I was taking a shower while deliberating upon the things I’ve been struggling with lately. It never fails that things just sort of hit me there, even when I have my toddler in with me and have to help keep the soap out of her eyes. I’ve written entire poems in the shower… but I digress.
The challenge has been levied to me to consider how much of my disconnect from other Christians centers around my own failure to pursue Christ with all my heart; and I’ll confess I’m not winning any super Christian awards or holiness merit badges these days, but who does? We all live in the same fallen world with the same temptation to stray. It takes on different forms, but it’s the same ugly monster no matter what clothing it wears. You and I both sin daily and copiously, it’s just that pet sins are, at times, better looking than at others.
Who, in Jesus’ day would have accused the Pharisees of failing to pursue God, after all?
I’ve become aware of my pet sins, through the Spirit’s leading. Jealousy. Insecurity. Pushing people away; casting poor judgment upon other peoples’ motives. Fear, doubt, and wicked bouts of self-centeredness that form the ugly root to all of my other problems. Whenever these rear their ugly head, my eyes aren’t fixed upon my God and Savior in any way, shape, or form. This is the true face of Julie, the rank pagan.
However, there’s another side to matters, especially when it comes to my failure to connect with other Christians. It’s something I’ve long suspected and vocalized in other times and places. Unfortunately, I wasn’t raised in a Christian home with Christian morals and a Christian culture enveloping me. I was raised mostly by a single mother with her own set of problems and personal demons. I smoked, I drank, I swore without impunity. My own attempts to reach out to religion were purely precursors to when God would finally grab hold of me, and for the first eighteen years of my life, I did the things fallen people do in a fallen world.
I also had the chance to immerse myself in friendships outside of the close-knit Evangelical world.
I still have friends from high school; friends who have spoiled my perceptions of what a friendship should be. We could laugh together; we could cry together. We got into trouble together. We shared our thoughts with one another without censoring them for content. We could be frank when someone had pissed us off and with most people, there wasn’t any second-guessing what they were trying to say and why. It was visceral honesty.
This is what made Flynn so alluring to me; I was sick and tired of applying the filter to my head and coming up with shoddy prose as a result of being more focused upon living up to a culturally-imposed standard than the content of the story itself. When I wrote what became the Prologue to the first Flynn book, I was wallowed in frustration and told myself to pretend no one else existed - that nobody was reading over my shoulder but God. And with that mentality, I lifted my fingers to the keyboard and started typing.
Apparently, I had a whole lot of darkness that had bottled itself up over eight years. But when the hope of light sprang forth in the closing chapters, I had some measure of assurance that the holy God of the universe still held me in the palm of His hand. And that’s really all I needed to know - that God could see the twisted honesty of my subconscious and not depart from me. He did more than that. He told me it could be redeemed, even when the protagonist was just as bloody and fallible as I felt most of the time.
Herein lies why I often call Peter my most autobiographical character. ^_~
The disconnect with others never came as a result of what I was writing, though; it came as a result of what I was feeling instead. Honesty was infectious to me once more. I felt as though I’d tapped into a well that needed to be plumbed a bit further and, in the process, took some partially-developed musings on faith and culture and started to apply them to my art. I’ve started to pen out something resembling more of a theological treatise that I hope I can start posting here soon, but all of that aside - the disconnect didn’t have so much to do with becoming in love with the darkness and wanting to hide away in some closeted sin I was starting to hold so deeply.
It had more to do with the realization that I’ve never been able to be as vulnerable and honest with the people around me as a Christian as I was able to before I came to faith in Christ. The people I know through the internet aside… (I can be honest with most of you which is why I bother being so frank in my blog posts. However, you guys are in Idaho and Washington and Texas and Kentucky and Indiana, etc. etc. Not in Greenville, SC.) … I’ve never been in a crowd of theologically-aware believers who weren’t also so censored about the way they spoke their thoughts. There are a few bright and shining moments when I’ve dared myself to say exactly what I was thinking and it was obvious I was speaking a foreign language. I haven’t been able to figure out why. The snarky side of me wants to say I didn’t get the right batch of Kool-Aid when I became a Christian, but that’s hardly fair of me to say.
Repentance, Julie, repentance.
But still, it leads me to wonder if we’re the anomalies and the rest of the Evangelical world is universally very prudish and stiff about the way they conduct relations and friendships. I know the pervasive culture taints our perceptions at times, but there are moments where we really don’t make this a very inviting world to join and habitate within.
Case in point…
A few years back, I was in a chat room with an Evangelical friend of mine and as this was a mixed-bag chat, there were many non-Christians there. It was my first time, post-conversion, speaking to a Wiccan girl and I took some time to hear out where she was coming from because I’d never taken the time to understand the whole pagan paradigm in much depth. She opened up to me and I, in turn, had the chance to talk in more depth about what I believed in without her feeling threatened. It was a great talk. I wish I could have fifty conversations daily just like it. And then, thinking she had found some safety with which to speak openly, the girl mentioned in passing that she smoked cigarettes with my friend present to see her say it.
After all of that, my friend began to beat on her about how unsanctified her smoking habit was and obliterated the entire conversation that had preceded it.
I wanted. to. throttle. him.
The need to keep up an appearance, at times, seems to supercede our need to be honest with one another, knowing that unless we have honesty, we can’t have fellowship and without fellowship - without true relationship with one another - we cannot admonish, edify, or instruct the same way we could with that bond of safety and security present. This is what the emerging church means when it speaks about being “authentic”. Many of us don’t speak as prim and polished as the rest of the Evangelical world. Many of us weren’t raised believers with hymns singing sweetly in the background noise of our fondest memories. Many people want the sanctuary of being able to be honest with others about what we struggle with without the fear of being ostracized of even having these thoughts, let alone giving them more than the passing glance of denial before moving along.
Sadly, the fact that we’re unable to be such with one another keeps many from possessing meaningful friendships within Evangelicalism not centered around housekeeping and the latest Kay Arthur book. (Or about our careers and fishing, if you’re a guy.) The fact of the matter is, we don’t know what to do with differences and diversity when we’re so wrapped within a cultural cocoon that we don’t realize we’re still “in” the world. And when the world finds itself onto our doorstep, we miss out on many opportunities to minister to them.
Recently, a person in #pros made this comment regarding their church leadership, which generated a whole conversation on transparency within the church: “It is a blessing to have a congregation full of people that understand that a preacher is a fallen, degenerate human being. Not some super-christian.”
It led me to these comments: “Sometimes we don’t even have that. Or only to a point; so long as nobody tips any sacred cows. I wish we fostered the type of environment where people could be transparent with one another. Without fear of being alienated or castigated for being fallible. You can’t be honest and upfront with anyone about being a sinner when you find yourself breathing down the barrel of a gun. The church is supposed to be a refuge for struggling sinners and yet it’s remarkable how many times it becomes anything but. “I love you so long as you’re like this… or don’t do this…” And not even speaking about blatant sin, but traditions and sacred cows. Variances which could be sin, but might not be as well. Might just be diversity.”
One of the responses was, “It is almost as if we have grown to love morality more than we love people…”
I couldn’t agree more.
In any event, sorry to ramble once again; just more stream of consciousness musing that hasn’t yet formed itself into anything concrete yet. And my musings are not targeted at my current church specifically or people within them, before anyone goes emailing anything to my pastor and elders once again. These are encounters and observations I’ve had about Evangelicals as a whole.
I have a sick toddler today, so no church for me. Time for me to download a sermon.
Peace, folksies.
Jules
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Now playing: Joy Division - Autosuggestion
via FoxyTunes
