In Case You Were Wondering

I've attempted to be honest in this space over the last few weeks. I've cleaned up the language a bit (not enough for some of you, I know!) and said some things a little more nicely than I meant them, but otherwise, I've tried to bring the good and the bad into the light here. I don't believe healing often happens in the dark. But it's been bouncing around in the back of my head that this may be the most I've spoken of my faith to some of you and maybe I should explain where I'm coming from here.

Confessing yourself a Christian has different implications, I think, depending on where you sit. My friends who don't consider themselves Christians are mostly tolerant, liberal (in the non-political sense), postmodern people who have friends of all races, religions, creeds, and orientations and, while they may harbor secret concerns about my mental health and pity me for missing Sunday brunch, they have never made me feel shamed or outcast for my beliefs. I've never faced persecution of any kind for my faith. (Soapbox Alert: I'm sorry, but I do not believe many Christians in the United States in the 21st century regularly experience persecution for their faith. Someone saying "Happy Holidays" to you does not count. If you have been persecuted, God says you are blessed, so thank Him and forgive me, please.) The closest I've come to any sort of persecution is when a relative told me a few months ago that I was too smart to buy into this Jesus as God stuff. I think he meant it as a compliment, so thank you?

There are a lot of assumptions people make when you claim to be a Christian. I often feel the need to say I'm a Christian* and then footnote all of the things that does not mean. From Rachel Held Evans' recent record-breaking blog post: 

When asked by The Barna Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was "antihomosexual." For a staggering 91 percent of non-Christians, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for 80 percent of young churchgoers. (The next most common negative images?: "judgmental," "hypocritical," and "too involved in politics.")

That statistic horrifies me in the deepest places of my soul. I do not want to wade into the debate about the Christian response to homosexuality here. I only want to say (okay, there is a lot I want to say. I only will say) that I'm sorry and this is not what I mean when I say that I believe the Jesus story.

David Foster Wallace gave the commencement speech at my graduation from Kenyon College in 2005 (read the whole thing here or better yet, spend $5 and buy it on iTunes - it's fantastic.)  In it he said:

Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already - it's been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth upfront in daily consciousness. Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

Wallace is right, as I see it. We all worship something. I've chosen to worship Jesus. I was gifted as a child with parts of the Jesus story, and the more I dig in, the more true it seems to me. I cannot prove that Jesus is God or was resurrected from the dead. I am uninterested in apologetics or attempting to defend my faith to you (if you're interested however, there are hundreds of books that try this). I can only tell you my story. I can only tell you that this story, the story of God becoming one of us, of God experiencing humiliation and defeat in a radical act of love for humanity, this story has captivated me.

I believe because it has been my experience that because of Jesus God answers the question we ask in our agony: "where are you?" with the answer: "right here."

I believe because I find it compelling "how at the cross God can gather up all of humanity’s violence and abusive power and even gather up Peter’s own denial of Jesus into God’s own self and then respond with nothing but love and forgiveness" (Nadia Bolz-Weber).

I believe because I offer my dysfunction and deep sense of unworthiness and certainty that I am the center of the universe and am made new by the promise of a love that never fails.

I believe because this God washes my filthy feet and then asks me to wash yours, acts of giving and receiving that are appalling, scandalous, humiliating, and grace.

I believe because I'm crazy in love with the community of loving and imperfect people I find here (when they aren't just plain making me crazy).

I believe that this world is enchanted and find the sparks of love, hope, beauty, and truth that filter through the violence and fear and monotony to be divine.

"I believe because Christ's compassion is addictive" (Micha Boyett).

I believe because Jesus said his command was to "love each other as I have loved you" and that sounds like the truest and loveliest way to live.

I believe because I long for Jesus' declaration of the good news of the kingdom of God to be true: blessed are the poor in spirit. We who are lonely, we who are broken, we drunks, we who abstain piously and judgmentally, we abusers, we who are abused, we power-hungry, we weak, those of us so damaged and desperate we sell ourselves to the highest bidder, we who damage, we liars, we fakes, we hypocrites, we who enslave, we who are enslaved, those of us who are greedy and selfish and comfortable and too apathetic to care about our neighbors: God is for us.

I believe all of this is True.

In case you were wondering, this is what I mean when I call myself a Christian. A special thanks today to those of you who read this blog and consider all of this Jesus talk absolute nonsense and love me so well anyway.