My experience left me disoriented and disconnected from my efforts at gratitude and contentment with the life I was living because I didn’t know what to be grateful for anymore. I’ve known how I needed to spend my life since I was fourteen. I’ve never wanted to do anything besides tell others about Jesus. The specifics of that tug on my heart have taken a variety of forms, but it’s never really changed. It’s all I want to spend my time doing: imbuing life with meaning by knowing its author and bringing as many people along with me as I can.

We end up separated from God in this life and into eternity because of a lack of faith, not because of wrong ideas. What I mean is that, even if I have all the wrong ideas in the world, but I have faith in God as he is revealed in his world and in the Holy Scriptures, then the worst thing that can happen to me is not that bad. God is not cruel. If I have wrong ideas about something and I’m earnestly seeking to know the truth, can he not be trusted to redirect me? Can he not be trusted to teach me differently? Am I not allowed to change my mind? 

A community that had the opportunity and distinct privilege to help me and others like me heal chose to wound us even more deeply because being participants in our healing was too messy and painful.

So. I’m pretty sure that I’ve spent my life, ever since those first few years in Radford, being the exact opposite of that. I’ve tried to meet wounded people with mercy, grace, understanding, and a listening ear. I’ve proven myself trustworthy before I offered advice or alternative perspectives. I’ve never doubted how someone has viewed or experienced their life, even if their view was skewed or wrong - it still felt that way to them. I suspect that I’m going to spend the rest of my life not only healing from the wounds of my time in Radford, but becoming the kind of person who I needed when I found myself lost and confused in the depths of conservative evangelicalism.

Jesus shows us, in the most remarkable and backwards way, that our rights and responsibilities don’t always play out like we think they will. If we’re going to use him as our example, then we’re going to have to give up some of our rights, like those to being treated with dignity and respect. We’re going to have to take on responsibilities that we may think are beneath us, like learning something the long way around from someone we wouldn’t choose to learn from. We’re going to have to suffer the consequences of our actions, especially when we didn’t do anything wrong. Even though we have certain rights and responsibilities, we cannot walk around like we own the place. Jesus actually did own the place, but he certainly didn’t act like it, at least in the traditional sense.

I’m going to walk us through my thoughts on these topics in light of my experience in Radford and what I’ve learned on the other side. I hope to give you courage and hope as you deal with your own painful experiences in the church or faith communities. I hope to shed some light on the ways that evangelical Christianity is really invested in rights and responsibilities, but they’ve got the whole thing backwards, as usual. Finally, I hope that, with a look at Jesus, we can be empowered and encouraged to step forward into our rights as citizens of the Kingdom of heaven and put this place back together.

He tells them to ONLY visit towns inhabited by Israelites. When he references shaking the dust off of their feet, his disciples would have understood that he was insinuating any town that rejected his followers and their message about him was just like the godless, pagan nations abroad. They were not part of Israel. Jesus was saying that, in spiritual terms, he wasn’t super concerned about someone’s ethnicity or ancestral heritage. He was concerned with whether or not their hearts were open to him.

While I’m not sure that I’m exactly grateful to be a mom, I’m grateful for the opportunity to have had it out with God. Never before had I been in a position where I clearly thought that he was treating me unfairly. There was no one to blame, but him. So, if I was going to be angry, there was only one person to direct it at. And you can bet that I did. But it was in that season of incredible isolation, fear, and pain that I learned something really important about God: he can take it.

He made the world in six days and then rested. He saved the world on Good Friday and then he rested again. In the tomb. Dark. Dead. Decaying, for all we knew. After his great work of rescuing his people from real slavery (that to sin and death), he rested, just as he had done in the beginning. Because it was never about accomplishing, achieving, or doing anything. It was about enjoying. It was about delight. It was about the work being finished by one so much more powerful and more capable than us that he can make the world with a word and save it with his blood.

We stop and stay awhile, wherever God has placed us, and trust in him to sustain us through whatever comes next.

Jesus alone, of all the world teachers, invites his followers to come and rest. Not come and work and change the world. Not come and see if you can be good enough. Not come and conform to these rules so that you can be “in”. Come and rest. You’re already worthy. You’re already enough. The work is already finished. Won’t you step into the life you were created for? Won’t you work with your limitations instead of against them? Don’t you, just a little, know that this is true?

Regardless of how spiritual or absurd your anchor strands are, you’re going to be better off if you choose them on purpose, rather than just kind of letting them happen to you. If you do that, you’ll end up with your phone and cheetos being the anchor points of your life and those aren’t going to hold up when I come darting out the door after Charlie.

When the authors of the Biblical story talk about hope and rejoicing no matter what, they’re remembering, like Sam Gamgee, that they were once so badly off that they thought they were dead. And more than thought, they actually were dead inside, deep down in their souls where it matters most, and they were rescued. Through no effort or merit of their own, they were rescued, healed, renewed, and restored to a life “between bewilderment and great joy,” to quote Tolkien once more.

So, take a few steps down the perilous path. Explore what you believe, what you see, and consider what makes sense of the world. Ask questions. Never stop asking questions. And don’t trust anyone who wants you to stop. The truth does not need a defender. It is the essence of reality and the foundation of the world itself. It’s far beyond you or me to define. Ask for it. Seek for it. Knock on every door.

Belief is like this. When we really believe in something, we trust in it to guide our lives and help us make decisions. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, if we believe that peanut butter is disgusting, we might not like pad Thai. Because beliefs aren’t always based on an overwhelming amount of evidence, though, they sometimes disappoint us. Like a wicker chair that has seen better days, we sometimes trust our beliefs to guide us and they collapse underneath the weight of our life. Perhaps you believed that brussel sprouts were gross only to discover they were delicious or the much worse belief that someone was honorable only to find out that they were a liar. Either way, we live what we believe and, therefore, beliefs have consequences.

But is it really “make” believe? Aren’t children reminding us of the importance of belief? Even if their belief is in something made up like Santa Claus, that skill, learning to believe, is critical. I think we all learn to believe and imagine when we are children. So, maybe we don’t need to spend our time thinking about when we learned to believe, but, rather, when we learned to stop believing.

Whether you have any experience with Christianity or not is irrelevant to my point. It’s the context and framework that I think is most helpful because I believe that what you think about Jesus is the most important thing about you. My point here is that, even if you learn the same stories or same sorts of things, how you learn them matters. How you learn your beliefs is going to shape how you view them, how deeply rooted they are, and whether or not you hold onto them when things get tough.

Too often, we place our identity not only in what we believe (which is actually a good thing), but also in who taught us this belief. Read that again: we place our identity not only in what we believe, but also in who taught us this belief. And that, friends, is incredibly dangerous.

What do we mean when we talk about “background noise”? I’ll tell you what I think we mean. I think we mean that we cannot sit in silence because it scares us. We’re not used to it and we don’t know what will happen if we have to consider the beauty of bird song or the beating of our own heart. Much less, the sounds of our own thoughts and the inner workings of our souls. No, we’d better not go there. Too messy. Too risky. We’re too afraid of what we might find. No matter that it’s likely buried treasure and the secret to all that’s good and glorious.

Yes, where we learn our beliefs matters. It matters because it impacts how we view those beliefs, but it also matters because it can influence which beliefs we hold onto and which ones we don’t. Do yourself a favor: don’t let your perception of a place, situation, or time color what you believe. I’ve learned some incredibly valuable, good, and true things from difficult circumstances that I shouldn’t have ever had to endure. I’ve learned some unhelpful, bad, and false things from nice places and easy circumstances.