I wish I didn't doubt, but...

My last blog post ended like this: “In summary: praise the Lord, healing is real…”

I feel like those phrases are among those that get tossed about easily in Christian culture, and, honestly, feel like the depth and magnitude of their meaning has been significantly deflated as a result. In the language of “Christianese”, these are among a series of mystic catch phrases that make many non-believers and Christians alike, cringe and scoff. Generally, I find myself in the cringing crowd, and try to use these phrases only sparingly, when I truly feel conviction of their reality. The truth is, when things aren’t going so well, I doubt the truth of these statements, the same way any other inquisitive human would. When I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, shaking, with my stomach churning, often after a day full of praise to the Lord for how far he has brought me along this healing journey, it’s very hard to believe that healing is real, and true, and has been happening. Similarly, I can barely imagine what it must be like to believe or even utter the words “God is good” after a couple loses their unborn baby, or a single-income family loses that source of income, or a person is evicted from their home and forced out onto the street. How could a God who is good allow these things to happen? If we don’t doubt the truth, even privately in our own minds, even momentarily, how can we ever discover and fully know it?

I’ve had pretty low self-esteem throughout most of the seasons of my life, particularly socially. I always felt somehow different from the other kids, and unable to fit in, and those suspicions of abnormality were, in one way, confirmed to me in grade 3. I was hand-picked to miss a period of math once a week to be part of a mentorship group with a guidance counselor with a bunch of other socially awkward kids, the purpose being to learn how to be less socially awkward and anxious and learn how to make friends—please, parents, don’t do this to your children. Nothing says “you’re weird and unlikeable and there’s something wrong with you” quite like “we’re pulling you out of math class today because we’ve noticed you don’t have any friends, so come let us teach you this basic life skill of acquiring human friendship that you just can’t seem to figure out”. People like me internalize blame, hate ourselves very deeply for it, and also internalize that hate, all while trying to project an image that is at least likeable. When that image fails, we put up walls, isolate ourselves, and stew in our own self-hate and hopelessness, wondering why we just can’t get it together and be normal. Grade 3 me, in all my wisdom (ha!), figured that I didn’t have any friends because I was too smart, so, naturally, to project an image of likeability and approachability, I pretended to be stupid, purposely spelling words incorrectly, and producing wrong answers to math problems. For the record, it didn’t result in any friendships.

About 2 years ago, when I started hanging out with Christians, I was exposed to a lot of new things, particularly relating to charismatic ministry, that I hadn’t experienced before. My first tangible experience of knowing in my heart, mind, body, and soul, the peace, presence, and truth that God is real and loves me—that moment was powerful. It left me knowing God in a way I didn’t know existed, and I wanted that reassurance of his presence all the time. That’s not the way it works, though. The Holy Spirit is not a dimmer switch that you can turn on and off as you please, although some Christians will have you believe that, and diminish all your problems to a lack of faith or spirituality, or ability to step up to the plate and do whatever it is they silently expect you to do. Enough exposure to (or, at least, perception of) that, coupled with my tendency to internalize guilt and blame, has often made me question God’s love for me, and my place in his kingdom. Apparently God outright speaks to some people with words or images or in dreams, but I’m not convinced that I’m one of those people. I don’t doubt that those are ways by which God communicates with humans, just the notion that I am a human he wants to communicate with in this way. Furthermore, when I do encounter inexplicable voices in my head, or dreams, they’re always rationalized somehow: “you only think God is telling you that because that’s what you want to hear”, or “boy, you have some effed up subconscious to come up with those crazy dreams”.

I wish I didn’t doubt. I wish I could just believe that God is real and good, all the time. Last week, Western had a crazy worship night with like 500 people. The sheer number of people in the room when we entered was overwhelming and intimidating, but I was feeling pretty good about the Lord at that time, and he’s proven to me numerous times that removing anxieties is within the realm of his power. I didn’t know very many of the songs, the music was too loud, the lights were over-stimulating (I secretly felt like an old person at a rock concert), but I knew that God was present in that space. At one point during one of the songs, I closed my eyes and heard a gentle, but bold and serious voice: “Helen, I love you—I know you love me, please just let me love you…” And I got emotional for a sec as I tend to do, but I knew within a minute that this was an experience that I would scrutinize, and probably doubt. I allowed the thought trail to continue on: “ha, heard that one before ‘God’, I mean, voice in my head. Of course I want to hear in words that someone loves me because I spend most of my time alone or at work and seldom ever hear those words, of course that’s the first thing I’d think of that I’d like God to affirm to me”. 

But that last part though, that was different.

“I know you love me…” well, yeah, I’m a hopeless, awkward screw-up, and I’ve tried so hard to not be those things, and some days I feel like I only have hate and jealousy toward most other humans, and I’m a horrible, unlovable person because of it. I can’t put trust or hope in myself, or any other humans, or knowledge, power, or wealth for that matter (I don’t have enviable amounts of any of those to begin with), but God has proven his presence and provision through the fiercest trials, when I discovered the endpoint to what human knowledge, power, and wealth can accomplish. How can I have anything but love and gratitude to such a God? I do love him.

“…please just let me love you...” this part is challenging. I can’t even love myself. I have a knack for suffocating and snuffing out nearly every human relationship that I have ever entered for one reason or another. I feel dirty, unworthy, selfish, stuck-up, guarded, and angry all at the same time when I think about salvation. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’d even consider myself “saved” because blackness in my mind absolutely rejects the idea of grace. It’s not for me. I’m not a miraculous conversion story. I’m a member of white, middle-class western society, happily blind and ignorant to most of my privilege. I look around at people singing songs of praise in church and think, “oh, how nice it must be for these people to truly accept and believe” borderline unaware of the blatant bitter sarcasm in my own thoughts. My life felt raw before I became a Christian. I didn’t feel fake or censored in front of my Christian and non-Christian friends. I felt like I could say and do what I wanted without having to face the scrutiny of “is this what Jesus would do?” or “have you asked Jesus about this?” or “what does Jesus say about that?” like Jesus is a ouija board. And then I perceive that my thoughts are misaligned with the thoughts of Jesus, so, fuelled by my own fraudulence, the cycle of self-hate continues. Isolation is a tough point in that cycle, where I feel like there’s no one who will understand this sitting-on-the-fence or on-one-side-feeling-like-this-side-wants-me-on-the-other mentality, and “nobody loves you” starts ringing through my brain but I say nothing about that to the Christians because they respond with “lies from Satan!” like he is an easily distinguishable separate ouija board (and having such an opinion is me obviously being not judgmental at all). I’m conceited, jaded, two-faced, fraudulent, sarcastic, angry, confused, depressed, doubtful, ugly, and feel like I don’t belong anywhere, yet someone is pleading with me, “…please just let me love you…”

I think I’d better figure out how to let the guard down and make that happen.

For Christmas, my mom gave me this CD, Welcome to the New by Mercy Me. At first I thought, ok mom, that’s cool that you got me a CD of Christian music because you think I’m super into that kind of thing because I go to church (I actually really dislike most Christian music—it’s just badly-written, poorly-performed, over-produced trash), but then she was like, yeah, I really like this one song on this album, and she starts singing it, and I’m thinking, what the heck? You listen to Christian music? Why? It’s crap, mom! But on one car trip to visit a friend a couple of hours away over the break, I popped it in the car just to see what it was all about. That CD has not exited my car CD player since it was first inserted. It’s a really remarkable album, exploring a bunch of different musical styles, but the best thing about it is the truth in the lyrics. They’re not bending over backwards to work scripture in there (not that there aren’t some excellent songs out there based on scripture), or repeating choruses a billion and a half times at the end waiting for  the last person to finish being prayed for at the altar call. No. They’re real, and raw, based on real human experience of encounter of God. The first track literally had me in tears while I was driving, listening to it for the first time. Check out these lyrics: (and check out the song here)

Got to live right just stay in line
You’ve heard it all at least a million times
And like me you believed it
They said it wasn't works
But trying harder wouldn't hurt
It sounds so crazy now
But back then you couldn't see it

But now here you are
Eyes open wide
It’s like you’re seeing grace
In a brand new light
For the first time

Let us be the first to welcome you
Welcome to the 
Life you thought was too good to be true
Welcome to the new

You broke your back kept all the rules
Jumped through the hoops
To make God approve of you
Oh tell me was it worth it
The whole time you were spinning plates
Did you stop to think that 
Maybe He is ok with just you
There’s no need to join the circus

And now here you are
A new point of view
And now it all makes sense
Why it's called the Good News
And oh

Look at you
Shiny and new
Look at you
You got the proof of purchase
You were purchased
‘Cause you're worth it
Look at you
Finding your groove
Don’t you dare think
That you're not worth it.
‘Cause you're worth it
Yeah you're worth it

I wish grace was simple. I wish I didn’t doubt. I wish I could love myself and allow others to love me. I’d like to have hope that all these things will happen. In my human shortsightedness, I’m blind, but that also gives me the opportunity to trust God, who somehow finds ways to love me even when I don’t want to let him.

Happy New Year, it's Time to DO Something

I’ve felt better over the last 5 days than I have in about 8 years. 

Last Saturday night, I came to the decision that I wasn’t going to go to church the next day. I was really tired and unlikely to wake up on time, for one, and I had attended a church the previous week that I had been to once before, and although I enjoyed the service, I didn’t really feel comfortable there. I felt like an outsider, and no one spoke to me other than the greeter who gave me a bulletin, and I’m not the type of person to jump into conversation as a stranger among a group of friends, so I left promptly after the service was over. I didn’t have any desire to play the same game of roulette with a different congregation, but I knew that I was going to end up disappointed and sorry if I didn’t go to church, and that if I did go, I’d get something out of it, God would use something to speak to me.

But I didn’t go.

I spent hour after hour watching marathons of renovation shows and British dramas, obsessively checking my social media accounts during every commercial break the way that some people check their refrigerators, afraid to miss out on anything new that might appear. I was angry at myself for not going to church, or going out of the house, or even getting dressed. After about 14 hours (yeah, disgusting, right?) of binge-watching, the questions bouncing around in my mind became more prominent than the removal of asbestos tiles and tone of hardwood that was going into that downtown semi, or the intricate terms of various alliances that were being formed by historical, fictional characters.

When, how, and why did this become my life?

The instinctive answer to the “when” was when anxiety became a part of my life as something that I consciously and constantly had to deal with on a daily basis, but different occurrences from even before that yielded similar results. In high school, I tore a ligament in my knee, which ended my athletic career for the time being, since it was a year between the injury and the surgery, and a year of recovery following that. After that ordeal, I babied that leg for years until I developed severe symptoms of overcompensation in the other leg, which required further medical treatment. I was so afraid of getting hurt again that my efforts ended up being harmful.

Almost 3.5 years ago, after living as normal of a life as I could for the previous 4 years dominated by knee injuries, life took another blind turn. All of a sudden, I was having 3 violent panic attacks a day and had to wait until I was feeling well to do anything that involved leaving the house, and even then it was a gamble. Mental illness is SO different than physical illness. It’s easy to Velcro on a futuristic-looking brace and be excused from potentially harmful components of a game or workout session. It’s so much harder to explain to your TA that you haven’t been to your tutorial in a month because you literally are unable to get out of bed without hyperventilating, gagging, and crying, and so aren’t able to get to the doctor to get a doctor’s note.

So the posture quickly becomes one of self-preservation when one’s safety or well-being seems threatened. That’s something I acknowledge that I tend to gravitate towards, and I’ve been working on it. To other people, it sometimes comes across as selfishness, or attention-seeking… There’s been a lot of healing that’s had to happen over the last year or so as a result of me believing those lies about myself.

When you have a mental illness, your self-worth is in the toilet. It is no source of pride or confidence to wake up in the morning and only be able to cry because the challenges embedded in the tasks of daily living are insurmountable in your present state, and there’s nothing anyone can do to take it all away. Adding insult to injury is when:

1)      society tells you that you need to make your own happiness (kind of impossible when you can’t even make yourself dinner because you can’t get out to do shopping)

2)      individuals with no experience or knowledge of the disease treat it like it’s nothing, and you’re being way overdramatic

3)      the church and its people say things like “you don’t need to have everything together to go help and serve this other person/group of people” (meaning: “you don’t have to be a perfect person” and not “you don’t have to be able to do anything”), or dismiss mental illness as spiritual inadequacy, or demon possession

It’s been a rough few years, and I’ve been hurt in all of these ways and more, and it’s chipped away at my self-worth piece-by-piece until there’s been nearly nothing left and I’ve just gotten up in the morning and cried because I was still alive and nothing had changed—for weeks on end! I knew that God loved me, that that was truth, but when your self-worth is swirling down the pipe after that flush and you believe that you are nothing, anyone else’s words and thoughts become more credible than your own, and you can start believing some really hurtful things about yourself if the people around you are not supportive, or have a different idea than the gospel of love and healing.

Permanent change doesn’t happen quickly, or easily, or painlessly, but the alternative is extremely unappealing. I want to change. I want to be uninhibited by physical and mental afflictions. I want to be confident in the truth that God loves me, and to rest in that. I want to take risks and live the full life that he intended me to live, without guarding myself from irrational circumstances. God has proven to me time and time again, that although things are not always comfortable, he is with me, protecting me, and I will be okay. I want to be convicted of that on a much deeper level this year, and beyond. I’m making a conscious effort to step into that conviction this year, going out of my way to go places and do things where I would’ve preferred to stay home and do nothing before, just to prove to myself that it’s okay, and that I can do it because I’m relying on the unwavering strength of the Almighty. I’m bound and determined to get my old life back—my old, uninhibited, confident life—the only difference this time around is that the Lord is in the picture, and has convicted me time and time again that things are so much better when he is there, and that I need him there.

This has been an incredibly slow, and, at times, painful process of healing that has been full of setbacks, but for the first time ever, I firmly believe that healing is happening. Healing is real, and it is something that God wants for his children. It doesn’t happen when or how you tell it to, and not as a result of you or others doing anything other than asking for it, but it is absolutely real!

¹⁶ So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, ¹⁸ as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. – 2 Corinthians 4: 16-18

Truth. I can’t even say it any better than Paul does here. I put this passage on a sticky note on my desktop almost a year ago, with little conviction that it was truth, but reasonable conviction that it was something I needed to let sink in, and it has sat there, and sat there, and I see it multiple times a day. I’ve scoffed at it, sworn at it, read multiple commentaries on the passage, called myself the exception to the rule because “there is no way this is true and I am being renewed because I feel like shit every day and this is only getting worse and I feel like there’s no one to talk to about it and God isn’t listening to me…” and then the thing that you’ve been praying for for years starts actually happening, and you finally gain the wisdom and perspective to sort of begin to grasp what’s really been going on.

One last resolution: I want to help people affected by mental illness. This is the loneliest life ever, and even if you have people who support you, that doesn’t mean that they understand what you’re going through. You’re always afraid of people dismissing you when you tell them how you really feel, or that they’ll overreact, or that the people who knew you as the person you were are going to see you differently and that it will ruin those relationships. It sucks. I’ve been through it and I have no idea what it looks like to effectively minister to these people, other than coming alongside, sitting, listening, and being patient. It’s not very glamourous, and probably really messy, and likely won’t produce observable change in a relatively short period of time like some other forms of ministry, but I really believe that it is very important, and often overlooked because it’s literally invisible most of the time. It doesn’t have the appeal of building a school in Central America or holding orphan babies in Africa, or even helping students meet Jesus, and honestly, that makes me kind of ticked, because it’s just as needed as all of those things.

In summary: praise the Lord, healing is real, and unresolved angst that I hope leads to something larger and more important.

Can we all be human this Christmas?

Christmas is hard.

I absolutely adore the time off work, getting together with friends and family, the music, the food, the general festivities, and even the gifts, but none of those change the fact that I am human. None of my problems magically disappear when December 1^st rolls around and we enter this season of hope, peace, love, joy, and giving. Yet, I feel pressured to hide away all the stress, anxiety, depression, and angst that seem to run even more rampant than usual during this month, and paste on an over-the-top happy façade that says: “my life is perfect, and I’m having you over right now over eggnog and cookies at my perfectly decorated house full of love just to prove that to you—you should feel happy for me, or shitty about yourself so that I feel superior to you in some way because that validates my twisted psychological needs…”

No. Just, no.

I don’t often like getting preachy, because I feel like everything I say gets intensely scrutinized, or that I’m believing something “wrong” or misinterpreting something else, or that people just stop listening as soon as I drop the J-bomb thinking I’m some sort of weird, fundamentalist religious wacko without the balls to admit that I have my own human problems and doubts. But, I do believe that Jesus was fully God and fully human. He came to earth not to trumpet himself above us, but to be holy, yet approachable—to show the love and care of the father as a human in the flesh. Yes, there is the atonement for sins part as well, but when we herald that above the gentle, meek, humble, ready-to-get-his-hands-dirty human that Jesus was, we make him seem more distant from ourselves as humans, and less accessible.

If our lives were as perfect as we like to make them seem at this time of year, what need would we have for Jesus? If I had no mental health issues, a perfect family, and an infinite amount of money, and if I somehow magically felt adequate amounts of joy, peace, and love all the time, I guarantee that I never would have ever had any questions about Jesus, and sought answers. Christmas as a Hallmark, consumerist holiday has absolutely poisoned us. “Here, buy all of these material things on credit that you can’t afford so that you’ll be stuff rich and cash poor, but at least able to show your neighbours that you don’t have money to pay for stuff, so your life must be better than theirs, even though you’re both living paycheque to paycheque.”

No.

How about: “I’m human. I’m broken. I struggle with x, y, and z. I NEED a God who loves me enough to come down to my level and sit with me, cry with me, hurt with me, laugh with me, walk with me, and stay with me.”

Instead of trying to hide our brokenness under mountains of red and green, silver and gold, delicious food, and gifts, how about we get into community with one another as humans, be vulnerable about that brokenness with one another, lift up one voice to God, and celebrate that he cares and knows our struggles because he gave us his son to come live among us humbly, in full humanness.

Just a thought.

Sometimes I have bad days

Sometimes, I still have bad days. Days where my brain reminds me that it’s still sick, despite all the positive self-talk, getting off the drugs, and being discharged from specialists and therapists. What I heard from all of those people, myself included at the time, was only the same message that any mental patient dreams of hearing in their heart of hearts: “it’s gone, you don’t need this label anymore, you’re good.” A more accurate translation of those words and occurrences would be something like: “now we’ve reached a point where you’re relatively stable, and you’ve demonstrated the ability to not control, but manage the symptoms.” I still have bad days, where sometimes I feel like the best way to manage the nausea, lightheadedness, panic, and general depression is to just stop everything and stay out of the way, and try to think about what’s really going on.

And I feel like people judge me for it, but not as harshly as I judge myself. “No one else cries and hits themselves while they drive. No one else has to worry about having to make the last minute call over whether or not they’ll be okay to go to work, and worry about rescheduling clients if the day seems too big of a stretch. No one else talks about this as openly as you do. No one else worries about whether or not people are too concerned about them. You must only do this because you’re selfish and want attention. No one else wants to see you like this or try to figure it out, so just go be alone, don’t get anyone else involved.” It’s hard to sift out the lies from the not-lies.

If your mind is like a sieve, the lies are sand. They’re very, very present, but only for a brief moment. The truths are like rocks, they’re not going anywhere, but sometimes when a fresh load of sand joins the party, they’re harder to find. Sometimes the panning turns the rocks over, exposing a new side of the truth, which can be scary at first, but it gets thrown into the roster with all the other truths once its threat is debunked. Then, sometimes there are clumps of dirt that are hard to distinguish from rocks; the lies that look and sound so much like truth that you have to poke and chip away at them over and over again, from all sides before their fallibility becomes apparent.

It’s okay if there’s more than rocks in your sieve. There’s never going to be only rocks. Sometimes there are more dirt clumps than rocks, and the rocks are hard to identify, so you poke everything to see what stands and what disintegrates. God’s a rock, and I’ve spent some time poking at him recently, but he’s still in the sieve. I’m poking everything. I’m sorry if that makes me selfish, or doubtful, or stupid, or neurotic, or anything else I shouldn’t desire to be. God always has been here and will always continue to be here, but he isn’t a bandaid that I only break out when the bleeding gets bad. I absolutely don’t believe that he’s just a magical man in the sky, waiting for me to pray some magic words at the right moment before he feels like he can cure me of this disease. He gave me a brain, and although it sometimes doesn’t work the way it should, I think it’s really trying to believe that his purpose is greater than this affliction. It gets hard to believe on days like this, but these days also really make me realize that I have zero grounds to put any hope, investment, or downpayment on myself as a human individual—I am nothing, other humans are nothing, so my hope has to be in the Lord.

So, sometimes I have bad days, but God is sovereign every day. That’s cool.

Church: Are we living as the body of Christ?

This, I’m writing based on my own personal experience.  I’m sure religious scholars could have plenty to say on these topics, under “laboratory” or “ideal” conditions, of course.  There is certainly a time and place for those empirical observations from historical visions, but the battle is here, in the real world, right now, and things haven’t gone perfectly according to plan, as is incredibly evident.  It is my opinion that the North American church would not be struggling to retain the ground it still holds after several decades of dwindling membership, had things gone according to plan (that is to assume that the plan includes the growth of the local church).

So, a bit of background, for context’s sake: my family went to an Anglican church for the first 11 years of my life, and I was baptized there at the age of 2 months (or something like that).  After some political situation in the Anglican church at that time, we uprooted and attended a Presbyterian church for 7 years until we moved out of town.  During this time, as I became more independent and autonomous, I began questioning different aspects of faith, and didn’t think church was relevant—it was ritualistic, and I didn’t understand the appeal or importance of that religiosity.  I think I still believed in God, or some form of higher power, I just didn’t understand why that entity would need to be pleased, and why on earth it would find a bunch of old people who would be dead within the decade chanting half-hearted liturgies pleasing… Was this the way that these older people had done it for all their lives, and were we young people supposed to jump on this slow-moving bandwagon heading out into the middle of nowhere just for the sake of carrying on the religion? No thank you, said teenage Helen.  While I was in university, my parents moved and began attending another Presbyterian church that housed a considerably older and more religious congregation.  That drew me even farther away from the church, but I was in university and had more important things to do, like partying…

After a series of events, I found myself seeking Christian community on campus in 3^rd year, and became connected with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF), where I met Jesus, dove into the Word and learned more about the Kingdom of God than I had every Sunday for 20 years.  It puzzled me so much: how could I have attended church for nearly my entire life, and known so little about God and his kingdom, and never committed myself to Christ?  How had I gone from “church is stupid” to “I’m answering God’s call to mission in Bangladesh” to preaching sermons in church in less than a year? HOW?!

The answers still elude me.  My parents recently moved again, to another town, and this past Sunday (actually, like 6 weeks ago or something, I've been picking away at this piece for a while) the church that they have attended for the last 4 years requested all of our family members be present so they could give us a final farewell (the cutest!).  This summer the church has been going through the “Top 40 Hymns” as named by viewers of the BBC program, Songs of Praise, and each Sunday they sing 4 or 5 of them and one of them is chosen as the theme for the sermon.  I thought it was a pretty lame way to try and incorporate some pop-culture into the aging congregation, but actually, since many of the hymns are based on scripture, it has been fairly refreshing and back-to-basics, which I feel like all churches need, but particularly the high church.  Anyway, this Sunday the hymn that was preached on was “Just as I am”.  This hymn describes God’s willingness and delight to accept us as we are through all our doubts and imperfections—great message, no arguments there.  This hymn was described as the greatest altar-call hymn of all time.  The minister had to ask with a show of hands how many people in the congregation knew what an altar-call was: 3.  Three people knew, so the minister explained the nature of the altar-call: at the end of a worship service, people are invited to come forward and commit or recommit their lives to Christ and to receive prayer.  The minister was very clear in the sermon: “we don’t do altar-calls in the Presbyterian church”, which I understood, as "altar-calls are kind of a more charismatic/fundamentalist thing, and the high church is not exactly charismatic, or fundamentalist".   Then the minister went on to describe Canadian Presbyterian youth conference he had chaperoned in the 1990s, where the organizers had made an agreement with the guest speaker that he wouldn’t do any altar-calls because it would scare the children. I had problems with that:

1)      If something scares you, usually some of that element of fear stems from a lack of familiarity, and such fear promotes avoidance and a lack of understanding.  If we are going to live as the kingdom of God, we need to recognize that we have different traditions as Christians between denominations, and embrace and celebrate, or at least get to know these different traditions, recognizing them as of the same faith.  What better time to make this introduction than at a young age, when people are clean slates, not yet too jaded by sour experiences.

2)      FOLLOWING JESUS IS SCARY. Let’s just call that like it is.

3)      The questions of commitment: How, if at all, were these young people encouraged to commit their lives to Christ, and what do Presbyterians, and other traditions for that matter, believe to be the protocol for committing oneself to Christ?  Even deeper, if people are not committing themselves to Christ, how can there be any hope for raising up future generations of Christians, or creating new believers—how has this church been sustaining itself under these principles?  Does anyone believe that this method of non-committance is sustainable for the faith of individuals or the church as a whole? If so, why/how?  If not, are there any proposed changes, and what can we do about it?

The last question lingered in my head for an uncomfortably long time.  Earlier that week I had been sitting in my parents’ house, reading the Presbyterian Record that had been left on the coffee table.  It was littered with articles, editorials, letters, and reflections outlining the recently-passed general assembly, and how many parties left disgruntled that those at the conference were unable to discern whether or not Presbyterianism is still a relevant denomination in Canada, and how the conference-goers seemed to be more interested in talking amongst themselves to discern this, rather than praying and listening for the Lord.

The way I understand it (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, that’s happened before, I won’t explode): In Catholic and Anglican (and Lutheran?) churches, your parents have you baptized as an infant through the sprinkling of water (although being baptized later in life is possible in lower traditions), you learn about the faith for a few years, and when you’re about 13 you have a confirmation ceremony, where you affirm your belief in God and the resurrection, publicly professing your faith.  I don’t believe confirmation is mandated for all people of that age bracket, but if you have peers in your church or go to Catholic school or are not yet autonomous from your family at that age, I can see how confirmation can become a pressure test rather than an act of genuine faith.

The Low Church (keep in mind, this is an enormous generalization, mainly based upon my own recollections and observations) largely abstains from baptizing individuals until they are cognizant enough to make a commitment to Christ (i.e. adult baptism, many by immersion as opposed to the sprinkling on the forehead used by much of the high church).   I understand the rationale behind this to be manifold: an individual is owning this big, life-changing decision rather than having their parents or guardians make it for them; the principles for adult immersion baptisms are derived rather directly from the Bible, whereas the argument for infant baptisms appears to be much more indirect, implied, or embedded in one’s own conviction; baptism is a public declaration of an individual choosing to follow Jesus, and due to the public nature of this declaration, accountability and support for the baptizee are facilitated.

Then, there’s the grey area of the Presbyterian and Reformed churches (among other denominations); they do infant baptisms with sprinkling, or adult baptisms by immersion, as well as professions of faith: the professing individual shares a snippet of their testimony and, for lack of a better term, professes their faith in front of the congregation. I’ve seen this happen primarily in the late teen years, but I have no reason to believe that it can’t happen at other times in one’s life or faith journey.

There seems to be this multi-standard thing going on of ways you come to belong to a church.  Divisions exist between whom is committing the individual to Christ and striving to provide a nurturing, Christ-centred environment (the parents or the individual) as well as how that commitment takes place, and at what age.

Commitment: can we talk about that for a sec? I’ve heard the language before of “daily surrendering” of certain aspects of one’s life: habits, vices, wellbeing, thought patterns, etc. to God. I’d argue that we need daily recommitment of ourselves to Christ, and daily reminders of why we began to follow Jesus so that we may fall in love all over again and continue to desire that pull deeper into pursuit of Shalom in his kingdom—“rebirth”, as it were. I do have an extremely short attention span, but I’d wager that a one-time commitment as a teenager isn’t grounds for a sustainable, active faith in Christ for people like me, as well as those with much larger attention spans. What does the church believe about this? It seems to be a different answer according to a number of different factors, including: denomination, governing body (assembly, convention, diocese, etc.), church leadership, and individual members. I feel like all would agree, however, on some level, that there has to be action accompanying the commitment to Christ—it isn’t just, “yay, commitment, home free, I’ve bought my salvation and now there’s nothing else on the earth left for me to do, see you in the next life, God”… Of course, some churches are better at mentoring, nurturing, inspiring, and motivating that action than others, but I think it’s something that all churches and individuals can and should strive to improve. (Here I am on my soap box, pointing out the speck in my neighbour’s eye…)

Another thing that we as the church need to be mindful of are the associations and judgments we make upon individuals attached to a particular group, denominational or otherwise. I mean, when I go to a Presbyterian church with my parents and people find out that I go to a nondenominational church where we sing praise songs with a worship band and our pastor has full sleeve tattoos, they seem disappointed (ick face!), and make me feel like I’ve picked the wrong church because it’s different than what their ideal church would be. “Oh, you go to one of those churches” is a phrase I hear all too often—what does that even mean?! By the same token, when people ask me about how I came to faith, or about what my church background is, I don’t like mentioning the Anglican church, just because I’ve seen my peers raise some red flags (and have raised some myself) about the theology of some Anglicans. Then as soon as I mention the word “Presbyterian” the eyebrows start going up because it sounds more like a nationality or new-age sexual orientation or classification than a religious sect. And then the “how did you end up here?”s start making their way out, so I mention that I met Jesus as a university fellowship student after 18 years of weekly church and 2 of running away from church, and that I’d never even heard that term, “meeting Jesus”, until university. My story confuses people; it’s not the black and white “I-was-born-and-bred-in-the-church-and-everything-was-perfect-so-I’ve-always-been-here-and-never-left”, or “I’d-never-been-to-church-and-was-a-total-sinner-but-one-day-I-met-some-Christian-friends-and-they-introduced-me-to-Jesus-and-he-helped-me-turn-my-life-around”, although those are both wonderful stories. It’s grey, and confusing, and I don’t even know what happened, or why, or where I belong—but I have been given this incredibly unique perspective that allows me to see so many nooks and crannies of the modern church; ways that it works, and ways that it doesn’t work; things it does well, and things it does not do well; areas where it is serving its members or clientele, and areas where it is serving the Lord. This gift of perspective is something that I believe God has used, and wishes to continue to use for the edification of the body of Christ that is the church. This is not to say that he has not gifted others in this way and that he will use them for the same purpose and other purposes, nor that my sole purpose in life, or the only way he has gifted me and will use me is buried within this idea.

The perfect church absolutely does not exist.  Many people when searching for a church home are looking for a community that supports and feeds their spiritual growth and wellbeing.  There’s nothing wrong with this, as ultimately, we all are seeking righteousness (righteousness = right-relatedness) and closeness with God, and it that relationship seems much more easily cultivated in a place where we feel his presence, whatever that looks like.  However, we must not forget that worship is not about us. Community is not about us. Church is not about us. All of the above are ways through which we love God and seek righteousness with him, and not with ourselves. Worship is speaking the truth about who God is.  Community is extending love to God’s children as he has loved each of us. Church is practicing being the body of Christ by combining these two things. Church is about the LORD. When people make these offhanded comments and funny faces as we talk about my upbringing or present whereabouts concerning church (“one of those churches” or the “ick!” face), I believe it comes from a place of wondering either “how does what they are doing in that place fit into my construction of ‘church’?” or “how can you meet the Lord in that place?!” The first question has already been nullified: the perfect or ideal church does not exist because it is not about us or what we want, but about the worship and kingdom of God. The second question is also void: how can one meet the Lord in any place? It isn’t up to the physical body of a particular church to provide satisfying interaction with the Lord to individuals because the church isn’t in place to serve us.  The church is the body of Christ, and we are there to worship and serve God; the church as an institution does not exist for our satisfaction, enjoyment, or validation.

All of this being said, there are points at which it is more than reasonable for individuals to make the decision to leave a church, especially when its actions or behaviours are not in line with the teachings of Christ. There are certain aspects of some churches my family or I have attended that I’ve absolutely loathed, but those churches are certainly not without their merits.  They were indeed places where I felt loved, at home, and learned the foundations of the faith. Likewise, any church or community I can choose to be a part of now or in the future is not and will not be without its downsides.

“As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for GOD HAS WELCOMED HIM. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.” –Romans 14:1-4 ESV, emphasis mine

Paul was actually talking about food here, but the theme of not judging or condemning other Christians for their practices of worship or prayer is a common theme throughout the gospels and the epistles of the early church.  The early church members were much like us, in that they didn’t always take this message to heart. I was reading Jeremiah 31 the other day, and it was like déjà vu as an entire year of studying and leading scripture through the gospel of John flashed before my eyes as Jeremiah is prophesying that Israel shall be rebuilt (indeed it was—but not like they were expecting) and that they would plant vineyards on the mountains of Samaria (maybe literally, but definitely metaphorically when you look at John 15)… Yes, God is for us as individuals, but he has not raised us one above the other; there is no “us and them”—just us. Jesus flattened the hills and raised the valleys so that there wouldn’t be an “us and them”, and that is something that we should make our worship about because it is absolutely revolutionary—it can’t always be about “Jesus you are so great because you saved me and died for my sins so that I may have eternal life with you and it’s so amazing that you would do this for me because I am so unworthy…” Don’t get me wrong—the fact that Jesus paid the ultimate price as atonement for our sins is absolutely greater than any verbal description that any human can assign to it. It is the gospel (good news) of atonement and foundational to the Christian faith.  We cannot, however, be Pharisees and use that atonement as an excuse to be elitist and create another “us, the saved” and “them, the unsaved” construction as a framework for how we associate with others. That is exactly what Jesus instructed the Jews NOT to do during his time of ministry! Yes, Jesus died, but he also lived, and we cannot continue to regularly polish his death up on a pedestal while his life and teachings sit on the floor, collecting dust. Ev’ry valley shall be exalted, and the rough places plain. (#HandelsMessiah #musicnerdmoment)

Churches are run by fallen, fragile, fallible humans, and by that virtue alone will never measure up to the perfection of Christ, the head of the church. We can strive though, and reach, and come closer all the time (but never touch—Jesus is like an asymptote that way). We are never going to be like Jesus in the way that we will never have to die as atonement for the sins of others (i.e., we are not the literal sons and daughters of God, as Jesus was), but we can put forth our utmost to love and serve one another in the name of Jesus.

If I was to hypothetically boil down all of the last 3000 words of convoluted statements into one final paragraph: What we get from church isn’t nearly as important as what we do there and outside, so we shouldn’t go shopping for a church with a checklist of objectives of things we are expecting to gain for ourselves in a particular community, without a larger checklist of ways we can love and serve the Lord and his people in that place. Worship is telling the truth about who God is, and is not for our benefit, so to speak. Commitment to Christ should be viewed as a commitment to living as he lived, and such a commitment should be lovingly encouraged among churchgoers. All churches have their strengths and weaknesses, and none is perfect, but with good, Christ-centred leadership and community, all should strive to become a bride worthy and reflective of Jesus. Instead of continuing to divide ourselves as the body of Christ through our own personal ideas and preferences of what church should be, while judging and condemning other groups for holding different views, we ought to put the petty differences aside, get back to basics, and allow our King to reign, with his gospel.

When there is nothing left...

When there is nothing left, God is left.  Truth.  In just a few days I get to cross the stage to receive my undergraduate degree.  Four years ago, this seemed absolutely unquestionable; I was smart, and my brains had gotten me good grades all throughout elementary and high school, why should university be any different?  I had bold plans to keep my average in at least the 90^th percentile to be assured a spot in physical therapy school upon graduation from an Honours degree in kinesiology.  That’s how things started…

I’ve talked about my struggles with anxiety exhaustively.  The gist is that it broke me down after I had all my ducks in a row and had myself set up for success.  No amount of “sometimes the best-laid plans never come to fruition” could ever console me, because I had lost everything that had ever made me successful, and made myself believe that I had value.  This illness had ripped me apart from the inside out, and it was totally invisible from the outside, so I was expected to just conceal it and carry on like normal.  That was all I wanted to do, actually, but it just wasn’t possible.  

By now, I feel like I’ve been given the label of “that girl who had anxiety and then found Jesus”… well, yes.  I’ve told that story a bunch of times, and it’s probably a good story, but that’s all it is.  It is but one story of a way that Jesus has touched me, because I have allowed God to say something different than the rest of the world, and speak truth into my life.  I’d wager that everybody has at least a story or two about overcoming adversity, and whenever I sit through a graduation ceremony, or walk through a cemetery, (well those were two very different examples), or a nursing home, I can’t help but wonder about the stories that each individual has to share: what brought them to this point?  What struggles did they overcome in life?  What is their family’s story?  I just really love stories: reading them, telling them, living them, and walking through them.  This story of me meeting Jesus while covered in the ashes of my dreams and having him show me that he wanted something way better for me?  That’s not the last thing he’s going to do.  It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to believe in a God who gets you through the tough times and just makes them okay, without any hope of pure joy and ecstasy in a future and a forever with him.  So Jesus got me through my undergrad—that’s just the beginning!  I’m not done with him, and he’s not done with me, and to know that as truth in my heart is a source of joy, every day.  I know there’s more, and it’s going to be so unbelievably beautiful, like a really good story.  That doesn’t mean that I’ll love absolutely every moment of it.  I know there will be heartache, tears, grieving, illness, and loss, just as there has been in the past, but when you’re on that road with God and not by yourself, he becomes the source that you draw from during those times, and …those who trust in the LORD will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. - Isaiah 40:31, NLT

I’m so excited to take time on Tuesday to celebrate everything God has done in the last four years of my life, particularly the last two as I’ve come to acknowledge and know him more.  When I stand for O Canada at that convocation ceremony, and hear my dad belting it out (probably in French, just to make fun) in his operatic baritone that cuts through everything, where I would’ve hung my head in shame a few years ago, I’ll smile (and probably also shed a tear or five), because I know no one was expecting me to make it there, and our Lord, in his abundant grace and mercy, gave me the strength to carry on, keep going, and finish this degree. Something about my dad’s voice always gets me, but beside that point, it’ll be like him saying “you did it!”, at the same time as God is going to smile and say “we did it!"...

Me and Dad at my high school graduation

Undergraduate convocation: celebrating reaching the summit of this mountain, but looking ahead to the other scalable peaks, and praising God for the beautiful panorama! Amen.

The plain and simple truth: I am a sinner.

It hit me the other day: I am a sinner.  I’ve been searching for specific sins for months, after having brothers and sisters call me out on less-than-desirable aspects of my character, while the answer I was looking for was painted all over me with fluorescent colours, being shone on with big flashing lights.  My motives were so wrong; I was only looking for a way to justify my actions, making everything I had ever done seem okay, rather than acknowledging my faults.  Somehow, I’d always been the exception to the rule, and all that stuff about judgment of sinners couldnt’ve been for me, because my sins were justified, and therefore not as significant as the sins of others.  I was horrendously narcissistic, selfish, entitled, and childish—but all of these things could surely be justified from something in my past, right? NO.

This one Sunday…

In the morning, before church, I asked God to give me something to reflect on in scripture and felt led to Ezekiel 16.  Every time I’ve read Ezekiel I feel like I’ve misinterpreted it somehow, or it’s been super weird and hard to understand, so as I read I expected to be pretty overwhelmed and confused—but I read anyway.  This chapter is an allegory of the life of Judah, an Israelite nation.  Judah was born to Canaanites, who as a nation, were known for their wickedness.  When she was born, she was despised; her cord was left uncut and she wasn’t washed or purified before being left in a field for dead, writhing in her own blood.  God took compassion on her in this state, and spoke over her that she should “Live!” and she grew up and became very beautiful, and God gave her the best food and the finest clothing and jewelry and entered into covenant with her.  She exploited it.  She became a prostitute, and gave the fine things that God had given to her as gifts to the men that she slept with, and sacrificed her children to idols.  Then God goes into pretty specific details about his wrath against her.  He reminds her of her sisters, Sodom and Samaria.  Sodom was fated with fiery destruction from God, due to her sinfulness; Samaria was seen as unclean, and Jews just generally stayed out of there and did not associate with Samaritans.  God tells Judah that her sins are greater than both of these sisters; she not only followed their lead before her, but also made a name for herself with her own sins, becoming more depraved than Sodom and Samaria.  The chapter ends with God telling Judah that he will deal with her as she deserves, for she broke the covenant that he formed with her in her youth.  However, he still remembers that covenant, and promises to make an everlasting covenant with her, and makes a separate promise that Sodom and Samaria will be given to her as daughters, and on the day when he makes atonement for her, she will be rendered speechless due to her humiliation.

Yeah, maybe I had been a lying, manipulative, narcissistic idiot, belittling the gifts that God had given me—but if I repented from those sins and asked for forgiveness, God was going to give me something awesome, since that atonement thing with Jesus dying on the cross for my sins already happened, a couple thousand years ago… That’s how it works, right?

But I had to be the exception, somehow.

I’d been so afraid of God, since about January when all this stuff started being pointed out to me.  I felt dirty.  When I did go to God, I wanted it to be real.  I wanted some kind of sign that whatever I was saying to him was being acknowledged, and I only ever wanted to hear good things.  When I didn’t, I got anxious and caught in a spiral of self-hate.  God hates me—that was my way to be the exception—he loves everybody, but hates me.  Every time I talked to him I felt like he wasn’t there (side note: looking back, that was probably just me putting God in a box of how I wanted him to act, and not looking for him in other ways; I wanted God to be who I wanted him to be, not necessarily who he really was), but I heard miraculous stories of how God was acting from my friends; through dreams and visions, signs and wonders, prophecy and tongues—so God must’ve not loved me enough to show me himself.  I was jealous, and wanted what other people had, like a child.

Church happened.  It was rad.

I biked through a forest in the heat of the day and sat by the river, and asked God to speak to me.  Nothing happened.  I was getting kind of hungry.  I knew I didn’t need to eat, and that I’d been engaging in a lot of gluttony recently, but—God didn’t speak to me, so he didn’t care.  I pulled an apple out of my bag (real gluttonous) and ate.  I stared out over the river, marveling at how clear the water was.  I could see the bottom (1-2 feet down) with no trouble, it wasn’t very deep and there was nothing down there; no fish, no plants, just sand and a few rocks.  About 4 bites into this apple, I was staring into space when on the other side of the river produced a huge splash!  I was startled, and my eyes darted over to the location of the percolating water.  It had been way too loud to have just been a frog jumping in from the bank.  Then a HUGE fish, about 2 feet long and 6-8 inches across, leapt out of the water at least twice its height and splashed back down.  “WHOA!” was all I could muster.  I stared at the spot where the fish had surfaced as the ripples from the splash radiated to my side of the river.  I’d lost my appetite for the apple…but I finished it anyway.  I couldn’t stop thinking about this fish.  “That’s how obvious it is” I kept hearing in my head.  My first instinct was to label my sins as that obvious.  I knew that by now.  Everyone could see right through me.  Why didn’t I just stay hidden from human beings forever, sitting here in the dirt among the bugs and squirrels and crazy psycho fish?  It was beginning to hit me how childish and dramatic I’d been over the last 2 years—maybe like this fish: jumping out of the water saying “look at me, I have a problem”, and then keeping the undivided attention of whoever would give it focused on me just because I could have it and it made me feel important, even though I didn’t need it, and was diverting it from other people and things who did.  I feel like that’s actually something I’ve recognized for quite some time, but instead of admitting to it and dealing with it, I tried to justify and explain it away, like I could do no wrong.  That didn’t make sense to me, and I traced back to my childhood to figure out where that sense of entitlement came from.  Why?  Why couldn’t I just admit that I wasn’t perfect (or at least, better than most, given certain circumstances), and stop trying to make everyone I encountered believe that I was?  Why couldn’t I just accept that the way God made me was good enough, and his love was enough, even if neither of those things looked exactly how I was wanting or expecting them to appear?  Ultimately, was my desire for God in my life greater than my desire for the things that I wanted?

the casualtrees #punny

roots

Every time that last question has come up, I’ve walked away from it—it’s a scary question.  This time was no exception.  I got up and physically walked away, carrying my bike over some roots and fallen trees until the trail warranted that I could sit in the saddle and pedal.  I stopped again at another spot by the river.  A cluster of trees had been totally uprooted, and had fallen so that the tops reached the other bank of the river.  It was incredible to see.  This enormous ( huge: 12 feet long by 6 feet high, but only 2 feet deep) network of roots, packed with soil in every crack and crevice somehow wasn’t enough to hold these trees in the ground—it just wasn’t deep enough.  Not just one tree, either, but five or six had all come down together.  I gazed towards their tops and surmised that they must have fallen recently, because lush, green leaves had been produced by every tree.  These trees had all appeared healthy from above the surface, but below they were not anchored, and as a result, couldn’t be sustained (my knowledge of basic biology dictates that as long as the roots are above ground, they won’t be able to take up water and the plant can’t photosynthesize, so it dies).  The roots on these trees were too shallow and small to hold them in the ground; there wasn’t enough integrity in their structure to support the mass above them.  Each time I’d go back into my past to try and explain away my sins, there was some truth to each of those things: those were the small roots.  Small roots might be okay for a baby tree, but once it grows up the roots will have to grow too, or it’s going to have the same fate as these trees that had fallen in the middle of the forest (I wonder if they made a sound).  Those millions of small roots never get deep enough to uncover the real problem.  What was that?  I AM A SINNER. There’s the one big root, the one that goes down deep and builds branches and networks of more roots off of it.  Without that master root, I could have been finding little miniscule explanations forever, sending down little capillaries of roots, repenting for things followed with a “but this…”, amounting to about a 10 degree turn on an egg timer that would slowly creep back to its starting position with nothing to hold it in its new place.  I could have done all that work, and still suffered the same fate as that tree.  Those trees.  So I thought about that for a bit as I waded through the river to see what was on the other side, trying to get as far away from my house as possible so I could get some good exercise biking back home.

I made it home, had a nap, made some dinner, and then sat on my bed wondering what to do next to spend time with God.  When I started taking a weekly Sabbath on Sundays after MarkCentral, one of the rules I set for myself there was a technology fast: no computer, phone, or tv.  I recalled a book I had finished reading a few weeks ago, which suggested that when you didn’t know what to do, but wanted to be in the presence of God, it never hurt to say the “Jesus Prayer”: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner”.  I’m normally not one to gravitate towards pre-written prayers or liturgy, but I just felt like something was prompting me, and I should in this instance, especially given all the stuff around my own sin that I had been sitting in.  I prayed the words slowly, like I was trying to make sure I really meant every word.  I sat in silence for a moment afterwards, and really felt like God was saying “thank you, you are here”… “you are here”... What?  Like the little star on the map at the mall that tells you you’re next to Sears even though it’s been closed for several months?  So, for months, as I’ve been praying I’ve felt God saying “come to me”, but had no idea what that meant.  Wasn’t I coming to God by praying? What more did I have to do?  The answer was so simple: come as you are.  Who was I? A sinner.  I remember one of my friends telling me that “people are simple” 4 years ago when I was down and depressed in the grade 12 blues, and I fought that so hard… I was too good to be simple, like everybody else… Except that I’m not.  I AM simple like everybody else.  I AM a child of God.  I AM made in his image.  I AM beautiful.  I AM loved.  I AM a sinner.  I am all of those things, not just some of them depending on the day, or how I’m feeling, or the circumstance, or any other excuse I could possibly make.  I am all of those things, all the time.  That is the truth.

And that is what God loves.  Plain and simple.