Apparently there's an anonymous questions trend going around..… I haven't tried it, but Matt and I have been asked LOTS of questions this year, so I thought I would answer some of those, but in a super lame Gen X format: my blog! I don't do tiny little answers that people can fit in a 30 second Insta story, so you'll just have to deal with a wordy blog post....
In addition to questions, we've dealt with many looks of disapproval or confusion over the past year. Plenty of radio silence from loved ones. There are those who talk behind our backs or those who distance themselves. The speculative look, the conversations that cease when you walk up, you get the idea. (We really have experienced so much love and support, so it's not all that way.)
I find the questions refreshing, frankly. I love when people care enough to ask to my face. It means a lot to me.
Perhaps you, like they, wonder how I could leave the church and then turn around allow my daughter to be baptized into that same church that caused me so much pain? Maybe you wonder how Matt could possibly stay married to someone who left the Church? What about my eternal family? Or how can I be out of the LDS Church and still support my missionary son? Or how can Matt and I support one another in differing churches? Or how can I still call myself a Christian while not subscribing to the inerrancy of the Bible? Or what the heck kind of crazy *progressive* theology have I adapted anyway? How do we even raise children like this?
Love.
I love them. Matt loves them. We love each other. I trust their hearts. I trust how much they love Christ and how much they want to follow his example. I trust that God sees them and speaks to them RIGHT where they are. We don't try to missionary each other. OK, Laura... But, seriously, how can you support your LDS son on a mission when you don't believe the same??
Well, I also vividly know what it's like to be excluded from being a bridesmaid in my friend's wedding because my theology is no longer valid in her eyes. I know what it's like to have my loved one refuse to be my maid of honor because I am not the right kind of Christian anymore. I also know what it's like to exclude loved ones from my wedding in the name of religion only to deeply regret and grieve over that choice later in life. I know what it's like to be told I'm being led away by sinful teachers. I know what it's like to tell other Christians that I am in the "one true" Christian church and I have the fullness of the scriptures and my church has the ordinances they need to be with their family eternally. Or else.
I know what it's like now to be both the one excluded and the one excluding others. I don't want to be either any longer. I support my loved ones because I know what it's like to NOT be supported AND because I know what it's like to withhold support on the basis of beliefs. (Even though I *thought* I was being loving and supportive by holding fast to my beliefs!) I don't think Jesus would do either. Neither one of those options teaches me to love like Christ. They both reek of pharisaical arrogance and I want so much to be done with that. I still, somehow, keep finding it in myself, though. I hope that everyone in our family will learn they are welcome and loved regardless of their spiritual beliefs. I hope they know they can ask questions and push back against theologies or doctrines that don't sit right with them.
Please know that we are doing this very imperfectly. I'm falling and getting back up over and over. I also want to make it clear that we don't do this successfully by avoiding hard conversations or by pretending the differences don't exist. We do it by speaking openly and kindly to one another, without defensiveness (as best we can). We do this by trying to ask ourselves and each other:
Who in our lives can we love better?
Is it my friend who is gay?
Is it my friend who is judgmental?
Is it my friend who is in the middle of divorce?
Is it my friend who has committed adultery and has been abandoned by all her friends?
Is it my friend who is in faith crisis?
Is it my friend who is terminally ill?
Is it my friend who disagrees with me politically?
Is it my friend with a transgender child?
When our children see us *trying* to love others who are struggling or others who are different than us, it's so much easier to come home and unite on what we have in common and try to be more open and respectful of the differences.
One of the many authors who has brought me comfort over the past few years is Rachel Held Evans:
“As the story goes…
The evangelist Phillip, was sent by the Holy Spirit to the wilderness road from Jerusalem to Gaza. There, Philip encountered a royal Eunuch from the distant land of Ethiopia, who was reading Hebrew Scripture from the back of his chariot. As a Eunuch, this man would have been strictly prohibited from entering temple grounds, much less participating in it’s rituals. He was a sexual and ethnic minority, and as such would have been totally excluded from the religious community in Jerusalem; even if he believed in Israel’s God. Had he approached the temple for baptism, he would have been turned away. Yet, this religious outcast, this man who was thought to be in a perpetual state of uncleanliness, had gotten his hands on a sacred scroll and found a passage from the prophet Isaiah that resonated profoundly with his own experience.
Overcome, the Eunuch looked out at the rugged landscape that surrounded them and shouted,
“Look! Here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?"....
At another time in his life, Philip might have pointed to the Eunuch's ethnicity, or his anatomy, or his inability to gain access to the ceremonial baths that made a person clean. But instead, with no additional conversation between the travelers, the chariot lumbered to a halt and Philip baptized the Eunuch in the first body of water the two could find. It might have been a river, or it might have been a puddle in the road.
Philip got out of God’s way. He remembered that What makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in.
Nothing could prevent the Eunuch from being baptized. For the mountains of obstruction had been plowed down, the rocky hills had been made smooth and God had cleared a path. There was holy water everywhere. Two thousand years later, John’s (the Baptist) call remains a wilderness call; a cry from the margins. Because we religious types are really good at building walls and retreating to temples. We are good at making mountains out of our ideologies, obstructions out of our theologies, and hills out of our screwed up notions of who’s in and who’s out; who’s worthy and who’s unworthy. We’re good at getting in the way. Perhaps we are afraid that if we move, God might use people and methods we don’t approve of; that rules will be broken and theologies questioned. Perhaps we are afraid that if we get out of the way, this Grace thing might get out of hand. Well, guess what?
It already has. Grace got out of hand the moment the God of the universe hung on a Roman cross and with outstretched hands, looked out at those who had hung him there and declared, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Grace has been out of hand for over two thousand years now. We best get used to it.”- Rachel Held Evans
So, if our theology is attempting to obstruct others from God; If our theology is excluding others from the grace of Christ by saying they worship Jesus the wrong way, or our church is excluding people from communing with God or witnessing a marriage in its temples, or saying they worship a different Jesus or they were sprinkled instead of immersed or they wore a t- shirt at their baptism instead of a white dress, or were they baptized by a woman instead of a male priest? If our theology is harming folks to the point that they can no longer believe in God and then teaching us to vilify those folks we harmed….
Yeah, I don't have time for that anymore. I don't want to be a part of that anymore.
I have too many people to love.
As I have poured over the words of Christ, the actions of Christ, the teachings of Christ over the past few years, I have been taken aback at how virtually every move he made was to include those on the margins. The people he moved toward were OUTCASTS.
His birth was announced to shepherds, one of the lowest and least respected professions of the time.
He sat and visited and accepted a drink from the woman at the well.
He taught of the good Samaritan.
He called the uber religious of his day VIPERS.
He touched the woman with an issue of blood. She would have been considered ceremonially unclean, but he reached down and touched her.
He healed the lepers.
His crucifixion was witnessed by WOMEN because the men had all abandoned Him.
His resurrection was first revealed to women. WOMEN. Not men.
This process has been so interesting. I have lost Mormon friends and evangelical friends. But I have also found out who truly loves me for ME and not for my beliefs. I have learned who holds to the view that I am still not the *right* kind of Christian…
But I am with Christ. I am in Christ. I have always been with Christ. No one, no church, no leader can take that from me.
I get that my family may confuse you. My marriage may confuse you. My theology may confuse you. Because I don’t get my theology from you or your pastor or your prophet or your interpretation of scripture or their interpretation of scripture. I get my theology from Love. I get my theology from God, who, as I memorized from the time I could speak, is in reality, LOVE. And perhaps my theology frightens you because it is too expansive; it is too free; it is too wide. But that is the God I worship. One who is bigger than our denominations or our sects or even our beliefs.
My theology is this: Through the person of Christ, God showed us how to become like God; to become LOVE. He walked, breathed and spoke radical love and acceptance to the outcasts. He laid down His life as a symbol, a sign that IT IS FINISHED. He showed us that the kingdom of heaven is HERE; that it can be in us NOW. We can experience the kingdom of heaven now as we follow Christ’s teachings. If I am overcome with guilt for saying a curse word under my breath on the frantic drive to the school pick up line, but I am not reaching out in love to accept my gay neighbor, my foster child, my hungry friend, my neighbor with depression, my neighbor with doubt, my grieving neighbor??
I am but a clanging cymbal.
As Paul said,
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:1
Does our theology emphasize order, structure, covenants, ordinances, liturgy, over the radical love and acceptance modeled by Christ? If I have to choose one over the other, I hope I will choose love every time. Perhaps that is like jumping out of the safety of a fishbowl and into the vast wide ocean. Perhaps it seems dangerous. But I realized that the danger was really the loss of the approval of my community, not the loss of salvation. I'm beginning to see that God’s grace is as vast as the ocean. Its wild beauty may seem frightening as you stare at the endless expanse of water. But the openness of God's love is the only safety I now crave.
Sometimes I wonder how much I’ve missed because I haven’t bothered to look, because I wrote off that church or that person or that denomination because I assumed God to be absent when there is not a corner of this world that God has abandoned.- Rachel Held Evans
So, let me tell you a little secret:
God is with my Mormon Missionary Son.
The Holy Spirit was present at my daughter's LDS baptism.
Christ was as present with me as I sat OUTSIDE the LDS temple during my niece's sealing as He was present for those inside the temple.
Christ is with my mother in her Bible Fellowship church.
God is with my neighbor on her Sunday morning hikes.
God is with my loved ones in their conservative Christian church.
The Holy Spirit is ever present at the progressive church.
God has not abandoned my friends hurt so deeply by religion that they no longer believe God is there.
God's Spirit is with my Jewish neighbor, my Sikh neighbor, my Muslim neighbor as well.
We want to put God in a box, to say that WE know God better than they do; but God just doesn't fit in our boxes.
And I for one, am so glad.
God simply IS with us. We cannot do anything to make God love us more than He does right now.
