Renewal

You've been having trouble staying asleep
You've been waking up at 4:12
You roll the voices over in your head
Then you try to put them neatly on the shelf

You watch the sun rise
You saw the darkness had no choice before the dawn
With your own eyes
And then you broke out laughing from a yawn

You said, "I'm so sorry I've been so down.
I started doubting things could ever turn around.
And I began to believe that all we are is material.
It's nonsensical."

So you walk outside and everything's new
You're looking at the world with new eyes
As if you'd never seen a sky before that's blue
As if you've never seen the sky in your whole life

And then the phone rings
As it turns out you're already late
And now you're wondering
Was peace just a temporary state?

You're waiting tables and parking cars
You've been selling cell phones at the shopping mall
And you begin to believe that all you are is material
It's nonsensical

I'm so sorry I've been so down
I started doubting things could ever turn around
But I still can't believe that all we are
And that all of our dreams are nothing more than material
Souls aren't built of stone,
Sticks and bones

-Switchfoot, 4:12

Last weekend I attended the third annual GayChristian.net conference in Seattle. GCN (and the people I've met through it) has been one of my lifelines throughout the current leg of my journey, so I was very much looking forward to renewing old friendships and building new ones.

And the conference lived up to my expectations. I spent more time in meaningful face-to-face interaction with more people in four days than I normally do in a given month. At the same time, though, it was a bit overwhelming being around that many people, and by halfway through the second day I found that my 'batteries' were already depleted (yet one more disadvantage to being a strong introvert). As a result there were many people I never got around to meeting, as sticking largely to those I already knew became a matter of survival.

Setting aside the dilemma of being constantly exhausted yet wanting it to never end, the conference was exactly what I needed. Although my core faith in the God who has brought me through so many difficult times over the years has remained intact, I've become increasingly cynical about the people who call themselves his followers, and about the value in even bothering with playing church when those who seem to be genuinely striving to follow the example of Christ seem to be the exceptions that prove the rule.

Not that there were any 'parting of the clouds' moments, or that my skepticism was all washed away, but just spending time among so many genuine and, quite frankly, beautiful people (which is not a reference to physical appearance) was enough to restore just a little bit of feeling to parts of me that I'd nearly forgotten about.

From the numerous stories of God's work in other attendees' lives that demonstrated over and over again that 'gay Christian' is not an oxymoron, to the love and acceptance shown to those who feel like outcasts even among other outcasts, to the friendship and unity modeled continually by individuals who disagree on just about everything, to the heterosexual woman who, having recently heard about GCN, came to the conference at the last minute to show her support for those she believes the church has treated unjustly, I was drawn back to Sam Gamgee's conclusion in the movie version of The Two Towers:

That there is some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.

In the lower moments of my post-mountaintop funk, the entire experience has reminded me just what a lousy Christian I am even by my own standards, and caused me to question what business I think I have considering myself a member of this group, but ultimately I know that to listen to those old insecurities is to miss the point. It's not about me, and God can use even the least of us to accomplish amazing things.

That may be a lesson that much of the church has forgotten, but no matter how dark things seem there's always hope. The body of Christ has been amputating its less seemly members for so long that it's come to interpret the resulting pain and debilitation as validation of its exclusionary policies, but that can change. It must change. The church needs our gifts just as much as we need the church, and with God's help that day of reconciliation may yet come.

Context

I recently began reading Karen Armstrong's A History of God, which a friend lent to me. Since Armstrong's own beliefs fall outside of the bounds of orthodox Christianity, I'm not surprised that she hasn't gotten a wider audience in evangelical circles, though perhaps that's to our detriment. Although there's much opinion that Christians of most stripes will disagree with, the book also contains a wealth of historical details and the broader context that they fit into.

One point I've gotten from the book so far, which in retrospect seems like it should have been obvious, is that the ancient Israelites were polytheists in their belief system, just as all the peoples of that time period were. Not that they didn't believe in Yahweh and in their covenant with him, but they continued to believe in the existence of other gods as well.

Seen in this light, it becomes more clear why the people of Israel repeatedly returned to worshiping foreign idols. In their own minds they weren't rejecting the God of Abraham, they were merely paying respect to all of the gods that they saw as relevant to their daily lives. Yahweh had his temple, just as other gods did, but his expertise was limited to certain domains.

Hence, when God sent the prophets to turn the people away from worshiping those other gods, the hostile reaction the prophets received was due, at least in part, to what most people saw as heresy. Yahweh was a powerful deity and Israel's primary god, to be sure, but the notion that there was only one God failed to penetrate the popular psyche all the way up to the time of the exile. God had to gradually transform the worldview of his chosen people over the course of centuries before it truly sank in.

Understanding a little more about the mindset of the people who lived in Old Testament times helps to shed light on its writings. It also exposes, with greater clarity, just how much bias we read back into those ancient texts. Theologians labor to extract a "moral law" from select Old Testament passages that seem to support what they think we ought to be able to find there, with little regard for the fact that the original authors (and their audience) had a very different outlook on life. Even when those theologians pay lip service to contextual concerns, they insist (at least implicitly) that God would have inserted our concept of "moral law" in there for our benefit, as if God is obligated to share our priorities.

Appeals to church tradition as support for our biases are of limited value, since the early church was heavily influenced by Greek philosophy and by their own Roman culture. By the time of Christ, the Jews were solidly monotheistic and had spent several centuries interacting with Greek culture. Today our 'Christian' worldview is colored by Enlightenment philosophy and scientific rationalism, which if anything makes us even less objective in the expectations and assumptions we read back into the Bible.

Experience teaches us that God understands our limitations (far better than we do) and works with us where we're at, just as he did with the ancient Israelites and the early Christians. The danger lies in assuming that, because God meets us within contexts we can understand, our assumptions about him and the universe he created must be essentially complete and all others' ideas about him wrong. Such pride has inevitably led to 'holy' wars and to the murder of countless heretics throughout history.

It's not enough to pay lip service to how limited our finite knowledge of the infinite truly is, if we continue to live as though we know it all. Epistemological humility no doubt seems like a theological death sentence to many people of faith, but the only thing it kills is the notion that the universe revolves around us. And isn't dying to self supposed to be part of the Christian walk?

What If

Over the holiday I spent some time with an old friend and his family. It was a rather noisy weekend with seven small children underfoot (his two plus his sister's five kids), but we were still able to catch up over a few rounds of Catan, among other games.

I've never had a strong desire to have children of my own. For a long time I assumed that I eventually would, but in my mind I usually skipped over the first sixteen years or so of my hypothetical children's lives. As cute as kids can be, I prefer them in small doses. True, there's something endearing about having a four-year-old suddenly decide that you're her new favorite playmate, but it's also nice to be able to pass her back to mommy when it's bedtime.

I've learned to be content with who I am and where I'm at in life, but all the same I sometimes wonder what my life might have been like under other circumstances. There's something very compelling about having a "normal" life (wife, 2.5 kids, two minivans and a house in the suburbs), which is no doubt part of the appeal of ex-gay ministries, but where in the Bible does God really call us to a life of normalcy?

Just because the evangelical church has put marriage and family on an idolatrously high pedestal that leaves anyone who's unmarried and/or childless feeling deficient doesn't mean that their priorities are in the right order. Just because many Exodus spokespersons imply that marriage to an opposite-sex partner is the epitome of 'healing' and 'holiness' doesn't mean that the married ex-gay has necessarily achieved any significant degree of either. Just because some Christians have conflated Genesis 2:24 with the discipleship that Christ calls his followers to doesn't mean that they have any idea what true discipleship looks like.

To whatever extent God may actually have any of our lives planned out for us, he has a unique path for each of us to follow, specially tailored to account for the millions of factors that differentiate each of us from everyone else. No church, no pastor, no ministry leader can chart that path for us or dictate what our lives should look like. However invaluable their counsel may be, as soon as their advice turns to ultimatums it's time to take a step back and take a closer look at that relationship.

And if I did suddenly find myself genuinely attracted to a woman? I'd approach the situation with caution and more than a little prayer, but I wouldn't dismiss it any more than I'd rule out what good could come from a relationship with another man.

But at the end of the day, there's only so much to be gained from dwelling on what might or might not someday be. The most that I can do today is to make the best use of what I presently have while making an effort to listen to that still, small voice. The more time I spend worrying about what I don't have or how I wish things were different, the less use I actually am to God or anyone else.

Spoiled

Last week I had the rather eerie experience of shopping in a half-empty supermarket - "half-empty" referring to the shelves, not the number of people in the store. Due to severe weather issues many stores had missed out on getting deliveries for several days; as a result, the supermarket's inventory was running low in multiple departments. The bread aisle was completely empty except for a half-dozen loaves of raisin bread, and the only toilet paper left in the store was two jumbo-sized packs of a bargain brand.

By the time I came by to do my shopping, deliveries had resumed and employees were beginning to cart pallets out of the stockroom, but it was still a surreal sight to see so many empty shelves. And yet for most people in most parts of the world (and in just about any past era), the concept of a supermarket stocked with every imaginable type of food would seem like an inconceivably wild dream.

It's easy to take for granted just how incredibly privileged I am to live in a time and a place where I can afford to assume that my basic needs will be met today, tomorrow and into the foreseeable future. Whether I'm in the mood for a burrito or a steak or a carton of raspberries, chances are I don't have to go very far to obtain it, much less worry about where my next meal is going to come from.

It makes me wonder how long I'd survive if I were suddenly thrust into the conditions that most of the world's population face on a daily basis. Smart as I am in a bookish sort of way, it's hard to say whether you'd be better off betting for or against me.

Something to ponder as I go back to playing around on my computer in my warm, comfortable apartment with its fully stocked kitchen.

Merry Christmas

This is the same video I posted about last year, but some things are worth revisiting. Plus, now I know how to link it directly to my blog.

Stuck

Since the subject of dreams has come up a few times recently in the blogosphere, I don't feel out of place talking about some of my own.

For the most part, I don't remember my dreams. I'll be aware that I dreamed something, but usually all that's left after the radio wakes me up is the impression that something interesting just got interrupted. I haven't been troubled by nightmares since early childhood, though frustration is a common emotion in my dreams, and there are certain themes that recur from time to time in the dreams I do remember.

I'm not particularly inclined to ascribe mystical meanings to any of my dreams, though I do see reason to believe that dreams can pinpoint aspects of our mental and emotional states that we may not be consciously aware of. In one of my most commonly recurring dreams, I'm going back to school (sometimes college, sometimes high school, even elementary school more than once) and trying to find my way around. If I have my class schedule, I don't know where my classes are, and sometimes I don't even know that much. Throughout the dream one thing after another keeps coming up, until finally it's so late that I've missed my class entirely (either for the day or for the entire semester).

Since starting the whole 'coming out' process that dream hasn't bothered me nearly as often as it used to, which gives me some thoughts about where those feelings of being 'stuck' come from. This past week the dream came back in a slightly different form; this time I had taken a job with a previous employer (one I hadn't been sorry to say goodbye to), and the first assignment my new boss gave me was something I had only the vaguest idea how to accomplish and which nobody else seemed to be of any help with. The remainder of the dream entailed trying to make progress toward figuring out what I was supposed to do without getting any closer to actually doing so.

Given that I'm currently feeling trapped at a job where I don't dare come out to anyone (much less advertise such details as the existence of this blog or the church I've been attending), it doesn't seem much of a stretch to connect that with the most recent incarnation of that dream.

The difficult part is that I generally like my work and the people I work with, and I have a boss who frequently lets me know that he hopes we're still working together decades from now. The latter, especially, makes it feel like a betrayal to even think about looking for another job, yet I know I can't stay here for too much longer. Even aside from concerns about being 'discovered,' I increasingly dislike the dishonesty (even if only by omission) that's effectively demanded of me as long as I remain here.

And that's not even getting into how much I may be holding myself back by staying in a job that no longer challenges me, or whether being considered indispensable is a healthy dynamic for anyone involved. So while I know that it's time to move on, it's very difficult to actually take that next step knowing that it's going to move me way out of my comfort zone, and God doesn't seem to be very interested in providing any hints.

Of course, I guess I shouldn't expect life to suddenly become simple just because I'm afraid of making a mistake.

Forsaken

Last night I was rewatching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which I just acquired a used copy of on DVD), and I was struck by something that had always bothered me, but that I'd never known quite what to do with.

Namely, Chinese civilization dates back thousands of years, yet up until relatively recently none of the ancient cultures of the Far East had any recorded contact with Christianity (or Judaism, for that matter). According to most strains of Christian theology all of those countless millions of people are now in hell, all because God never revealed his true name to them. All of the beauty they created - art, music, literature, philosophy, technology, martial arts - was apparently pointless because of geographical barriers that they had no control over.

For the diehard fundamentalist there's nothing to question; if the Bible seems to suggest that all of those people deserve to go to hell, then that's simply all there is to it. Less dogmatic Christians would reason that we simply don't know the whole story, and that a just God will certainly take what they don't know into account when passing judgment. Like CS Lewis, they might posit that those who wholeheartedly seek after God will find him even if they don't call him by his proper name.

As we move away from the more conservative traditions, we'll find Christians willing to acknowledge the glimpses of truth found in Eastern philosophies, and even the notable similarities between Christian and Buddhist thought, and with such acknowledgments one can conclude that perhaps those thousands of years of Far Eastern history aren't as worthless as some unquestioningly assume.

As a Christian I still believe that the Bible presents the best picture we have of who God is and how he wants to relate to us, and that while different religions contain their own glimpses of eternity they aren't necessarily equally reliable paths for those seeking God. At the same time, though, I find myself increasingly convinced that the Holy Spirit can work and is at work outside of the context of 'orthodox' Christianity.

To acknowledge that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life is to recognize that our salvation is entirely dependent on him, and not necessarily on the labels we place on the boxes we construct in our constant attempts to define the infinitely powerful Creator of the universe we inhabit. There will always be those who reject him, but ultimately it's not our place to speculate on the eternal destiny of others.

At the same time, many who appear to have rejected God have, in reality, merely rejected a false impression of God that they were given by the bad example of some Christians. And the god that many 'believers' present to the world is small, petty, fickle and utterly undeserving of anyone's worship. That many who reject Christianity conflate those gods (lower-case g) with God (upper-case G) does not necessarily mean that they have truly rejected God, even if they carry that mistaken impression with them for the rest of their lives. As evidence of that we see many 'nonbelievers' who live godlier lives than the 'believers' who drove them away from the church.

But I digress. At the end of the day, all of our debates about God are rather like a group of two-year-olds arguing about the nature of the grown-up world, when any attempt their parents might make to explain to them what it's really like would go almost completely over their heads.

That isn't to say that God is completely unknowable, only that there's so much in this vast universe that we can just barely begin to comprehend that the best God can do in reaching out to us is to give us just enough knowledge of him to provide a starting point for managing our own lives. Fear and pride continually drive us toward the notion that we can bring others closer to God by micromanaging their lives for them (and even many who preach against such legalism with their words say something very different with their actions), but in the end we are no more qualified to do so than a toddler is capable of running a household.

There is tremendous beauty to be found in Far Eastern cultures. The fundamentalist has no choice but to dismiss that beauty as meaningless, but I'm convinced that the God who authored beauty is honored whenever human beings strive to emulate their Creator's creativity. Without devaluing my own beliefs I can affirm the good that I see in those who may not share my theology, and through those relationships build on my own understanding of the God I strive to know.

And no, that doesn't really have much to do with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It's a beautiful movie, though.

Random Thought

In the wake of my recent mention of the thought process behind my writing style, I was reminded of a paper I wrote back in college for one of my biblical studies classes.

The topic was women in ministry, and we were to argue either for or against women being allowed to serve as pastors. At the time I was against the idea, being fairly conservative in my theology.

I'd done all of my research well in advance, had my citations picked out and had a pretty good idea of what I was going to say, but didn't actually sit down to write the paper until the day before it was due. As I got to the end of my essay, I suddenly realized that I'd just written an argument in favor of women serving as pastors, and changing my argument would have required rewriting the entire thing - which I didn't have time for by then.

The professor gave my paper an A.

I never was quite sure what to think of that...