A time to mourn: My seminary encounter with Christian violence toward Jews

If I had to tell you one seismic shift in my thinking since starting seminary, it would be the way I understand Jews and Judaism. My favorite classes have been Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and Hebrew. I've had multiple professors who are experts in historical Jewish-Christian relations. And I have been smacked in the face with the grief of the way my religion has treated our such close Jewish brothers and sisters.

I was not, or at least I thought I was not, anti-Jewish in any way before I came here. But sometimes we don't realize the subtle ways our beliefs build walls or breed condescension.

Like a good Christian, I saw the Jewish faith in some way as incomplete, misguided, overshadowed by the advent of Jesus Christ, as though God's intimate and messy history with the people of Israel were no longer worth much attention, except as it prefigures Jesus or reveals human brokenness.

Like a good progressive whose husband spent a year living in the West Bank under the shadow of the Israeli dividing wall, I mourned the way Israel went from oppressed to oppressor. I began to associate Judaism with 18-year-olds on catwalks holding AK-47s, pointing them down to intimidate all who travel through the Bethlehem checkpoint from Palestine into Israel. I began to associate Judaism with Europeans living in wealthy modern cities built on the tears of displaced people. (Americans, and Christians are of course implicated also in these things, which are never simple.)

I still believe Jesus changes everything. God did a new thing in Jesus, but there must be a way to hold that newness in tension with the good and faithful things God was doing and continues to do through the covenant with Israel.

I still believe that, though it is complicated and sometimes painful to talk about, though there is mutual violence and enmity, the state of Israel should be rebuked for the times it has been an oppressor. But this should not define Judaism.

*

Meanwhile.

Did you know that in the middle ages, Christians made up stories about Jews desecrating the bread of Holy Communion in order to justify killing or expelling them from cities?

Did you know that the Nazis extensively used the language of Martin Luther and other Protestant Christian reformers to build up their rhetoric against the Jews in the 1930s?

Did you know that on the way to "take back Jerusalem" in the First Crusade, and aflame with apocalyptic ideas, Christians pillaged and ransacked Jewish cities and killed their brothers and sisters?

Did you know that language from our very own Gospels was used for centuries to view Jews as children of the devil, killers of Jesus, stubbornly unreachable?

Did you know it's not over today, or at least, its felt ramifications are not over today, in the small ways Jews hear our language as superiority, in the small ways our assumptions carry forward?

All of this I deeply mourn.

*

So especially this week, a week when so many of us Christians will unthinkingly associate Jews with the death of Jesus, a week when so many of us Christians will celebrate the historic event that seems to us sometimes to render any of God's work in the world before the time of Jesus as irrelevant or secondary at best, I want to pause and celebrate the beauty that I have found as I've learned more about Judaism.

The Hebrew Bible is an exceedingly beautiful religious text, remarkable for its time.

I love that out of all the ancient religions of the Near East, the Jewish people were the only ones who lost their land and kingdom and independence and yet did not lose their God. Instead of believing (as was typical) that the destruction of their kingdom was a sign their God was not strong enough, or had abandoned them, they believed that their God went with them into exile, and 3 generations later brought them back.

I love that the vast majority of works preserved in ancient Hebrew are theology. We have references to other literature, like political records and court documents, but what was important enough to them to preserve was the story about God.

I love that God's crowning act of creation and a centerpiece of God's law given to Israel is a day of rest. (A day which Christians have largely ignored or explained away, and then have said Judaism is a religion of works and Christianity a religion of mercy.)

And if this is not enough...Jesus himself was deeply Jewish. Christians have sometimes divorced his teachings and theology from its Jewish roots, offering a caricature that paints the Torah as legalistic and Jesus as focused on the heart. But Jesus' teachings are deeply connected with the Hebrew Scriptures, and many of his "innovations" have long precedent in the Torah (Here's a great book about that.) His last word, his last prayer, was a Psalm.

All of this--all this beauty, all this pain, all this mangled history--calls me to mourn. I mourn for the violence of my heritage, and I mourn for the years of missing out on so much richness of my spiritual heritage by not looking deeply into the Torah and the offerings of historical Judaism. I come now to a place of humility, and I think now is my time to listen, and learn, from the tradition that taught the world so much about God, and shaped even my Jesus in his ministry to all.

Full-circle cynic

Photo by Joka Okada

It was February in Minnesota when I first sat in the front row of his "Hebrew Bible" class and pulled out my notebook and an NRSV Study Bible. I was bright-eyed and open-hearted, ready to be struck with glory, ready to be changed. The summer before, I'd slowly and painstakingly read through the first five books of the Old Testament--the Torah--and I'd been amazed by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now I was about to learn all the hidden and glorious messages of God within these texts.

I knew, of course, about tough questions and challenging passages. I knew about critical scholarship. I knew that somewhere deep in my gut there lived nascent questions and doubts. I'd seen those questions before: in prior religion classes, in the emotional bruises of deep and intense friendships, in the experience of engaging a foreign culture.

But I was hopeful. I'd just spent four weeks in Bangladesh, and I had written in my final paper that love was the answer to poverty. Jesus was the answer to all sorrow. I walked by faith, and some things were still simple.

*

My professor, who was popular with students, cracked sarcastic jokes about fundamentalists, and I sometimes wondered if I was included in his classification. He assigned a text called The Secular Bible and spent the first few weeks not delving into the mysteries of the text but rather making us very comfortable with words like "legend," "saga," "myth."

Only I wasn't comfortable. I believed the Bible was True--by which I meant science, I meant history in the modern sense, I meant it had been recorded without error from the mouth of God. If the myths were borrowed from other cultures, if the geography didn't line up, if there was no Adam and Eve...if some of it wasn't true, how could any of it be true? How could Jesus be true? How could the life I'd built be relevant?

There was no one to pat my back and tell me it was okay, that story was the vehicle of theology in the ancient world, that there are still so many incredible and unique and maybe even miraculous distinctions about the Judeo-Christian tradition, about the way it's been passed down.

There was no one. Only my professor, who called me a Bible-thumper, who answered my earnest questions in his office hours with academic explanations and justifications when what I needed were pastoral affirmations.

And so after six weeks in the class, I bailed. I bailed not to run away from the evidence; in fact I knew I'd never be able to ignore it again. I bailed because it was too much, too fast, too heavy, and my mind and heart were being crushed. I bailed because I needed silence in order to hear the whispers of God. I bailed because I couldn't bear to lose my faith. (And you can pick up the rest of that story here.)

*

Eight years later, as I prepared to start seminary at Duke, there was a tiny piece of me that wondered if I'd have to go through it all again. I had learned to reconcile my questions and still my heart. I had learned that scholarship is not contrary to God but a means of honoring God. I had learned that science and archaeology and faith don't have to be at odds, that God can transcend some of the imperfect ways God's word has been communicated. But had I only reconciled these things because I wasn't facing the questions directly every day?

Meanwhile, my politics and theology had evolved (left, I suppose I must say, though I am wary to identify with any ideology).

I was internally clear that these shifts were good shifts, shifts made in pursuit of truth, in pursuit of Christ.

I also saw how they correlated with increased skepticism of religious language, increased internal resistance to some Biblical interpretation, increased walls of defense. Maybe I was afraid of judgment from those who still held the beliefs I'd left behind. Maybe I was sometimes afraid of my own thoughts.

I didn't like the ways I had become jaded and cynical, defensive of my beliefs, skeptical about the work of the Spirit.

*

In the first week at Duke, the trees behind the chapel windows formed the most sacred kind of stained glass; the bread of the Communion brought together the many as One; songs were offered by broken, beautiful voices.

I walked into my Old Testament class. I was somehow again open-hearted, which was in itself a miracle.

This time, my open heart was met with a beautiful fullness.

Because the lecture that day was about a Creation story sprung from the spirits of an exiled people affirming their God.

The lecture shimmered with art, and faith, and authenticity. The lecture fully engaged history and archaeology and literary genre and found in the scripture something good and beautiful, something redemptive, something far richer than the simple reading I gave it at twenty. The lecture took into account patriarchy and ecological destruction and all of the evil that may come of power and was not glossing over the objections and yet still finding something in the story worth remembering, worth thanking God for.

I wanted to cry, for my twenty-year-old self, for her questions restored and recast in a beautiful framework.

And it goes on like this, day after day. My cynical nature has met its match. Every question, every doubt, every troubling implication is anticipated. Every day now, I walk out of my Old Testament class with a heart that is aching for the terrifying goodness of God.

Note: Since some people have asked, my professor is Ellen Davis. And I highly recommend every book she has ever written. Particularly lovely and accessible is Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament.

Becoming Pastor Katie

This is (one angle on) the complicated, messy story of my journey to Duke Divinity School, where I will begin my studies next month.

Photo by Keith Kissel

We are yawning through our Sunday school or confirmation class and we are debating what societal roles are acceptable for women. I have no desire to join the military so I could care less when we debate the role of soldier, and I am fairly certain we are going to have a woman president within a few years, so that part of the discussion seems superfluous. But when we get to pastor, I pause. I have the sense that this question matters beyond our class today. Matters to us. To me.

My teacher shows us a Bible verse: Women should be silent in the churches. And another one: I do not permit women to teach or have authority over a man. My friend protests, but I am looking at the words right there, and I take the Bible so seriously, and I can’t see a way to wriggle around it.

That night, I ask my mom what she thinks. She tells me some of her best friends are lady pastors, and if they are sharing the gospel of God’s love in Christ, she can’t see why God wouldn’t approve.

*

I have volunteered to share my testimony—the story of my incredibly unexciting spiritual journey to age fourteen—in church. I walk to the front of the congregation, grab the microphone, and talk about learning to pray, learning to trust God rather than popularity or success at school. At the end, I tell them that I want my whole life to be about serving God.

The people in the congregation smile proudly at me as I look around the sanctuary. Afterwards, a few come and tell me they enjoyed my speech.

The official teaching of our church is that women can’t preach. But it doesn’t seep down far into our culture. This feels like a good thing. Women serve and lead in almost every ministry. They are elders, they read the scripture, they serve communion, they speak in church, they lead youth group, they teach Sunday school to adults and to children. I have always felt free. I have never felt limited.

It’s just that when I start to think about serving God with my life, and what that will look like, the idea of being a pastor never occurs to me.

*

At camp every summer, I live with a community of girls for two weeks, and my I get my yearly quota of deep, spiritual conversations. On Sunday mornings, women and men speak in front of the whole camp, sharing their life stories. In Bible studies, my lady counselors blow my mind with new ideas about living life for God. During rest periods, I creep over to counselors’ bunks and ask for wisdom, and these women encourage me to grow.

It is one of my deepest, loveliest summers—a summer of stars and brownies and skinny dipping and late-night whispers—and I am exploring in this place that is expansive, open. I have started to question some of the teachings of my church, especially the political ones. “What do you think,” I ask my counselor, “about women being pastors?”

“Well,” she says slowly, “I don’t know for sure. But I do wonder whether women have the necessary qualities to lead a whole church.” She stutters a little. “I mean, personally, I haven’t gotten as much from women pastors as I have from men.”

I breathe in thoughtfully, nodding. For the moment, it makes sense. I haven’t gotten as much from women pastors either, I think. It is a safe phrase to hide behind when the Bible is ambiguous—this pretense of personal experience. For several years, it becomes my line.

But the truth is, I have never had a woman as an official pastor to “get” things from.

And yet most of my spiritual development has been guided by women.

*

I am twenty-three and working in the nonprofit field, serving God with my life by loving the poor. I enjoy my clients, but something is missing in my relationship with them, something about sharing stories and doing life together and delving into the big questions.

John has been teasing me for a couple years now. He says I need a job where I can talk about faith; therefore I should become a pastor’s wife. He says this flippantly, to mock established roles and bring lightness to heavy conversations.

When he says it, I laugh. The idea that I could take the word wife off of the phrase and then claim pastor as my calling, still doesn’t register.

Until one night I am reading Bonhoeffer, and something in the words on the page leaps out at me, and echoes of the past months reverberate around me, and I realize that pastor is a word for the things I feel most called to.

After a few excited, sleepless nights, I tuck it away. I know my personality; I am an Enneagram Type One whose deepest fear is of being ethically wrong, whose deepest hope is to be so good that I am beyond condemnation by anyone. I am still a tiny bit afraid to make waves, to become something that could possibly be against God’s plan, something that could draw confused looks from my more conservative friends.

I keep working in nonprofit, and then a church job literally drops in my lap and I think, Okay God, point taken, I will try it and see what happens.

*

In June 2012, Rachel Held Evans hosts a “Week of Mutuality” on her blog, which is a glorious bombardment of posts designed to make the case that the Bible supports equality for women in the church. I eagerly tune in each night, learning about women apostles and Greco-roman household codes and an end to patriarchy. I devour everything, and the last strands “women should be silent” are removed, and the last whispers of “I’ve never met a good woman pastor” slip away.

At the end of the week, I feel utterly free.

A few days later, I have this transcendent moment in a glorious church. I confess to God all my fears of being wrong or controversial or inadequate. The organ is echoing in my heart, and the desire to follow this small voice is now greater than my fears, and I know it is time to take the next step.

Learning to read at 60

I first met Shirley in 2009, while working with an adult literacy program in DC. Shirley was sixty, a mother and grandmother, a heart attack survivor, a lifelong DC resident. She was friendly, spirited, close with the other students. And she couldn't read.

I started tutoring her that fall, and over the next three years, we met most weeks in the library or at the building where she took her classes.

At first, we read lists of simple words, and short stories about school or work or family. After a story, sometimes she would pause and tell me about her experiences.

Shirley told me she’d had trouble in school from the time she started. All her brothers and sisters did okay, but she struggled to read. Likely, she had learning disability that was never diagnosed. The teachers passed her along each year. She dropped out in the seventh grade.

As I worked with Shirley, she made small steps forward, and we progressed to reading her mail and managing her bank account and bills. She told me that this was important to her, because ever since her mother died, Shirley’s siblings had been taking advantage of her. They charged her twenty or thirty bucks anytime she needed a favor, like writing out a money order, withdrawing money from the bank, reading a piece of mail. She wanted to learn to do it herself.

Photo by Dvortygirl

She told me that she had loved and cared for her mother dearly as she aged. She had moved in with her mother as a caretaker because in Shirley’s own words, “That’s what I do. I take care of people.” Some of Shirley’s siblings seemed to busy with their own lives to trouble with their mother, but Shirley loved every moment she spent with this woman, who was her role model, guide, and best friend. Her death changed everything.

Together, Shirley and I tackled the frightening task of writing, too: handwriting, signatures, filling out forms. But it was recipes she really wanted to record. When we finally completed a selection of recipes, she named it “Shirley’s Dream Cookbook.”

She told me her favorite thing to do as a child was to go into the kitchen, sit on the countertop, and watch her mother cook. She loved the smells and colors and found that she had a penchant for cooking herself. At class potlucks, Shirley made a mean crab salad and was renowned for her pork chops. On the other hand, she didn’t bake too much. Baking requires reading recipes and making precise measurements.

*

After a couple years, Shirley asked me if we could start reading the Bible.

It was slow going, because the words were difficult. But she also knew them, from years of churchgoing, and it was empowering for her to learn to read phrases like my enemies have disgraced me, O Lord do not forsake me so that she could read them before bed as a prayer.

Tutoring session became almost like a Bible study, and I’m not sure which one of us was the teacher.

One day we read about the day when God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and she told me about the twin girls she had lost only a few days after she gave birth to them.

Another day, we read a psalm of lament, and she told me how she regretted her son’s slow descent into the wrong crowd. She had seen it happening and hadn’t known how to stop it, and it was that path and that crowd that had landed him in prison a few short months after his son was born. She’s convinced he was set up. Shirley’s son is still in jail, and Shirley misses him every day.

We read about God as a refuge and protector, and she told me her husband had survived after getting mugged one night as he walked from the bus to their apartment. He’d had eye surgery, and he couldn’t work for several months after that, but he was okay now.

We read about God’s great love for us, and she shook her head with that kind of wisdom and joy that only comes from trekking through the storm. She said, “Hallelujah.” She said, “Katie, I don’t even know where I would be without God’s faithfulness.”

*

Over the three years we worked together, Shirley improved her reading skills and increased her vocabulary. She opened a bank account, became comfortable with an ATM, and learned to write her own checks and money orders to pay bills. She learned to text. She learned several Psalms. She got a new apartment through DC public housing, one that has an elevator, which is better for her with her heart condition.

Every step in Shirley’s learning process was small. She still needs a lot of help with everyday tasks that require reading. She hasn’t gotten a GED or found a lawyer who can get her son out of jail or learned to read a novel. But in every small step she opened up a little more, found new independence, confidence, and determination.

Last year, Shirley was ready to share her story. She found her fifteen minutes of fame on the local NPR station, where she spoke about her experience battling illiteracy. A couple weeks later, she went with some fellow students to lobby the DC City Council for adult education funding. From memory, she testified in a packed public hearing about the difference adult literacy programs had made in her life. She absolutely nailed it.

This post is a part of my Women’s History Month project, “Honoring Women’s Stories.” You can read more about the project and see other women’s stories here.

It’s not too late if you’d like to contribute a story--your own or someone else’s. Just email me by March 12 at katiemurchisonross at gmail dot com.

A journey, part 5: Jesus in Africa

This is part 5 of a story in five parts. Catch up here:
Part 1: Waiting for a sign
Part 2: A sinking feeling
Part 3: April showers
Part 4: Whispers and campfires

January of my junior year, I boarded a plane with thirteen other students bound for East Africa for five months. On the plane, I sat next to another student, John, who I’d met the day before. He was confident, friendly, attractive.

The first week in Tanzania, we sat through orientations, braved local minibuses, and went to a church together. I learned that his parents had been missionaries in Kenya. He read the Bible on the roof of the hostel in the mornings and spoke naturally about his faith. He took homeless people out to lunch and winced at stories of aggressive missionaries in Africa. He seemed the kind of strong, intelligent, and compassionate believer I needed in my life.

At night in the hostel, while the others watched a movie, John and I sat on the roof to catch the breeze.

We’d known each other less than a week. How did it even come up?

“You’ve been reading the Bible in the mornings?” he asked.

“Yeah. The book of Job.”

“Not the easiest book to get through.”

“I read Jeremiah last summer,” I said. “That was rough.”

“How so?” John had a casual, inviting manner. The sky was clear.

“God is pretty wrathful,” I said. “I wasn’t sure if I believed in him for a while.”

I smacked a mosquito on my leg. God, please don’t let me get malaria. Had I said too much? I barely knew him.

“Me neither,” he said. “My faith really took a beating last year.”

Really? Him too?

We slid easily into the stories: I had to write a paper about Nietzsche. I had to break off a relationship.  I stayed up late talking to my roommate about big questions. Somehow every time we answered each other, “Me too.”

In between classes at the university and volunteering in Dar es Salaam, John and I studied on the roof of the Swahili building. He read me a passage from St. Thomas Aquinas. I asked him more about his doubts. We sat in silence, alternating between Swahili flash cards and prayer journals. Hoping, both, to experience God again.

In the afternoons I went running with another American student, Emily. It was too hot and dusty to last longer than twenty minutes. We stretched afterwards, outside her host mom’s apartment.

“Sometime,” she said, “I want to talk to you and John more about your faith. You guys have something that seems genuine.”

Together, Emily and I read part of the gospel of Mark, the earliest account of Jesus’ life. I discovered again, with her, that Jesus was brilliant. It was refreshing, to hear from someone on the outside that belief could be worthwhile.

This is what it means to say Tanzania. Freedom from college Bible studies where I felt I had to fit a mold. The colors of the fabric they waved in the churches. That John had doubted too. Leaving behind the friends who had unknowingly hurt me by caring not enough, or too much. That Emily saw something real in my faith.

God was coming alive again.

In April, John and I traveled to northwestern Tanzania, and on Easter morning we woke to stand under an acacia tree. The Maasai people trickled in and joined us, their plaid shukas tied across their bodies, white and colored beads dangling from the egg-sized holes in their ears. We gathered to celebrate the victory of Jesus over death.

By 10:30 a.m., they began to sing, nasal and high, and the music encircled me like a wind. The joy of the Lord was in their voices. They sang out under an acacia tree, the rolling highlands of the Maasai steppe all around: “Etupiwuo Yesu!” Jesus has risen from the dead! I watched them jumping and joined in, pushing myself as high as I could, making up my own syllables to the verses I didn’t understand in their tribal language rather than remain silent in this assembly of saints. Gazing at the rolling green hills and blue sky around me, I felt as though joy and earth and God’s spirit building up in me would burst out of me, into the mountains.

This is how we know that he lives in us: we know it by the Spirit he gave us.

During the service, we went down to the river and eleven-year-old Sipironi was baptized. That evening over a plate of roasted goat, I heard Sipironi’s story. A year earlier, crippled by a sudden sickness and unable to eat, he’d been sent from hospital to hospital without diagnosis, a medical mystery. One morning the missionaries left him in the house to run errands. When they came back in the afternoon, he was walking. “Jesus told me to stand up,” he said.

The sky that night was big enough to hold the impossibility of it all. The stars were so many I fell to the ground in awe. Biting ants crawled into my pants and John stood laughing as I wiggled around, yelping and brushing them off my waist and dancing back to the porch for safety.

Etupiwuo Yesu! Jesus is risen.

A journey, part 2: A sinking feeling

This is part 2 of a story in five parts. Catch up here: Part 1: Waiting for a sign

Disclaimer: for the record, the college friends I mention are STILL some of my best friends, years later. So when I say I was lonely, I don't blame anyone. It was a confusing time, for all of us. We were all figuring things out, piece by piece.

At age twenty, sure I wanted to be the kind of Christian who lugged my Bible everywhere, hugged trees and denounced the Iraq war, I followed Jesus to Bangladesh for a month of studying rural poverty and development. I took with me a jar of peanut butter and a vague notion that this would be my training to save the world.

Upon arrival in Dhaka, while jet-lagged and drugged with the new scents and the thickness of the tropical air in January, I met Rumana. One of our student guides for the month, she translated the culture to us and painted our hands with henna in the evenings. At the hostel in the village, Rumana prayed five times a day. When she heard the call to prayer echoing from the minaret, she looked at all of the American girls huddled in a small room and asked gently, “Do you mind if I pray?” Then she bowed towards Mecca, her sari glimmering in the twilight.

In the evenings, the twelve of us Americans fumbled over our observations of village poverty and pretended we could figure out how one day, the women wouldn’t have to bathe and wash their saris in the polluted sludge. Our professor Haroun discussed pros and cons of micro-finance, the need for good governance, and the peace of the message of Islam.

The yellow mustard fields bloomed and the imam woke us every morning at 4:30, calling the faithful with an ancient song.

Photo by Abhijlt Kar Gupta

*

I returned to Minnesota, head full of unprocessed images on culture, religion, and poverty. Second semester began.

My religion class was called Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Stansell, a professing liberal Christian, gave us a text called The Secular Bible and spent the first few weeks on Genesis—the creation story, the story of Adam and Eve, the stories of Noah and Abraham. He explained, with a little too much of a gleam in his eye, that Genesis was mostly legend. He compared it to contemporary Middle Eastern sagas. He claimed much of the Bible was more ideological treatise than history.

I stayed after class and asked why we were spending so much time drilling into our heads the idea of legend. “I want to get to the text and the meaning of the text,” I said. He told me he wanted to challenge my critical framework.

After a couple weeks, he announced that we were going to begin to delve into the prophetic books of the Old Testament. “Now let’s find this story about when Isaiah was visited by angels…” He thumbed around for thirty seconds. “Where is it now…”

“I think it’s Isaiah 6,” I said quietly. I happened to have read it the day before.

“Aha! A Bible thumper!” he said in the same half-mocking tone he used when he talked about Fundamentalists and Creationists. “Now, the book of Isaiah actually represents two separate prophetic traditions…”

Stansell’s teaching was well-researched and clear, if his tone was a little biting. The more I read, the more evidence slowly piled up on the side of his interpretation. Meanwhile, in another class, Darwin was making a pretty brilliant case for evolution, and Freud explained that Christianity was wish fulfillment, the ego’s hope of something bigger than itself. Until now, I’d thought I could gracefully tread along the balance of intelligence and faith, obedience and compassion. But was that wishful thinking? Did believing in the Bible mean I had to reject science? Accept holy war and genocide in the name of God?

Most of the kids in the class were either non-religious or liberal Christians. They did not seem perturbed. But there was another girl in the class. With a smile on her face, she would raise her hand and give the evangelical pat answer to questions about the Bible. When asked about the three historical/archaeological theories of the Hebrew people establishing themselves in Caanan, she would simply say, “Moses led them out of Egypt and God cleared the way for them in the promised land.” I wanted to shake her. Was she dumb enough not to realize that these theories were contrary to everything she believed?

Now I know. Everyone’s brain works differently. Maybe she did not see these historical theories of the Bible as a threat to her faith; maybe she was able to hold it all in tension. Or maybe she was challenged, but was clinging to the familiar words and beliefs as a means of defense. All I know is at the time, she seemed to me an image of the unthinking, head-in-the-sand Christian I did not want to be.

*

“What if Genesis is myth?” I queried my evangelical Creationist boyfriend over coffee during a study break. “When did we start thinking it had to be literally true? Saint Augustine and C.S. Lewis didn’t think so.”

He was worried about me; his eyes shifted quickly, right and left.

“What if we’re actually missing out by believing that? It could be more real, more powerful, as a story,” I said.

“You write stories,” I accused.

“Why are we so scared to admit it could be a story?” I added.

He didn’t argue. He knew I was talking to myself.

*

As the questioning voices grew louder, I didn’t know how to be honest with my friends about what I was going through. They had problems and conflicts of their own, which sometimes seemed too much for me in my agony. They knew I had doubts, but they did not realize how I was suffering. They had their own existential questions to deal with.

So I holed away in the library, reading The Secular Bible. I ate dinner alone in the cafeteria. I spent evenings analyzing Freud and Virginia Woolf in front of the computer screen, hoping with each footstep outside the door that someone would come in my room to ask how I was doing. My roommate sat at her desk wearing headphones as she wrote papers.

Woolf gave words to my experience: the estrangement of all human beings from each other and from reality. Where could a loving, or logical, God fit into this world of alienation and absurdity?

As I fell asleep some nights, throat would ache from holding back tears. This was more than “doubt” or “questioning my faith.” Those words are too small and mathematical. What was happening to me felt like an illness of the soul. Love, security, and meaning were being snatched away from me everywhere I turned.

One late night after another unfruitful talk with my boyfriend, I struggled to complete a short response paper on Nietzsche’s analysis of Christian faith. “Nietzsche is right; there is nothing rational in Christianity,” I finally wrote at two a.m. “Nevertheless, I will hold out for humble, sacrificial love, because it’s the only thing worth living for.”

I knew that I could not maintain this feeble grip much longer.

*

Thursday at Bible study, the speaker talked about dancing and laughing, leaving your sorrows, traveling light. We should be full of the joy of the Lord. We should drop all our sorrows and run full speed towards God, laughing all the way. We should stop being so boring and serious.

I sat still and did not smile at his jokes. My pack was full of books and questions and messy relationships. I left early, without talking to any of the smiling faces. I stopped at my friend Leanne’s room to say goodnight.

She was reading Nietzsche, but she stood up and gave me a hug.

I started to cry. “I’m so scared.”

“Scared of what, honey?” She held me close.

“That he’s not real,” I whispered, for the first time admitting it aloud.

She listened to me cry. “Even in my darkest moments, there has remained a core in me, deeper than emotion, that is faith.” She squeezed my hand. “God won’t leave you alone.”

She did not speak lightly. Her faith had been the only seed of hope to sustain her through the three years since her two sisters and brother were killed in a car accident.

Keep reading with Part 3.

New Year's Repetition

I make the same New Year’s resolution every year. 

Read the Bible every day.  

I think I have been trying to read the Bible regularly since I was about 12. It almost certainly started as an attempt to do the right thing, to be a good person, a good Christian. Reading the Bible was one of those things I thought I was supposed to do. But over the years my motivation evolved. There were times when I read out of a desperate longing to know God. Or out of a felt realization that I would be happier, more centered, more whole if I focused my life on following Jesus. There were also times I intentionally did not read, for fear or exhaustion or despair. 

I think back over my years of resolutions, which have each been beautiful in their own way. 

Photo by Thomas Mathie

I remember New Year’s 2005: I was 18 and confused about identity and life and relationships and meaning. I would lie on the floor of my dorm room, picking strands of hair out of the carpet I never vacuumed, and reading the existential parts of the Bible. There is nothing new under the sun; all is vanity and chasing after the wind. I would lie there for an hour just reading, and thinking, and putting off the homework and friendships that were so confusing. I remember my affliction and my soul is downcast within me, yet this I call to mind and therefore have hope: because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed. Tears were coming down and I was taking solace in the universality of these words from long ago. Answer me quickly, O Lord; my spirit fails. 

Then there was New Year’s 2007: I was studying abroad, in Tanzania, slowly recovering from the weight of loneliness and fear and doubt and guilt. I would wake up early from jet lag those first few days in January, climbing to the hostel roof as the sun was rising, and read the beautiful words: There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, for through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set us free from the law of sin and death. The banana and mango trees stretched vastly before me; the Tanzanian people were singing and laughing; I was rediscovering God’s love; I was recreating myself. I was unafraid. I was free. 

Or New Year’s 2009: The year I moved back to Maryland, I lived with my parents for six months, commuting an hour and a half, struggling to find my niche back in my hometown, lonely. On December 31, I moved into a community house closer to work, cut my commute to 20 minutes, found new friends to surround myself with in the evenings. Buoyed by the new community, and on the strength of the first gut-wrenching laughter in months, I began to read the Bible again, reverently and joyfully in the mornings while sitting in the ugliest, comfiest easy chair you’ve ever seen. One of my new housemates noticed, and thanked me for my example, and began to return to the morning Bible reading herself. I thought, it is only because of her and these lovely people that I have the energy to care again, to take up this discipline myself. I thought, how beautiful that we help each other grow closer to God, that we need each other. How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.   

Next week I will be sharing my story of belief lost and found again. My story of the year that seemed to redefine my faith and the way I read the Bible and the way I related to Christian community. It was 2006, but sometimes it is like I am still feeling the aftershocks. This past year was definitely a valley for me in terms of my daily discipline of Scripture reading. Maybe it is because of laziness or loneliness or exhaustion, or maybe it is because the questions of 2006 are still nagging me, or maybe it is complicated.

It’s not that I value the Bible less than I used to. It’s just that sometimes I feel like I have read it all before, and it is hard to hear it in a new way.  It just that is has become heavy: heavy with the scholarly and political debates; heavy with images and standards I no longer have hope of measuring up to; heavy with words that made me feel like I should easily snap out of fear, doubt, sadness, when I couldn’t seem to. It’s just that I am so tired. I am no longer the bright-eyed teenager who is sure that I will one day perfect myself, perfect my faith, be the person God wants me to be. On some days it is like I have given up. 

The Bible is so rich, though—rich with stories and challenging words and a call to experience more out of life. It is full of journeying and honesty and compassion and love. Full of reminders that we don’t have to perfect ourselves. That grace and mercy are available. It is a text that is alive with the presence and mystery of God, alive in a way that means my relationship to it must always be changing. And that is why each year is different. That is why I can never read it how I used to read it. I can only step forward into a new and beautiful era.

So I have said it yet again: let me read the Bible every day. I am starting to explore an Anglican Book of Common Prayer that I found in my grandfather's house. I am starting to learn its liturgies and songs and prayers and readings. A little each day, plodding at first, until the discipline comes to life again. It takes work, but that is okay. It will become natural again, in the same way that running 8 miles becomes natural after a few weeks of grueling training. In the same way that conversation with a loved one because natural again after a few days of being reunited. This year, it seems right to read the Bible not in gulps as I once did, nor to pore over it in analysis mode (that will come next year in seminary), but just to let the words sing, a few at a time, with poetry and the Spirit and truth.

Further resources on homosexuality and the Bible

This post is a follow-up to part 1 and part 2 of a series I wrote about some lovely people in my life. Here are some places to start for understanding the perspective that gay marriage is blessed by God and by the Bible. I am not really writing this to start a debate. I don't expect everyone to agree. I just provide these resources in case you are interested in how I came to this belief.

It’s hard to change what you’ve always thought. I can’t say there’s any magical argument or perspective that settles it once and for all. It starts with reading the Bible, and not just reading it, but critically and contextually and honestly. And as objectively as possible, but I think if we are honest, all of us read into the text a little of what we bring with us. We are meant to, because it’s a living word that interacts with and becomes real in the context of our experiences.

There are a couple people who helped me think through this logically Biblical support for gay marriage. One of them is Justin Lee, the founder and president of the Gay Christian Network, which does a great job of being accessible to people with various opinions on same-sex marriage. The best is to read Justin’s book, but he has also written about his view here, and if you’re more of an audio-visual person, I love this video (see minutes 37 through 46).

I also found helpful two articles (here and here) by Richard Beck, which helped give some context to the text of Romans chapter 1, which is the main New Testament text that is used to support the traditional view that homosexuality is not acceptable to God.

Gay marriage is a tricky one. As more churches have come to affirm women as leaders and ministers, they have the positive biblical examples of Deborah, Anna, Phoebe, Priscilla. There are no positive examples of same-sex marriage relationships in the pages of scripture.

But there is this:

That Jesus loved the people the religious hierarchy regards with disdain.

That we are to let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his neighbor fulfills the law. The commandments “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Romans 13:8).

That by their fruit you will recognize them...every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. (Matthew 7:16-17).

That we are ministers of a new covenant not of the letter but of the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6).

That if we are going to take risks in life and faith, they should be risks we take for love and compassion.

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I would love to hear your thoughts. Please keep comments charitable.

Coming out, part 2: Getting off the fence

This piece is a continuation of a post I wrote earlier this week. It will probably help to read part 1 first. Both posts are dedicated to the brave and wonderful people who allowed me to include their stories as a part of mine. I write this in hopes that this piece of my journey will help to break down walls rather than create them.

After the summer of 2008, I was changed. I returned home with new stories in my heart and mind. Three women had been vulnerable with me. They had been honest about their struggle to reconcile their sexuality with their lives, faiths, relationships, identities.

I needed to think more on this. I followed the news and articles closely when my favorite Christian rock singer, Jennifer Knapp, came out as a lesbian. I sought more commentary and read Andrew Marin’s beautiful book Love is an Orientation. I settled comfortably and honestly onto a fence between rejecting and accepting gay marriage. It seemed more important than ever to accept gay people, love them, and believe that God could speak to them, too. But it seemed good to resist labels, to avoid taking sides. After all, Jesus often hung around with the questionable folk, and he often resisted questions that created barriers, questions that tested which side you were on (Should we pay taxes to Caesar? Is John the Baptist legit? How can we get on God’s good side? What is your stance on homosexuality?). So I determined that I didn’t really need to define my “stance.” My orientation could be love.

Meanwhile I got to know a few more folks.

When I first met Martin at church, I had no idea he was gay. I did think he was a brilliant writer, a talented musician, and way smart. I remember feeling like he didn’t fit a label—he read the Bible critically, read the news critically. When someone got off on a liberal rant he could bring us back to see the other side. He never wanted to ignore the hard things about faith, like God’s wrath or the devil.

I also wondered why he was so reserved. In our writing group he always brought fiction and never seemed to want to share about his personal experiences. Then one day he brought nonfiction memoir to writing group, a heartrending story about being gay at his Christian senior prom. Growing up evangelical, he had prayed for God to take away his attraction to men. When he realized he could never fall in love with a woman, he resigned himself to celibacy. Later, after much thought, he came to reconcile his sexuality and faith. He hopes to marry one day. Whenever I have asked Martin questions about his sexuality and faith and journey, he is patient and gracious and takes the time to explain.

A couple months after Martin opened up with us, I started working at a new church, where I met a married couple named Sarah and Lara. They were one of the happiest, most in-love couples I had ever met. They seemed so affectionate and servant-hearted with each other. They had been married in a church ceremony though not “legally” because their state did not allow it. Again, they did not fit any stereotypes. Sarah was a teacher of special ed, and Lara worked for the school system in adaptive services for students with disabilities, and they liked a good concert and a date night and a long vacation like anyone else. Sarah once worked for a local Republican campaign. Sarah and Lara wished the state would recognize their marriage, and they wished they could be allowed to adopt. They would be loving, wonderful parents.

When I attended Sarah and Lara’s more progressive church, everyone probably assumed I was a supporter of gay rights. As I found excitement in my heart when DOMA was struck down and when Maryland voted to allow same-sex marriage…maybe I even started to assume it myself.

*

Last spring, I was accepted to divinity school to become a pastor, and I realized that within a few years I would have to take a public stance on the one question that really remained: Is there a place in the church for Christian same-sex marriage? and can this be supported by someone who takes the Bible seriously? So I began to read some books and articles and look closer at the Bible on this issue.

I write about stories, and memories. Not theology or politics or ideology. So this is the part where my story becomes halting. I’m not sure how to share the rest, the little pieces of different videos and articles and books and prayer and Bible study that have shaped my interpretation. Do I keep writing and try to explain it? Or do I just let the stories above speak for themselves?

By this point you realize what I’m going to say. You realize that I am “Coming Out” as a supporter of gay marriage, both politically and religiously, but more importantly, personally. And, if you’ve had the kindness to read this far, you are either shaking your head—why did it take her so long—or you are slightly frowning—this isn’t what the Bible says. Or maybe, just maybe, you are thinking, I understand. I understand the journey of slowly and honestly changing your mind on something you never really chose to think in the first place, something that was gently given to you by your culture.

So I think I want to stop there. To keep it simply what it is: a story of my journey in learning to love better.

And yes, you’re right, it took me too long, and I am sorry.

And yes, you’re right, the Bible is complex and deep and contextual and we have to read it so carefully and seriously, because it is living and holy and true. I know that you read it carefully and seriously and I understand that change is hard and I respect that. Please know that I read it carefully too. It is actually because of this Bible and this faith that I have come to this place. (If you’re interested in how I believe my position is supported, read this post with some additional thoughts and resources.)

The fence of ambiguous silence is no longer a good place for me. Today, I am Coming Out as an ally because I want to stand up for what have come to I believe is right. Because some people don’t have the choice to remain neutral and blend in everywhere. Because every day, someone on the fault lines of Christianity and the gay community is hurt. Because every day, we have the chance to take a step towards healing.

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I would love to hear your thoughts on today’s post as well as Monday’s. Please keep comments charitable.