Apologizing for Hypocrisy

I used to think I had all the answers to just about everything in life, and I was quick to tell others those answers.  Difficult circumstances? Turn to God for comfort!  Marriage troubles? Obey the Bible's guidance for husbands and wives--love and respect and submit and all that!  Homosexuality? No, marriage is only for one man and one woman!  Abortion?  Murder in all circumstances!  Politics? Republican!  Science? Genesis!  And so forth and so on.

The problem with having a seismic shift in your religious beliefs is that you start to feel like an ass for how you've behaved in years past. Even though most of my attempts to win converts to my way of thinking were well-intentioned, I'm embarrassed and ashamed of many things I've said and written to other people.  Granted, I was operating under a genuine belief that if I loved people, I needed to do everything to see them get "saved." This entailed trying to win them to the faith through sound arguments and living in such a way that they would see that itty-bitty inkling of hope within me. Then the Holy Spirit would tip them over the edge of unbelief and into the arms of a loving God.  Or so I hoped.

The trouble is that I was not happy or completely satisfied with the very answers I was giving to everyone else.  I never presented the gospel as: "Believe in Jesus and then your life will be just peachy!" I know I was upfront with the "Life will still be very difficult" caveat. Still, I was naive and rather out-of-touch with how my message was being perceived by a lot of people. If they raised arguments, I could crush them. If they still wavered in doubt, I could convince them.  If they stubbornly insisted on holding to their sinful lives, I could condemn them.

Oh, silly, silly, sinful me. Can I take all of that back?  Can I apologize for my hypocrisy?  I know better now.  I really do.  I know I don't know much about anything. I don't have this figured out. I know now that no matter how one's life may appear to other people, other people never know the whole story. I didn't know their stories or their experiences. I presumed a great deal.  And for that, I'm sorry.

Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God"

A few months ago I bought Julia Sweeney's one-woman monologue/show called "Letting Go of God." I finally got around to watching it last night. She perfectly captures much of the confusion and frustration I currently feel with my search to understand God, faith, and the world. I haven't quite come to the conclusion she ultimately comes to, but I so appreciate her humor and honesty in describing her journey.

You can see most of her monologue via clips on YouTube, but I highly recommend purchasing the DVD.

http://www.juliasweeney.com/letting_go_mini/

Out of Misery and Into Joy

It occurred to me over homemade mac and cheese, a generous piece of store-bought chocolate cake, and a glass of wine. It was sometime last October or November, sitting in my new rental house all alone, watching PBS. The kids were with their Dad for the weekend, and while I missed them and was still getting used to the idea of them being gone, I didn't feel lonely. For the first time, I had the delicious thought that I was free to do whatever I wished. No one to judge me. No one to guilt me, boss me around, or look over my shoulder. Thirty years of life, and I finally felt like an adult. I could watch what I wanted, and no one would care. I could eat and drink what I wanted, and no one would think ill of me. I could talk to whomever I wanted without raising suspicions. I could go to the store at midnight, and who would even know?

It may seem a silly thing, but it was rather revolutionary for me. I'm not used to such a wide range of choices nor used to exercising the full range of my volition.

I've lost so much in the last year. Marriage, house, friends, neighborhood, idyllic dreams of things that probably never would have been anyway. But through it I've discovered the amazing love of friends who continue to minister to me while I sort through the random pieces of my life. Friends who give my kids and me a place to live. Friends who come and clean, pack, paint, move. Friends who give food and money. Friends who call me up just to check on me. Friends who anonymously leave gifts on our doorstep. And new friends at my new school as we train for our new careers, who offer me encouragement and inspiration as we struggle through together.

I hesitate to say that I'm a better person now. We have failed to keep a vow, and there is no way to glamorize or martyrize that. It is a failure, a sin, a breech of trust, a broken contract. But it is what it is. And life goes on, somehow.

With my newfound sense of freedom comes a lifting of the weight that has held me down for so long--the unspoken expectations I was so sure God had of me. Surely I must put myself through the spiritual wringer time and again to gain His approval. Die to self, die to self, die to self. Resistance if futile, and misery marks progress. Be miserable, for I am miserable.

The great thing about blowing the big stuff like marriage is that everyone in church loses their expectations of you. You move into the category of divorcee, whose only options remaining are to screw it up even further or play the single parent martyr. There is freedom in not having to try to impress people anymore.

Such a funny thing, then, to find that when I stop trying so damn hard to be holy--when I give up on the idea of guilting myself into spiritual fitness--I move out of misery and into joy. And while I've roughened up around the edges (when did I start swearing?), I feel more authentically Christian, more whole, more at ease with myself. For the first time in a long time (dare I say ever?), I found myself saying a phrase that felt foreign on my lips- "I am happy."

And wonder of wonders, God hasn't struck me down yet. Who knew.

Apathetic About Apathy

The other day I was telling a friend about my "spiritual journey," which was really just a roadmap of heartache at the hands of the church and the people in it. It was also a chronicle of my wide-eyed belief turned cynical-brand of belief. Telling the story in a condensed version, it made me sound rather fickle and wishy-washy, as if I'm easily swayed and change my opinions according to the latest bad experience or theological fad. "I'm a Republican! No, I'm a Democrat! No, I'm Independent!" "Young earth! Old earth! Theistic Evolution!" "I'm Arminian! No, I'm Calvinist! No, I'm both!" "Complementarianism! No, egalitarianism!" Etc. Etc.

When you see the world all in black and white for so many years, learning to distinguish the gray areas is a rather earth-shaking exercise. I'd like to think of it as a process of maturity-- learning to nuance and think through issues with more complexity. So if I'm changing my mind, it's only because I've finally allowed myself the freedom to think through an issue from more than one viewpoint. Nine times out of ten, I realize my previously held belief was inaccurate or incomplete at best. I'm embarrassed of much of what I believed before and even more ashamed at how it made me behave.

I feel like I'm at a crossroads in my faith. So much has happened to me that my rational mind can't reconcile it with evangelical faith as I've known it. But I don't think the answer lies in just some other form of church (as my visit to the Episcopal Church this morning confirmed). I have never known this level of apathy before. Before, being apathetic used to elicit a small voice of concern in my brain ("You really should care about this!"). Now I'm even apathetic about my level of apathy.

Maybe it's a phase. Maybe when life takes a break from kicking the crap out of me, I won't feel this way. But I find myself despising, deriding, and mocking much of what used to elicit feelings of conviction and devotion. I have no illusions that I can "work myself up" to feel a certain way, but at the very least, I would think these aspects of faith, church, and life wouldn't create such a strong aversion in me. But they do. Quite a lot. And I don't know what to do about it.

Illness, Dysfunction, and/or Sin-- Getting Help and Owning Up

I've blogged about depression and mental illness before and made mention of it in comments and so forth. I've struggled to know what role the Holy Spirit plays in a person with depression. Answers remain elusive in this murky topic, but I have a few thoughts to share borne out of the last several months of my life.

Mental illness in Christians is so difficult to understand and treat because there seems to be (at least) three sources of causation that overlap and intertwine: illness, dysfunction, and sin. They may manifest themselves in strikingly similar ways in terms of feelings and behaviors, but they are very different issues. Consequentially, each area has to be dealt with in a different way. Trouble is, it is difficult, if not impossible, to differentiate where one ends and another begins.

First, there is illness. Depression and other mental illnesses are often just that-- illnesses with a physiological basis to them. There may be no other explanation other than chemical or biological, but stressful events in life will most certainly aggravate it. Medicine is a usually a good option for treating the illness, although it takes time and sometimes lots of trial and error to find the medications that will help. Of course, no medicine is a cure-all. Its job is to help the person feel well enough to function and to think clearly. Sometimes a person is on meds and feels better, but then they feel surprised when they continue to struggle.

That leads to the next area-- dysfunction. An abnormality or impairment in function. A deviation of a norm. Dysfunction, as I understand it, means all the negative and unhealthy behaviors, habits, coping mechanisms, and so forth which one has learned throughout their life. We are all dysfunctional in some sense; we all choose to cope with things in unhealthy ways. It begins in our childhood-- we learn it from our parents and family, our teachers, our peers. We see, and we model. As we get older, we learn our own modes of coping, and we develop our own habits. Our way of dealing with life becomes our own "normal," even if it is unhealthy. The reason I differentiate dysfunction from sin is because it is not necessarily a violation of God's commands. It's generally just a poor way of doing something, but it can be changed and unlearned through therapy, counseling, and/or a conscious decision to alter behavior. For instance, take communication. A family who doesn't know how to communicate with each other in a crisis but rather sweeps the issues under the rug has a dysfunction in their communication. It's not necessarily a sin (although it can be), but it's not necessarily healthy either. Dysfunctions are sometimes hard to identify, because to the dysfunctional person, it IS normal. It is safe. It is all they know. But when a person realizes they have some dysfunctions that are impairing their daily life and relationships, they can begin to make progress to a more healthy way of dealing with the stress of life. Depression, then, can stem from dysfunctional habits and behavior; conversely, dysfunction can exacerbate an illness and prevent a person from getting the help they need.

Finally, there's plain old sin. Willfully choosing to do the wrong thing, or willfully choosing not to do the right thing. Lots of people want to call depression a sin-- a person should just be able to "choose" to feel better and "choose" to be joyful. On the other side of the token, a lot of people with depression want to blame all their bad behavior on the illness and not take responsibility for the sin in their lives. And, to complicate matters further, part of the reason they can't take responsibility is because of their dysfunctional way of living and coping. We are all sinners, so we know that on some level, sin and its consequences are coming into play in a person with a mental illness. It may not be the cause, but sin has to be (continually) identified and addressed along with the illness and the dysfunction. That's true even of a person who doesn't have a mental illness. That's just part of being a Christian-- identify, confess, and repent, in sins both big and small. Daily. Hourly, even.

So how does one sort through this mess? The Holy Spirit has got to step up to the plate on this one. But a person also has a responsibility to be self-aware. If someone knows they have an illness but refuses to get help, or if they are confronted with their dysfunction and refuse to make positive changes, then one could argue that their illness and dysfunction have led them to sin. But since part of mental illness involves a skewed view of reality, a person not only needs self-awareness, they also need wise counsel around them who can help them make good decisions for themselves. If they are not able to get help when they desperately need it, then family, friends, pastors, counselors, doctors, or somebody has to step in. If a person has gotten help but continues to wallow in their old patterns because it feels safe, or if they begin to place blame or make excuses, then it is not fair to lay the blame solely on illness. The best thing solution then is to own up and take responsibility for themselves in all three areas.

Again, none of this is cut-and-dry. It's like a big soup pot of issues floating around together, but they all get served up in the same bowl. But we all have a responsibility to repent of the things we can change (sin), address the issues we can improve (dysfunction), and get help for the things that are out of our control (illness).

Where in the World is the Holy Spirit?

Doctrines about Jesus and God the Father are fairly consistent from one evangelical church to the next, but let's admit it, doctrines about the Holy Spirit are all over the map. I've attended cessationist churches, and I've attended charismatic churches, and they have sizable differences in what they expect the Holy Spirit to do in the church and in the heart of the believer. But no matter whether you believe the Holy Spirit still gives believers spiritual gifts such as prophecy, tongues, and so forth (which I do, although the idea is often abused), most evangelicals are in agreement that it is the Holy Spirit's job to comfort, counsel, and convict:

"And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— ¹⁷the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.... [He] will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you." John 14:16-17, 26

"When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment..." John 16:8

He is also our Intercessor:

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. ²⁷And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will." Romans 8:26-27

From these scriptures and others, these are the things I've believed about the Holy Spirit:

1. He lives inside of every believer, and He won't ever leave. This was Jesus' gift to believers when He left. He Himself would not be physically present, but He would send His Spirit.

2. He will bring conviction of sin. More than just our God-given conscience, which I think is part of every human's cognitive and psychosocial make-up, the Holy Spirit will prompt a person to repent of sinful behavior.

3. We can learn to ignore Him. Of course, believers can harden themselves to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and learn to disregard Him. Hence we are warned not to quench the Spirit (1 Thess. 5:19).

4. He brings comfort. He will bring peace that passes all understanding.

5. He teaches us. When we read scripture, it is the Holy Spirit who enlightens our minds for understanding, which is why unbelievers don't get a whole lot out of the Bible.

6. He intercedes for us. This is one promise I cling to tenaciously-- that when my heart is crying out to God but can't seem to summon up any useful words, the Holy Spirit is stepping in on my behalf.

Believing all this, I've really been struggling with the feeling that the Holy Spirit is not doing His job.

In regards to His role as Comforter, I've certainly sensed that supernatural peace during difficult times in my life, such as when my Dad died. But I've hit some of the lowest points of my life during these last 9 months, and I've thought, "That whole comfort thing would be nice, Mr. Holy Spirit, sir. Any time. Any time at all."

I've also wondered why He doesn't always seem to reveal truth or convict sin, even when it's desperately needed and sought after. As I've mentioned in other posts, my husband struggles with severe depression and mental illness, and one thing he and I both pray for is wisdom, discernment, and a firm grip on reality. One facet of his mental illness is that he often blocks out and forgets things and has no recollection of doing or saying things he has done and said. Why would the Holy Spirit not bring clarity when my husband prays for it? I realize that not every prayer for healing is answered with healing, but when the illness is so intertwined with a person's emotions and spirit, how can the Spirit not step in and reveal truth? How can the Spirit allow a person to continue on in sin unknowingly when that person is praying and asking for truth and conviction of hidden sin?

All of this was brought home to me this week when my son's principal called me. Apparently my son had defaced another child's book; however, no one had actually seen him do it. The evidence was purely circumstantial. When confronted about whether or not he had done it, my son didn't say yes or no-- he said, "I don't remember if I did it." Aaahh! After two hours of grilling, talking, and listening to him--in which we talked about how God sees everything we do and how He will help us know the right thing to do-- my son still didn't know whether he needed to confess or not. Now, my son believes in Jesus and has the Holy Spirit in him. I can understand an adult being hardened to the promptings of conviction but not an 8-year-old child who generally defends his innocence and confesses his guilt fairly easily. So how could he simply not remember? Why wouldn't the Holy Spirit reveal truth to his heart? I'm terrified that he has the beginnings of the same mental illness as his father.

Or maybe I just don't understand what the Holy Spirit is really supposed to do...?

The Ragman... the Rest of the Story

I know it's been one depressing post after another, but since this blog is an outlet for my angst, frustration, and discouragement... well, here comes another one.

I was really looking forward to Easter, the greatest day of the Christian year. The one day where we really should drink champagne for breakfast and party late into the night-- He is risen, death is conquered, we have hope! Of course, I wasn't expecting hors d'oeuvres at church or anything, but I was hoping to have a time of celebration and unmitigated joy.

What we got was one rather depressing, emotional show. And I was part of it, so I don't feel bad criticizing it. We emphasized Christ's suffering and gave the resurrection only passing note. We presented a dramatized version of "The Ragman" (if you are not familiar with it, you can read one version here). Now, I will say that story is helpful in understanding just what it means for Christ to take our sins upon himself and to be a substitutionary sacrifice. But the story is misleading in many ways. First, it makes it seem as if Jesus' healing is physical, tangible, and instantaneous. The woman stops crying, the girl stops bleeding, the man gets a new arm and goes to work. Forgiveness of sin and the regeneration of one's spirit is instantaneous, but nowhere does the gospel promise immediate healing of all your ailments and troubles. Just because we are healed and whole in our spirit does not mean we will be healed and whole physically, emotionally, or mentally.

The second problem is that it seems to insinuate that after Jesus heals you, you launch out on a new life that will be free from those old problems and pain. No more tears, no more suffering, no more tribulation--hasn't he taken that all upon Himself? What a misleading thing to tell a person about Christ. What will they cling to when 2, 5, 15, 50 years down the road their world falls completely apart? When their body decays, their marriage fails, they lose their job and their house, a child rebels, and so forth? Where is the Rag Man then, to take on their pain and exchange it for joy?

The crucifixion and the resurrection was a one-time, once-for-all event, but the gospel is something we need continuously, every day, every minute, with every breath. In this moment, His grace is sufficient for me. In this moment, my sins need cleansing and my mind renewing. In this moment, He may not heal me or take away my tears, but because I believe the gospel, I have hope that He is somehow working out all these things for His glory, my good, and for the future redemption of all creation.

So I propose we add "The Rest of the Story" to the Rag Man. Perhaps the woman continues to cry because of unexplained depression that won't go away, but the Rag Man comes and sits with her while she weeps. Perhaps the little girl, whose bandaged head has been healed, now gets shuffled from foster home to foster home, and sometime in her teens the Rag Man comes back to visit her. She remembers him from her childhood and decides to get to know him better. The man who regains his arm has a hard time finding a job, and after a few years working in a factory, he is diagnosed with cancer. The Rag Man comes and sits with him in the hospital room until he breathes his last. I don't know. I'm just too cynical to get the warm fuzzies with the original story. Give me a glimpse of the hope I can have in the midst of my pain. Show me a slice of real life, of real struggles that we cry out for Jesus to heal but He doesn't seem to.

This is the hope of Easter--Jesus is King and His Kingdom is here and is coming. "Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow."