Two shall become one belief and then two and then... (Part One)

When friends and family heard that my faith had shifted from committed evangelical to something resembling a liberal amoeba, invariably the next question would be, "But what about Jon? What does he say about it?" I used to take offense to the question. It felt paternalistic, like I needed his approval to change my beliefs or that if he had known, he could have prevented the changes. Looking back now, I don't think those were the reasons people asked about Jon. Some worried about how my revised beliefs would impact our marriage, others wondered if Jon's beliefs had changed too, and perhaps some who knew us best hoped Jon would at least protect the kids from my theological wanderings.

Jon, to his credit, has always resisted answering for me when asked what I believe. He has never defended me or criticized me to others, even when he himself worried about where I was headed. Honestly, the one thing I never anticipated when we married was the possibility that one of us would lose our orthodox Christian beliefs.

Back in 1984, our marriage vows stated that we would "reach the Berbers (indigenous Moroccans) for Jesus Christ" until death do us part. Yep. In our vows. So naturally the idea of walking away from the evangelical version of faith never dawned on either of us, let alone the idea that one would and one wouldn't. You may as well have asked us if we thought it possible that one of us might go through a sex change operation at some point in the future. Unimaginable. (And honestly, now on this side of 40, I think I'd ask young engaged couples to really scan the horizon for what change might mean - in sickness and in health is one thing, but changed religious beliefs and gender are not outside the realm of possibility any more.)

Lucky for us, our marriage was tested long before I reevaluated my faith. Put two dysfunctional people (adult child of alcoholic parents - Jon - and adult child of divorce - me) in a new marriage on the mission field among Muslims without any team members or other Americans in the town... well, you do the math. We left the field within two years and landed in therapy for two more.

Our faith commitment definitely helped us. We knew divorce was not an option. We believed in the power of prayer and love and 60 minutes a week with Jane, the therapist. We saved our marriage and went back to the mission field for another year. During that year, I went through a major shift in faith (I became an enthusiastic pray-er ala Mike Bickle and the Kansas City Fellowship). Jon had to deal with a shift in my theology even then. I quit our missionary team and devoted myself to prayer.

Together, we revised our thoughts about missions and Muslims, and returned to California to be in the Vineyard where we'd learn more about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. By year 15, we had a stable marriage and family. Then we moved to Ohio.

Coincidentally, the Internet became my lifeline to friends and relationships after that move. As I've shared elsewhere, I began examining my beliefs because I couldn't get a majority rules on any one important doctrine (particularly salvation). Jon knew that for me, the idea of hell had been the chief force behind my theology and evangelical drive. So it didn't surprise him too much to see me checking out books about reformed theology, openness theology (Clark Pinnock) and those emergent ones by Brian McLaren. When I came home with Hans Kung, though, he raised an eyebrow.

I began sharing some of the challenges to traditional faith that these writers raised for me. Jon listened openly, though less interested in theology than I was. He hung with me until I started talking Jesus Seminar, revised morality and loss of faith in the bodily resurrection of Christ. This was when I noticed him start to show signs of concern. I remember one particular conversation where Jon said, "It's all fine unless you lose Jesus. If you lose Jesus, you lose everything." I knew I had hurt him. That's when I determined that I had better stop sharing my thoughts so openly with him and used the Internet for deeper exploration of the questions I had.

Those next couple of years were very interesting and deserve more time than this one post can give it. I want to turn this discussion into a series as it is too much to condense seven years into one blog post.

I will leave you with this for now. It is impossible for the beliefs of one married partner not to impact the thinking and beliefs of the other. Whether those beliefs have to do with organic vegetables, politics, gun ownership, education of children, parenting or theology, marriage partners talk to each other so much that it is inevitable that the discussions will lead to shared conclusions and/or deeper understanding and sympathy toward formerly rejected viewpoints. If this doesn't occur, it is very very difficult to stay married or intimate. I have friends who have lost their marriages during these kinds of reevaluations... The tension became insurmountable.

So what I'd like to share in the next installment are a few examples of challenges we faced, how Jon and I did contribute to each other's changes in belief and what we did about the kids in the meantime.

Valuing other viewpoints

I started this as a comment and it got long. I'm going out of town in ten minutes so chat amongst yourselves. I just wanted to throw this out for consideration:

To understand/value other viewpoints, I try to find the passionate, articulate representatives of that view and read them. I sit with those views. I live with them for a while. I try to imagine life through that perspective. I read various viewpoints not to find balanced thinking about a variety of perspectives, but to understand the "otherness" of a particular viewpoint. I ask how my previous view has been altered by this direct encounter with a different perspective.

One of the things postmodernism has contributed to us is that each one of us has a view and that perspective impacts every evaluation, every thought, every reading. It's like you can't get away from it. There is no neutral zone, no dispassionate reading, removed reading. The way to incorporate other views into your own worldview is to allow them to be other, to value by acknowledging their internal coherence (sometimes frighteningly so - like trying to get inside the logic of suicide bombing or holocaust).

Through a diversity of readings, I discover the interior logic of viewpoints I don't hold. That is not the same thing as agreement. But it may approximate understanding or empathy or even reaction (as in, contending for an alternative). Usually I read other views to sit with them, to allow them to live in me for a bit and to see how they impact my former understandings.

When I've written about valuing multiple viewpoints, that doesn't mean always balancing one's own viewpoint. It means actually standing in the shoes of the other and "getting it" - letting go of your need to control the outcome.

However when articulating one's own viewpoint, it's equally important to reveal the conditions that create it, to own up to your biases, loyalties, "agendas" and so on. So my purpose yesterday was not to alienate, but to allow you to see inside what animates me and what purpose this blog serves beyond the chatty window into my daily life. If someone is interested in how Christianity looks to ex-fundamentalists and ex-evangelicals, then you'll get that here.

I'll go one step further, then I'm off. There is a vast difference between insider critique and outsider reaction. It's the difference between you criticizing your family and someone else doing it. Another example. Those who leave a job, for instance, will have much to say about the conditions that provoked the leaving. Those who stay have a stake in protecting the benefits of that space. Totally reasonable.

I read your blogs (and many others!) who write about being happy, satisfied Christians and enjoy them, learn things, have my views modified. I read and participate at Jesus Creed most weeks even while differing on almost every doctrinal point. Why? Because it is useful for me to stay in touch with why and how Christians believe and what benefits they get from those beliefs.

On balance, I think we all have something worth saying, and all of it taken together gives a rounded picture.

What the Cee?

So what's up with me? I mean, do I have an agenda? Am I out to insult the sincere Christians in the world?

Of course not. Some of my best friends.... (you know the drill). And while I love the saints, I hate the unexamined life and culture.

So I'm out to expose the crazy-making, not the sincerity.

Because I want to. Because it helps me and some other people who read here. When I was in that deconstructing process myself, I looked everywhere to find someone who'd listen and help me think, reason and clarify.

I found out pretty quickly that Christians can't do it. Once you say something that appears critical, the closest you get is "Well, that may be true of some obscure minority that I've never heard of, but you must have had a very Unique Strange Hurtful Doctrinally Incorrect experience in Christianity because what you express is not at all normative nor correct."

Oh really? You don't recognize any of this in your church?

Well, then some of the nice ones come back and acknowledge that Yes, of course, there are excesses, and you can find extreme people in every group, but the truth is, there are lots more people who have better theology, who are loving and kind, who don't do the weird things you cite on your blog, who see faith as mysterious, who act generously, and so on... You overstate the case, they say.

That line of reasoning reminds me of arguing with my husband. You know how you get frustrated and say, "You never take the garbage downstairs after you take it out of the can." And then he's all, "That's not true. I take it out sometimes." But like, the point wasn't the frequency of his taking it out. It was the fact that today and enough times previous he hadn't and now you feel all up in his grill about it and want him to get just how irritating it is so you say "never" to get his attention, but that diverts it to a semantic argument until one of you attacks the other with a pillow and wrestles him onto the bed for a make-out session... Oh wait. TMI? Sorry.

Anyway, the point being... the emphasis in "overstating" or in what I consider "isolating" a behavior is to draw specific undiluted attention to the issue. Why would that be helpful? Why is it helpful for your bank to pay undiluted attention to each deposit or withdrawal on your account? Do you really want them to get it right "mostly" and to be generous to themselves as they process your experience of your bank statement?

H-e-double hockey stix no!

And while Christians are human beings with flaws (hopefully your bank is a machine without them), they are guided by what is called Absolute Truth. I'm looking at the damaging impact of that overarching belief on flawed human beings (not the good that that belief does) and expressing it here. That's the focus. That's the agenda.

I isolate behaviors because they affect (on balance) how everyone feels about Christians (all of them, regardless of what brand they are because the general population doesn't make the nit-picky distinctions between varieties that Christians make). Most Americans get a general impression and that impression is based on real, concrete, frequent applications of Christian identity to issues of faith, salvation, community, moral posturing, and (some would say, regrettably) politics.

So I bring that stuff here. But not every day.

I also like writing about postmodern theologies, feminism, black theology, Bonhoeffer, and the Jesus Seminar. Those interest me even more, though I don't write about them as often. But it appears by sheer number of posts that besides my fan-girl enthusiasms for Los Angeles, Tiger Woods in his red Nike underarmour, the Bengals when they win (which this season is like never) and the obviously clever, original comments of my children, deconstructing Christianity takes up the bulk of my posts.

But it seems like you have an ax to grind because you can't stop talking about it.

Well, yeah! I do. I might have to talk about it forever. Because if the only people who have anything to say about what it's like to leave that brand of faith stop talking, there is nowhere for those who are in that deconstruction process to go. They need writers like me. I need bloggers like them. And those are the people who like to read here (at least it seems like it; they never complain).

Are my experiences representative of evangelical Christianity? Of course, they are. I've got the resume to back it up. Are they the sum total of Christianity? Of course they aren't. But I'm not writing to be balanced or to describe the whole of Christianity. I went to graduate school to learn how to do that and it worked.

And as I thought about it all in the shower while shaving my legs, I realized that what I like? What really makes me happy?

...is creating a space for people who need to talk about their evolving disenchantment with Christianity.

It's a singular, startling, mostly liberating, sometimes painful, relationally isolating experience. Blogs and forums help.

If you're looking for balance or someone to find the jewels in the midst of the manure, go read someone else's blog.

For those who enjoy my writing, thank you. It's really gratifying to read your deeply thoughtful comments that contribute to me and the others who read and post here. And all of it's a lot of fun.

Christian Culture

What is it? Does it separate Christians from those around them? Is it necessary to learn the lingo, the vocabulary of Christianese in order to be identified with the group? Is it unnecessarily alienating to those outside (and even those inside)?

Consider the following accounts (all real encounters).

1. A Christian teen on a bus equates homosexuality to adults having sex with children. He reasons: "If it could be shown that there was no damaging effect on the child, what would prevent society from ruling that sex with children ought to be legal?" The kids on the bus who were not from a conservative evangelical background responded: "Kids can't consent to sex. Minors are protected by the law. And what's that got to do with being gay?" The Christian responds: "The Bible is clear. Homosexuality is wrong just like sex with minors. We have to obey the Bible." Who is the "we" in this statement?

2. A Christian college student explained that she and her roommate had prayed for the last year that non-Christian students would feel welcome in their dorm room. When two non-Christian boys spent an evening with them in that dorm room, they considered it a triumph of faith. You have to wonder: why would two attractive, nice college girls feel concerned that guys in their dorm wouldn't want to spend time with them? What is it about being a Christian that even Christians know they are naturally alienating and need special help from God to simply "hang out" with other people who aren't Christians? Do non-Christian kids worry about whether or not other dorm-mates will feel comfortable with them?

3. One high school group in a church I know has divided into the homeschooled and the public schooled. Kids who are in the homeschooled group are the ones who go to the mall on the weekends sharing the 4 Spiritual Laws. The public schooled kids are playing sports (and therefore seen as less committed). Even among pastors, there is division based on home educated versus public schooled. Should teen activities be ranked according to devotion to the faith? Do kids pick up parental values and then use them to rank themselves among themselves?

4. Why are high school students and college kids pushed into leadership positions? I remember in college I had barely converted to the faith and was already "discipling" two new Christians. I knew little more than they did about the Bible, yet it was considered necessary to my growth to lead right away. I actually taught what would have been heresy according to Campus Crusade had they paid attention to my Bible reading so new was I to the faith. Worse, so many kids are measured according to their "leadership" qualities. Why? What is this drive to be sure "everyone is a leader" of someone else?

I know one wonderful 20-something kid who is literally burning himself out with worry over his Bible study group. There are cliques, there is competition, there are those who turn prayer request hour into therapy sessions. You have to wonder: would life be easier on some level if everyone chilled out at Buffalo Wild Wings and watched sports over beer? Why create relational stress in your life for the sake of "leading"?

5. Barna shows that this next generation is unimpressed with the baggage associated with the terms Christian and evangelical. Some people have opted to call themselves "Jesus Followers." Does changing the name make any difference? One of the criticisms is that this cadre of Christians is known more for what they oppose than what they are for. How do Christians reverse that trend and get known for what they are for?

When English is your second language...

From a friend of Jon's:

One of the supervisors called a Wal-Mart and ordered a cake. He told them to write: "Best Wishes Suzanne" and underneath that, write "We will miss you." Here's the cake that was delivered:

Palmer triplets

Palmer triplets, originally uploaded by juliecinci.

The view from our end zone seats: Palmers everywhere. :)

Yesterday Jon took me to the Bengals game for our 23rd anniversary. By the half, I looked like this:
By the end, we were smiling:

And the plot thickens... Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen made an interesting comment on 60 Minutes last week when asked how his band took it when he disbanded them and went solo artist in the middle of his career. Springsteen remarked:

"And I think what happens is sometimes you got to break your own narrative."

"We all have stories we're living and telling ourselves," he says, laughing. "And there's a time when that narrative has to be broken because you've run out of freedom in it. You've run out of places to go."

He explained that he could see where he was headed but knew that growth included disrupting the expectations and going into new territory. He eventually reunited with the E Street Band (they are touring right now for his new CD), but the break enabled band members to also explore avenues they may not have (such as Steven Van Zandt in "The Sopranos" etc.).

The idea of "breaking my narrative" deliberately has been playing around the edges of my thought life all week. Ruts can be comfortable but they can also be confining. And while a change of pace is sometimes helpful in re-energizing your experience of daily life, it struck me that a narrative break raises the stakes. It's a deliberate exile of self from the comfort zone, perhaps even relationships and beliefs.

He continued:

"I was probably one of the smartest kids in my class at the time. Except you would've never known it," Springsteen says, laughing. "You would've never known it. Because where my intelligence lay was not, wasn't able to be tapped within that particular system. And I didn't know how to do it myself until music came along and opened me up not just to the world of music but to the world period, you know, to the events of the day. To the connection between culture and society and those were things that riveted me, engaged me in life," Springsteen says. "Gave me a sense of purpose. What I wanted to do. Who I wanted to be. The way that I wanted to do it. What I thought I could accomplish through singing songs."

"It's not just the singing. It's the writing, isn't it, for you?" Pelley asks.

"Of course. Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can't quite get off their back . And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions," Springsteen says.

I got to thinking about the connection to a "narrative break" and "obsessions" and those things that "eat" at writers.

What a great way to see the dramatic moves we make in life. And how curious that our brilliance is sometimes confined by the system designed to free it.

Humble pie ala Bengal

It's official. The Bengals have imploded and lost any "touch" they had two seasons ago. The fans are livid, depressed, despondent, resigned. When I moved to Cinci, the Bengals were called the Bungles and lost every game. Only two seasons ago, they made the play-offs for the first time in a decade. It is deeply disappointing to Bengal nation, therefore, to find that they've lost 7 of the last eight games they played (their only win on an iffy call against the Ravens).

The Chiefs won (got your message K-Bob) and deserved to. I'm glad they could have a good day after such a poor start to their season. But what will become of the Bengals? So much talent, so much waste.

In other sports news: My perfect start to FF came to an end last night when Kim beat me with Tom Brady. That guy is a machine!

Here's hoping I can re-enter the land of blogging with more to say than how disappointing my football teams are. :) Peace.

Now that's how to run a business

Ampersand shows us how it's done.

Sifting through old notes

and stumbled on a 3x5 card of highlights from a lecture I heard at Xavier. Thought I'd throw them out for comment in no particular order:

If you open the door to allegory in Scripture, you open the door to your own agenda.

Historical truth is necessary to unpacking a tradition.

Propositional theology is a 19th century phenomenon; prior generations focused on theology as wisdom.

The Kingdom of God is in our presence - midst, not within us.

History is about survival of insight... how we adjust to what is happening around us.