One Person's Take

“It was Christians protecting Christians from Christians.”

So ran one line of a short article about Portland believers who blocked Westboro Baptist protestors from sight at a conference for the Christian Gay Network.

I heard about the conference and the protest yesterday from a friend of mine who is attending the conference. Seeing a retweeted picture of one of the conference goers posing with two protestors on either side of her was like a punch in my gut, especially because of her comment that she told them that she loved them all.

“Who is the better Christian here???” I asked myself. Not that I ought to judge “how Christian” someone is…..perhaps the better question is, “Who displayed a more Christ-like attitude here?” Was it the church protestors with their signs of hate and hell condemnation? Or was it the conference attendee who told those spewing such words that she loved them?

Wrestling with this issue embedded itself so much in my mind that I dreamed about it in some sort of fashion last night as I slept. I don’t even quite remember the details of it, I just know that was involved in it somehow.

Then I woke up this morning and went to church, where the sermon was on Romans 14:13-19, which says in part “Therefore do not let your good be spoken of as evil; for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit….Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and things by which one may edify another” (vs. 16-17, 19). The sermon came in the context of this new year’s theme at the organization where I work: “Your kingdom come” from the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, and as I listened to the preaching I couldn’t help but think of the situation in Portland.

Because, of course, the issue is much much deeper than what happened recently at one conference. I am from a country where an immense political/legal battle is being waged about states legalizing gay marriage. I currently live in a country where they have passed laws instituting strict penalties for carrying out homosexual acts. This issue is one of the major debates of our current generation, all over the world.

And it’s not an issue that I will even attempt to scratch the surface of here.

I am very sure I would never have gone as far as the Westboro protestors go. But my conservative background means that I grew up with definite opinions about the issue that were closer to them than to the Portland counter-protestors. It used to be easy to give pat answers to this question…but it is not anymore.

The brief reason for that is having friends whose sexuality does not fit into the easy, simple categories. I have three, that I know of, who have struggled with questions about their sexuality and gender. And as I have heard their stories and the stories of others like them, I have lost my ability to quickly judge people and dump them in a particular spiritual box based on this issue alone. All three of these friends attended the same Christian college that I did – and I know that at least one of them desires very much to know and love God just like I do.

The fact that we definitely do not see eye to eye regarding all topics—particularly this one—does not one bit change the fact that I care about each of them as individuals bearing the image of God, individuals for whom Christ died. I love them, and I pray for them just as I do many of my other friends.

In all honesty, I don’t always know what to say or how to respond. I don’t know how to reconcile the beliefs I was raised with to the questions—and sometimes hurt and pain—that I have seen my friends deal with. Sometimes a small part of me wishes I could ignore their stories and go back to my easy answers.

But life isn’t about easy answers. And life definitely does not rely on me for the final decisions—Thank God for that!

In the end, I am thankful for these three friends of mine. I am so thankful for them, for their courage and their willingness to share about themselves and their struggles. And the real fact is that I wouldn’t change my knowledge of their stories even if I could. Because hearing their realities has peeled another layer of judgmental scales off my eyes.

We are all broken people. We—each and every one of us—face personal challenges that we must wrestle with. And often the decision is at least partly up to us: Are we going to allow our trials and struggles to pull us away from God? Will we try to do life on our own strength? Or will we see those challenges and trials for what they are: a reminder of our daily need to run towards God and to rely on Him for EVERYTHING, to trust in His wisdom and His plan of redeeming ALL THINGS.

Because in the end, it is to Him that I turn when my earthly mind can’t rectify my friends’ stories with my original beliefs. When I don’t know the answers, it’s a reminder to trust the One who does. And so, I do not end this post with a pat theory that will solve all the problems. But I do end it with a call: A call to righteousness and peace and joy in our Paraclete, a call to love and work together to build one another up, not to judge and condemn.

The Likely Disciple

I’ve been walking around in a bit of a daze. A few minutes ago, as I write this, I finished reading a book. A book that I am still processing. It’s a make-Esther-stop-and-think kind of book. So what do I do in response?? I write.

Imagine this: a young college journalist from Brown University—the Ivy League school, not “my” JOHN Brown University—decides to spend a semester at Liberty University, a Christian school founded by Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority. No, the student is not a Christian. He doesn’t believe much of what Liberty University exists to teach. But he goes as an experiment, to see if these conservative evangelicals are as crazy as the secular world thinks they are.

And, like any good journalist, he writes about his experience. The result is the 300-page book (in the Kindle edition) that I finished reading this evening—The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University. My mentor and high school teacher/boss told me about the book and then sent it to me as a gift. Over the past week, in my down-time (sometimes just waiting for something on the Internet to load, or just for the Internet to work again) I dove in.

As I said above, the book made me think. In some ways, that is to be expected. Like the author Kevin Roose, I have practiced journalism. I attended a Christian college. But those are the similarities, not what made me think. What tickled my brain and made me feel the need to do some processing-writing were the differences.

He came at his project as an outsider. He did everything he could to blend in at Liberty because he wanted to get the real flavor there—but he did not naturally buy into any of it. And by the end of the book {SPOILER ALERT}, his experience failed to convince him that he needed to become an evangelical Christian.

If he is the Unlikely Disciple, that makes me a Likely Disciple. Not only did I grow up in a Christian home, I was homeschooled in a conservative Christian home. In all my 23.5 years, I’ve only been outside of the Christian bubble for about nine months—seven months living in China when I was 12 (though the type of community I was part of there makes it hardly count) and two months in a secular study/internship program in Washington, D.C. I attended a Christian college (that was actually less conservative than me), had a second internship with a Christian organization, and now find myself in the African bush with missionaries because God called me here when He shut the doors I had planned on.

So while we have a couple similarities, Kevin and I are worlds apart. What stopped me in my tracks tonight was the fact that he went through all the motions of being a good student at a conservative Christian university—one that was a lot more strict in its rules than where I went! The only thing he admits to getting reprimanded for is falling asleep in the chapel service. He tells about some of the Christian students there who were doing worse than he did during his “study abroad” semester at Liberty University.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that his book made me stop and think about what it is that makes me a Christian, and why it is that I do the things I do. It’s unnerving to think that it was so relatively easy for Kevin’s dorm-mates and class-mates to assume that he was a believer because of where he was and what motions he was going through. No, his book is not making me question my faith or doubt my salvation. But it certainly serves as a reminder that sometimes only God knows the heart, and that no amount of outward good deeds or rule following makes one a child of God.

It was enlightening to read his book because of his outsider-passing-as-insider status. He wrote his tale very well, tailoring it to be accessible to any audience. As he tells of struggling through taking Bible classes and learning the ropes of an evangelical community, he explains things that we Christians just take for granted. He did not naturally approach things with “biblical worldview glasses,” so his book is a chance to see my comfortable environment the way a non-Christian would. He’s honest—sometimes brutally so—about what bothers him; about where his real views clash with the persona he took on for a few months. He doesn’t pull punches, but at the same time he went through the process with a fairly open mind and he came out the other side with a somewhat-revised view of the conservative Christian community.

What I read in that book ranged from convicting to embarrassing to exciting to discouraging. At times, I wanted to cheer as he talked about his dorm-mates who encouraged him spiritually, even when they didn’t know they were witnessing to an unbeliever. In other sections, it bothered me—as it often does—to read a secular opinion of conservative Christian views about homosexuality, creationism, or environmentalism. Those are things that even my Christian college education have made me wrestle with over the past four-to-five years.

Of course, there’s a difference between how I have wrestled with it and how he did. Unlike Kevin, I am convinced of the truth of Christianity. That naturally does not mean that I have everything figured out theologically, or that I always live out/apply what I believe to my daily practice. At the end of the day, our starting points do make a big difference on where we end up on things.

And when I finished the last page of the book, before the swirling thoughts took over my brain, I prayed for Kevin. Because whether he believes it or not—and regardless of the fact that I believe some of his critiques were valid—I know he needs a Savior. We ALL do because we are all sinners. He spent a semester doing all the “right” Christian things. But that’s not going to save him, just as that is not what saves me. Whether unlikely or likely, Christ calls each of us to be His disciple. To follow Him on the path of spiritual transformation—to be conformed to His image. And like it or not, it’s a journey that never ends in this life.

HO Week 4 (9/17) - Calling

My Natural Strengths

In this week's posts, students are to compare their spiritual gifts with their strengths (based on the StrengthsQuest survey). So as a refresher: my top spiritual gifts are Faith, Serving, and Leadership/Administration or Pastoring/Shepherding. My top five strengths (from when I took the test for Gateway last fall) are Belief, Responsibility, Discipline, Intellection, and Connectedness.

Belief obviously ties into Faith. This is one that I hadn't really thought about/recognized in myself until I did these tests. I think it's because my beliefs and faith are such a part of me that I don't think that's unusual. I feel as though all Christians should care that much about their beliefs. The down side to this is that I can tend to be very set in my ways, even in minor things, because I take my beliefs so seriously. Intellection probably goes along with Faith as well. I have strong beliefs, but I want to know why I believe those things as well. I want it to be grounded in reason, not "just because."

Responsibility and Discipline go along with Leadership/Administration and probably with Serving too. An example is the work I did the last two years of high school. I had a class with the same teacher for three years, and after the first year she asked me to be her assistant, probably because of the discipline I had exhibited in class. Ever since then, I have been her administrative assistant of sorts, helping her each summer get things set up for the new school year. This ties together all four of the things listed above - and I love doing it!

When I took the StrengthsQuest, I was most surprised by "Connectedness." I was a little worried about it too, because it sounded almost New Age-ish. I have come to realize that I do look for connections in things though. I feel like this might go along with the Shepherding gift - of wanting to show people that they're not just out on their own, they are part of a bigger plan: God's plan.

HO Week 2 (9/3)

How to Impact the Culture

[It's week 2 because there wasn't a post for the first week. And yes, I am late on posting this!]

For the second week of Honors Orientation, we read the first chapter of Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Through his book, Noll makes the case that Christians have not given themselves enough to the pursuit of intellectualism. While I strongly disagree with his categorization of creationists, I did agree with his main point and many of the things he said. It was a thought provoking chapter, and I certainly want to read the rest of the book.

Noll talks about the "life of the mind," meaning "the effort to think like a Christian—to think within a specifically Christian framework—across the whole spectrum of modern learning" (7). I am familiar with this same concept being referred to as having a Christian world view. Noll goes on to describe three areas where Christians have failed to be active participants: the areas of culture, intellect, and theology.

I see myself as most likely to impact the area of culture. Noll makes the case that Christians focus too much on “urgencies of the moment” or “over-simplification of issues” when they try to change the culture (12), and I can see his point. The reason I am studying journalism is so that I will hopefully be able to play a part in changing the culture of America. I have strong beliefs about many cultural issues, and I believe that God has given me the gift of writing well. I want to combine these two characteristics by writing as a political or cultural analyst, encouraging Christians to think about issues from a Christian world view.