"I Was Afraid You Were One of Them"

Sorry about the cheesy title, but my new sweetie and I watched an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-type movie the other night where someone said that line, and as it kind of pertains to the subject matter of this post, I couldn't resist. :)

Last night, this same sweetie and I were talking, and he told me that if it weren't for some of the "shynesses" that I have about certain subject matters (primarily sex), he would never know that I was once an uber-conservative Christian. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, and I'm not sure how I feel about his words, whether they bother me or not. On the one hand I think it's great. I'm glad he doesn't see in me the narrow-minded perspectives and judgmental thinking that characterize most conservatives. But it also bothers me because Christ followers are supposed to be different. Jesus was loved by the sinners of the world, but it wasn't because He looked so much like them that He blended right in. It makes me ask myself if I "blend in" too much. It also raises some much more universal questions, though, about what it looks like to be a Christ follower in our world today. What are the marks of a Christ follower?

The more I think on the subject, the more I feel that our beliefs about what marks will characterize a Christ follower are in need of change. Both the church and the secular world have embraced a fairly similar list: no smoking, drinking or swearing; no pre- or extra-marital sex; general honesty (i.e. no stealing, lying or cheating); attending church regularly. Both sides could add a few more items to the list to define it more fully according to their individual ideas, but I think this is a fairly good core of characteristics that most of us expect from "religious" people or "Christians." If you take a closer look at the list, however, I think you might agree with me that it's a pretty worthless list to use when determining whether someone is a Christ follower or not. Most of the stuff that appears on this list of defining characteristics can be managed with little or no help from God. In fact, these characteristics have been hallmarks of numerous individuals throughout history who have been no more Christ-like than the devil himself. Case in point: the Pharisees. You couldn't find a more moral, upstanding bunch, but Jesus called them white washed tombs full of corruption.

So if the characteristics we generally use to define Christ followers aren't really giving us an accurate representation of what being like Jesus is all about, what does it look like? I think it comes back to the heart. The marks of a Christ follower have less to do with adhering to a strict moral code (Wait! Don't freak out on me yet!) and more to do with where our hearts are in relation to God and our fellow man. If I were to redefine what a Christ follower should look like, I'd start with the oft-listed and seldom-considered "fruit of the Spirit": love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Then I'd build from there. In addition to being loving and kind, a Christ follower should be compassionate, merciful, devoted to bringing justice to the oppressed and healing to the broken and wounded. A Christ follower should be a lover of the truth who doesn't fear to look new ideas in the face and sift them to find any kernels of truth they might contain. A Christ follower should be marked by practical humanitarianism, by selflessness, by generosity, by respect for appointed authorities, by the forgiveness they offer to those who wrong them. And yes, a Christ follower should strive to adhere to the moral code set forth in the Bible.

Notice the things on my list. They aren't things we humans can do without help from someone bigger and stronger. They are internal characteristics that show themselves in outward behaviors, not outward behaviors (like the ones in the list that currently defines Christ followers) that may or may not be a reflection of what is really going on in the heart.

So do I bear the marks of a true Christ follower? I don't know. I think I am beginning to bear some of them, though in their infant stages. I think some of them are still being formed in me, while others I am still wrestling with in myself. And perhaps I should go back and ask my sweetie if he sees any of those characteristics in me that actually count. I hope he does. I already know that in so many ways I'm not a good representative of the first list. I know that when it comes to certain issues I'm a terrible representative of Jesus, and this troubles me deeply and makes me ashamed to claim Him - not because I'm ashamed of Him but because I'm ashamed of myself and don't wish to make a mockery of Him. But I hope that in spite of my many flaws, some part of Him continues to live and grow inside me in ways that other people can see.

If you can see the marks of a Christ follower in me, I guess I can live without all the marks of a conservative Fundamentalist Christian. If you can look at me and see Jesus, I've become all that really matters to me, and that's enough.

Coming into the Light

So often the tone of these posts is somewhat dark and negative. I suppose that's to be expected when you're dealing with subject matter like mine, so it's nice to be able to offer you all a "brighter skies" kind of post today.

I had the chance recently to look back over some magazine articles I wrote a couple of years ago. One in particular really drew me in because, in the first half at least, it was one of the most honest and transparent pieces I had ever written. Which is probably why it wasn't published! :) The second half of the piece was full of my "wishful thinking" bullshit, but the first part was very raw and real. Reading it was great because it reminded me of how far I've come and how much this difficult journey has given me.

The real guts of the piece had to do with how I felt invisible and uncelebrated, how I felt like I was in hiding deep inside where nobody - not even God - could see me. Well, okay... God could see, but I didn't really want to deal with that.

I remember having a mental picture some years ago of coming to stand before God, as the Fundies say. And I remember feeling in this picture as though God wanted to look at me, in me, through me, but I was terrified to let Him. I knew that He already knew and saw the dark places, the broken places, the deep neediness of my soul that I was horribly ashamed of, and on some level I was okay with the fact that He knew. What frightened me was not His knowing; it was the idea that I would have to experience the "knowing." I'm not sure if that makes sense, but there's a difference between knowing someone has read your diary and sitting down to read your diary to someone. I didn't want to experience His searching and knowing of me. Of course, I knew that He wouldn't hate or reject me because of what He saw, but I feared even His compassion and pity; I feared the shame I would feel to have Him see the broken, dirty person I knew I was. Strangely enough, I knew the thing I dreaded was also the thing I most needed. I just didn't know how to open myself up to it. So I remained a shriveled wretch, crouching on the floor before Him, shrinking away from the freedom of being known.

Oddly enough, as a good Fundy girl, I didn't have much real shit to hide from God. Up until the last year or so, my roster of "really bad sins" was empty. In retrospect, I think I was less ashamed of things I had done and more ashamed of myself - who I was. I guess what amazes me now is how that need to hide seems to have vanished as I've become a "real" sinner with some genuine shit on my roster. Somehow, some way, it's brought me to a place where I no longer feel ashamed of myself - what I've done, yes (well, sometimes) - but not who I am. I feel like I can come into the light and not pretend or hide or wish I were better and more worthy. Now I'm just me, and being just me with all my faults and foibles is enough.

I can't explain how what I've been through has changed this for me. You'd think it would have the opposite effect. I'm not sure, but as I'm talking about this I remember a night last fall when I was in some of the darkest moments I'd ever known. It would have been sometime in November, and I remember sitting on my bed and seeing this picture in my mind of me walking up to Jesus. I wanted to talk to Him, but I simply had no words. There was no way I could begin to express the depth of my pain and fear and loneliness. I was literally shattered, and I couldn't even come up with one word to communicate all that to Him, to ask for His help and forgiveness, to ask for His love. In that moment - and it wasn't something I imagined; it was real - He reached out and put His hands on each side of my face, cradling my cheeks between them, and He simply looked into my eyes. Neither one of us said anything because the emotions of the moment were too profound to be cheapened by words, but I remember Him looking into my eyes, and I remember the tears that slowly started to roll down both our cheeks. We didn't sob or wail; we just quietly cried. And His eyes told me that He loved me and accepted me and felt compassion for the pain I had made for myself.

At the time it seemed like a nice experience, and I didn't see it for the profundity of what it might have been. It didn't stand out as one of the great spiritual experiences of my life, and I've had a few I will never forget. It was just a simple moment that was over and done in a flash, but it was real. I wonder now if that moment was what He had wanted to share with me all along. If perhaps the searching I had always dreaded didn't have to be what I thought it would be and if perhaps He simply wanted me to let Him look in my eyes long enough to see that He knew, He understood, He loved.

Anyway, that was all pretty personal, but I was thinking on it today and realizing how freeing it is when you feel like you can come into the light and stop hiding what you are. And looking back on that unpublished article, I can say that I still feel some of the things I wrote about, but somehow it isn't so strong. So I guess I'm getting somewhere, huh?

Toward Forgiveness

A while back I wrote a post regarding the struggle I was having to forgive some of the folks who have deeply wounded me in the past year. While the situation doesn't dominate my thoughts, it is a matter on ongoing prayer for me, mainly because even once a person has made the choice to forgive, the feelings of forgiveness do not always follow and the desire to "have the last word" or witness some type of "poetic justice" is a hard one to shake. I don't want to be that kind of person. I need forgiveness from God too much to go around withholding it from others, and I'm not keen on the idea of carting around those ugly, bitter feelings indefinitely. Despite my decision to let go of the past and forgive, though, I haven't figured out how to root those ugly feelings out.

Last night I made some progress toward my goal, however, and it came in the most unexpected of ways, proving that our Bible school jokes about God speaking through asses (e.g. Balaam's donkey) were more truth than fiction. I went to see Hamlet 2 with some friends of mine, and I must warn you that if you are sensitive to religious humor that is somewhat sacreligious, this isn't the film for you. It was funny as all hell, but it wasn't all that respectful. It inspired some pretty thought provoking things for me though. In the play that is performed in the film, Hamlet must come to a place where he forgives his father, inspired of course by a modernized "sexy Jesus." (Told you it wasn't respectful!) Something Jesus says to Hamlet really hit me between the eyes. He remarked that He understood how Hamlet felt about his father because Jesus' Father had forsaken Him too. The play ends with Hamlet forgiving his father and Jesus saying to His Father, "Father, I forgive you."

It's a pretty provoking thought when you consider it. Did Jesus have to forgive His Father for forsaking Him when He was on the cross? I'm not really sure. My well concealed conservative side would say no, and that side of me is probably right, but it's an intriguing idea. What must Jesus have felt when, as a perfectly innocent man, His Father abandoned Him at the darkest moment of His life? Did He understand? Despite that understanding, did He feel betrayed?

Thinking on these things opened up my old wounds. I don't want to dig into details, but in my situation the people I viewed as my mentors, friends and "spiritual parents" chose to handle a choice I made in a certain way. I've said more than once that it wasn't the decisions they made that caused the deep wounds; it was the feeling that I was abandoned in a time of need - in essence, betrayed. I trusted these people implicitly and absolutely, and I had always believed that if I made a big mistake they would be there for me. Of course, they would say that they were, but the truth is they were only willing to be there for me as long as I did things their way. They had mapped out the course they wanted me to take, and when I wasn't able or willing to deal with the issue that way, they cast me off like a piece of worthless shit. When I admitted that I was broken and couldn't emotionally handle the sermonizing, I was simply ignored.

It is that feeling of betrayal and abandonment that has been at the root of my struggle to experience the feelings of forgiveness, however committed I am to my choice to let it go. But what the "sexy Jesus" said really brought some things into perspective. I had never considered what He might have felt after being abandoned by His Father. Perhaps, like me, He could rationally look at the situation and say, "I understand and I'm not angry about the decision. He did what He had to do." But despite rational thought, perhaps there was some emotional, irrational corner of His heart that said, "Why? Why did you abandon me? Why did you walk away when I needed you? Why weren't you willing to fight for me?" He probably didn't. Jesus' understanding is so far beyond my limited understanding that I'm sure He didn't need to "forgive" His Father for forsaking Him, but just knowing that He had been forsaken by His Father opened something deep up in me and started to release some things.

Just like Jesus, I was forsaken by my "spiritual" father and mother. He was forsaken because of the sins of others; I was forsaken for my own sins. But He understands that. He knows what it feels like, and just knowing that He gets that makes me feel a bit less bitter and veangeful. It's not a cure all yet. There's still some sour spots in my heart, but I'm moving closer to forgiveness.