Messy Spirituality

Cross-posted from Ex-Gay Watch

The late Mike Yaconelli spent much of his life worried that he wasn’t spiritual enough. Despite his many efforts to be a better Christian, the best he ever seemed to manage was “a stumbling, bumbling, clumsy kind of following.” Spirituality remained an eternally elusive state of being that was always just out of grasp.

Most churches reinforce this perfectionistic line of thinking, setting high standards for how their members should look and act and offering countless formulas for “godly” living that never quite work as well as advertised. The end result is pews full of people with smiles permanently in place who know all the right things to say to hide the disarray and dysfunction that lie just below the surface.

Yaconelli’s epiphany came when he realized that spirituality wasn’t a matter of having one’s life perfectly sorted out or of fitting into the mold of what a “good Christian” is supposed to look like.

Spirituality is not a formula; it is not a test. It is a relationship. Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. The way of the spiritual life begins where we are now in the mess of our lives. Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God’s being present in the mess of our unfixedness.

Messy Spirituality (recently re-released by Zondervan Publishing) is Yaconelli’s challenge to a church that values conformity over authenticity, perfection over compassion and formula over relationship. Most evangelical churches would argue that they uphold a vision similar to Yaconelli’s, yet in practice few allow people the freedom to be where they’re at without pushing them to strive toward some fixed standard of perfection. Uniqueness is sometimes praised but more often condemned.

Similarly, many ex-gay ministries teach what appears to be a grace-filled message that encourages participants to share openly about their struggles while growing at their own pace according to God’s timing. In practice, however, only a handful of these ministries genuinely leave room for individuals to engage directly with God; the end result of that engagement has been predetermined according to a particular interpretation of a select set of biblical passages, and anyone who reaches different conclusions is automatically deemed unworthy of membership in the body of Christ.

Yaconelli (perhaps wisely) does not address the issue of homosexuality in his book, aside from including GLBT individuals in a list of various groups that churches commonly ostracize (to his credit he uses the term “gay or lesbian” rather than the various euphemisms that evangelicals typically substitute). As a result, readers will bring their own conclusions with them as to how homosexuality should be addressed by the church.

Yaconelli’s vision of “messy spirituality” does, nonetheless, suggest a framework that we can use to live with fellow Christians who disagree with us on this (or any other) issue. Having been granted the freedom to be where we’re at as individuals, we can in turn extend that same grace to others, encouraging them to pursue God (and to be pursued by him) without the need to dictate to them what that must look like, or what conclusions they have to reach.

It’s an imperfect solution, but then again, it’s an imperfect world.

Life Soundtrack 7

Little Bird, by Annie Lennox

Every gay man is supposed to have his diva, and I guess I can't buck all of the stereotypes. Most of the usual divas (Cher, Madonna, Bette Midler, etc.) don't do anything in particular for me; I can enjoy their music, but on the whole I'm more likely to listen to Lifehouse or Matchbox Twenty.

But then there's Annie Lennox. Walking on Broken Glass was a revelation, and the aptly named Diva has spent a good deal of time in my CD player over the years. What a voice...

Sites to See

-First up, Peterson Toscano's thoughtful response to a guy struggling with his sexuality. Key insight: "Where is the joy in the journey?"

-Conservative Republican Ward Connerly follows in Barry Goldwater's steps and endorses gay marriage.

-Professor Miguel de la Torre challenges James Dobson's version of the gospel.

-And, not to make this a complete Dobson bashfest, but it's nonetheless true that James Dobson Doesn’t Speak For Me.

-Finally, five words nobody ever expected to see together in the same sentence: Jar Jar, You’re a Genius...

Paralysis

The church, by and large, has had a poor record of encouraging freedom. She has spent so much time inculcating in us the fear of making mistakes, that she has made us like ill-taught piano students: we play our songs, but we never really hear them because our main concern is not to make music but to avoid some flub that will get us in dutch.

-Robert Capon

Security

Continuing with Ellul's thoughts on submission, we're left with the question of what freedom is. In the United States there is no greater virtue, and our churches reflect that priority, at least in rhetoric. The celebrations we held across our country today bear witness to our devotion. But do we truly value freedom, or are we just enamored with the concept?

There is another element that is intolerable for different reasons, namely, freedom. It is true that people claim to want freedom. In good faith attempts are made to set up political freedom. People also proclaim metaphysical freedom. They struggle to free slaves. They make liberty a supreme value. The loss of freedom by imprisonment is a punishment that is hard to bear. Liberty is cherished. How many crimes, too, are committed in its name? ...

But this fervor, passion, desire, and teaching are all false. It is not true that people want to be free. They want the advantages of independence without the duties or difficulties of freedom. Freedom is hard to live with. It is terrible. It is a venture. It devours and demands. It is a constant battle, for around us there are always traps to rob us of it.

But in particular freedom itself allows us no rest. It requires incessant emulation and questioning. It presupposes alert attention, ruling out habit or institution. It demands that I be always fresh, always ready, never hiding behind precedents or past defeats. It brings breaks and conflicts. It yields to no constraint and exercises no constraint. For there is freedom only in permanent self-control and in love of neighbor.

Love presupposes freedom and freedom expands only in love. This is why de Sade is the supreme liar of the ages. What he showed and taught others is the way of slavery under the banner of freedom. Freedom can never exert power. There is full coincidence between weakness and freedom. Similarly, freedom can never mean possession. There is exact coincidence between freedom and nonpossession.

Freedom, then, is not merely a merry childish romp in a garden of flowers. It is this too, for it generates great waves of joy, but these cannot be separated from severe asceticism, conflict, and the absence of arms and conquests. This is why those who suddenly find themselves in a situation of freedom lose their heads or soon want to return to bondage. (pages 166-167)

It may be politically incorrect to say so in this day and age, but in some cases people who have been liberated from slavery long to return to their captivity. They do so not because the institution of slavery is morally good, but because of the security it provides. A slave is (in all but the worst situations) free from having to worry about where he will sleep or what he will eat; his only responsibility in life is to obey his masters, and all else will be taken care of for him.

So it is, all too often, in Christianity as well. The responsibility that accompanies freedom is such a great burden that we happily adopt Muslim concepts of submission and fate so that we can avoid having to take Paul seriously when he tells us that all things are lawful. After all, he also says that not all things are profitable, so surely God must have spelled out for us exactly what is unprofitable. The alternative would require us to evaluate our every action on its own merits, never completely certain whether we might be about to make a mistake.

For all our talk about freedom, freedom is not what most of us actually want. In many churches, Christian liberty is defined as a negative: freedom to not sin. It may be worded positively as freedom to choose God, but in practice it's an ultimatum with no real choice: follow our rules or go to hell.

We don't call it slavery since our master in this case is (allegedly) God, but the only freedom we truly desire is freedom from responsibility. If God has spelled out our every choice for us, we no longer have to worry about the consequences of our actions so long as we're obedient; any action that God commands can only have a positive result, even if it seems to our worldly eyes to be causing more harm than good.

Freedom is actually a rather frightening thing; it requires a high level of accountability from us and promises no security. It tests whether we truly love others or simply hope that things will turn out well for them. Freedom in no way guarantees that things will turn out well for us.

We see this in the political realm, where we surrender a huge portion of our economic freedom (in the form of taxes) in exchange for the government's promise to provide for those in need. In this way we are released from having to genuinely love the poor, the widowed, the elderly and the unfortunate (except, perhaps, for members of our own family - and sometimes even then); they are now the government's responsibility instead of ours. We now have the luxury of retreating into our own little worlds, until even our next door neighbors and fellow churchgoers are merely background noise.

I'll admit that I prefer the safety of the familiar and the comfort of letting others take care of the world's problems; I'll even donate generously to those willing to act compassionately on my behalf so that I don't have to leave my comfort zone. Such giving is not without merit, but neither is it an adequate substitute for genuine compassion if I never go any further than writing a few checks.

It may seem like I've just wandered off on a tangent, but in reality compassion is inextricably connected to freedom. God values our freedom, but he won't force us to claim it. Slavery can be freely chosen as well, however we come to that decision.

Oh, the Joy

Makes you want to get married, doesn't it?

(as seen at Andrew Sullivan)

Arrival

He who thinks that he is finished is finished. How true.
Those who think that they have arrived, have lost their way.
Those who think they have reached their goal, have missed it.
Those who think they are saints, are demons.

-Henri Nouwen, The Genesee Diary

Fatalism

Getting back to my study of Jacques Ellul's The Subversion of Christianity, one point of his that I found very interesting was his discussion of the ways that Christian thought has been influenced by Islam. Ellul never blames Islam for any of the ways that the church has departed from its biblical roots, but he does demonstrate how interactions between the two religions inspired Christian theologians to incorporate certain Islamic concepts into their thinking.

The most obvious of these ideas is the concept of "holy war," an idea that had previously been foreign to Christian thought. Prior to the Crusades, the church had used its influence to discourage armed conflict. Forced conversions may not have been unheard of before Christianity's first contact with Islam, but they weren't as common as they became.

Another concept that's less obviously a product of Islamic thought is that of submission. It's important to note that there is a distinction between obedience and submission; submission goes much further than obedience and leads to a fatalistic mindset within which freedom exists only as something to be surrendered in favor of being saved from eternal torment.

While some Christian traditions have a looser definition of submission than others, most agree that God has a plan for every step that a person takes through life, and that this perfect plan can be fully discerned from the unchanging, universal commands that the Bible exists to provide us. Only in "liberal" circles does the Holy Spirit's guidance serve any real purpose other than to steer us (or to help us steer others) back to that set of all-encompassing rules.

Islam means submission (to God's will). Just as mystics negate themselves to give place to God, so Muslims have the same religious orientation. Not just obedience but submission is involved. At a first glance this seems to be in full conformity with the biblical revelation. We know how important a role is played in current piety by the formula mektoub, it was written. We have to submit to the sovereign, preexistent, eternal, and immutable will of God. All history, all the events of history, all the things that come to pass in each individual life have already been decreed and fixed in advance and written by God.

In reality this is the very reverse of what we are told about the biblical God, who opens up freedom for us, who lets us make our own history, who goes with us on the more or less unheard-of adventures that we concoct. This God is not "providence" (which is never a biblical word). He is never a determinative cause or an irreducible conductor of events.

The biblical God is he who unceasingly reestablishes our human liberty when we keep falling into bondage. He unceasingly enters into dialogue with us, but only so as to warn us about what is good, to set us on guard, to associate us with his will; never to force us. Here again the tendency to believe in a God who because he is omnipotent is also omniscient (which presupposes that everything is already said) was already present in Christian thinking when it was invaded by certain elements in Greek thought. Yet at first the themes of salvation and love were always dominant. I believe that it was the strictness of Muslim piety that really led Christians along this path.

If we make God's omnipotence dominant over his love and autonomy, his transcendence over the incarnation and liberation, then we think of his omniscience as an inscribing of history and events in a nexus of events that has already been established, that is unchangeable and immutable, and that all takes place at a stroke. Then we do not have to enter into a dialogue with God, or into a monologue that, like Job's, demands a response from God, but simply have to submit to the unchanging and, in a true sense, inhuman will of God.

The whole Bible, whether in the Old Testament or the Gospels, tells us that there is no such thing as destiny or fate. All this is replaced by love, and hence the joyful freedom that the first Christians experienced. But gradually, and insidiously, fate stages a comeback. (pgs. 107-108)

Ellul's arguments here tie into the concept of Open Theism, in which the future is unwritten, even by God. Many Christians still view Open Theism as heresy, even though it's arguably more biblical than the idea of a God who transcends time. If everything that will ever happen has already been witnessed by God, then how can free will be anything other than an illusion? And without free will, how can we ever truly love God or those around us?

From now on destiny and divine omniscience are conjoined. Believers can live in perfect peace because they know that everything was written in advance and they can change nothing. The very formula "It was written" could come only from a religion of the book. Yet the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels never use such a formula.

Thanks to it, the idea of predestination that was already haunting philosophical and Christian thinking received confirmation, forcibly established itself, and came to include double predestination (in Calvin), which, whether we want it or not, transforms the biblical God into destiny, Ananke, etc. And this derives from Muslim thinking. For it is not just historical events that were written in advance; it is also eternal salvation (or rejection). Ultimately this conviction came to dominate a good part of Christendom, and paganism rejoins it with its belief in the god of fate. (pg. 108)

One can see these concepts at work in the ex-gay movement, where the only options presented to anyone with a homosexual orientation are change or death. Once again, free will exists only in the form of a single binary choice: one either submits fully to one's predetermined fate, or spends eternity being endlessly punished for choosing incorrectly. If that's truly the freedom that the Apostle Paul speaks of, then perhaps we're not taking enough of our cues from Islam.