I think if I am reading the current environment correctly, with popular book titles such as:
* You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are leaving the Church…and Rethinking Faith by David Kinnaman
* The Church of Facebook by Jesse Rice
* Insurrection: To Believe is Human, to Doubt is Divine by Peter Rollins
* Writings by Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz)
…the direction of the church is moving…it is changing. There is a growing discontent for the status quo among those of us that follow Jesus yet find ourselves less and less likely to feel we “fit in” within the walls of most American churches.
Furthermore, as I venture into the thoughts and aspects of these books and venture out of the life I once led within the church into a new direction – I find myself more and more discontent with the image many Christians are painting of Christ in the world. If you haven’t read the first part of this series – now might be a good time in order to understand my own growing discontent.
Is God Bigger Than the Christian Church?
God: Caught in the Middle
Whose Reality Will You See Through?
As I keep saying, my goal is not to judge or criticize…but to simply open up the debate…to express my feelings and reasons for those feelings…hoping to start a discussion that will only serve to help others investigate their own faith in whatever it is that they believe.
So, why don’t I want to be called a Christian?
Basically, I don’t want to be labeled, categorized into some type of stereotype that will close people off to hearing me openly and freely. I want to be an individual who others want to get to know, to talk with, to be invited into a conversation because they know and respect that I can know and respect them…that I will not judge them nor bring down the “hell and brimstone” speech on their heads.
Call it semantics if you will…but I feel that the word “Christian” has a very limited notion, a very limited definition of what I now feel I am. Instead of opening up the gates, it closes them. It builds walls within our culture instead of breaking them down.
I strongly believe it also limits us – as the so called “Christian”. It limits us to understand a bigger, fuller, grandeur picture of who God is and what His work is in His world. It bases our actions on the human traditions about how we have interpreted the scriptures…instead of on scriptures themselves. I believe that doing the former – basing my understanding of scripture on human tradition – allowed me to buy into a picture of God as a security blanket…as One who will protect me and work together for good everything in my life…in the way that our human traditions dictate. Let me give you an example of how this has played out in my life:
In my situation where relying on human tradition to interpret scripture instead of allowing scripture to interpret scripture, this means not divorcing but separating so that I could continue: to be the good wife; to pray harder and longer; to continue to demand respect from my spouse, to continue to hang in limbo that these demand and actions I am “doing”…that these would bring about the result that the “God of the security blanket” would bring.
So, you can imagine my surprise when I undoubtedly heard the Spirit move me towards a divorce. This was completely against the grain of my understanding of scripture…and one I knew could bring much controversy in my life.
Let me let you in on a little secret about me: I HATE being in the middle of controversy…at least my old self did. While there were things I could stand up for and speak my mind…this type of controversy was definitely NOT what I wanted to be part of! “What would people think of me? Would I be able to stand in my own beliefs if I was questioned, challenged and interrogated? Would I be able to stand?” I say this to let you know that my old self – while it had shown little glimpses of my “not wanting to stand in line” personality – all-in-all I had allowed that side of myself to be suppressed for many reasons and was not looking to start a full blown debate that I know possibly find myself in.
However, now I can look back at this time in my life and realize what was truly going on: That I was basing my understanding of scripture to be based off of human tradition and NOT off scripture itself.
Scripture itself says that God divorced Israel….and not so much for her unfaithfulness – that was just a symptom of what was truly going on in her heart. No, God divorced His bride because of her stubborn heart. In the end…isn’t that what all sin is about? Stubbornness of heart? Our unwillingness to come out of denial about our own condition? About our desire to continue to see the world as we would like to see it…through the tainted glasses of Satan? Where we are allowed to play the “victim” and to garner support for this role?
If God, in all His majesty and patience and understanding of human conditions….didn’t “stick” with Israel but decide to let her go….then why isn’t that allowed in human relationships also when one spouse sees the “stubbornness” of heart? If it was good enough for God to use, why wouldn’t it be good enough for us to use?
In the end, you all know which route I decided to take. I took the one less traveled by all means…I took one that went against every grain that I knew to be true based on what I had learned about God. I took a road that has brought me through persecution and trails and abandonment and rejection. I took a road that ripped away the “God of my security blanket”….and left me grasping for something, anything to steady myself on…it left me feeling more like Jesus than I probably ever cared to feel like.
This step off of the cliff into the unknown has left me seeing a God that is bigger than just the Christian Church and its traditions can contain. It has left me with more questions than answers as I learn to live in the middle of the tensions of life. It has left me to stand back in total and utter wonder as I try to understand that “Everything is Spiritual”…that I am an “Embodied Soul” meant to live an abundant life in the here and now. It has left me to understand that I am to be an environmentally concerned citizen, personally invested in God’s planet that He created and put me in charge of tending. It has left me to understand that I am unequivocally equal in status and ability to serve God with my gifts as any man…that in fact when God looks at us He doesn’t see a woman or a man – but an individual who is beautifully and creatively made to reflect Him and His love to those other individuals around us. It has left me with understanding that men and women can be friends…learning and challenging each other for the benefit of the kingdom.
In short, this step off into the unknown has propelled me into an arena I barely saw from a distance in a few other friends…but wanted to avoid myself. I wanted to avoid it because I thought they were misunderstanding the scripture…I thought they were perverting the scriptures and were harming the Christian message. I wanted to avoid it because I didn’t believe it was the truth.
Yet, now I am here – fully emerged in the arena I wanted to avoid…in an arena that isn’t nice and neat and orderly – but messy and unsure with no security blankets around. An arena where there are no definite answers…yet room for people to have their own journey, room for people to believe how they wish based on that journey. An arena where life doesn’t turn out how we suppose it should…
And I couldn’t be more at home, more settled into myself in this chaotic, unstable time than I have ever been in my life. I have never understood Christ more fully than I do now. I have never understood what it means to lose everything in my life – including the God I thought I knew – until now.
To me…this just doesn’t line up with the idea of the word “Christian”. So, out of all due respect – I don’t want to bring a concept to Christianity that is not true to its core…I don’t want to insist that Christianity changes its definition to fit me and my new reality. I am done trying to demand others fit to my notion of who I want them to be…judging you for not doing so. So the only right thing for me to do is to no longer call myself a “Christian”.
Hi Joy! I have just come across your blog via a link recommending a post of yours. I couldn’t stop reading because I can identify with so much. Not only am I hearing what your saying but I FEEL it having gone through, as one of your posts puts it, the earthquake. I wonder, how many women have felt the tremors of this same earthquake? It seems to have been a worldwide event!
Speaking of human tradition, the church is so bound up by it that it’s taking unique individuals like us, who hate controversy, to stand up and speak by sharing our journey. The church has put on the old wineskin and those who want the new wine or have been given the new wine are bursting out of the old wineskins. As a result many will look at us, point the finger and say, “Look at this mess you’ve made of things.”
I am actually blogging about my own earthquake. At least one tremor of it, that is biblical womanhood. I also said I do not want to be labeled, but my take is I want to be known as a Christian but shine forth out into the world the true meaning of what it is to be a Christian. This is happening very slowly both in my family and church. In my family because they were all anti Christian. And in my fellowship because I believe they are so bound up with tradition.
You can find my blog here: http://www.journalofanezer.blogspot.co.uk
Check out my story first. I look forward to reading more of your posts. It’s great to be able to encourage one another in our journey for we are family after all!
I love this post. Thanks for linking to it from your comment on another blog.
HI Ladies – thank you so much for your comments!
Geraldine – I just read your story and was nodding my head right along with you the whole way…although some of those terms are different here in the states. I so welcome you my British sister to the site and am excited to read more of your findings.