Christians and Privilege - Part Two

If you haven't already please read part one here. 

It has taken me years of study to come to my conclusions about Christians and privilege.  It has taken me years of trials to understand God in a different light, different from what I was taught from the time I was a tiny girl.  I am compelled to study the age old question of "why do bad things happen to good people, why do believers suffer so?" All of this has led me to search the scriptures.  I started to study topics such as predestination and free will.  When I started studying these things and also looking at how the world works, how God works in ALL believers lives I started to realize that there is a huge discrepancy between how we view God here in the United States and how He actually works.   

I'll quote a book that when I read it finally seemed to me a Biblical interpretation of God, free will, and predestination. See, I do not believe that God predestines each of our steps - I don't think that is Biblical. I think he has given us free will and if He predestines every step it negates free will:

From "Bright Evening Star" by Madeline L'Engle 

"If we do not live in a predestined world does that take away from God's omnipotent power? No, no, it makes it all the more extraordinary! When God gave us free will, the Maker did indeed throw away power. When Christ came to us as Jesus, that was an even more radical throwing away of power. But that's what a loving God does! God throws away power over and over again while we greedily grab for it. A lover wants to be loved by the beloved. not to wield power, but to love hoping that the love will be returned in the same way. When we are caught up in power we are not free, but in bondage to the power we have grasped. God is completely free because power has been laughingly thrown away in order that love may reign. The throwing away of power requires enormous power. "

I don't think that God knows everything that is going to happen, and even if He does He most often does not interfere.  I don't think He "allows" bad things to happen to people to test them or to discipline them.  I don't think someone gets cancer because God knew that they could "handle it", or that it was His way of having someone draw closer to Him.  I believe that we live in a fallen world, a fallen world means that God allows the world to continue in it's natural order: natural disasters happen, people die, people get sick, women are infertile, men rape, bad things happen.  God does not purposely allow these things, He does however allow the world to run it's natural course.  But He is there after, to hold your heart, to comfort you, to bring peace, to possibly perform a miracle.  My way of thinking make God even more powerful, if God doesn't predestine our steps - yet can accomplish Romans 8:28 and still work things together for the good of those that love him - well He is truly amazing!

Yet what is this "good" spoken of in Romans 8:28?  The Greek word here is Agathon.  From Babylon:

The good (principle), the highest or supreme good in a moral sense, summum bonum; Plato's name for that aspect of the divine otherwise called the unmanifest or First Logos. Although sometimes equated with atman, which corresponds to the Greek pneuma, paramatman is a better equivalent for to agathon. It is likewise equivalent to the Buddhist alaya (the indissoluble or everlasting).

What does this mean in a practical sense?

When I was a pastor a woman came to us that made my struggles look like a pittance. She had come from a civil war in Africa. She had scars all over her arms where someone in the resistance had taken a machete and killed her baby even though she tried to protect him by wrapping her arms around him. Her family was taken away from her to war camps and she was left alone, homeless, and wounded. She was blessed and was able to find a way to come to the United States. Fifteen years later she was reunited with her husband and her children that made. it. This woman was highly educated, she was a doctor in her country. She came here and had to get a crummy job, yet the love of Jesus shown through her despite all she had been through. Her heart was good.

Yet, what of those believers that died in the war camps? What if she hadn't been reunited with her husband and her surviving children - would God still have been good? Yes, because God works in our hearts, if the only good that God is able to do is comfort us as we die, after we have lost everything - then God is still working for our good - because He loves us.

Good is not things, or health, or the desires of our hearts, good is what God does with our hearts. Yes, He can give us good things, and in America we are so so SO blessed with health and material things and even good circumstances. But if all that is taken away? Most here would question God's goodness - because we have equated God's goodness with those things.

I believe God's goodness is what He does in our hearts. It is our hearts that He changes, not always our every move, our every step. How much more are we able to love Him, how much more important is it to be in daily communication with Him if it is our hearts He truly cares about and can change? To be more like Him, is completely about our hearts, not our circumstances.

Faith, true faith, is when everything is taken away from you and you can still trust that there is a God that loves you, a God that cares, even as you are dying alone and destitute. Even if the world has defeated you and completely broken you, evil can not win if God still has a hold of your heart and nothing can take that away. God's love is still more powerful than evil, because what He can do in a person's heart is that powerful.

This is what I believe, this is how I was able to reconcile my faith with the trials I have experienced.  This is how I was able to believe in God again after He didn't wave His magic wand and make everything all better.  God, in my ultimate moments of brokenness was able to hold my heart. He is so powerful that when I despised life, when I wanted to die, when I tried to end my life, when I held my dead baby, when I was being raped, when my best friend died, when all the horrible things in my life that have happened to me - I still knew that God was there for me. How powerful and loving is He! How amazing that He could still hold my heart! How powerful His love that even though the world truly broke me, I still trust in Him. He does work all things together for my good, because in my heart I still have love and I still have hope. I sometimes fear everything being taken away from me - like Job, yet I still believe that God is powerful enough to hold my heart no matter what. 

I once screamed at my husband in one of my darkest hours, "I don't believe in God anymore!" God was there, working in my heart even then, allowing me to feel my anger, allowing my doubt, allowing me to process my grief and hurt.  Going back to that Madeline L'Engle quote, God is a patient lover, He waits and woos, and comes on strong when we need it and backs off when we need that too.  He will wait and wait and try and try.  He is kind and will not force His way into your heart, but ever so gently will show you His love.  He is there to hold your heart. 

What if a lover has nothing to give, is that lover's love worthless?  If you receive nothing material from your lover, but you lover values you, supports you, is always there for you do you cast off the love because they have nothing material to give?  Some will.  But if a lover knows your heart, there is support there that no material positions or physical benefits could match.   To be loved unconditionally, so much so that you are made whole despite all you have been through and your imperfections is more powerful than all the riches in the world. 

And that is how I am able to have faith in Him now and truly believe that He does work all things together for the good of those that love Him.

Christians and Privilege - Part One

I watched this video that is going viral on Facebook today and was angry.*  I am angry at the logic of it.  I am tired of the Christian attitude that "Jesus will make everything magically better."  For years I have sat in churches and got the indirect but often direct message that if you bring all your cares to Jesus he will make everything better.  We have all heard "when God closes a door he opens a window."  How is that Biblical?  What if another window never opens?  What do we say to those that are suffering with no answer from God?  What does silence mean about God?  These are questions that need to be asked. 

Christians that I have run across often ascribe every good thing that happens in their life to God.  New job?  God.  Good doctor that was able to heal you?  God.  Infertility treatments that worked?  God.  I could go on and on talking about the situations that people attribute to the goodness of God.  People who prayed and prayers were magically answered.  I'm going to counter here and say something radical.  I don't believe in MOST of these situations it was God intervening.  I think it was middle class white American privilege that helped with these situations. 

*I just head an audible gasp from the crowd.*

Why would I say these things?  Do I hate God?  Have I turned my back on Jesus?  No!  In fact I have walked with Him through some of the most difficult trials of my life and have come out the other side still believing in Him.  So how could I say these awful things?

I have started paying attention to the world.   I see believers struggle, here in America, and elsewhere.  These other believers that have strong faith.  People in desperate situations that watch their children suffer, that are stuck in the middle of a war, that are black here in America - grew up in poverty - and can't seem to catch a break to get out.  What do you say to the believer that is watching their child die from starvation?  What do you say to the young woman that has prayed for years to be healed of a chronic illness that leaves her childless, in pain, and modern medicine can do nothing for her?  What do you say to the believer caught in a war that has watched her family die in a bombing and she is alone and a refugee in a strange country?  Do you honestly believe that God has something better for these people?  Do you believe that that God will wave His magic healing wand and make these people's pain all disappear? 

I believe Christians in America are out of touch with pain and suffering.  I believe they are out of touch with who the true God really is.  There is such a narrow focus on what is immediately around them that they view God only through their immediate culture.  They view God through privilege - we have so much privilege here in the United States, and yet people refuse to admit it.  And so the view of God follows. 

Part two here.

*Yes, I know this video is most likely from Australia.  I'm not an Aussie, so I can't speak to the Christian culture there.  The video is just the most current viral video with this message.

Church Depresses Me

It has been since last October that I have been a regular church attendee.  I have went a handful of times and each time I leave feeling drained and sad.  Sadness overwhelms me and it takes a few days to recover.  I think to myself 'that this is not how church should be, I should be encouraged and uplifted!'  But I am not.  I struggle with guilt and shame for not going, I struggle with depression when I do.

I label myself as a Christian and an ex-minister, and yet there are still times where every part of me has to struggle to get ready on Sunday morning, walk into the church building, sit down, actively engage in corporate worship, listen to the sermon, and socialize with others afterwards. 

I know I'm not alone in this struggle.  I think that church feels like a hostile environment for many people. 

There have been multiple times in my life where church has become a hostile environment for me to be in.

The first time I felt like this I was pregnant with my twins.  I was nineteen years old and had just come back from Bible college shamed.  I had once donned a pretty diamond ring on my finger, but that had been taken away.   Now I was a knocked up girl who had been caught in her sinful ways.  I attended church with my parents, until I started to show too much and then I wasn't allowed to go anymore.  We were keeping a secret and I wasn't allowed to tell anyone.  The only one who 'knew' was the senior pastor.  I remember one of the last Sundays I went; I was finally showing and I knew it would be one of my last Sundays at church.  I had my mother's long coat on to hide my bulging stomach.  I was standing in the middle of the worship service and I felt so lonely.  I wanted to cry, I wanted to have someone hold me, I wanted someone to tell me that it was okay, and that I would be okay.  But it didn't happen, and not too long after that I found myself home by myself while my parents went to church.  It was almost a relief not to go, not to have to dodge the truth. 

There have been other times where I felt like church was a horrible place to go, times where sitting in service put me on the verge of a panic attack.  As a minister I was relived that I was able to teach the children because I could embrace the sweetness of youth, love them, be present without worries about judgement. 

It's is almost amusing to me that almost every time I felt that church was hostile environment it had nothing to do with God, but everything to do with the people in it.  Sometimes people hurt others in a church environment intentionally, I have been on the receiving end of that multiple times.  Other times it was because I didn't let others in.  And sometimes it is just the situation that is overwhelming. 

I love my current church.  The first time we went there it felt like home.  It's not perfect, but it is a wonderful place for us.  So why have I been dodging it?  It seems so ridiculous when I type it out, when I say it out loud, but it is something that hurts to the deepest part of who I am.  In a choice that really wasn't a choice, I was denied my motherhood seventeen years ago in the shape giving up my twins for adoption.  After that my dream was to be a mother again, not to replace the boys that I had given up - that would never happen, but to fill my heart and home with children that I so desperately wanted.  I longed for motherhood.  It was a huge blow when we discovered that we couldn't have children.   In our first five years of marriage I struggled greatly and dodged questions of when we were going to have a family.  Looking back now I realize that I very likely had many early miscarriages.  Then I had two miracle babies, and yes I believe they were miracles.  Then the miscarriages started again. 

I was told that pregnancy was very dangerous for me, possibly life threatening, and yet we still tried and lost more babies.  One of those babies took, but she didn't make it and I held her tiny frame my hand.

Last March I had to choose between my health and the possibility of more children.   I was so sick that there was no question what I should do.  I had the surgery that destroyed every last bit of fragile fertility I had left in my body.  And so in a choice that wasn't really a choice I lost my ability to be a new mother once more, this time for good.

We go to a young church.  The preponderance of the people there are under thirty.  They are beautiful young people doing what young people do: date, get married, and start families.  When I go my church everywhere I look there are pregnant women glowing with radiance of early motherhood.  The church had to move the nursery because there were too many babies being born and they needed more space. 

I go to church and look at healthy glowing women and beautiful little newborns.  I was sick for all my pregnancies - either throwing up so much that I needed IV lines and hospitals or fighting preterm labor.  The last baby that came out of my body that I got to hold was a dead one.  I look at these lovely women and their babies and am truly happy for them.  But I am reminded at the same time of how my body betrayed me, how my motherhood was taken away at the beginning and at the end.  I am angry at my body, at myself, at my choices, at my life.  A woman's motherhood is not something to be taken lightly, is not something that is easily forgotten.  Even though I have two children that are (for the most part) healthy - I am still hurt and angry.  Having two children eases, but does not take away the pain and longing I feel.  It does not take away the betrayal I feel by my own body.  Being in that church only amplifies those feelings. 

I have gone back to church hoping that I could overcome these emotions, ignore them, compartmentalize them - but it never works.

I feel stuck.  And so I stay away.

I'm sure there are many others out there that can relate to me, whether it is because you just got divorced, are infertile, your sexual orientation does not match with traditional beliefs, or you have been betrayed... there are so many reasons to feel like church is a hostile environment and they are too many to list. 

So what do you do when your community, your support system feels hostile?  I'm still pondering that.  I hope that with time and counseling I'll feel like I can go back to my church and it can feel like home once again.

The Marriage Amendment

I live in one of the four states that will have the marriage amendment on the ballot.  For me this has caused a time of reflection.  I just wanted to share with you my thoughts.  As a note I am not going to discuss my feelings about homosexuality, because I feel that they are not relevant. 

I know why most Christians are voting for the marriage amendment.  I understand this viewpoint, after all I was an uber-conservative pastor for many years.  This world view thinks the act of homosexuality is a sin.  Nothing will change that viewpoint, sex outside of marriage and especially sex with someone of the same sex is wrong.  For this group of people the impassioned pleas, the beautiful videos of two people in love, the heart-wrenching tales of loss will not move them to think that homosexuality is anything but a sin.  I've seen shame tactics from anti-amendment groups and this will only cause stronger resolution in their unwavering hearts.  In the end I know that they think that not having the legal benefits of marriage is a consequence for choosing a life of sin.

I get not wanting to endorse something that they feel is a sin.  BUT here is what is frustrating me about all of it: This amendment is not about endorsing homosexuality.  If this amendment passes homosexual marriage will still be illegal in my state.  So, to me, this amendment feels more like going overboard to try to stop something that is already illegal.  In the end I feel it is persecution of another people group.  Christians claim to know about persecution, a limiting to feel free to practice their faith, so they should understand even so slightly the feeling of persecution.

Let me explain further:  This amendment is trying to limit others belief systems.  Yes, I did say belief system.  In America we have worked hard to embrace freedom of religion and freedom of achieving your personal dream as long as it does not harm others.  This country is a haven for all to practice any kind of belief system.  It seems to me that Christians tolerate Buddhists, Hindus, Satanists, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses etc., if nothing else hoping that one day they will turn to Jesus.  We live in a country where people are free to practice hate like the KKK and Westboro Church.  These detestable people follow their convictions and practice their belief systems under the guise of freedom with all that entails.  We are also free to spend our whole lives serving the poor loving other and following examples like Mother Theresa.  So not only are we free to practice our religion we are free to practice our belief system and personal set of morals and follow these convictions out in our actions.  So for example we are free to abuse alcohol or free to be dry depending on what we believe about alcohol.  I'm guessing you can see where this line of logic is heading. 

I think that the culture of homosexuality has become it's own people group.  There are many variables within that group, but in the end it has become a culture because of the stigma that has been attached to it.  This group of people has become a community, embracing one another, supporting one another, and caring for one another when often they are abandoned by their families, friends, and churches.  They are often more of a community than most churches I know.  Here is a group of people that are trying to live out their own belief system and in it find a way of life within that set of beliefs.  Marriage has become part of this culture, part of what is important, a way of life.

So to me this amendment feels like it is trying to attack another groups belief system and that is persecution.  It seems to me that that is not what we should strive for.  It seems to me that attacking a persons way of life in the name is Jesus is wrong.

In the end I don't care if homosexuality is a sin or not.  I just don't want to hurt others in the name of Jesus and that is why I am voting no.  

Looking Back

You never know how bad it really was until you look back and see what you just went through.   I didn’t know how sick I was, I really had no idea.  The only one who possibly had any clue was my husband.  He watched my quick decent into sickness, but I don’t think even he could really tell how sick I was.  It took me a while to realize that this wasn’t a passing thing. 

It took me even longer to realize how not normal I had become.  Normal people don’t pass out every day.  Normal people don’t get so tired after going to church that it takes two whole days to recover.  Normal is not being so weak that it was difficult to lift a laundry basket or getting winded by going up and down the stairs.  It was a slow realization two years ago that I was truly ill.  It has even been scary, there have been ER visits, many times of passing out, a few times of passing out and then being unresponsive, but mostly it has been extreme exhaustion.

This illness started to affect my thought processes.  My thoughts were foggy and I lost words in the middle of sentences.  I would go to do something and then forget about it for days.  I missed two very important conferences for my son.  Even reading became a chore because I couldn’t keep my train of thought for long enough to finish more than a few pages. 

My husband and I started referring to the “Old Heather.”  The one that seemed more vibrant, that got out and did things, that wrote, that had ideas, and so much more.  The worse it got the more I feared that something was desperately wrong, but the less able I was to make concrete decisions to help myself.

Then one day in November of 2010 I got a break through.  I got on an elliptical machine with a heart monitor.  I watched my heart rate soar into the 200’s almost immediately.  I suddenly became lightheaded and wanted to pass out.  I did it again another day with the same effect.  Finally I was able to go to the doctor with two concrete symptoms; passing out and a high heart rate.  Finally a doctor took me seriously.

It took almost a year but I was able to finally see the specialist I needed.  I finally got an answer; Dysautonomia.  It’s a big word that means your autonomic system is out of whack.  Your autonomic system controls all of the unconscious functions of the body, including the cardiovascular system, gastrointestinal system, metabolic system, and endocrine system.  All of mine are severely messed up.  It’s not fun.  It’s also rare and so it is not something most people or even medical professionals even know about. 

Bad day

I got to go on a steroid for a while, but that caused major side effects that made everything worse.  Honestly the worst side effect was that I was bleeding constantly.  One of my biggest struggles is that I don’t have enough blood.  Thus I have low blood pressure.  Not the good kind of low blood pressure, really low blood pressure.  It’s the kind that makes me exhausted all the time, I don’t get enough blood to my brain and that makes it hard for me to think, I pass out because my body is trying to get blood to my brain and it makes me fall down for gravity to accomplish that. 

So all the traditional therapies didn’t work for me because my blood loss was too great every month.  The older I got the heaver my period got and thus the more blood I lost and couldn’t reproduce it fast enough.

This was compounded by my miscarriage in 2010.  I almost died when I lost Elya because I almost hemorrhaged to death.  We didn’t know about my blood issues at the time or I think different steps would have been taken.  After the miscarriage I was severely anemic.  For six months I struggled to get that under control.  My doctor thinks I never recovered from the miscarriage and that is why between that and the monthly bleeding I was getting worse with every month. 

If I wanted to get better I had to stop my monthly cycle.  In my case the only way to do that was to have a uterine ablation or a hysterectomy.  Either one meant the lost of my ability to have any more babies.  It was devastating for me.  In March of this year I had a uterine ablation.  It was an awful experience and I ended up in the emergency room later that day because of complications. 

Even with all the complications a couple weeks later I started to notice a difference.  I had energy.  My mental confusion started to lessen.  I looked around the house and was horrified about how messy it had become.  How did I not notice this before?  I looked at the relationship between my husband and I and saw how much it had suffered, and the same for my children, my friends and my family.  I had been afraid to drive because I passed out once while I was diving.  I realized how much time I had spent at home. 

Everyone around me had suffered because of me and I still feel a tremendous amount of guilt about that.  If you are reading this and you are one of the people I have let down in the last four years, I am sorry.  Terribly horribly sorry.   

So now here we are five months after my surgery.  I’m not all better, not by a long shot.  I’m still learning to manage my chronic illness, but I can manage it now with traditional therapy.  Learning to take care of myself is difficult, it doesn’t come naturally, but I’m trying one day at a time.  There are days I forget what is required of me, or days I’m lazy and just don’t want to.  But I know now how sick I was and I don’t want to be there again.  It’s a learning process and I still haven’t figured it all out yet. 

It sounds corny by I feel like I’m starting a new part of my life.  I want “Old Heather” to be the sick Heather.  I want my identity to become something that is different than what I have experienced the past four years. 

Thus I want to chronicle my victories.  A victory is anything that I do that is creative again, or organizing a closet out of chaos, or turning my chaos into cleanliness, or just writing again.  It is being with my family in a real way, or having fun with friends.  A victory is anything that I haven’t been able to do these last few years. 

I can’t wait to start this new part of my life.