November 14, 2009

It’s Really All About God – book review (sort of)

Posted by ellenharoutunian under Bookses!, Living Orthodoxy, book review, community, conversations, interfaith dialogue, real church | Tags: , , , , , |
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itsreallyall3It’s Really All About God
By Samir Selmanovic
Jossey-Bass
286 pages including study questions

When recommending an important book one of my favorite profs used to say, “Go, sell all that you have and buy this book.” There’s not many books that can truly earn such a strong endorsement but I think this is one of them. But I must recommend it with a warning: it will rock your world. Perhaps it’s only suitable only for those whose thirst for God has exceeded safety limits. For through his personal stories and engagement with the stories of  Christians, Muslims, Pagans, Atheists and more, author Samir Selmanovic points the way to a life with God and each other that is bigger and better than most of us have ever dared to dream. It is the only non-fiction book that has brought me to deeply felt tears in recent years. And there’s laughter as well to be sure, flowing easily from his descriptions of our humble human condition. (Really, who writes about their hemorrhoids?) Yet in this warm sharing of very human realities he draws us into a brother and sisterhood of humanity in which we may encounter God in the midst of our ordinary experiences. I am writing this not so much as a book review than as an expression of gratitude.

Samir Selmanovic is the founder and co-leader of Faith House in New York City. He shares his own journey from his beginnings amidst a close atheist/Muslim family in eastern Europe to his conversion to Christianity through a Seventh Day Adventist Church and through the realization of having embraced a way of understanding religion that limited the scope of God’s love in this world. “Religions are meant to lose their luster to God’s larger presence,” he says. And, are we willing to make [our] religion “take a back seat to something larger than itself?” The eye-opening time for him was when he reflected on the fact that his early years had been encompassed by fullness, celebration, hard work, kindness, laughter, generosity and warmth within his secular Muslim home and he realized that “Life was complete, until I became a Christian and it all came apart.”

He came to realize that in his early days of conversion he had shut out his former life and relationships. Rather than growing into more life, he had merely switched sides. In my early years as a Christian, I also learned to compartmentalize my life, ignoring family celebrations for Christian retreats and pouring less of me into connection with dorm friends and others to go to Campus Crusade meetings. I ignored my heart for years, assuming that to want to drink in regular old life, side by side with family and neighbors of all persuasions was to step away from the Kingdom or compromise myself. (Yes, I was actually taught that.) Selmanovic demonstrates beautifully that the Kingdom was to be found in those places all along. God inhabits the lives of all people.

At first glance it might seem that this is just another attempt at asserting the idea that Christians dread- that there’s good in all religions so why can’t we all get along? However, I believe he rescues us from our shrunken vision of exclusivity and superiority. He gently and beautifully challenges Christian triumphalism and leads us to a healthier place by recalling our virtue of humility- we are not the only ones who serve and do for the world. He gives us back the wonder of the deep enjoyment of the presence and expression of God in all others. The gift of other religions, he says, is that “They pose difficult questions we don’t want to ask, make assumptions we don’t want to acknowledge or examine, create meaningful arguments against us we don’t want to consider, and expose harmful practices we don’t want to stop.” They make us better Christians and in that vein, they can help us to become better lovers as a more generous expression of God’s heart for this world. Perhaps trying to “own” God has distorted our self-understanding.

So how much will our hearts expand? Christians have considered atheists to be the enemy. Selmanovic draws us into an even more expansive heart that is able to embrace the gift that atheism brings. He says, “Atheism at its best grabs us by the collar and throws us to the ground, demanding to see lives well lived, forcing us to dig deeper and live up to the best of our own religions.” Atheism calls on us to live out the integrity that our “converted” hearts have claimed.

In my tribe I know that a knee-jerk reaction will be that the author is advocating relativism – that all faiths are the same so we should just blend together. We fear the loss of specialness, as God’s “peculiar people”. But he asserts that our uniqueness is a gift that we offer to one another and that the boundaries that maintain our distinctiveness are also essential in order to love well. However, the author reminds us, these boundaries do not need to be cement walls. Why can’t they be bridges? Or doors? If God is relational (and of course He is), so are we, and we need a path towards each other.

But here is the real gift – as we lay down our demand to be first and best and only and that all others must become like us, won’t we then look more like Jesus who laid down all of His privilege, even equality with God, to become one of us and live in our reality, even unto death? We will become lovers in the best sense as He was, serving up, making room for the other and dancing with God as He plays in 10,000 places. As we give up our stake in protecting Christianity, we are freer to follow Christ. Through this gentle, winsome call out of a religious expression which sets up rigid walls between human beings, we may paradoxically find and therefore express more of Him. In losing ourselves, we will find Life. Selmanovic says, “We can either stay with the Christianity that we have mastered with the Jesus we have domesticated, or we can leave Christianity as a destination, embrace Christianity as a way of life, and then journey to reality, where God is present and living in every person, every human community, and all creation.” Sounds like the Kingdom to me.

www.samirselmanovic.com

Read the New York Times Review
Mystery Over Certainty
Pomomusings
Video of Samir Selmanovic

(I once again apologize for my lack of gender-inclusive language. There is no appropriate pronoun to describe God who transcends gender and creating hybrids makes me crazy. But the author of this book absolutely includes women fully and freely into this wonderful mix.)

 

October 26, 2009

blogging the 10 commandments: #4

Posted by ellenharoutunian under Kingdom, community, conversations, real church, reflections, theology | Tags: , , , , , |
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southafrica-winegetawayI took a brief Sabbath from blogging about some reflections on the 10 commandments and have returned just in time to continue with number 4.

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. ~ Ex. 20:8-11

I have written about the Sabbath before (found here) but there is always more to say about such a day as this.

My husband and I enjoyed the most beautiful Sabbath experience several years ago during a trip to Africa. We had spent 5 weeks in Mozambique with people we loved, working very full days, writing, preparing, teaching, discipling, learning, traveling, preaching, visiting, counseling and conversing. There was no time off. We enjoyed it so much we didn’t realize how tired we were until we left Mozambique and landed in Capetown, South Africa (via Johannesburg). While there we had some time to take in the lovely seascape, travel around the Cape of Good Hope while dodging penguins and baboons, and gaze at all the beauty from high up on Table Mountain. Interspersed between those things was a visit to Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela had been imprisoned for 27 years) and visits to a few of the many townships where poor, black South Africans still reside post-apartheid. The strange juxtaposition of it all was too much for my mind to hold.

One morning, we ended up at an old winery. A huge, leafy tree beckoned us to come sit beneath it and rest alongside a small blue pond. Dappled sunlight poured through the leaves above us as we sunk into in white wicker chairs. The temperature was perfect, neither too warm nor cool. It was so perfect in fact, that we barely noticed any temperature at all. A gentle breeze rustled through endless rows of grapevines that wove up into the small hills that encircled the vineyard. The vineyard owner’s two purebred dogs came out to sit with us in the shade of the tree, lying in two half-moons at our feet. As if on cue, two glasses of wine would appear at intervals for tasting, accompanied by cheese and fruit. The time for work and worry had passed for the moment, and it was time to drink in beauty with all of our senses. We were soaked in Presence. We could feel God’s pleasure.

Sabbath time. Sabbath is more than a pleasant day off, or a reward for hard work. It is a call to remember. The Sabbath command recalls a time that pre-dates the day that we forgot God and forgot ourselves. It recalls beauty, harmony and life abundant. It stirs longing for the home we’ve never really known but desire just the same. It is a thin place, where we once again may walk in the garden with God in the cool of the day. It helps us to rediscover joy – an experience that is sorely lacking in so much of our lives that are consumed by survival and competition and production. Sabbath increases our longing for wholeness and wellness. Sabbath is a connection to our past and to the future, where we at once recall the beauty for which we were designed, and gain a better vision for the coming reign of God. It is a reminder of the promise: “All shall be well”.

What’s most remarkable to me about this commandment is that it includes a profound sense of God’s heart for justice. Sabbath rest is not merely for the rich and privileged who can afford not to work. Nor is it merely for those who have “earned” the right to rest. As Jesus reminds us so many times in various ways, those who seemed not to work as hard or “do it right” will still be welcomed by Him, just like the parable in which the workers who started their labor late in the day in the vineyard got the same reward as those who had toiled since the early morning. God simply does not measure us by the things that seem logical in a post-fall world. Sabbath reflects grace.

The commandment about Sabbath was spoken to the Jews after they had been freed from slavery in Egypt. They knew what it was like to be the hated and oppressed other. And now they learned that the people of God were never to treat others that way. The Sabbath would include all – male and female, people of all stations of life, strangers and even animals. All would be free to enjoy God and others. The Sabbath is meant for all Creation. It foreshadows the Kingdom to come but as we practice it together it helps to create Kingdom Now.

As I was teaching about this one day in Mozambique, I was struck by the overwhelming irony of being a white American standing in authority as a teacher over black Africans in their own country. I prayed, God what do I do with this? I sensed Him say, “Speak to them about their story.” So with more than a little trembling, I did. I began to speak of the reality of slavery that had ravaged their continent and despoiled the moral health of a large part of the world for centuries. Their eyes reflected deep shame and they slunk lower into their seats.

As our conversation progressed they began to reveal some of the lies they had been told. “Is it true,” one asked, “that we are black because we are so sinful?” Is it true that we are black because we are cursed?” “Is it true that the white man must rule over us because we are sinful?” They had been told all these things by colonists and remembered them for generations. We went to the text together to disrupt those lies. And because of the fourth commandment that speaks to former slaves about equity and God’s heart for all, they were able to bring their story to the true Story. They began to pop like popcorn out of their seats. “Africa is blessed!” one man cried.

Sabbath, it seems, is a transformative practice. It is a great equalizer. When we each remember to interrupt and stop what we believe is our life and look up to remember our Source, we stop measuring and rating and comparing ourselves to one another. Then as we make space for all to experience Sabbath rest by removing our resentments and demands upon the other, we remember our interconnectedness. When we all are free to dream, rest and play, and all are free to pause and drink in the same beauty under a sunlit tree, then all are finally recognized to be the fruit of the same Vine.

I believe that Sabbath is a practice that we cannot afford to ignore. It is a commandment that is restorative for us on many levels. But even as we are intentional about practicing Sabbath as a community, there will still be food to be prepared, babies to be changed, or animals to be tended. Somebody’s hands will be serving. The fact that while we live in this world our work never truly stops just serves to remind us that true Sabbath never happens without some form of sacrifice. That too, is part of the Story that needs to be recalled again and again.

 

October 5, 2009

blogging the 10 commandments: #3

Posted by ellenharoutunian under Kingdom, conversations, real church, reflections, spirituality, stuff to ponder, theology | Tags: , , , , , , , |
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nameinvainI am blogging through the 10 commandments. Sometimes things become so familiar that we can’t truly see them anymore. I am finding them richer and more grace oriented than I remembered. They come alive when you remember God’s passion for creating the Kingdom of Shalom- peace, life, and love- on earth. The post on the first two commandments is here.

So here is number 3:

You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.
Exodus 20:7

What does it mean to take the Lord’s name in vain? According to Webster, the word vain means “empty; devoid of real value; useless; worthless, fruitless and futile.” On one level we understand that to not take the Lord’s name in vain means no “OMG’s”. We do use empty expressions of God’s name frequently. We even throw God’s name around as if it were a curse. Jesus! It feels powerful, I suppose, as curse words often do. I sometimes imagine the long-suffering, bodily resurrected and present Jesus saying, “I am right here. No need to shout.” Now that would make cool reality TV.

Do we have any idea of WHOM we speak? Once again, the name of God used in this commandment is YHWH (Yahweh), which is the personal name of God that is referenced when you see the capitalized word LORD in the text. It was considered by the ancient Hebrews to be too sacred to speak. I need to meditate on that a bit more. I wonder if this was because any word to name or describe God cannot ever be big enough and therefore once we utter it, we have reduced God down into what our finite minds can hold. St. Augustine said that once we have explained God, we have lost God. Peter Rollins says that any talk that we have of God is not truly about God. It is about our understanding of God. It is about finite, one-dimensional snapshots of God, and the images we have constructed from them. A study of the word for vain, שָׁוְא in Hebrew associates it with the idea of idols – something worthless for ascertaining the truth. To reduce God in this way must be the ultimate act of vanity (both in the sense of emptiness, but also in conceit) because we create a false image of Him.

In our attempts to grasp an understanding of God lies the inherent danger that we will create a system of religion and ethics that is built around the smaller God that we’ve captured. When we do so, we begin to speak in ways that demand supremacy and “being right” and that create divides and exclusions and distortions of the faith in His name. Love is thwarted. (It’s funny how this smaller God resembles ourselves.) When this happens we violate both of the greatest commandments given to us by Jesus (that sum up all of the 10) which are: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and love others as you love yourself.” When we take God’s name in vain, we lose God and thus, each other. It kills the community of Shalom. It’s fruitless, empty, futile.

Even as we confess our utter poverty in trying to understand God, Jesus brought a name and face to us as the God-man, God in flesh. He came to show us what God was truly like: “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” (John 1:18) Even so, I realize that we do continue to try to reduce Him or fit Him into our mold (Soldier Jesus, Boyfriend Jesus, Santa Jesus, Holier than Thou Jesus, Congeniality Jesus, etc.) but we have a Person who has shown us the heart of God and how God moves in this world. Like the first two commandments, I think the third is calling us back to sit with Him and gaze upon His Face. Sitting with Jesus, we silence our many words so that instead of grasping and comprehending, we are grasped. Instead of holding and possessing, we are held. Instead of “changing” God, God changes us. Sitting there with Jesus, we learn that “that which we cannot speak of is the one thing about whom and to whom we cannot stop speaking.”* There we find our heart’s desire instead of own vain attempts at explanations of Him.  After all, “one does not read love letters while in the embrace of the Beloved.”* Then, we love “because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)

Here’s more thoughts on what taking God’s name in vain might mean (Feel free to add your own!):

  • Presuming to speak for God in ways that divides and diminishes others
  • Televangelists who insist that God promises that if you send money to them your life will change for the better (We have had too many vulnerable people deceived by this.)
  • Asserting absolute rights over another in the name of God
  • Presuming ownership of God in the belief that God does not or cannot inhabit the lives of people outside our faith circles
  • Presuming to live self-sufficiently, as if our lives do not effect the whole
  • Using God to justify a religious spirit that profits or dominates, or simply must have the last word
  • Withholding respect from others as the Imago Dei
  • Presenting the Evangel as one who is not good news for all
  • Forgetting grace

*These quotes are from “It’s Really All About God” by Samir Selmanovic
(It is also so difficult to write of God when we don’t have a pronoun that can transcend gender!)

 

September 30, 2009

blogging the 10 commandments: # 1 and 2

Posted by ellenharoutunian under Kingdom, Living Orthodoxy, community, conversations, generative Christianity, real church, reflections, spirituality, theology | Tags: , , , , |
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montypythonGodI am going to blog about the 10 commandments. Wow, you must be running low on material, a friend said. Weeeeell no, I am interested in writing about them because I think how we see them reveals something about ourselves. They may trigger all sorts of reactions, as my friend conveniently demonstrated. There are those who view them with feelings of guilt or annoyance. Some view them with a smug satisfaction. Some see them as a big snooze-fest like my friend above. She also feels burdened and judged when she reads them.

I resonate with Scot McKnight when he says that the 10 commandments are relational in nature. The first four commandments are about loving God, the last 6 are about loving others. Jesus summed them all up for us in His expansive way: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and love others as you love yourself. I have always wondered why people get so adamant about having the 10 commandments posted in their local government buildings instead of the two greatest commands. Is it because Jesus’ interpretation of them requires so much more of us?

The first two were originally seen by the Hebrews as one commandment. Maybe should be called the Nine Commandments, which would be a cool play of 3’s, being Trinitarian and all. But I digress. The first two commandments are:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

“You shall have no other gods before me.

“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
Exodus 20: 2-4

The first two commandments are contained in verses 3 and 4 but I included verse 2 because it reveals something about God’s heart for the people. When LORD is written in all caps, it is the word Yahweh (YHWH), which is God’s personal name and was considered so sacred by the Hebrews that they would not utter it. So here we have God expressing Him/Herself on a personal, relational level as the one brought them into freedom. That’s what love does. Even so, we often read the commandments as if God were saying from on high, “I do and do and do for you kids and what do I get? Straighten up and fly right! Here’s the rules, don’t blow it again.” Instead, I think God was saying something more like, “This is Who I am, and I know who you are. Here is the way that brings life, love and freedom. Walk in it.”

Why do I say that? I believe that these commandments are pure grace. You shall have no other gods before me. In the days of Moses there were plenty of other cultures with dozens of gods whom people had to please in order to ease their anxiety about surviving in a harsh world. It gave them some sense of control to think they had some affect on what could bring good weather for crops or to have plenty of sons so one’s tribe and influence would increase. The Hebrews were often lured into those beliefs. But these gods were capricious and unpredictable. And there were so many of them that required attention. People were enslaved to appeasing them, even sacrificing their own children when required.

Don’t be enslaved to anyone or anything, God said. Look at Me. I bring you freedom.

In addition, being a student of attachment theory which studies how people develop into healthy, loving human beings, I think God was saying something even more profound. In attachment theory we know that a child develops a sense of being and self from the loving gaze of another, primarily at first, her mother. Through sensitive connection, reflection and response, a child learns that she exists as a separate and special person, that she is worthy of love and can trust others to meet her needs. Eventually she is able to become one who is able connect emotionally and meet others’ needs as well. Without that strong protective beginning, people cannot attach in deep, healthy ways in later relationships. Love is thwarted. People struggle deeply because their true selves are tucked away and hidden, often even from themselves. They struggle to know how to get close to others and often feel unable to participate in some of the sweetest things in life because they don’t know or trust who they really are. So, what does this have to do with the commandments?

From the creation stories we know that we are the Imago Dei, the image of God. The crucial mother-child attachment is an icon of the crucial attachment we need in relationship with God. God’s gaze upon us affirms our truest selves and helps to peel away the “god complex” -the false selves that we often create to present to the world. We draw our truest identity from a face to face relationship with God. He tells us who we are, giving us the unconditional acceptance and love and delight that we need to flourish and be. He is the ultimate “Thou” to call forth our “I”, to paraphrase Martin Buber. From this orientation to God, we begin to understand who we are. Likewise, on a larger scale the living Church body draws her life and identity from God as well. To shift our gaze downward towards lesser things as we often do, substituting Christology for Christ for example, or beliefs that squeeze out those who do not fit a particular mold, means we lose ourselves. We lose our corporate identity.

It has been my belief that the church has lowered her gaze to many lesser things. Most are not necessarily bad things in and of themselves. They may include things like preaching, programs, church culture, moralism, rationalism and other “isms”, club mentality, being right (at least more right than that church down the street), being good, looking good, looking righteous, knowing how everyone else should look, finding ways to justify not being our brothers’ keeper, etc. Add your own. It is said that we will resemble that which we worship. If so, when others see us, what are we communicating about God?

It’s easy to see how these first two commandments are so connected. The second is: You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. When we take our gaze off of God as our Source of life, identity and being, whatever we gaze upon instead becomes an idol. An idol can be material or ideological. Anything, anything can become an idol. Idols are manageable. They give us a sense of certainty and tell us how to proceed. They make life seem logical and controllable. Idols freeze our certainties in time, eliminating the need for faith or hope, having created some sense of control over the past and future. Idols kill love and therefore, community.

The grace in these first two commandments is that in fixing our eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, we receive more of God for whom we were made to love and enjoy forever as the Westminster Confession says, and God heals us and gives us ourselves. And, just as important, He gives us each other! Miroslav Volf says that when we come to faith in Christ, we not only receive Christ but also all He brings with Him. Even in each of our own lives God is creating more than a single person; He is creating a community that resembles His own communal life in the Trinity. Though I do not believe, of course, that the ancient Hebrews were thinking about attachment theory when they studied the scriptures, they did understand the idea of Shalom, that celebrative experience of life that was peace-filled, inclusive, forgiving, abundant, joyful, and harmonious. God is re-creating people who will be able to participate fully in that. In fixing our gaze upon God, we re-orient ourselves to the only true means of experiencing the community of Shalom, and of birthing the Kingdom of Shalom on earth. I hope we can begin to see these commandments not as burdens or sources of self-righteous accomplishments but as a gift of life and love.

2 down, 8 to go.

 

September 23, 2009

who should lead the church?

Posted by ellenharoutunian under Kingdom, community, conversations, generative Christianity, real church, search for real church, social justice, stuff to ponder | Tags: , , , |
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downslastsuppersmall

CLICK on picture to see larger image

If you examine the picture closely, you can see that this portrayal of DaVinci’s Last Supper (photographed by Raoef Mamedov) is made up of people with Down’s Syndrome. This picture brought to mind a conversation from a DMin class on church leadership from over a year ago. It was called “Beyond Hierarchy” and focused on what church leadership could look like in this age of rapidly shifting ideas. One of the Profs had received 100 letters from pastors saying things like, “Something changed about 4 years ago . . .  We can’t do things the same anymore . . . We’re done with the show and placing ourselves on the corner and expecting people to come.”

They recognized that we have a hierarchical Christianity within an egalitarian culture. People don’t want to come to church and listen passively anymore. The expressed goal of the class was to explore how to release everyone to be active participants in the Grand Narrative of God. Sounded good. Aha! An action plan! A good old “how-to”.

During the class we were part of a class-wide conference call with an author of one of the many new how-to-do-church books that have been published in the last few years. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’ve read a ton of them, many are really good and insightful about church in this culture.) But then one class member asked him, who should lead the church? Without a second’s hesitation he replied, “the least of these.”

Silence.

No-one knew what to say to that. We all felt a bit exposed. Surely he was not serious. We wanted new ideas, but in reality most of us are still pretty comfortable with the “sharpest” and most entertaining and informative as leaders. And we like to be counted amongst that special group. And we still too often want someone up front that makes us feel like good Christians and look like we are doing important work. We become very comfortable with the congregational passivity that that leadership structure produces and the resulting insulation from most of the hurt and need of the world (or, quite possibly, down the street.)  But the least of these? How does leadership flow through them?

I remember my sweet cousin with Down’s who died in her thirties of a heart condition that is common to the syndrome. She was without guile and ready to love anyone. She would give huge bear hugs and unabashedly assume that you were her best friend upon first meeting. Simple things that would not warrant a second look from most of us made her uncommonly happy. And most of us have heard the stories from the Special Olympics where a whole group of runners will stop and run back to help a fallen friend – and often choose to cross the finish line together. They are each their brother’s keeper. When you think about it, when it comes to Christ-like love perhaps they set the bar too high for the rest of us.

We know that if we made any of them executive pastor, it might kill the institution which needs CEO’s and administrators and winners to make it work and stay afloat. But what do we value? From the least of these we might just learn humility, a sincere lack of self-importance, unconditional love, and sacrificial giving simply because someone had a need. Maybe we’d develop eyes to see God beyond where we have convinced ourselves He works and stays. Maybe we’d really move beyond hierarchy because we’d be in utter awe and wonder of each and every new best friend we meet. Maybe we’d finally see the Reality of God in the rhythms of a footrace gone backwards.

Jurgen Moltmann says that a church without the disabled is a disabled church. I think that’s because without them we really buy into the idea that the best and brightest know something more about doing “ministry” than everyone else. In my ongoing search for real church, that is, our true identity as the Body of the living Christ, our Living Orthodoxy, it seems that the “least of these” truly do know something about the Kingdom of God that the rest of us desperately need to learn. And perhaps, we who have lowered our sites to a comfortable ticket-to-heaven gospel are truly the “disabled” ones.

 

September 18, 2009

loving the other part of the flock, part TWO

Posted by ellenharoutunian under community, conversations, gay Christians, real church, spirituality, stuff to ponder | Tags: , , , , |
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sheepandgoatsMy tribe has been orbiting around “truth” like the earth orbits the sun. This is because truth gives us a center of gravity to keep us in place and to protect us from spinning out of control. My assertion has been that we have been orbiting around a truth too small for us, limiting the intended scope and reach of our lives. We are meant to have the Truth Himself, the resurrected and alive Jesus, as our center of gravity. Smaller truths, such as our attempts to understand God in the form of theologies, doctrines and the western mind, are good and can be helpful but when they take the place of the Truth Himself they also become a form of idolatry. We think we know.

To have Jesus at the center means that we are constrained by love as the force that holds us and keeps us. Jesus at the center is the only way in which we can love and fellowship with those with whom we disagree. But to center ourselves around Love is quite a difficult shift. Love seems to let just anyone in. Love makes space for the other. It is very difficult for people like us of the dualistic mind, to imagine that there is something more important than the truths that we hold dear. Truth, after all, has been how we have differentiated and defined ourselves as a particular kind of Christian. It has become our identity. So, more than ever, we need Christ.

I am bringing this up again because I am adding another post regarding gay Christians. Many of them find one of 3 categories that fit their journey. One is to be gay and committed to Christ, which means monogamy at the very least (and opens up questions of unions, marriages, ordinations, etc.) Some of them are very dear friends. I have written about these folks in a previous post (click here). Another category is to be Christian and celibate. I also have friends in that place. The third category is about healing. This is the one that I am writing about today.

This will also make a lot of people mad at me. It seems that no-one is safe from at least some maligning when speaking out on this volatile issue, no matter what angle we come from. Those who pursue inner healing are sometimes criticized and even made fun of by those in the first group, especially those who call themselves ex-ex gays. However, it is also important to know that there is a lot of very harmful “treatments” out there, some of which is thrown together by well-meaning pastors and churches who are panicked about the issue of homosexuality hitting home through one of their own. Many of those who scoff at the idea of healing have been through a program or an accountability group that tried to change them and failed, leaving them feeling foolish or shamed. These experiences further cement the belief that healing is not possible.

Few Christians who have an opinion on homosexuality seem to have much understanding as to what goes on inside the developmental process of a human being in regards to his or her sexual orientation. Contrary to political correctness-ology, science has produced no evidence for a gene, and twin concordance studies reinforce that there is not one to be found. There is also the reality of sexual fluidity, which describes the phenomenon where some with homosexual orientation do change, even spontaneously (which does not mean overnight) as a result of ongoing relational and developmental growth. Without going into it all, what we actually do know is that there are thousands of factors that go into the make-up of a person’s sexual identity and orientation including biological, hormonal, environmental and family factors as well as a person’s own interactions, perceptions and responses to life. Human beings are wondrously complex. There is no simple “choice”. We ALL do harm when we try to demand that everyone fit into the category that fits our theological model. Hence (cool word, hence) we all need to re-center on Christ from whom we all draw our life and identities if we are to love well at all.

A sweet friend who is a former lesbian wanted to share her story. I will call her Lila. She wants her true name hidden because as she says, “there’s a lot of crazies out there”. I agree. So please read this story with openness to the unique person that she is and the healing work that she has experienced God doing within her heart and life. You may not agree with her, but her story is her story. And because I have lived and worked for decades with people and in a church culture which forces pretense all too often, I know deep integrity when I see it. She’s the real deal.

Lila grew up in a very strict fundamentalist church. She describes it as “ingrown, small, and always perpetuating bad theology.” Women were not allowed to speak in church except to sing, but the men led the singing and did all the preaching and praying. For women there was no voice, self-determination or choice. Lila would be expected to carry on in life as the women always had: cooking, cleaning, raising kids and serving her husband. Her parents even encouraged a relationship with a 19 year old man when Lila was only 14. He was ready to marry her and start a life together. Lila realized that this life meant only more of what she had seen in the lives of the church women all around her and she vowed then and there to never marry.

Lila’s mother had severe post-partum depression from which she never fully emerged. She remembers her mother as disengaged and sad, staring blankly ahead for hours on end. Though she now understands that this condition wasn’t her mom’s fault, she was left unattached and very alone, despite a grandmother who cooked and cared for her and her siblings. She was a little girl lost at home and was surrounded by so much misogyny at church and in community that her sense of “being” was all but shattered. For those who understand the developmental and attachment processes of people at all, Lila lived within a set-up in which a core sense of “Home” and safety, which begins with a deep warm connection with mother and is crucial to creating a healthy, attached but individuated self, was robbed from her.

She eventually left home and left God. She became promiscuous, getting her physical needs met with men to whom she would never be committed. Because of her life experiences, she believed that men were assholes and she craved a place to be emotionally safe, which was to be found in the arms of a woman. A couple of long-term exclusive relationships with women followed over the next 20 years.

After the last relationship, which had become controlling and abusive, Lila moved to a new city to start fresh and found instant connection from the gay community. She says, “The gay community gives you your identity. It’s who you are within it. It’s a benevolent gang. They have all known exclusion and abuse and don’t fit anywhere else. They all just want to be known and loved. This community provides that.” She lived through many difficult times with them, especially the days of so many deaths due to AIDS.

Through a personal family tragedy – the suicide of her beloved brother – and the care of a new friend she began to feel God’s loving pursuit in her life amidst her grief. At one point she actually entered church again and could sense God standing beside her with His hand on her shoulder. She came back to faith through the pursuit of this loving God who was very different from the angry, small, oppressive and judgmental God of her youth.

At that point she recalls, “I was scared to death of what He’d do with me.” What would God ask of her? Where would she go? That’s understandable given what she had known. She also feared that she wouldn’t know who she was without the identity she had within the gay community. She feared that her old friends wouldn’t be open to her anymore.

She found a group of people who were familiar with the inner workings of the heart and were able to walk beside her in her journey – not for “fixing” but for deepening her relationship with God. There was counseling and prayer as well. Lila says that learning that sexual sins are not the worst of all sins (unlike what she had been taught) was very liberating. And, she found tremendous hope in learning that the root problem within her heart was not homosexuality. It’s not what needed to be “fixed”. What she needed was a re-orientation back to the God who loved her and gave her true identity. From there she says, “In Christ my life wasn’t mine anymore. He gave me a new identity and a new heart.” She adds, “I had been searching for wrong things to fill me.” The emotional dependencies and way of attaching to others in order to find her identity and a sense of belonging (in all sorts of ways) were beginning to be replaced by a strong core self. The process was full of mystery and courage. There’s no “10 steps to change.” But Lila has found a new center of gravity.

But I’ll let Lila speak for herself:

On healing:
“Our healing only happens at the foot of the cross. We don’t stand and demand our healing. I had to be naked and humble before God and admit that I couldn’t do it anymore. I’m done. So, I lay it down at the foot of the cross. I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life “white-knuckling” this. I knew that if God is who He says he is then He could heal me. But, if He is going to do His part I needed to also do mine and stay at the foot of the cross.”

“And, I learned that I was only able to heal when I was able to forgive others. There is no healing without forgiveness of others and oneself. This meant the doctors that misdiagnosed my mother and robbed us of her care, and the men who had oppressed me, among others. I needed to forgive myself as well.”

On the journey we all walk:
“Idolatry is the biggest problem in the church today. We are full of idolatries. We use all kinds of things to fill ourselves such as sexual addictions, pornography and the ways in which we create ourselves. I trust in how smart I am or I stay wrapped up in my own world and my own needs.”

Where she is at now:
“I have not arrived, but I realize now that I am comfortable in my own skin. I refuse the label “ex-gay”. People label each other. I am a daughter of God”.


 

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