Fighting for Dear Life

After Bernie Sanders’ speech at LU convocation, David Nasser asked him an abortion-related question, to the effect of “Aren’t our unborn children in the greatest need of protection?” The crowd of students cheered thunderously, and for the only time in the entire broadcast I noticed, gave a standing ovation – just to that question.

Students, dreamers, protectors, defenders: please don’t forget to keep that fire alive for mothers, for children, after they are born. In the way we vote, in the issues we fight for, in the way we look at women with screaming children on the street: will we choose to KEEP fighting for life? It gets much, much harder from here.

How will your church or Christian school deal with the unmarried pregnant woman? Will you babysit for the single mother? Do you belittle your co-worker for loving lavishly on his children? Do we fight for education? For resources that so many women, families, and little ones so desperately need?

Or will be just be clanging, clanging, clanging symbols?

one year later

[written March 2014]

I’m crying and I can’t stop.

No, that’s not how it started. It started with driving out of the parking deck. It started with praying.

((our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name…))

God, please help these children. Please help your children.

(crying)

God, please turn our hearts to you, to your children. God please turn our stupid stone hearts to flesh. Please God, please God.

(can’t speak, crying so hard)

“You’re young.”

So was Jeremiah. And Timothy and Josiah.

“We have to follow our conviction.”

That’s fine just don’t call it true religion.

“The gospel is at stake.”

YES IT IS. And the stakes are so high.

Someday kids, undergraduate kids, will raise their hands and ask their professors, how could so many Christians use the gospel to justify slavery? To justify the crusades? The inquisition? Pulling pledged, financial sponsorship from ten thousand children in less than a week?

And all I hear from everyone makes me cry and cry and hurt so bad.

Truth Doesn’t Care How You Feel About It

Gregory Alan Thornbury has written a piece at Christianity Today entitled Why It Matters That the Exodus Really Happened. The abstract sums up the content of the article pretty well:

“No less than Western law, the civil rights movement, and Christianity itself rest on the historicity of the biblical event.”

It’s nothing we haven’t heard before.

But it’s a disappointing premise.

Because truth doesn’t care how you feel. Actual historical events don’t have to consult you about whether or not they “had to” have happened. They either A) happened, B) didn’t happen, or C) happened in a way somehow different than we imagine.

To quote my favourite biblical studies student:

“I keep learning again and again that truth does not care about what I want. It doesn’t care what makes me comfortable, or what I’ve always believed, or what I like. Truth is subversive.”

The answer to ‘Is this true?’ will often not coincide with the answer to ‘Do I like this?’ or ‘Is this coherent with what I believe?’–but it is a much more important question.

–3 Characteristics of Truth-Seeking, on Disputatious Interpretation

But people don’t want true things, I’m realizing.

Because we set up Premise A that makes us comfortable (or that we’ve always been told is true) and any re-thinking, re-hashing, or re-grouping is out of the question. We say things like,

 “Evolution can’t be true, because then we would have to completely abandon our beliefs on sin nature and salvation.”

“Common ancestry can’t be a thing, because then what does it even mean to be created in God’s image?”

“Of course the Canaanite conquest happened. If we can’t trust one biblical account, we can’t trust any of them!”

The Exodus HAD to have happened, because (in Thornbury’s own words): “Did Jesus predicate his own sacrificial death on the cross upon an event that never occurred? If that is the case, the entire covenantal nature of the biblical narrative falls apart. Jesus of Nazareth cannot be ‘the new Moses’ if Moses never existed.”

My frustration is not about the topic. It’s not about Exodus, the conquest, the Exile, Jesus’ miracles, natural selection, common ancestor. It’s not about any of those things.

It’s about what we actually want. Do we actually want true things? Are we willing to start clawing in the dirt, from nothing, to try and find them? Or are we starting our quest for truth with unshakable assumptions from which no evidence can dissuade us? We can’t call ourselves lovers of truth, if that’s what we do. We can call ourselves many things, but not truth-seekers.

If you’re an archaeologist or a historian, it’s your job to care about what physical evidence has to say about the world. When we find diaries of deceased heroes and villains, we care what they have to tell us about a world we can never see with our own two eyes. We do our best to authenticate such findings, to see how much stock we should (or shouldn’t) put in them. We work hard to match up our beliefs of the present with the historical unfolding of the past. And if new information changes things, our opinions and assumptions have to change as well.

Truth exists. And truth doesn’t care what you want to be truth.

Again on Disputatious Interpretation, Holloway discusses the fall of Jericho, a story which, “for decades” has been found to be “not a record of an actual historical event” as evidenced by available archaeological data. Holloway tackles opposition to this concession to facts and data from an author, V. Philips Long, who claims that the conquest and fall of Jericho may have to be historical in a way matching the biblical narrative in order for Christians to place stock in the Bible’s trustworthiness. Holloway responds:

“The fall of Jericho had to happen because it makes us less sure of the Bible’s overall historicity if it didn’t? This is not a reason to say it happened! ‘If this story isn’t true, then it makes me question whether or not these other stories are true; therefore, it needs to be true.’ This is a non-sequitur if I’ve ever heard one. If the fall of Jericho didn’t happen, then it didn’t happen; if that causes us to doubt the historicity of the resurrection, then we will just have to deal with that. Dismissing the problem by affirming the historicity of all of the events in Scripture is not an actual solution” (Is My Faith in Trouble If the Fall of Jericho Didn’t Happen? (A Response to V. Philips Long), emphasis mine).

So, the Exodus.

Our best guesses, from a purely academic (archaeological, sociological, linguistic, etc) perspective are that of course something must have happened to kick-start the Hebrew nation. That some leader emerged and laws were created. The nation certainly formed, after all, and it must have formed somehow. And it must have formed in such a startling, meaningful way to influence every literate generation of Hebrews to speak about the Exodus in the way that they did.

But as of right now, the archaeological evidence before us suggests that the Exodus did not happen the way the Bible said it happened. We may of course find new data in the future, but we’ve found a lot already. And much of what’s been found contradicts strictly literal, historical interpretations of the book of Exodus (as is the case for much of Scripture).

So the massive Exodus of 6 million Jews slaving in Egypt, crossing the red sea, and wandering the desert for 40 years, either happened or it didn’t. And if it didn’t, there are of course a hundred possible other (different or similar) events, or combination of events, that could have happened instead.

The past doesn’t care your opinion whether it happened. It either happened or it didn’t.

And guess what? That means we have to have the humility, the willingness, to re-evaluate our assumptions. To re-learn how to read Scripture. To better educate ourselves on these sacred texts we claim to value so highly, but that we invest so little in, and toss around like so much ammunition.

If our best and most brilliant scientists tell us that our world is almost certainly millions of years old, what DOES that mean for the way we approach Scripture?

If our hardworking archaeologists and linguists assure us that the biblical timeline doesn’t always match the physical record of what happened in the Ancient Near East, how can that inform our beliefs?

If it turns out that literature, culture, and people groups in the Ancient Near East are different than we assumed, do we continue to try and squeeze them into our own image?

What happens to our faith, our assurance, if some things we thought were simple and easy turn out to be complicated and messy?

That’s up to you, isn’t it?

It’s Really Hard

I think the last few things I wrote have been sad. Not because life is All Sad. It’s not. It’s beautiful. It’s adventures and rehearsals and vlogs and laughing and swan kids and cooking experiments and thousands of kisses. But it’s also harder and sadder than I ever knew life could be.

Is that what it’s like to be a grown up?

I think maybe that’s what it’s like to learn things.

I realize now that many people don’t want to know more. Many people like what they have and aren’t interested in more. Even people who have access to education, resources, and people who are different from them. And I can’t hold that against anyone. Take the life you want and do glorious things with it!

But I just love learning so much. I find myself constantly reading, absorbing, re-thinking, listening. Once you hear enough about an issue, talk to enough people about something, your perspective is just changed forever. Even if my conclusions are the same – I’M not the same. I don’t have my conclusions for the same reasons. I’ve cultivated more empathy, understanding – I’ve tried to wiggle around in strange shoes.

But that gets so lonely when so few people live like that. It gets so lonely when people I love retreat further and further into their boxes, when I just want to keep following light and air and growing my wings and learning to see the world through other people’s eyes.

I don’t know what to do about how hard it is.

I don’t know how to deal with brothers dying and sisters fading away. I don’t know how to deal with living thirty miles from my best. I don’t know how to deal with friends who go to toxic churches and leave compassion at the door of their social media accounts. I don’t know how to deal with false whispers and hate and smallness.

I don’t know how to be Good like I want to be – but I know Bad when I see it.

And I don’t know how so many people can’t see it.

broken

//

– _ / { “ /

I can’t do it anymore.

I cannot keep crying over you.

Over your hurt and your words and your lies and accusations.

I should have run out of tears by now, but they just keep coming.

I can’t keep agonizing over what went wrong every time I have a moment’s silence. In the shower

{quick, hum}

in the car

{quick, turn on the music}

waiting in lines

{don’t think, can’t stop, don’t cry}

.

“It would be different if you were actually helping,” he told me.

It’s true. But I’m not. You keep spiraling down and down and further and further away from the one I knew.

You never saw me right, but you never saw me so very wrong, either. Now you look at me and see everything so. so wrong.

~

I just wanted to love you.

I want to have funny facebook exchanges on your wall.

I want to give you the good marriage books I read and warn you about the silly ones.

I want to talk about your dreams and hopes and your hair and where you’re going to live.

I want you to sit me down and cut my hair and tell me about all the adventures you want to have. I want to tell you mine.

I want you to look at me without hate in your eyes.

I want to know why you never trusted me, never believed me. Why you lied to me. What did you think I would do? say?

did you think I would leave you?

did you think I would throw you to the wolves?

I just want to be your friend.

I’ve only ever wanted to be your friend.

but I can’t do it anymore.

I have to stop trying to fix it.

I have to stop trying to fix
every
broken
thing

I see.

some things are just broken i guess.

[2013]

2013 taught me about some things.

1. Love looks like whoever is the least-burnt-out willingly doing the dishes

2. It’s OK to give money to a person on the street. And ask what kind of coffee/sandwich they like, before you buy it for them. And their names.

3. It’s amazing how many doors get opened by asking questions and really listening to the answers. And caring.

4. I understand now why people have to break off relationships for their own mental, emotional, or physical safety.

5. As exhilarating as it is to live in a breakneck-speed world of academia, articles, voices, debates, questions, long conversations, doubts, study, and challenges – it’s lonely. Because you inadvertently fall out of pace with so many people who aren’t in such journeys themselves, or who don’t care about so many things, or so deeply.

6. “Please / I know that we’re different / But we were one cell in the sea in the beginning / And what we’re made of / Was all the same once / We’re not that different after all.” ~Miss Alison Sudol

7. Going back to visit school gets harder and lonelier every time. Life at University is like a Polaroid of golden hour, right at the space where it’s the prettiest, ugliest, hardest, most thrilling, achiest, and greatest thing all at the same time. But that’s it. Teachers and students leave, new faces fill up, new buildings come in, new rules and regulations get set down. Eventually everything you loved about it fades or crumbles away, like when you paint the floor black after a show…erasing scuff marks, tape, tears, sweat, and everything else that went into building the performance. It’s just shiny black, now. Somewhere underneath are your memories, but nothing recognizable remains. Just echos in a familiar space.

8. I might love something so much, with so much of myself, but I can’t do it alone. It takes many hands and hearts to pull off something great.

9. Nothing will break you more solidly than learning you’ve been lied to for a long time.

10. Wanting to help, and not being able to, is the worst.

11. Being open, being honest, is worth any awkwardness or faux pas that tend to come along with it.

12. If you aren’t saying something good, beautiful, wise, or worth my time, I really don’t have to listen to you or accept what you’re saying. Conversely, I ought to listen openly to anyone’s opinion, especially if they are older and more experienced than I am. It’s finding a happy medium between the two that’s the difficult bit.

13. And finally, wise words to live by imparted to me from a world traveller with a T.S. Eliot tattoo on her back:

“You do you. I’ll do me.”

The Lie of the Slippery Slope

This will be brief.

But I have been thinking about The Slippery Slope. The idea that, “once certain events are set in motion, certain other things inevitably happen.” Put in place certain policies, America will become communistic. Allow gay marriage, soon we’ll be letting people marry children and toasters. Etc.

Now, there is some wisdom in recognizing that certain things lead to other things. That, I will concede.

But as a young adult always making connections between my lived reality and things I was taught growing up, I am becoming wary and disappointed with the messages that The Slippery Slope rhetoric is imparting, especially to young people.

For example, many people in my generation who grew up in evangelical environments were exposed to a certain strain of purity culture that emphasized: be careful who you choose, and then be even more careful about your physical boundaries. kissing leads to french kissing which leads to petting which leads to sex.

And yes, physical intimacy is a great example of how it’s easy to get carried away with things once you start down The Slippery Slope. Once you kiss someone enough that you’re madly in love with, you definitely want to move on to doing more things with them. But I want to say something very loud and very clear for any reader who may happen to be of the younger variety:

There is no LITERAL slippery slope. You are an independent agent capable of saying “yes” or “no” to anything you want.

Want to kiss your boyfriend? You are a human being capable of doing that, and not moving further than that.
It might be hard to stop there.
It might be difficult dealing with HIS desires and hormones.
But (assuming you are in safe places with people who respect you) you are 100% capable of removing yourself from an uncomfortable situation, saying “no, not right now,” or creating new lines in the sand for your relationship.

And I fear that The Slippery Slope argument, perhaps, might give young minds the impression that they do not possess such agency.

But you do. Please please know that you do.

Yes, make wise choices.

Yes, consider the consequences of what you choose to do or say. Consider them deeply and thoughtfully.

You can always say no, not tonight, not this far.

You don’t have to believe pedophilia is OK to think gay marriage should be legalized.

You don’t have to have sex just because you’re holding hands (or kissing, or snuggling, or ANYTHING THAT’S NOT SEX).

You’re bigger than The Slippery Slope. You can jump the freak off the sled anytime you want to.

In Defense of Outspoken Young People

I am an Outspoken Young Person, I guess.

By no means do I always speak when I think – but often I do. I’m not a secretive person. I enjoy, and learn a lot from, open dialogue. I think that when done with a respectful spirit, honest discussion and even disagreement truly makes the world a better place.

And there’s a subtle weapon used against Outspoken Young People like me, which is starting to disturb me quite a bit. No, perhaps “weapon” is too strong of a word. Most of the time I don’t believe it’s brandished offensively. Rather, often it tends to be used defensively. Perhaps I should call it a “tactic” or better yet, simply an assumption. I’m seeing a certain assumption made about Outspoken Young People, and I believe it to be dangerous.

I am noticing that if an Outspoken Young Person brings to light an annoyance or a complaint on facebook about a larger issue – an assumption is made that said young person only deals with this issue on the realm of the internet. A jab or quip will be made about “getting off facebook and doing something about it” or “it’s easy to complain,” or “I’ll leave you to your Internet argument and actually go do something about it.”

I am noticing that sometimes when issues are raised by Outspoken Young People, people will respond by vowing to work on their own hearts, their own defects, and encouraging said Outspoken Young People to step back and to the same. The assumption is that Outspoken Young People are ignoring their own faults and obsessing over the faults of others. I’m not sure how many circles this assumption invades, but it’s certainly prevalent in Christian circles, and often accompanied by an admonition to focus on the plank in one’s own eye before examining the speck in another’s.

I hope the point I’m about to make is not surprising…

I hope this makes sense…

Why are people making these assumptions?

Why, as an Outspoken Young Person who interacts regularly with her community via social media, does my outspoken Internet voice necessitate that my physical, “real” life is passive and lazy and inactive?

Why does my critique of Christian leaders, government leaders, or otherwise public figures necessitate that I am ignoring or even ignorant of my own flaws?

It shouldn’t be mind blowing, but many of us Outspoken Young Persons are so outspoken and such a constant Internet presence because we care about these issues with every aspect of our lives.

Sometimes I speak passionately about caring for the poor and handling our money loosely, living as stewards of God’s property and not our own. And guess what? I also give food to homeless people and one of the largest categories on my family’s budget goes to helping people in our community who are in need financially because of job loss, car issues, or whatever else. When I talk about how important it is, it’s because I believe it, and I live it, and I want to grow in it – and I want others to grow in it too. I know I’m not perfect. Money decisions are hard. But it is not hypocritical of me to say I believe Christians don’t give enough to the poor, because I live a fairly simple life with very few luxuries. I sacrifice many things so I can honestly live what I believe about Christian money management.

Sometimes I critique public figures – specifically Christian public figures – for behaving in ways or speaking words that I believe misrepresent Christ. In no way does this mean I think I have it all figured out.

But you know what? I do some things better than Mark Driscoll does. Like knowing how to correctly, contextually interpret 1 Timothy 5:8. I do that better than he does. Maybe Christians aren’t supposed to say this (*shrug?*) but some of us are better at things and some of us are better at other things. Mark Driscoll is a powerful leader and figurehead – he strikes chords with people, especially, I hear, floundering men who need to get their acts together. But that doesn’t mean I think he should be shepherding, writing books, or using poor exegesis to tell people erroneous things about Christ and the Bible. Because he chooses to do all of those things, and also regularly claim to speak for the God I worship, I feel no reservation about critiquing his ministry and letting other people know my deep concerns about what he says.

Do I do it perfectly? No! He makes me too angry and emotional. But, if we’re being brutally honest, that’s because (in his own words) “there’s a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus” and there are ministries devoted solely to helping ex-Mars Hill members heal from the brokenness they experienced from the teaching (and sometimes actual person) of Mark Driscoll.

I care about broken people. Ergo, Mark Driscoll upsets me.

Moving on.

So I don’t just complain about Mark Driscoll. I read and study and care so much about properly representing my faith. I open myself up to learning from those around me. I am willing to sacrifice anything to the guillotine of truth. If I’m not willing to, how can I truly call myself a disciple of Christ? I may come to different conclusions than many, but I’m doing it in sincere passion and devotion to the God of the Universe, and I work daily to humble myself and listen to his truth, no matter who’s speaking it.

And again, I’m not good at everything. I never ever have pretended to be. So while I point out specks, please be aware that my own logs are not being neglected.

I know the logs are there.

But that doesn’t mean other people don’t have them. That doesn’t mean I pretend other people’s specks and logs don’t exist.

So my petition is, don’t assume you know about my life and the things I do or don’t do because of what ideals I hold, what arguments I participate in, and which leaders I criticize. If you’d like to know about those things, I’d be more than willing to share them with you.

Iron can only sharpen iron by clashing and making sparks. That’s what so many of us Outspoken Young Persons are trying to do: sharpen ourselves, sharpen others, and cause some sparks that maybe (if we’re lucky) burn up some choking weeds, card houses, prisons or facades.

The gold will be fine – our sparks won’t bother anything of worth or value or strength.

“A Disgraceful and Dangerous Thing”

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.”

St. Augustine, from “The Literal Meaning of Genesis”

“It’s the Church’s Job”

Have you ever heard, or said, these words?

“Of course we should be taking care of the poor. But that’s the church’s job, not the government’s. And besides, he government is horribly inefficient.”

I’ve heard them. I’ve said them.

And of course that’s true.

But guess why our (their, any) government is trying to take over the specific duty of caring for the poor? Because the church is failing.

If every christian family, if every church, in the entire United States of America, did everything it possibly could to help the poor in its midst, at its doors, maybe the government wouldn’t need to have such massive food stamps programs or pass legislation like the Affordable Care Act.

Why do we spend so much energy saying “it’s the church’s job!” instead of just doing our jobs?

For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason (Romans 13:4).

The government will wield the sword, make no mistake. It’s easy to apply that verse to matters of capital punishment. But, maybe, in this time and day and place, just maybe the sword is for our wallets and our overstuffed bellies.

If I’m tired of my neighbor taking “my hard earned tax dollars” for food stamps to stay alive, maybe it’s time to forego my daily Starbucks trip and and start buying them lunch so they don’t need the tax dollars quite so much.

I’m going to be brutally honest. I applaud efforts at giving I see in my community and family, but I don’t exempt anyone from this: we suck at giving. We really, really suck at giving.

Our megapastors buy mega-houses and drive mega-cars.

We fritter away thousands of dollars sending our indecisive freshmen kids to expensive, private Christian colleges when they don’t even know what they want to do yet, and who are perfectly capable of taking Bio 101, Comp 101, and College Algebra at the local community college while they figure it out.

We pay hundreds of thousands of dollars so doctors can do fancy things to our eggs and sperm, because we simply can’t bear the thought of missing out on the glorious pregnancy experience, and holding a baby that looks like me is more important than taking in a foster kid, adopting an older child, or starting a trust fund for a niece or nephew to get an education or, I don’t know….. have food for the rest of forever.

I have always, ever since I can remember, felt this ache in my heart about money. I am blessed and rich and privileged, even if it doesn’t feel like it most of the time. And in this middle-class American suburban culture (the only culture I’ve ever known) – we’re just obsessed with spending money on things we don’t need.

So guess what? Politicians are always going to fight for bills we think are crazy. The government is going to govern too much, and we’re going to be grumpy about it all. That’s a fact. I don’t like it any more than you do.

But please, please, the next time we fidget and find ourselves wanting to say, “it’s the church’s job…”

-do it. Do that job. You’re the church. You’re holding Christ’s emblem. If you want the government to stop doing the church’s job, then the church better get it done right.