Beautiful day today. I look out my studio window and the sun is shining. I have come to appreciate the sun instead of totally taking it for granted. That was a bad habit that was formed while living nine years in Florida, and of course having been raised in Arizona, I feel most comfortable when it is blazing hot. Now in my present Maryland I look out on a sunny day and feel elated. When we moved here two years ago I must have known my spiritual plight because I prayed that God would make me grateful. Big mistake. Never pray for characteristics unless you are willing to be tested. Having said that I do recognize that God has been faithful and that the rewards have been reflected in the newer person I see in the mirror.
New in understanding.
I feel like I have popped out of a narrow tunnel into a vast landscape that has left me traveling at a snails pace carefully selecting each step as I go. The journey behind me seemed easier because it was well charted and well defined. Rules were welded in place with no room for discussion and behavior and body language fell in line with those around me. Looking back I think it was easy being evangelical. Maybe I am leaning hard on the stereotype, but I am also leaning on personal experience.
Did the church make me stupid?
I always thought myself a fairly intelligent person. When I was younger my sister and mother and I would have lively debates about the world and life, politics and philosophy, religion and sex. No subject was off limits and discussions were like sport. Sometimes the topics got heated but never toward anyone personally, because there was this unspoken rule that it wasn't personal and so you can truly say what you felt. This practice of open communication has served me well and laid the foundation for how I communicate in my marriage and to my son. In our house no topic is taboo.
But what I am wondering is that by being totally immersed in evangilicalism (by being in ministry) did I forgot what it meant to follow Christ? Or worse, have it actually trained out of me. Did all those years of going to church, being involved, hearing the sermons, taking the classes train me how to look and talk like an evangelical, not like a Christian. Sometimes I think it honed me into an intolerant and judgmental person.
It's like living on a tiny island for years and years only to be rescued and find that you have to learn how to fit into civilized society. When you are on an island, certain issues just don't present themselves, and so you forget that they exist in the rest of the world...
Why am I thinking about this now? Every weekend rolls around and presents itself with a healthy evaluation of the decision of not attending church. Having come to that decision with careful consideration after being in the thick of "doing church" for years, it seemed that the church and everything in it started to loom larger than the God we were serving and so it was time to step back to get some perspective. That perspective is struggling to come into focus. It has been good but hard. The hard part has been the culture shock. The good part for me personally is seeing that my character is being altered for the better. The person I see in the mirror is a little less legalistic, a little more tolerant(just a wee bit, there are years of work ahead on this one). Now, outside the church, I can think about things like biblical metaphor, gay marriage, women in leadership without just dismissing them. It is amazing how when you remove a strongly imposed framework (a lens or filter or dare I say...doctrine) from scripture it starts to speak truth again. So it is with us in removing the strongly imposed framework of the ministry lifestyle. Truth is emerging. Altering this lifestyle, habit, pattern, whatever you want to call it, has jolted us just enough that the culture shock has shaken something loose. Like a sifter I feel like the chunky bits are being left behind and something good is being produced.
I am not just repeating the words I was taught, now I am compelled to think about what they say. It's isn't that I have really put my brain on hold for all those years it is just that I think the subculture became my culture and there is so much more. Now I am off the island and I have discovered that God is present, alive and well, in my culture shock. It isn't neatly packaged, but it is real.
that is exactly where i am at right now (except for the part of being able to choose not going to church. :)
this is good, blair.
i'll keep you coming some sunday morning. :)