Red Pill Christians

"You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."

This quote from Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) comes at a decisive moment in the movie The Matrix. Neo (Keanu Reeves) has just been told that he has been living in a fantasy, a digital world created by machines who have taken over and enslaved humanity, farming their bodies for energy while filling their brains with made-up images and experiences. Now, Neo has a choice: go back into the comfortable but false world of the Matrix or permanently exit the delusion and suffer the consequences of knowing the truth.

Spoiler alert: he takes the red pill.

My ethics professor and sister in Christ, Amy Laura Hall, has used this image to talk about a kind of Christianity that refuses to use religion as an opiate. My friend and classmate Lindsey refers to herself as a "red pill Christian." Red pill Christians know just how bad things can get both in the world and in the church. They've taken off the rose-colored glasses.

Here's the thing: although the first instinct after taking the red pill, so to speak, may be to reject the institutional church, my calling seems to be to a difficult tension. I consider myself a red pill Christian, but I still feel called to serve within and through the church. If you're anti-institutional, I sympathize and probably agree with you on a lot of your concerns about organized religion, but I am still committed to the institution because, frankly, it's all we've got.

The church has done a lot of awful things over the centuries and continues to fail to represent Christ to the world, and admitting this is part of being a red pill Christian; but there are still times and places in the life of the church in which God's love shines through in a way that it simply cannot elsewhere. I do not believe that the church is the hope of the world, because only Christ is that; but as broken as the church is, she is still the body of Christ.

What might it look like to be a red pill church? It does not mean to abandon hope; if you think about it, the kinds of people and groups who most faithfully embody Christian hope are those who truly understand just how bad things can get. It means to see how deep the rabbit-hole goes and emerge on the other side determined to be faithful even in the face of what we've seen, because God is there even in the darkness of the rabbit-hole.

What I'm Reading #33: Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott)

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott

We read Bird by Bird (Anchor Books 1994) for my introductory preaching class this fall, and I loved it. Not only was it enormously helpful for preaching and writing in general (which I'm wanting to pursue more of), it holds a lot of important lessons for life. Plus Anne Lamott is brilliant and slightly unstable, which I love.

Lamott handily dispels the myth that writing is easy for writers. Throughout my life, I've periodically felt the urge to write more (like right now), but when I sit down and am unable to produce beautiful prose immediately, I assume I'm just not cut out to be a writer. Turns out, writing is hard even and especially for writers. This I find encouraging.

Another thing Lamott said that I appreciated is that perfectionism is a tyrant. We need to be willing to write (in her words) "shitty first drafts," work on them, and then let them go even when we aren't totally satisfied with them. This sounds an awful lot like life to me. Are any of us ever really going to get it together? If not, can that be OK?

Finally, she has a lot in there about what my counselor called (while diagnosing me with it) a "reassurance addition." I posted a poem by Philip Lopate that Lamott reprinted in Bird by Bird that illustrates this insane need for love and attention that she often feels (and with which I strongly identify). Whether in writing, any other line of work or life in general, we need to be able to trust from within that we are enough. Yes, others can encourage and support us, but ultimately, if we do not see ourselves as lovable or good or sufficient, nothing anyone else can say will help at all. A major part of being a good writer (and, I would argue, a good preacher) is being comfortable in one's own skin and non-anxiously assured of one's own gifting and calling.

I'm not doing this book justice, but I would definitely recommend it. I liked it even more than Lamott's more popular Traveling Mercies.


Favorite Quotations

"Good writing is about telling the truth."

"We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this."

"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor."

"If you don't believe in what you are saying, there is no point in your saying it."

"Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance."

"If you want to know how God feels about money, look at whom she gives it to."

"Being enough was going to have to be an inside job."

"Truth is always subversive."

Today Is a Day for "No"

Today is a day for "no."

I met with the District Committee on Ordained Ministry this morning, assuming that it would end with me being recommended to the Western North Carolina Conference for commissioning in 2012. That did not happen. The meeting wasn't what I was expecting, and it quickly became clear that I was not prepared and am not ready to be commissioned this year. This wasn't a huge surprise, but it was certainly humbling, because I am rarely told "no." In the end, though, I agree that I am not ready, and now I don't have to meet a January deadline for commissioning papers. It was freeing.

I followed up that humbling experience by giving a "no" of my own. I had been invited to lead worship for a church work camp over Christmas break; it sounded like a great opportunity, but after this semester, I am going to need a break, and I don't spend enough time at home (and even less time actually being present at home). I often feel like I have to take any cool opportunity, either out of pride or a desire to prove myself or simply because I say "yes" to everything, but today I emailed the camp organizer and told her it would be better for me if I did not commit to doing it. It was freeing.

In general, I think a posture of "yes" is a good one to have. However, in order to own and commit to every "yes" I give, I must be able to say "no" when necessary; and if I am ever to appreciate a "yes" given to me, I need to be told "no" from time to time.

(In case anyone is concerned about my future, not to worry. I'm continuing as a certified candidate and have been affirmed in my call to ministry and encouraged to do commissioning next year, so this isn't a forever "no.")

A Poem by Phillip Lopate

We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realized we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.

— Phillip Lopate, via Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird

What I'm Reading #32: The Help (Kathryn Stockett)

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

Thanks again to Audible.com for allowing me to "read" a book I probably wouldn't have taken the time to sit down and read on my own. Heck, thanks to them for getting me to consume a novel during the semester! I've heard a lot about The Help—who hasn't?—and after letting a friend's copy sit on my shelf all summer only to be returned unread, I decided that audio was the best way to go.

This book tells the story of African-American maids and the white women for which they work in a community in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s. The book has three alternating narrators: two maids, Abilene and Minny, and a young white woman named Skeeter.

If you know me at all, you know that racial angst is coming in this post, but for now I'll set that aside and say that when I bracketed that and simply inhabited the world this book creates for the reader (or listener), this is a good read. The characters are fascinating and likable; the context is ripe with dramatic irony, teetering on the edge of a cultural shift as hints of a changing outside world occasionally creep into the pristine southern gentility; there is humor; and there is suspense, but not so much that you feel like you're being jerked around.

One thing that I liked about this book is that it shows that sometimes people are brave by accident...or, should I say, by habit. The main plot thread involves Skeeter, an aspiring journalist, interviewing maids for an anonymous book aimed at revealing what it is really like to work for a southern white woman. Skeeter dives into the project in hopes of impressing publishers at Harper and Row, not realizing until very late in the game (if at all) just how dangerous it is for her and for the maids. At least at first, there is nothing particularly heroic or justice-oriented about Skeeter, and I like the image of bravery not as something grandiose, something decided and sought after, but something for which a person is somehow formed whether they realize it or not.

On to the racial angst (or whatever).

The first thing I did after finishing the book was to do a Google image search for the author, Kathryn Stockett. She is, like me, petite and blonde. She clearly has a love-hate relationship with the south (as I do), and it seems pretty clear to me that Skeeter in many ways represents her—a young white woman giving African-Americans a voice in the south. In the story, Skeeter is celebrated and even called "family" by the blacks in the community after the book is published. Did Stockett create Skeeter's character to try and reverse engineer something redeeming into the culture from which she came?

In retrospect, I found it interesting that Stockett chose to tell the story from the viewpoint of two maids and Skeeter. This makes sense because she was telling a specific story, but I wonder if she thought about what it would be like to tell another side of the story; for example, that of Miss Hilly, a friend of Skeeter's whose racism is at times appalling, at others humorous for its ignorance. The closest Stockett comes to identifying positively with any of the white women's racist tendencies is when Skeeter discovers an uncomfortable truth about something her mother did to their former maid and meets only her mother's defense of her actions where she had hoped to find redemption.

This tendency to distance ourselves from the darkness of the human soul (or simply the gross biases of cultural malformation) is one I've thought about a lot lately, beginning most sharply in the wake of Troy Davis' execution, when I found myself wondering why no one had taken up the cause of Lawrence Brewer, another man executed on the same night (more on that here). Obviously, this is because Davis' case presented huge amounts of doubt while Brewer was an unrepentant white supremacist who committed an unfathomable hate crime. Despite how charming The Help was as a novel, I had to wonder if Stockett was distancing herself from the most virulent racism she observed, choosing instead to adopt the voices of two black maids and an only mildly racist but gradually reforming white woman. It is understandable that she would not have wanted to give credence to the thought processes of a character like Miss Hilly, but to simply make her into a villain meant that both Stockett and the reader were able to remain a safe distance from the worst of it all.

If I've ruined your favorite summer read, I'm sorry! I just can't leave anything alone that tries to make white people feel better about the 60s...or even race relations today...

Let's Get Naked!

This was originally posted on the blog of New Creation Arts, the student arts group at Duke Divinity School.

During the last week of September, these odd fliers peppered the walls of Duke Divinity School. By the end of the week, people were talking about naked Quakers and asking if there would be streaking. As the event coordinator, I made no promises.

We welcomed musician Jon Watts to campus with a call he makes in one of his own songs: "Let's Get Naked!" But this wasn't just for shock value. Jon's latest musical release, Clothe Yourself in Righteousness, is a unique project that was born out of a collaboration with Maggie Harrison. Maggie had written an academic paper on the 17th-century Quaker practice of going naked as a sign.

For the September 30 performance, co-sponsored by New Creation Arts Group and the Duke Divinity Women's Center, we were excited to have Maggie with us in addition to Jon. Maggie shared the highlights of her paper with us, hitting on the several layers of significance of going naked: recalling that Adam and Eve were created good—and naked—only putting on clothes after the fall; pointing out that Isaiah preached naked in Isaiah 20; and insisting that the call to put on the new self, to put on Christ, to clothe yourself in righteousness, requires that we first take off the false clothing we have put on to hide our shame and our vulnerability. At the end of the concert, the group had a discussion with Jon and Maggie around all this and more, rounding out the event as unique not only in content but in the way it encouraged conversation and vulnerability among those present.

I haven't even mentioned Jon's music yet. As a spoken word artist (performing here with a guitar and violin), the sound is an experience all its own. Jon is a gifted songwriter, his lyrics simple but profound at the same time, unafraid of hard truths while still inviting the listener into his questions and challenges. Lyrical gems include, "Forgiveness is the difference between heaven and hell. That's not some afterlife shit; I'm talking now"; and this one that resonated with many of us present: "You don't need a degree from seminary to know God loves you." Jon's music encourages the listeners to be honest with themselves and with each other, even in their brokenness. That vulnerability is what getting naked is all about for Jon.

Pick up Jon's album, but prepared to be surprised and challenged by it. The ideas that Jon and Maggie are pushing have the potential to call the church (and not just Quakers!) back to its identity as a loving, genuine, transformative community that can effect real change in relationships and in the world.

"On Marriage" by Khalil Gibran

I attended a wedding yesterday at which this was read, and I liked it, so I'm posting it.

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.