every single member knows it or not. To declare the congregation "open and affirming" would divide the church more than it would unite it.

A similar thing happened with my campus ministry group a few years before I got to college. The LGBT center was asking various organizations to make themselves known as "safe places" by putting stickers from the center on their office doors. Despite the fact that my campus minister and many of the group's members are vocal allies, they decided against it because they did not want to make people who disagreed feel unwelcome. Think about it—if you proclaim yourself "open and affirming," how much meaningful conversation will you have in-house on the topic that isn't one-sided?

See, it's not that I’m opposed to a church being open and affirming in deed. It's just that I wonder what is lost when a church takes the road of declaring itself as such. There are people in my life whom I would miss very much from my congregation if that happened. Some voices would be emboldened, but others would be lost completely.

I once went to a worship service that was so LGBT-friendly that I felt out of place—the songs were all about love in many forms, the vestments were rainbow-colored, even the communion bread had been made with an array of food dyes. I'll admit it—I was uncomfortable. I wasn't even sure I should be there.

The thing is, even though I was personally uneasy in that worship service, it was a truly beautiful event. All around me were people who had been hurt or disenfranchised by society and even by the church, and suddenly they were empowered, they were loved, they knew that at least in that time and that place, they were members of the body of Christ. My own discomfort paled in comparison to the joy and hope I saw in that room. And I couldn't help but think: the way I feel now—some of these people feel that way all the time.

Here's the part where I need help. What the heck are we supposed to do about this? The problem that I recognize in my own argument about avoiding the "open and affirming" stamp is that it can easily be misconstrued to mean, "don't ask, don't tell." But how can we be members of the same body if we don't understand each other? How can we bear one another's burdens if we don’t know what those burdens are?

There's another point I want to make that's going to be tricky to articulate, but I think it's important, so allow me to try. I've heard several gay friends and acquaintances of mine tell me that part of their struggle is that they don't want their lives to be defined by one issue (because even if we acknowledge what I said earlier—that it's not an "issue," it's about people—the world makes it an issue for us). Neither should an issue define our faith. Part of why I was so uncomfortable in the worship service I described earlier is that I feel very strongly that worship is not about us; it's about God. Worship shouldn't be about celebrating gayness—neither should it be about celebrating American-ness (which is why I don't like singing patriotic hymns in church), wealth (which is why the "prosperity gospel" is no gospel at all), racial identity (oh good grief that's a whole other can of worms, not now, please), or any other human quality.

By the way...let me briefly unpack my 3 givens from the beginning of the post. Too often we forget that saying someone is a member of the body of Christ does not mean that you agree with everything they say or do. At the 2008 General Conference of the United Methodist Church, a group tried and failed to change the wording of the paragraph in the social principles about homosexuality. Contrary to what you might have gathered from the intense anger of the opposition, the change would not have condoned homosexuality. What it would have said was that we must acknowledge that many intelligent, faithful people have examined the Bible, church tradition and the issue itself, and they have come down on both sides. The question here in my blog is not the whether homosexuality is right or wrong. I rarely debate that subject anymore, because honestly, I have yet to be thoroughly convinced by anybody one way or the other. I've heard people use the exact same Bible passages to argue opposite points, and at least for me the question has worn out its welcome. I don't want to know whether the church can come up with the perfect answer to every question. I want to know what the church is going to do in the face of uncertainty and disagreement.

A friend of mine (who is gay) once told me that although it's fine for people to disagree theologically with homosexuality, it is never OK to hate. The crucial point here, which far too many people miss, is that disagreement and hatred are not correlative to each other. We can be a part of the body of Christ without being on exactly the same page on everything, if only we can remember that our focus is on God and that the only way we can be healed is by working together towards understanding, not by issuing ultimatums.

So. Can you be gay and be a Christian? Yes. Can you support gays in their sexual identity and lifestyle choices and be a Christian? Yes. Can you hold the belief that homosexuality is a sin and be a Christian? Yes.

In closing, let me ask you to recall that first emotional reaction to the title of my blog. Did you assume I was anti-gay? Did that offend or affirm you? Did your assumptions prior to reading this blog color my status in your mind as a member of the body of Christ—or not? We all need help being Christians. None of us have it right. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." All means all.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Why Has This Happened to Me?

These two videos together form my sermon from worship yesterday at Asbury Temple UMC. It's in two parts, so don't forget the second video.



Friday, November 20, 2009

My husband's/wife's deepest needs

I have never cared about gender issues. When I was younger, I would hear people talk about women being disadvantaged in the academy and the workplace, and I would wonder why they couldn't just get over it--be really good at what you do and your gender won't matter. I still believe that to some extent, and I try really hard only to call foul when it's a real issue, but I'm finding that more and more I'm becoming a (*insert heavy sigh here*) feminist. I really hate that word, because it has bad connotations for me, but through life experience (some of it, unfortunately, bad) and just growing up, I'm starting to see more and more the ways in which the world and (sometimes especially) the church screws up gender roles and expectations. It's going to be fun for me when I really come into my prime after being underestimated and type-cast since high school.

Anyway, here's where some of this is coming from: I recently helped with music at a church marriage retreat. To preface, I'm not going to say which church because I don't want to seem like I'm dissing them, which is not at all my purpose. Also, I want to stress that I think a marriage retreat is a GREAT idea. The church needs to do a better job in general of talking about relationships, marriage, love, sex, all of that stuff. Too often I feel like the emphasis is placed on saving yourself for marriage, but then nobody tells you what you're supposed to do once you get there. I'm all for lots and lots of premarital counseling (Protestants, we suck at this. Let's please learn from the Catholics) and lots and lots of postmarital (er, during-marital?) counseling and whatnot. The divorce rate in this country is appalling, and the church is failing couples constantly by not giving them the resources to make and follow through on commitments.

OK, so this marriage retreat. I was behind the scenes for part of it, so I didn't get to hear it all, but some of it sounded really great. I heard lots of talk of communication and honesty, of moving out of an economy of shame into a life of grace, of forgiveness and joy and lots of great stuff. I'm sure a lot of couples were blessed--I know I was, one of a handful of single folks in the room.

I'm writing all this because I want to stress that my hang-up was over something minor. On each seat was a slip of paper with writing on both sides. Side one:

My Wife's Deepest Needs:
1. My wife needs a Godly man and my unconditional love.
2. My wife needs my affection, security, comfort, approval, tenderness, touch, cards and gifts.
3. My wife needs conversation with me.
4. My wife needs my honesty and openness.
5. My wife needs financial security.
6. My wife needs my commitment to the family--be faithful to my wife, share parenting responsibilities, take initiative in home repairs and be the spiritual leader in my home.


Side two:

My Husband's Deepest Needs:
1. My husband needs a Godly wife and my unconditional love.
2. My husband needs sexual fulfillment.
3. My husband needs recreational companionship.
4. My husband needs an attractive wife.
5. My husband needs domestic support.
6. My husband needs my admiration.


OK. Word to Godliness, unconditional love, etc. However, I have a few questions/comments:

-- #2 on side one sure makes women sound needy.
-- The claim that women need financial security is just funny to a woman whose boyfriend refers to her as his "sugar momma."
-- If anyone does house repairs in my family, it's my...sister.
-- Do wives not need sexual fulfillment?
-- Do wives not need attractive husbands? Is #4 on side two suggesting that it's the duty of a woman to stay beautiful for her husband? What about his beer belly?
-- I just hate the word "domestic," even if I've found in the past few years that I do enjoy cooking and cleaning. *sigh*

So...yeah. Just some thoughts. I could get all indignant over some of this stuff, but it's not worth it. Mostly I just found the card funny (yes, I kept it).

Thoughts?

Truth-telling modifies behavior

The question of truth-telling has been an interesting one throughout my life. As a child, I was utterly guileless. The other day, commenting on how my younger brother was grounded for something or another that involved lying--and inept lying, at that--my dad noted that Noah is only slightly better at lying than I am, and we both knew that was a pretty bad insult (if having one's talent at lying slighted can be called an insult). I learned very quickly when I was young that I was a terrible liar, and I had such a deep fear of angering or disappointing anyone that I did all I could to avoid any situation that would require (or maybe I should say tempt) me to lie later.

My freshman year of college, I wound up in a romantic relationship that thankfully did not pan out as horribly as it could have, but still reflected lots and lots of bad judgment. The other person involved had the gall to lecture me on honesty when our whole relationship was largely secret and based on deception. I learned from that mistake, though unfortunately it took me one or two more similar situations to really figure out that any relationship that involves deception is not OK. Period.

A friend of mine was in a scarily similar situation a few years ago and protested my concerns by asking why it was anyone's business what people did with their personal lives. Unluckily (or luckily?) for her, she's a Christian, and folks, being a Christian means that you don't get the kind of personal life we talk about in America--the kind where you keep your problems to yourself and think that mistakes won't affect anyone but you. We are called to bear one another's burdens, and guess what that means? We have to know about each other's burdens. And sins. And mistakes. And joys!

My dad and I had an interesting conversation the other day (stemming from shaking our heads in amusement at my little brother). He told me about something he heard from a Jewish man who grew up in Europe, I think in the early 20th century. What he said was that being a Jew in Europe meant that you couldn't make any mistakes. If you stole someone, suddenly all Jews were thieves. If you had family problems, suddenly all Jewish marriages were dysfunctional. And on and on. What he said was that, far from encouraging good behavior and high moral standards, this pressure cultivated deception. You had to maintain your outward appearance and reputation, but if you could violate that image in secret, you would.

My response summed up some things I've been thinking about a lot lately. To me, I think the problem is a matter of priority. If our main concern is our image, what others think of us, then the truth can become secondary and inevitably it will be sacrificed if it comes into conflict with the maintenance of that image. Whether it is your economic status, marital bliss, academic prowess or what have you, if other people's perception of that is more important than their integrity, when push comes to shove the truth will lose every time.

On the other hand, if truth is the most important thing, it's a whole different ball game. If you commit to being honest all the time, there are tons of things you might say or do otherwise that you won't do if you know you'd have to tell someone about it. Truth-telling modifies behavior. Sometimes, you may even know that you are behaving in a way that is inconsistent with your beliefs, but trying to change that on your own is not enough. But, if you just tell someone what's actually going on, suddenly whatever you're doing is no longer your personal life, no longer just your business. Suddenly, whether you change a behavior or not affects someone else, and someone else cares.

I wish that I had understood this earlier in life, and also that I had had people in my world at certain points with whom I could be completely honest all the time. I'm still really bad at lying, but I'm ashamed to say that there have been times when I've found myself telling selective truths to different people. For a while at one point, I was basically living two separate lives, one all happy and Christian-y and the other pretty much a mess, but neither really knew much about the other. Oh, and by the way, this person to whom I would have liked to have been able to honest would have had to have been a Christian, or at least someone whose values aligned with mine (because I have plenty of non-Christian friends whose morals rock way harder than those of a lot of Christians out there). There were some people who knew when I wasn't always acting the way I should, but they didn't care because they were doing it too. That's just self-justification.

My thesis is in the subject line. If your first commitment is to truth-telling, everything else has to fall in line with that. If anything else is more important--your looks, your relationship, your popularity, your job--you will find yourself sacrificing truth to that, and though I have neither the time nor the emotional energy to go into what happens when that goes down, we've all been there. Let's hold each other to a higher standard of integrity. Let's be people who tell the truth and are willing to hear the truth from others--without being offended, without judging or condemning. Only in this way can we seek the Truth of the One who made us all.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

The Miraculous Feeding of the 5,000

Today, I overheard a snippet of a conversation taking place on the first floor of my house as I walked through the second. "Oh, you Methodists and your non-miraculous reading of that miracle," said one housemate jokingly to another. I knew exactly what he was talking about, and it prompted me to think a little further about my troubles with a particular reading of the passage in question. But I get ahead of myself.

The feeding of the 5,000 (or 4,000...or 5,000, not counting women and children...but still a lot of people...) became a boring narrative for me sometime in middle school. I'd heard it so many times I tended to zone out when that Bible story was being read or preached on.

Imagine my surprise when one time earlier in college a sermon on this Gospel lesson caught my attention. Having drifted off mentally as usual, I was suddenly listening and disoriented. The preacher was wondering aloud whether perhaps the crowd was moved by the generosity of the young boy with the fish and the loaves. Perhaps someone pulled out a piece of bread here, a hunk of cheese there, and before long everyone's little to offer became a lot to eat.

I felt myself immediately averse to this account, but I couldn't explain why. In fact, more recently, my friend said she thought that it would have taken a greater miracle to move the crowd to such generosity than it would have to reproduce baskets of bread and fish. I had to agree with that. But I was still troubled, and I think I'm starting to figure out why.

Let me make it clear that I'm not opposed to this Stone Soup version of the story. I'm open to different readings of the Bible, and besides, the stone soup approach works wonders in the household of which I am currently a part. It isn't so much this interpretation that bothers me, it's where it came from and what it can lead to.

In my Old Testament precept last week, we were discussing a book by Peter Enns called Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Enns attempts to find a way to reconcile a non-literal reading of the Bible with the maintenance of Scriptural authority (to summarize very crudely). In order to give us background on where the debate over the Old Testament and the authority of Scripture began, our preceptor described to us some of the theological and philosophical history of the various issues. He talked about one school of thought that sought to explain, in modern terms, the seemingly miraculous happenings in the Bible. One scenario that struck me was that on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus was walking on a sandbar and simply appeared to be walking on water. There were several other explanations that rubbed me the wrong way, and the interpretation of the feeding of the 5,000 that I outlined before was ranked among those.

My issue isn't so much that I'm so attached to and dependent on the miracle status of the stories from the life of Jesus that I can't give them up, like a child with a security blanket. I won't call down curses on someone who says the demoniacs in the Bible were schizophrenic or otherwise mentally ill. (By the way, it seems to me that curing someone of a mental illness is at least as impressive as casting out a demon.) What troubles me about this whole train of thought is the obsessive need to explain everything. Faith is an art that requires an ability to live in the tension between the known and the unknown, the revealed and the unseen, the fulfilled and the yet-to-be. Certainly we should be exploring the Bible with minds that are open to new inspiration, but we should not take our need to explain so far that it becomes an attempt to control and manipulate the text. And we must never forget that while alternative explanations of Bible stories may be interesting, when they become the focus, we miss the point. The technicalities of how a miracle occurred should never become more interesting or important than the Miracle Worker. Explore possibilities, share new ideas, ask questions; but don't get rid of the mystery.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Fully an academic institution AND fully a faith community

After 4 years of lurking in the halls of Langford and Westbrook, I'm finally a student at Duke Divinity School. I've been around so long that there are faculty who think I'm a third year, and plenty of people who I'm sure must wonder what in the world is taking me so long to get an M.Div.

Anyway, in the process of going through ordination and of explaining some of the philosophy of DDS (Duke Divinity School) to others, I came across an interesting question: How in the world can a place function both as a competitive academic institution and as a community of faith? Are we primarily students or primarily ministers?

I'm a big fan of holding things in tension, so the distinction doesn't bother me personally, but orientation was rife with instances of faculty and administrators actually sounding confused as to how to define what the heck we're doing here. I heard one person tell me DDS is first and foremost a graduate school; another said that ministry is a priority over against academics. One faculty member tried to explain that DDS is most importantly academic, AND most importantly faith-based.

Like I said, nonsensical "both/and" statements like that don't bother me. The main reason for this is that we have a Savior who is fully human AND fully divine. Christians should be used to this kind of nonsense. But that doesn't mean that living out our identity as divinity SCHOOL students and DIVINITY school students is easy.

I've had some people react with surprise when I tell them that most of my professors begin class with a prayer. I love that we do that, even though I know full well that the love of Christ isn't going to keep Dr. Smith from giving me an "F" in Church History if I don't study.

Then there's the funny question of spiritual formation. DDS tries to be intentional about forming not only the minds but also the hearts of its students. Part of this effort is the required spiritual formation group to which each first year is assigned. You don't get a grade or really any credit for it, but you can't move on to your second year of seminary without it. That class is itself in many ways the embodiment of the fine line we're walking between academics and faith.

I guess we'll just see how this plays out. I already know Duke thoroughly for the competitive academic institution that it is, and I know the Div School is no exception, so I'm not going to pretend the competitiveness isn't there. But I also know that for the most part my classmates are going to be far more willing to help me out than perhaps some were in undergrad.

"If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it" (1 Cor. 12:26). As weird and awkward as it might sometimes feel, we are all one body, and it does me no good to get an A in Hebrew if the seminarian sitting next to me can't remember the alphabet.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

2009 Wright Room

Monday, July 27, 2009

Glow Sticks

(This post totally steals an idea from my boyfriend, Gary Mitchell, www.myspace.com/visionrise.)

Consider a glow stick. (Bear with me.) Now, erase everything you know about glow sticks. In fact, forget the "glow" part. We'll call them...all right, I can't think of a great name, so just imagine all you know is that these are small liquid-filled plastic sticks.

What uses could you think of for such an object? Today, my youth came up with a few: paperweight, necklace, Christmas tree decoration, action figure stand; you could play catch with it or use it as a toy for your dog to fetch. You can certainly do some things with it.

But we all know what the real purpose of a glow stick is--I mean, it's right there in the name! A glow stick is supposed to glow. And how do we get it to glow?

Exactly. We break it. Until it is broken, a glow stick can never fulfill its real purpose. It can be lots of different things, but never what it was meant to be. With the breaking comes light.

In college, my boyfriend and his roommate had a tradition surrounding glow sticks. Every time someone they knew came to Christ, they would break one. They collected these glow sticks as reminders of their friends who had been broken--who had surrendered to Christ, admitted their sin and need of forgiveness, submitted to the will of God.

The glow stick image goes along well with 2 Corinthians 12:9--"My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." In our pain and suffering, God enters in to reconcile us to him and to make us whole in his love. In our brokenness, God shines a light we cannot see when we think we've got everything together.

Earlier this summer, I marked the 2nd anniversary of an extremely painful event. After helping me turn the day into a celebration and helping to give me good memories of that date, Gary brought out a glow stick. I had heard his explanation before, and I admit I had thought it a little cheesy at first. But wept as he broke the stick and gave it to me, saying that he was proud of me and he could see how God was using me in my weakness to serve others.

Today, I did a glow stick demonstration with my youth at the end of a discussion about why bad things happen. Afterwards, I was wearing my sample glow stick around my neck, and a question from one of the kids showed me another dimension to the metaphor: "Can you turn it off?" asked Kristopher. "No. No, you can't." I smiled. Sure, it's an imperfect comparison, because glow sticks do fade...but then again, maybe that's about right. We often need to be reminded of our need of God. Maybe we don't have to be broken drastically over and over again, but faith is not a one-time thing where you get it or you don't--it's a process. Some of us might need to go through Wal-Mart's entire stock of glow sticks before we get it.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Summer Youth Retreat 2009

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Theology without Faith

My campus ministry group has an annual tradition: students write "affirmation letters" to the graduating seniors. When I graduated from college this spring, I received one that included an important observation: "There's always more to learn about God, but I still believe the best way to do that is through time with him on our knees, not in the classroom."

I'm starting divinity school in the fall, and I'm a little nervous about it. I'm going to the same school where I did my undergrad, and I spent way too much of the past four years in the religion department and divinity school. I know that I thrive on academic pressure. But I'm also aware of the danger that exists when thinking about faith becomes more absorbing than faith itself.

Theology is fundamentally different from other disciplines because it requires not only that you contemplate the logos but also that you know and engage with the theos. While nonbelievers can study the history or sociology of religion, theology outside relationship with God completely misses the point.

So I'm grateful to be attending a school where regular worship, spiritual formation groups, prayer in the classroom, and field education are significant, even mandatory components of my education. My goal is to avoid becoming so fascinated with the eschatological implications of the Eucharist that I forget to spend time in prayer.

This post first appeared on Theolog, the blog of The Christian Century.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Nature and Scripture

"While I see evidence of God in nature, I would not know the person of Jesus Christ without reading the Bible. I cannot look at the stars and know that God wants us to turn away from wickedness. I cannot marvel at a sunset and feel the pain God felt as Jesus hung on the cross." — Caroleah Johnson, Upper Room Daily Devotional

Yes. This is great. I've always gotten agitated when people talk about seeing God in nature. Honestly, I wasn't terribly nice about it for a period of my life, and I had to be taken down a notch, which in part took the form of me finding peace at a monastery in the middle of the New Mexican desert—a place where God reveals himself, in no uncertain terms, in rock and river and sky. But I have continued to long for a way to articulate my concern when someone tells me they experience God primarily in nature.

There is nothing wrong with that. The devotional I pulled that quote from draws on Psalm 19: "The heavens are telling the glory of God." It's not that nature isn't a valid means of connecting to the eternal; it's just that our meetings with God in nature and other settings need to be informed by a familiarity with and understanding of Scripture. Jesus is universal and particular—though his face can be seen in any person or natural wonder, we need to know the story of the actual man who lived and died if we are to draw any meaning from that connection.

The kicker: as much as I've complained about relying too heavily on stars and flowers for a God connection, I don't read my Bible nearly enough to make up for that. It's something I'm working on, more intentionally now than at other times in my life. This reflection is one more bit of motivation for me to be in the Word more.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

God Is More Faithful (a quote from a devotional)

"We can be grateful that God is more faithful than we are." — Upper Room Daily Devotional

Thursday, April 2, 2009

A Poem from E. E. Cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

No More Excuses

Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." Then I said, "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy." But the Lord said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a boy'; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord." Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, "Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant." — Jeremiah 1:4-10

I love this passage. It's been really important to me for the past several years as I've discerned and explored my call to ministry. I recall spending a lot of time with these verses my freshman year of college and feeling like I too often tried to hide behind my age as an excuse not to realize my full potential.

I picked this Scripture for my morning reflection and prayer time today, and I had a disturbing thought: Jeremiah said "I am only a boy"—and I've said "I am only a girl"—but what happens when that is no longer true? If youth wasn't a valid excuse for dodging your calling, how much more must be expected of you once you don't have youth as a shield, if even a flimsy one?

Obviously, I'm not tottering with old age just yet. I'll be 22 in just over 2 weeks. But I'm not a child anymore. I have a college degree, I have a full-time job, I pay my own rent and buy my own groceries. When I reflected on Jeremiah's calling at age 18, I was completely dependent on my parents and didn't even have a work study job or anything. I was a child in worldly terms and in faith. Although I still often feel like an infant in my understanding of God, I am not a girl anymore.

God expected enormous things of Jeremiah even in his youth; how much more must be expected of us once we enter adulthood? Young age wasn't a valid excuse then; it seems there is nothing to hide behind now. I have been called by God to a specific vocation, and even if the details have not yet been revealed to me, I can't keep telling God to wait until I'm older or wiser or more prepared. It makes me think of the quote, "God does not call the equipped; he equips the called." I can't hide behind what I may perceive as a lack of skills or knowledge or equipment. I have to respond to God's call and know that he will provide whatever it is I need.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Bombarded by Grace

I need to just take a moment to reflect on how unbelievably blessed I have been lately. I am seriously blown away by how good God has been to me, especially when I think about how much I don't deserve anything at all. I don't pray as I ought, I make poor decisions that lead me into sin, and I hide or ignore the gifts God has given me...and he responds by calling to me in such a way that leaves me no other option but to fall on my knees in prayer, gives me opportunities and reasons to be better as a person, and open doors to let me use my talents to glorify him.

I've always been incredibly blessed, but the past few months really blow everything else out of the water. It started at the end of last semester: in the span of one week, I completed my undergraduate education, was offered the first full-time job I every applied for within 24 hours of my interview, and was accepted to Duke Divinity School on a full scholarship. Talk about being bombarded by grace. And it was all such a huge affirmation of who I am and what I'm called to be, I almost couldn't handle it. Particularly in thinking about starting seminary in the fall, I'm still really struggling because I am simply levelled with humility in the face of the hopes and expectations laid on me.

Things only got better when I returned to Durham in January and started work. I found that working a 40-hour week is vastly different from being a full-time student, and suddenly, I had free time--to spend with friends, with the youth from my church, on reading and prayer and music. I had been wanting to use the spring semester to get back into playing and writing music, and a random run-in with a local musician gave me the inspiration I needed to pick up where I left off in high school. Little did I know, that musician (Gary Mitchell, www.myspace.com/visionrise) would later have me playing shows and open mics with him, and that an incredible new relationship would develop from a chance encounter at the mall. I don't deal well with coincidence, and it makes my brain implode to try and fathom just how lucky and blessed I have been for everything to have fallen into place so perfectly.

Then there's Afton, a company that contacted me about a year ago asking if I'd be interested in booking shows through them. I ignored the email at the time, because I wasn't doing music then, but they got back with me in December and I've been in contact. I was hesitant to commit to a show with them because I'm still insecure about my talent and my ability to recruit fans, but my show last Saturday and attending an Afton showcase last night gave me a little more confidence, and I'm pursuing that further. Doing something like that could get me plugged into performing more regularly, and I could even make a little money if I get enough people to come to a show.

Also, it turns out one of the guys I'm living with next year is an MC, and a really good one. Brandon (www.myspace.com/mcmmusic) invited me to perform with him next Friday at the Durham Senior Center. I don't understand how these cool opportunities just keep falling into my lap. My life is so much fun right now, even in the face of the impending graduation of my class at Duke (which really depresses me) and the weight of what I'll be taking on when I start seminary in the fall. I can't believe how good God has been to me. I am humbled and grateful. Life is amazing.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Should We Save Money?

It seems to be a day of reflection, which is good, because I'm struggling with my job right now (more on that later, most likely). I'm listening to a sermon by Dr. Benji Kelley, pastor of New Hope Church in Durham, NC. In discussing money, he advocates a "10-10-80 Plan": give 10% of your income to the church as a tithe, save 10% for yourself for the future, and use 80% to live on now. There's nothing inherently wrong with this formula, and his main point, of course, is that you should tithe in response to Biblical command, but I want to needle at this a bit anyway.

As a disclaimer, I struggle with my relationship with money. Although people I love and respect have argued convincingly that wealth and sin are not necessarily correlated, I still have a really hard time even just being around people who have extreme wealth. I even feel guilty about the kind of car I drive, even if I only own it because of bizarre circumstances involving a car wreck (heh). Anyway, I just wanted to say upfront that I come down hard on the side of money being bad, and that obviously colors this discussion for me.

Over winter break, I went on a mission trip with my campus ministry group from Duke University. We worked for several days on hurricane relief in Galveston, then returned to Houston for a few days to celebrate the new year and to visit Casa Juan Diego. CJD is a Catholic Worker House that publishes the Houston Catholic Worker and provides housing to hundreds of illegal (yes, only illegal) immigrants and their families.

There are hundreds of reasons I'm basically in love with this place, but for now let's focus on their treatment of money. They provide food, housing, medical care, clothing, and countless other services to hundreds and hundreds of people every day. That costs money. When I asked the founders, Mark and Louise Zwick, how they raise funds, they simply responded, "We pray a lot." They get donations, mostly from individuals, and God provides. Their entire operation is based on enormous trust in God's ability to move in the hearts (and wallets) of other people.

The more interesting aspect of CJD's treatment of money as it pertains to this particular discussion is how they use funds once they receive them. CJD does not save money. Not a cent. When they get a donation, they immediately assess how it can best be used, and they use it. Nothing gets holed away for later; it is used to meet needs as they come and as funds are available. Mark and Louise don't have a retirement plan. They don't even necessarily know if they'll have money to run CJD each new day.

I personally operate a bit like this in the sense that I generally use whatever money I earn as it comes, but that's probably more out of my own inability to budget or even think about numbers than a desire to use my resources in a manner that mirror's CJD's approach. But the question of saving for retirement or what have you still remains. Kelley argues that even though he does believe Jesus is coming back and could do so even today, it's simply not good stewardship not to plan ahead. And of course, it's all well and good for me not to give a lick about how much money I'll have next month after I pay my rent now that I'm a single 20-something looking at a few more years of school (which will be paid for, by the way), but when I get married and have kids, how "responsible" do I need to become in setting aside money for my family? My parents have a retirement plan and fantastic life insurance (no, I'm not planning to murder my dad). How will I approach that as a "real" adult? I don't pretend to know. I love the idea of existing from day to day, trusting God will provide and not feeling like I can't do something or help someone because I need to save that money for when I'm 65. But I hear having kids changes everything. I guess we'll see.

That post was way less articulate and intellectual than I had hoped, but oh well.

Love Wins

On Monday, I went to a lecture at UNC by Frank Turek, author of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. There, he referred us to a video of a debate he had with Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great. I'm currently in the middle of watching the debate and had to pause to reflect on some things.

Hitchens' main point is not that God does not exist, but that we cannot know that God does exist. I concur. That's what faith is for. I don't want to believe in a God whose existence can be empirically proven by mortals. In such a case, faith is a moot point. If God's existence can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, there is no room for faith, hope, even love.

Apologetics as a field elicits a sort of inquisitive amusement from me. I take God's existence as a given, and I'm totally OK with that. I have no qualms about making that assumption. When people want to debate the "facts" with me, I'll indulge them to a certain extent, but it reaches a point where I simply lose interest, because I've been convicted by a faith that will not let me go and that could be neither convinced nor deterred by ontological, teleological or any other proof.

It's probably good for me to be in relationship with people who understand and are good at apologetics, because it simply isn't my cup of tea. I know all the arguments, but I'm far less likely to talk about the prime mover or creation ex nihilo than I am to share the ways in which God has moved in my life and in the communities of which I am a part.

It simply isn't helpful to people who want the scientific-sounding answers, but that's just how I understand my faith—in relationships of God-given love. Not that I don't enjoy a good theological debate—I'm going to seminary in the fall, for goodness' sake—but I believe all of that should be trumped by the witness of the love reflected in believers' lives. They'll know we are Christians by our love—not by our intellectual arguments. Not that those aren't valid, but basically...love wins.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

A Prayer from W. E. Orchard

Begotten of your love, O Father, we are made in your image. Cared for all our days, we are never beyond your sight. Enfolded in your heart, we are never out of your thought. To think of you is rest. To know you is eternal life. To see you is the end of all desire. To serve you is perfect freedom. To love you is everlasting joy. Amen.

— W. E. Orchard

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

One Pure and Holy Passion

Give me one pure and holy passion
Give me one magnificent obsession
Give me one glorious ambition for my life
To know and follow hard after you

To know and follow hard after you
To grow as your disciple in your truth
This world is empty, pale and poor
Compared to knowing you, my Lord
Lead me on, and I will run after you
Lead me on, and I will run after you

— Passion

Friday, January 23, 2009

Unity or Uniformity? (a quote from MLK, Jr.)

"Unity has never meant uniformity." — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Why I wouldn’t want to attend an "open and affirming" church

A few opening words. First, the title of this blog was intentionally worded to elicit an emotional reaction, and I'm betting it did its job for most of you. Before you read further, take a moment to register what your initial thoughts and feelings were upon reading the title. Tuck that away in the back of your mind, and keep reading.

Second, this blog is one I think I meant to write years ago. I did write something that was a pitiful attempt at this, but it was clumsily conceived and written, and it hurt some people. For that I am sorry. This entry is an attempt at an apology and a rewrite. Hopefully this time, what I meant to say will come through more clearly.

With the disclaimers out of the way, I should warn you that if you do not share the basic assumptions I am working with, reading this blog is pointless. So let's get that straight from the get-go, OK? Here are the givens on which my thoughts depend:

• Homosexuals are members of the body of Christ
• Heterosexuals who support LGBT rights are members of the body of Christ
• Heterosexuals who do not support LGBT rights are members of the body of Christ

If you disagree with any of those statements, or think that any one of them is more important than the others, you should proceed with caution, or at least keeping in mind that we might not see eye-to-eye on our basic assumptions. Also, I've had to simplify my categories for the sake of brevity—I am fully aware that there are heterosexuals who do not think homosexuality is a sin but who do not support gay marriage, and that there are plenty of other in-betweens. Forgive me the lack of nuance, and if you don't seem to fit into one of the three groups above, I'd be more than happy to talk with you more individually if you so desire. My thoughts on this subject are continually developing, and I have much to learn.

I also want to say upfront: homosexuality is not an "issue." It has to do with people. And we aren't just talking about behaviors—we're talking about identities. Heterosexuals on both sides of the "issue" (there I go already) sometimes forget that.

So let’s get down to business, shall we? Back to the title of my blog. I would not want to attend an "open and affirming" church. To begin to articulate my thoughts on this, I'll share a bit about one church with which I am fairly familiar. It's a large, mainline Protestant church, historically white and upper-middle-class but recently becoming wonderfully diverse in many ways. There are a number of members who are gay, but the church has not declared itself "open and affirming."

Recently, a few people (who I believe were relatively new to the congregation) began to lobby the pastor to make this move. The pastor dissuaded them. Why? Because if that church were to be branded "open and affirming" or "gay friendly," the one or two members staunchly opposed to homosexuality would come out in full force, and deeply hurtful things would be said. Right now, the church is doing fine at welcoming gays, whether every single member knows it or not. To declare the congregation "open and affirming" would divide the church more than it would unite it.

A similar thing happened with my campus ministry group a few years before I got to college. The LGBT center was asking various organizations to make themselves known as "safe places" by putting stickers from the center on their office doors. Despite the fact that my campus minister and many of the group's members are vocal allies, they decided against it because they did not want to make people who disagreed feel unwelcome. Think about it—if you proclaim yourself "open and affirming," how much meaningful conversation will you have in-house on the topic that isn't one-sided?

See, it's not that I’m opposed to a church being open and affirming in deed. It's just that I wonder what is lost when a church takes the road of declaring itself as such. There are people in my life whom I would miss very much from my congregation if that happened. Some voices would be emboldened, but others would be lost completely.

I once went to a worship service that was so LGBT-friendly that I felt out of place—the songs were all about love in many forms, the vestments were rainbow-colored, even the communion bread had been made with an array of food dyes. I'll admit it—I was uncomfortable. I wasn't even sure I should be there.

The thing is, even though I was personally uneasy in that worship service, it was a truly beautiful event. All around me were people who had been hurt or disenfranchised by society and even by the church, and suddenly they were empowered, they were loved, they knew that at least in that time and that place, they were members of the body of Christ. My own discomfort paled in comparison to the joy and hope I saw in that room. And I couldn't help but think: the way I feel now—some of these people feel that way all the time.

Here's the part where I need help. What the heck are we supposed to do about this? The problem that I recognize in my own argument about avoiding the "open and affirming" stamp is that it can easily be misconstrued to mean, "don't ask, don't tell." But how can we be members of the same body if we don't understand each other? How can we bear one another's burdens if we don’t know what those burdens are?

There's another point I want to make that's going to be tricky to articulate, but I think it's important, so allow me to try. I've heard several gay friends and acquaintances of mine tell me that part of their struggle is that they don't want their lives to be defined by one issue (because even if we acknowledge what I said earlier—that it's not an "issue," it's about people—the world makes it an issue for us). Neither should an issue define our faith. Part of why I was so uncomfortable in the worship service I described earlier is that I feel very strongly that worship is not about us; it's about God. Worship shouldn't be about celebrating gayness—neither should it be about celebrating American-ness (which is why I don't like singing patriotic hymns in church), wealth (which is why the "prosperity gospel" is no gospel at all), racial identity (oh good grief that's a whole other can of worms, not now, please), or any other human quality.

By the way...let me briefly unpack my 3 givens from the beginning of the post. Too often we forget that saying someone is a member of the body of Christ does not mean that you agree with everything they say or do. At the 2008 General Conference of the United Methodist Church, a group tried and failed to change the wording of the paragraph in the social principles about homosexuality. Contrary to what you might have gathered from the intense anger of the opposition, the change would not have condoned homosexuality. What it would have said was that we must acknowledge that many intelligent, faithful people have examined the Bible, church tradition and the issue itself, and they have come down on both sides. The question here in my blog is not the whether homosexuality is right or wrong. I rarely debate that subject anymore, because honestly, I have yet to be thoroughly convinced by anybody one way or the other. I've heard people use the exact same Bible passages to argue opposite points, and at least for me the question has worn out its welcome. I don't want to know whether the church can come up with the perfect answer to every question. I want to know what the church is going to do in the face of uncertainty and disagreement.

A friend of mine (who is gay) once told me that although it's fine for people to disagree theologically with homosexuality, it is never OK to hate. The crucial point here, which far too many people miss, is that disagreement and hatred are not correlative to each other. We can be a part of the body of Christ without being on exactly the same page on everything, if only we can remember that our focus is on God and that the only way we can be healed is by working together towards understanding, not by issuing ultimatums.

So. Can you be gay and be a Christian? Yes. Can you support gays in their sexual identity and lifestyle choices and be a Christian? Yes. Can you hold the belief that homosexuality is a sin and be a Christian? Yes.

In closing, let me ask you to recall that first emotional reaction to the title of my blog. Did you assume I was anti-gay? Did that offend or affirm you? Did your assumptions prior to reading this blog color my status in your mind as a member of the body of Christ—or not? We all need help being Christians. None of us have it right. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." All means all.

Monday, December 21, 2009

Why Has This Happened to Me?

These two videos together form my sermon from worship yesterday at Asbury Temple UMC. It's in two parts, so don't forget the second video.



Friday, November 20, 2009

My husband's/wife's deepest needs

I have never cared about gender issues. When I was younger, I would hear people talk about women being disadvantaged in the academy and the workplace, and I would wonder why they couldn't just get over it--be really good at what you do and your gender won't matter. I still believe that to some extent, and I try really hard only to call foul when it's a real issue, but I'm finding that more and more I'm becoming a (*insert heavy sigh here*) feminist. I really hate that word, because it has bad connotations for me, but through life experience (some of it, unfortunately, bad) and just growing up, I'm starting to see more and more the ways in which the world and (sometimes especially) the church screws up gender roles and expectations. It's going to be fun for me when I really come into my prime after being underestimated and type-cast since high school.

Anyway, here's where some of this is coming from: I recently helped with music at a church marriage retreat. To preface, I'm not going to say which church because I don't want to seem like I'm dissing them, which is not at all my purpose. Also, I want to stress that I think a marriage retreat is a GREAT idea. The church needs to do a better job in general of talking about relationships, marriage, love, sex, all of that stuff. Too often I feel like the emphasis is placed on saving yourself for marriage, but then nobody tells you what you're supposed to do once you get there. I'm all for lots and lots of premarital counseling (Protestants, we suck at this. Let's please learn from the Catholics) and lots and lots of postmarital (er, during-marital?) counseling and whatnot. The divorce rate in this country is appalling, and the church is failing couples constantly by not giving them the resources to make and follow through on commitments.

OK, so this marriage retreat. I was behind the scenes for part of it, so I didn't get to hear it all, but some of it sounded really great. I heard lots of talk of communication and honesty, of moving out of an economy of shame into a life of grace, of forgiveness and joy and lots of great stuff. I'm sure a lot of couples were blessed--I know I was, one of a handful of single folks in the room.

I'm writing all this because I want to stress that my hang-up was over something minor. On each seat was a slip of paper with writing on both sides. Side one:

My Wife's Deepest Needs:
1. My wife needs a Godly man and my unconditional love.
2. My wife needs my affection, security, comfort, approval, tenderness, touch, cards and gifts.
3. My wife needs conversation with me.
4. My wife needs my honesty and openness.
5. My wife needs financial security.
6. My wife needs my commitment to the family--be faithful to my wife, share parenting responsibilities, take initiative in home repairs and be the spiritual leader in my home.


Side two:

My Husband's Deepest Needs:
1. My husband needs a Godly wife and my unconditional love.
2. My husband needs sexual fulfillment.
3. My husband needs recreational companionship.
4. My husband needs an attractive wife.
5. My husband needs domestic support.
6. My husband needs my admiration.


OK. Word to Godliness, unconditional love, etc. However, I have a few questions/comments:

-- #2 on side one sure makes women sound needy.
-- The claim that women need financial security is just funny to a woman whose boyfriend refers to her as his "sugar momma."
-- If anyone does house repairs in my family, it's my...sister.
-- Do wives not need sexual fulfillment?
-- Do wives not need attractive husbands? Is #4 on side two suggesting that it's the duty of a woman to stay beautiful for her husband? What about his beer belly?
-- I just hate the word "domestic," even if I've found in the past few years that I do enjoy cooking and cleaning. *sigh*

So...yeah. Just some thoughts. I could get all indignant over some of this stuff, but it's not worth it. Mostly I just found the card funny (yes, I kept it).

Thoughts?

Truth-telling modifies behavior

The question of truth-telling has been an interesting one throughout my life. As a child, I was utterly guileless. The other day, commenting on how my younger brother was grounded for something or another that involved lying--and inept lying, at that--my dad noted that Noah is only slightly better at lying than I am, and we both knew that was a pretty bad insult (if having one's talent at lying slighted can be called an insult). I learned very quickly when I was young that I was a terrible liar, and I had such a deep fear of angering or disappointing anyone that I did all I could to avoid any situation that would require (or maybe I should say tempt) me to lie later.

My freshman year of college, I wound up in a romantic relationship that thankfully did not pan out as horribly as it could have, but still reflected lots and lots of bad judgment. The other person involved had the gall to lecture me on honesty when our whole relationship was largely secret and based on deception. I learned from that mistake, though unfortunately it took me one or two more similar situations to really figure out that any relationship that involves deception is not OK. Period.

A friend of mine was in a scarily similar situation a few years ago and protested my concerns by asking why it was anyone's business what people did with their personal lives. Unluckily (or luckily?) for her, she's a Christian, and folks, being a Christian means that you don't get the kind of personal life we talk about in America--the kind where you keep your problems to yourself and think that mistakes won't affect anyone but you. We are called to bear one another's burdens, and guess what that means? We have to know about each other's burdens. And sins. And mistakes. And joys!

My dad and I had an interesting conversation the other day (stemming from shaking our heads in amusement at my little brother). He told me about something he heard from a Jewish man who grew up in Europe, I think in the early 20th century. What he said was that being a Jew in Europe meant that you couldn't make any mistakes. If you stole someone, suddenly all Jews were thieves. If you had family problems, suddenly all Jewish marriages were dysfunctional. And on and on. What he said was that, far from encouraging good behavior and high moral standards, this pressure cultivated deception. You had to maintain your outward appearance and reputation, but if you could violate that image in secret, you would.

My response summed up some things I've been thinking about a lot lately. To me, I think the problem is a matter of priority. If our main concern is our image, what others think of us, then the truth can become secondary and inevitably it will be sacrificed if it comes into conflict with the maintenance of that image. Whether it is your economic status, marital bliss, academic prowess or what have you, if other people's perception of that is more important than their integrity, when push comes to shove the truth will lose every time.

On the other hand, if truth is the most important thing, it's a whole different ball game. If you commit to being honest all the time, there are tons of things you might say or do otherwise that you won't do if you know you'd have to tell someone about it. Truth-telling modifies behavior. Sometimes, you may even know that you are behaving in a way that is inconsistent with your beliefs, but trying to change that on your own is not enough. But, if you just tell someone what's actually going on, suddenly whatever you're doing is no longer your personal life, no longer just your business. Suddenly, whether you change a behavior or not affects someone else, and someone else cares.

I wish that I had understood this earlier in life, and also that I had had people in my world at certain points with whom I could be completely honest all the time. I'm still really bad at lying, but I'm ashamed to say that there have been times when I've found myself telling selective truths to different people. For a while at one point, I was basically living two separate lives, one all happy and Christian-y and the other pretty much a mess, but neither really knew much about the other. Oh, and by the way, this person to whom I would have liked to have been able to honest would have had to have been a Christian, or at least someone whose values aligned with mine (because I have plenty of non-Christian friends whose morals rock way harder than those of a lot of Christians out there). There were some people who knew when I wasn't always acting the way I should, but they didn't care because they were doing it too. That's just self-justification.

My thesis is in the subject line. If your first commitment is to truth-telling, everything else has to fall in line with that. If anything else is more important--your looks, your relationship, your popularity, your job--you will find yourself sacrificing truth to that, and though I have neither the time nor the emotional energy to go into what happens when that goes down, we've all been there. Let's hold each other to a higher standard of integrity. Let's be people who tell the truth and are willing to hear the truth from others--without being offended, without judging or condemning. Only in this way can we seek the Truth of the One who made us all.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

The Miraculous Feeding of the 5,000

Today, I overheard a snippet of a conversation taking place on the first floor of my house as I walked through the second. "Oh, you Methodists and your non-miraculous reading of that miracle," said one housemate jokingly to another. I knew exactly what he was talking about, and it prompted me to think a little further about my troubles with a particular reading of the passage in question. But I get ahead of myself.

The feeding of the 5,000 (or 4,000...or 5,000, not counting women and children...but still a lot of people...) became a boring narrative for me sometime in middle school. I'd heard it so many times I tended to zone out when that Bible story was being read or preached on.

Imagine my surprise when one time earlier in college a sermon on this Gospel lesson caught my attention. Having drifted off mentally as usual, I was suddenly listening and disoriented. The preacher was wondering aloud whether perhaps the crowd was moved by the generosity of the young boy with the fish and the loaves. Perhaps someone pulled out a piece of bread here, a hunk of cheese there, and before long everyone's little to offer became a lot to eat.

I felt myself immediately averse to this account, but I couldn't explain why. In fact, more recently, my friend said she thought that it would have taken a greater miracle to move the crowd to such generosity than it would have to reproduce baskets of bread and fish. I had to agree with that. But I was still troubled, and I think I'm starting to figure out why.

Let me make it clear that I'm not opposed to this Stone Soup version of the story. I'm open to different readings of the Bible, and besides, the stone soup approach works wonders in the household of which I am currently a part. It isn't so much this interpretation that bothers me, it's where it came from and what it can lead to.

In my Old Testament precept last week, we were discussing a book by Peter Enns called Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Enns attempts to find a way to reconcile a non-literal reading of the Bible with the maintenance of Scriptural authority (to summarize very crudely). In order to give us background on where the debate over the Old Testament and the authority of Scripture began, our preceptor described to us some of the theological and philosophical history of the various issues. He talked about one school of thought that sought to explain, in modern terms, the seemingly miraculous happenings in the Bible. One scenario that struck me was that on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus was walking on a sandbar and simply appeared to be walking on water. There were several other explanations that rubbed me the wrong way, and the interpretation of the feeding of the 5,000 that I outlined before was ranked among those.

My issue isn't so much that I'm so attached to and dependent on the miracle status of the stories from the life of Jesus that I can't give them up, like a child with a security blanket. I won't call down curses on someone who says the demoniacs in the Bible were schizophrenic or otherwise mentally ill. (By the way, it seems to me that curing someone of a mental illness is at least as impressive as casting out a demon.) What troubles me about this whole train of thought is the obsessive need to explain everything. Faith is an art that requires an ability to live in the tension between the known and the unknown, the revealed and the unseen, the fulfilled and the yet-to-be. Certainly we should be exploring the Bible with minds that are open to new inspiration, but we should not take our need to explain so far that it becomes an attempt to control and manipulate the text. And we must never forget that while alternative explanations of Bible stories may be interesting, when they become the focus, we miss the point. The technicalities of how a miracle occurred should never become more interesting or important than the Miracle Worker. Explore possibilities, share new ideas, ask questions; but don't get rid of the mystery.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Fully an academic institution AND fully a faith community

After 4 years of lurking in the halls of Langford and Westbrook, I'm finally a student at Duke Divinity School. I've been around so long that there are faculty who think I'm a third year, and plenty of people who I'm sure must wonder what in the world is taking me so long to get an M.Div.

Anyway, in the process of going through ordination and of explaining some of the philosophy of DDS (Duke Divinity School) to others, I came across an interesting question: How in the world can a place function both as a competitive academic institution and as a community of faith? Are we primarily students or primarily ministers?

I'm a big fan of holding things in tension, so the distinction doesn't bother me personally, but orientation was rife with instances of faculty and administrators actually sounding confused as to how to define what the heck we're doing here. I heard one person tell me DDS is first and foremost a graduate school; another said that ministry is a priority over against academics. One faculty member tried to explain that DDS is most importantly academic, AND most importantly faith-based.

Like I said, nonsensical "both/and" statements like that don't bother me. The main reason for this is that we have a Savior who is fully human AND fully divine. Christians should be used to this kind of nonsense. But that doesn't mean that living out our identity as divinity SCHOOL students and DIVINITY school students is easy.

I've had some people react with surprise when I tell them that most of my professors begin class with a prayer. I love that we do that, even though I know full well that the love of Christ isn't going to keep Dr. Smith from giving me an "F" in Church History if I don't study.

Then there's the funny question of spiritual formation. DDS tries to be intentional about forming not only the minds but also the hearts of its students. Part of this effort is the required spiritual formation group to which each first year is assigned. You don't get a grade or really any credit for it, but you can't move on to your second year of seminary without it. That class is itself in many ways the embodiment of the fine line we're walking between academics and faith.

I guess we'll just see how this plays out. I already know Duke thoroughly for the competitive academic institution that it is, and I know the Div School is no exception, so I'm not going to pretend the competitiveness isn't there. But I also know that for the most part my classmates are going to be far more willing to help me out than perhaps some were in undergrad.

"If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it" (1 Cor. 12:26). As weird and awkward as it might sometimes feel, we are all one body, and it does me no good to get an A in Hebrew if the seminarian sitting next to me can't remember the alphabet.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

2009 Wright Room

Monday, July 27, 2009

Glow Sticks

(This post totally steals an idea from my boyfriend, Gary Mitchell, www.myspace.com/visionrise.)

Consider a glow stick. (Bear with me.) Now, erase everything you know about glow sticks. In fact, forget the "glow" part. We'll call them...all right, I can't think of a great name, so just imagine all you know is that these are small liquid-filled plastic sticks.

What uses could you think of for such an object? Today, my youth came up with a few: paperweight, necklace, Christmas tree decoration, action figure stand; you could play catch with it or use it as a toy for your dog to fetch. You can certainly do some things with it.

But we all know what the real purpose of a glow stick is--I mean, it's right there in the name! A glow stick is supposed to glow. And how do we get it to glow?

Exactly. We break it. Until it is broken, a glow stick can never fulfill its real purpose. It can be lots of different things, but never what it was meant to be. With the breaking comes light.

In college, my boyfriend and his roommate had a tradition surrounding glow sticks. Every time someone they knew came to Christ, they would break one. They collected these glow sticks as reminders of their friends who had been broken--who had surrendered to Christ, admitted their sin and need of forgiveness, submitted to the will of God.

The glow stick image goes along well with 2 Corinthians 12:9--"My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." In our pain and suffering, God enters in to reconcile us to him and to make us whole in his love. In our brokenness, God shines a light we cannot see when we think we've got everything together.

Earlier this summer, I marked the 2nd anniversary of an extremely painful event. After helping me turn the day into a celebration and helping to give me good memories of that date, Gary brought out a glow stick. I had heard his explanation before, and I admit I had thought it a little cheesy at first. But wept as he broke the stick and gave it to me, saying that he was proud of me and he could see how God was using me in my weakness to serve others.

Today, I did a glow stick demonstration with my youth at the end of a discussion about why bad things happen. Afterwards, I was wearing my sample glow stick around my neck, and a question from one of the kids showed me another dimension to the metaphor: "Can you turn it off?" asked Kristopher. "No. No, you can't." I smiled. Sure, it's an imperfect comparison, because glow sticks do fade...but then again, maybe that's about right. We often need to be reminded of our need of God. Maybe we don't have to be broken drastically over and over again, but faith is not a one-time thing where you get it or you don't--it's a process. Some of us might need to go through Wal-Mart's entire stock of glow sticks before we get it.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Summer Youth Retreat 2009

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Theology without Faith

My campus ministry group has an annual tradition: students write "affirmation letters" to the graduating seniors. When I graduated from college this spring, I received one that included an important observation: "There's always more to learn about God, but I still believe the best way to do that is through time with him on our knees, not in the classroom."

I'm starting divinity school in the fall, and I'm a little nervous about it. I'm going to the same school where I did my undergrad, and I spent way too much of the past four years in the religion department and divinity school. I know that I thrive on academic pressure. But I'm also aware of the danger that exists when thinking about faith becomes more absorbing than faith itself.

Theology is fundamentally different from other disciplines because it requires not only that you contemplate the logos but also that you know and engage with the theos. While nonbelievers can study the history or sociology of religion, theology outside relationship with God completely misses the point.

So I'm grateful to be attending a school where regular worship, spiritual formation groups, prayer in the classroom, and field education are significant, even mandatory components of my education. My goal is to avoid becoming so fascinated with the eschatological implications of the Eucharist that I forget to spend time in prayer.

This post first appeared on Theolog, the blog of The Christian Century.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Nature and Scripture

"While I see evidence of God in nature, I would not know the person of Jesus Christ without reading the Bible. I cannot look at the stars and know that God wants us to turn away from wickedness. I cannot marvel at a sunset and feel the pain God felt as Jesus hung on the cross." — Caroleah Johnson, Upper Room Daily Devotional

Yes. This is great. I've always gotten agitated when people talk about seeing God in nature. Honestly, I wasn't terribly nice about it for a period of my life, and I had to be taken down a notch, which in part took the form of me finding peace at a monastery in the middle of the New Mexican desert—a place where God reveals himself, in no uncertain terms, in rock and river and sky. But I have continued to long for a way to articulate my concern when someone tells me they experience God primarily in nature.

There is nothing wrong with that. The devotional I pulled that quote from draws on Psalm 19: "The heavens are telling the glory of God." It's not that nature isn't a valid means of connecting to the eternal; it's just that our meetings with God in nature and other settings need to be informed by a familiarity with and understanding of Scripture. Jesus is universal and particular—though his face can be seen in any person or natural wonder, we need to know the story of the actual man who lived and died if we are to draw any meaning from that connection.

The kicker: as much as I've complained about relying too heavily on stars and flowers for a God connection, I don't read my Bible nearly enough to make up for that. It's something I'm working on, more intentionally now than at other times in my life. This reflection is one more bit of motivation for me to be in the Word more.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

God Is More Faithful (a quote from a devotional)

"We can be grateful that God is more faithful than we are." — Upper Room Daily Devotional

Thursday, April 2, 2009

A Poem from E. E. Cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

No More Excuses

Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." Then I said, "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy." But the Lord said to me, "Do not say, 'I am only a boy'; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord." Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, "Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant." — Jeremiah 1:4-10

I love this passage. It's been really important to me for the past several years as I've discerned and explored my call to ministry. I recall spending a lot of time with these verses my freshman year of college and feeling like I too often tried to hide behind my age as an excuse not to realize my full potential.

I picked this Scripture for my morning reflection and prayer time today, and I had a disturbing thought: Jeremiah said "I am only a boy"—and I've said "I am only a girl"—but what happens when that is no longer true? If youth wasn't a valid excuse for dodging your calling, how much more must be expected of you once you don't have youth as a shield, if even a flimsy one?

Obviously, I'm not tottering with old age just yet. I'll be 22 in just over 2 weeks. But I'm not a child anymore. I have a college degree, I have a full-time job, I pay my own rent and buy my own groceries. When I reflected on Jeremiah's calling at age 18, I was completely dependent on my parents and didn't even have a work study job or anything. I was a child in worldly terms and in faith. Although I still often feel like an infant in my understanding of God, I am not a girl anymore.

God expected enormous things of Jeremiah even in his youth; how much more must be expected of us once we enter adulthood? Young age wasn't a valid excuse then; it seems there is nothing to hide behind now. I have been called by God to a specific vocation, and even if the details have not yet been revealed to me, I can't keep telling God to wait until I'm older or wiser or more prepared. It makes me think of the quote, "God does not call the equipped; he equips the called." I can't hide behind what I may perceive as a lack of skills or knowledge or equipment. I have to respond to God's call and know that he will provide whatever it is I need.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Bombarded by Grace

I need to just take a moment to reflect on how unbelievably blessed I have been lately. I am seriously blown away by how good God has been to me, especially when I think about how much I don't deserve anything at all. I don't pray as I ought, I make poor decisions that lead me into sin, and I hide or ignore the gifts God has given me...and he responds by calling to me in such a way that leaves me no other option but to fall on my knees in prayer, gives me opportunities and reasons to be better as a person, and open doors to let me use my talents to glorify him.

I've always been incredibly blessed, but the past few months really blow everything else out of the water. It started at the end of last semester: in the span of one week, I completed my undergraduate education, was offered the first full-time job I every applied for within 24 hours of my interview, and was accepted to Duke Divinity School on a full scholarship. Talk about being bombarded by grace. And it was all such a huge affirmation of who I am and what I'm called to be, I almost couldn't handle it. Particularly in thinking about starting seminary in the fall, I'm still really struggling because I am simply levelled with humility in the face of the hopes and expectations laid on me.

Things only got better when I returned to Durham in January and started work. I found that working a 40-hour week is vastly different from being a full-time student, and suddenly, I had free time--to spend with friends, with the youth from my church, on reading and prayer and music. I had been wanting to use the spring semester to get back into playing and writing music, and a random run-in with a local musician gave me the inspiration I needed to pick up where I left off in high school. Little did I know, that musician (Gary Mitchell, www.myspace.com/visionrise) would later have me playing shows and open mics with him, and that an incredible new relationship would develop from a chance encounter at the mall. I don't deal well with coincidence, and it makes my brain implode to try and fathom just how lucky and blessed I have been for everything to have fallen into place so perfectly.

Then there's Afton, a company that contacted me about a year ago asking if I'd be interested in booking shows through them. I ignored the email at the time, because I wasn't doing music then, but they got back with me in December and I've been in contact. I was hesitant to commit to a show with them because I'm still insecure about my talent and my ability to recruit fans, but my show last Saturday and attending an Afton showcase last night gave me a little more confidence, and I'm pursuing that further. Doing something like that could get me plugged into performing more regularly, and I could even make a little money if I get enough people to come to a show.

Also, it turns out one of the guys I'm living with next year is an MC, and a really good one. Brandon (www.myspace.com/mcmmusic) invited me to perform with him next Friday at the Durham Senior Center. I don't understand how these cool opportunities just keep falling into my lap. My life is so much fun right now, even in the face of the impending graduation of my class at Duke (which really depresses me) and the weight of what I'll be taking on when I start seminary in the fall. I can't believe how good God has been to me. I am humbled and grateful. Life is amazing.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Should We Save Money?

It seems to be a day of reflection, which is good, because I'm struggling with my job right now (more on that later, most likely). I'm listening to a sermon by Dr. Benji Kelley, pastor of New Hope Church in Durham, NC. In discussing money, he advocates a "10-10-80 Plan": give 10% of your income to the church as a tithe, save 10% for yourself for the future, and use 80% to live on now. There's nothing inherently wrong with this formula, and his main point, of course, is that you should tithe in response to Biblical command, but I want to needle at this a bit anyway.

As a disclaimer, I struggle with my relationship with money. Although people I love and respect have argued convincingly that wealth and sin are not necessarily correlated, I still have a really hard time even just being around people who have extreme wealth. I even feel guilty about the kind of car I drive, even if I only own it because of bizarre circumstances involving a car wreck (heh). Anyway, I just wanted to say upfront that I come down hard on the side of money being bad, and that obviously colors this discussion for me.

Over winter break, I went on a mission trip with my campus ministry group from Duke University. We worked for several days on hurricane relief in Galveston, then returned to Houston for a few days to celebrate the new year and to visit Casa Juan Diego. CJD is a Catholic Worker House that publishes the Houston Catholic Worker and provides housing to hundreds of illegal (yes, only illegal) immigrants and their families.

There are hundreds of reasons I'm basically in love with this place, but for now let's focus on their treatment of money. They provide food, housing, medical care, clothing, and countless other services to hundreds and hundreds of people every day. That costs money. When I asked the founders, Mark and Louise Zwick, how they raise funds, they simply responded, "We pray a lot." They get donations, mostly from individuals, and God provides. Their entire operation is based on enormous trust in God's ability to move in the hearts (and wallets) of other people.

The more interesting aspect of CJD's treatment of money as it pertains to this particular discussion is how they use funds once they receive them. CJD does not save money. Not a cent. When they get a donation, they immediately assess how it can best be used, and they use it. Nothing gets holed away for later; it is used to meet needs as they come and as funds are available. Mark and Louise don't have a retirement plan. They don't even necessarily know if they'll have money to run CJD each new day.

I personally operate a bit like this in the sense that I generally use whatever money I earn as it comes, but that's probably more out of my own inability to budget or even think about numbers than a desire to use my resources in a manner that mirror's CJD's approach. But the question of saving for retirement or what have you still remains. Kelley argues that even though he does believe Jesus is coming back and could do so even today, it's simply not good stewardship not to plan ahead. And of course, it's all well and good for me not to give a lick about how much money I'll have next month after I pay my rent now that I'm a single 20-something looking at a few more years of school (which will be paid for, by the way), but when I get married and have kids, how "responsible" do I need to become in setting aside money for my family? My parents have a retirement plan and fantastic life insurance (no, I'm not planning to murder my dad). How will I approach that as a "real" adult? I don't pretend to know. I love the idea of existing from day to day, trusting God will provide and not feeling like I can't do something or help someone because I need to save that money for when I'm 65. But I hear having kids changes everything. I guess we'll see.

That post was way less articulate and intellectual than I had hoped, but oh well.

Love Wins

On Monday, I went to a lecture at UNC by Frank Turek, author of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. There, he referred us to a video of a debate he had with Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great. I'm currently in the middle of watching the debate and had to pause to reflect on some things.

Hitchens' main point is not that God does not exist, but that we cannot know that God does exist. I concur. That's what faith is for. I don't want to believe in a God whose existence can be empirically proven by mortals. In such a case, faith is a moot point. If God's existence can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, there is no room for faith, hope, even love.

Apologetics as a field elicits a sort of inquisitive amusement from me. I take God's existence as a given, and I'm totally OK with that. I have no qualms about making that assumption. When people want to debate the "facts" with me, I'll indulge them to a certain extent, but it reaches a point where I simply lose interest, because I've been convicted by a faith that will not let me go and that could be neither convinced nor deterred by ontological, teleological or any other proof.

It's probably good for me to be in relationship with people who understand and are good at apologetics, because it simply isn't my cup of tea. I know all the arguments, but I'm far less likely to talk about the prime mover or creation ex nihilo than I am to share the ways in which God has moved in my life and in the communities of which I am a part.

It simply isn't helpful to people who want the scientific-sounding answers, but that's just how I understand my faith—in relationships of God-given love. Not that I don't enjoy a good theological debate—I'm going to seminary in the fall, for goodness' sake—but I believe all of that should be trumped by the witness of the love reflected in believers' lives. They'll know we are Christians by our love—not by our intellectual arguments. Not that those aren't valid, but basically...love wins.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

A Prayer from W. E. Orchard

Begotten of your love, O Father, we are made in your image. Cared for all our days, we are never beyond your sight. Enfolded in your heart, we are never out of your thought. To think of you is rest. To know you is eternal life. To see you is the end of all desire. To serve you is perfect freedom. To love you is everlasting joy. Amen.

— W. E. Orchard

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

One Pure and Holy Passion

Give me one pure and holy passion
Give me one magnificent obsession
Give me one glorious ambition for my life
To know and follow hard after you

To know and follow hard after you
To grow as your disciple in your truth
This world is empty, pale and poor
Compared to knowing you, my Lord
Lead me on, and I will run after you
Lead me on, and I will run after you

— Passion

Friday, January 23, 2009

Unity or Uniformity? (a quote from MLK, Jr.)

"Unity has never meant uniformity." — Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

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