by Rebekah Mays
If you’re like me, you weren’t able to take your eyes off your Twitter feed a few weeks ago. If you’re like me, you still feel grieved and overwhelmed by what you’ve seen in Ferguson, and maybe even a little cynical that it’s ever going to get better.
But here’s the good news. We may not be aware of it, but many people are already doing everything they can to help heal our country’s deep racial wounds. They are slowly changing the world with their sermons and homeless ministries, their blog posts and youth mentorship programs. Please reflect upon the words of these ten individuals, organizations and churches who are all doing the beautiful, often messy work of racial justice.
1. Rev. Willis Johnson of Wellspring Church
Ferguson, Missouri
Rev. Johnson is the pastor of Wellspring Church in Ferguson, on the very street where so much national attention has been fixed the past two weeks. During the protests, someone captured a photograph of Johnson laying a hand on 18-year-old Joshua Wilson. In a powerful interview on NPR, Johnson describes his identification with Joshua’s anger, and breaks down in tears as he describes his own son he’s trying to raise. “This is a not a race issue,” Johnson says, “this is a human issue.” Listen to the interview here.
Church website: http://www.wellspringchurchstl.org/
Twitter: @FWillisJohnson
2. Christena Cleveland
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Christena Cleveland is a social psychologist and the author of the book Disunity in Christ. She speaks about racial reconciliation around the United States and is an associate professor of reconciliation studies at Bethel University.
Her website is a treasure trove of thought and practical advice on overcoming cultural divisions. In a recent post, “The Cross and the Molotov Cocktail,” she writes:
“It’s relatively easy to see the suffering Christ in black men who are already dead and aren’t threatening to hurt anyone. But can you see the suffering Christ in black men who are still alive and might hurt someone? Can you see the suffering Christ in violent responses to injustice? Can you see the cross in the Molotov cocktail?”
Website: http://www.christenacleveland.com/
Twitter: @CSCleve
3. Austin Channing-Brown
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Austin Channing-Brown speaks and writes about racial reconciliation and leads diversity trainings around the country. In a fascinating post on Rachel Held Evans' website, Channing-Brown thoughtfully responds to several questions about implementing multicultural initiatives in Christian communities. Read her answers here.
Website: http://austinchanning.com/
Twitter: @austinchanning
4. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Durham, North Carolina
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of many spiritual books and articles and a leader in the New Monasticism movement. He has also started a “house of hospitality” for the formerly homeless and recently began coordinating content for the blog Red Letter Christians, which strives to take the “red letter” words of Jesus seriously.
Read this wonderful piece he recently wrote on God’s gracious commandment for Americans to “go to hell.”
Website: jonathanwilsonhartgrove.com
Twitter: @wilsonhartgrove
5. A House on Beekman
Bronx, NY
A House on Beekman serves the neighborhood of Mott Haven, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. The house provides long-term spiritual, educational, economic services to the neighborhoods’ residents and hosts a number of summer camps and after-school programs for local youth. The House is directed by Sara Miller and supported by Trinity Grace Church in New York City.
Watch “Sara’s Story,” the director’s beautiful testimony about dedicating herself to the renewal of the South Bronx.
Website: http://www.ahouseonbeekman.org/
Twitter: @ahouseonbeekman
6. Daniel Hill and the River City Community Church
Chicago, Illinois
Daniel Hill is the founding and senior pastor of River City Community Church, a vibrant, multicultural body of believers. Hill is deeply committed to bringing both spiritual renewal and social justice to Humboldt Park of Chicago.
In a recent interview in which he discusses the choice Christians have to be brave or to be safe, Hill says, “If we actually have the luxury of choosing between safe and brave, then we are living in a far more comfortable existence than most of the world … That is just one more reminder of what has always been true – safe is not the goal of a believer!”
Website: http://www.rivercitychicago.com/
Twitter: @danielhill1336, @rc3chicago
7. Mihee Kim-Kort
Mihee Kim-Kort is a PCUSA pastor and the author of Making Paper Cranes and Streams Run Uphill. Her prose is gorgeous and emotive, often grappling with the issues of racial and gender equality in the church. Read her compelling post “#BlackLivesMatter and Vigilance.”
Website: http://miheekimkort.com/
Twitter: @miheekimkort
8. By Their Strange Fruit
Columbus, Ohio
“By Their Strange Fruit” is a blog that facilitates conversations about racial divides and renewal and is edited by Kaitelin Hansen. The blog is extraordinarily well-researched and informative – a great starting point for anyone wanting to deepen their understanding of racial injustice.
Website: http://bytheirstrangefruit.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @BTSFblog
9. Shane Fast and Rebirth East St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri
Rebirth founder Shane Fast first began volunteering with East St. Louis High School’s football team in 2009. Since then, Rebirth has been expanding its support to the young men in the area, and now provides athletic, academic, and spiritual support through a range of opportunities.
Fast recently wrote an excellent essay on CNN iReport responding to the Ferguson tragedy. You can read it here.
Website: http://rebirthesl.org/
Twitter: @RebirthESL
10. Jonathan Walton and the New York City Urban Project
New York, NY
Jonathan Walton is the director of the New York City Urban Project, a ministry of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship that works with college students to feed the homeless and fight sex trafficking. Walton has mentored dozens of students through NYCUP’s Spring Break Plunge and Summer Immersion programs and often uses spoken-word poetry to encourage and challenge his listeners.
“Would you say I didn’t deserve to grow up in poverty?
Or would you say, ‘jonathan, yours is such a great story!’”
Read the rest of his poem here.
Website: nycurbanproject.com
Twitter: @foreverfocused
These are just ten of many others working for racial justice and reconciliation. Who are the other leaders who have challenged and motivated you to pursue racial justice? Tell us in the comments.
Rebekah
Mays is a Barnard College graduate originally from Austin, Texas. She
currently works and writes in Prague, Czech Republic. You can find more of her writing on her blog The Prague BLOG or follow her on Twitter @smallbeks.
You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
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by Rebekah Mays
A photo of a man holding a limp child lit up my computer screen as I clicked on the Twitter link. The boy was one of four Palestinian children playing on a beach, killed by an Israeli airstrike. One look at the man’s face was enough to feel a share of his sorrow and powerlessness.
But perhaps since I was separated by space, by culture, by relative safety, the sorrow I felt was still quite small. This man's reality is not my reality, I couldn't help think.
But powerlessness – that I can relate to. Because as we educate ourselves about the many injustices in the world, as we read about the centuries of violence between groups of people and we see how little has changed for the better, we feel helpless. We know all too well that our material resources are limited. We feel we can do little more than raise awareness, or give money to someone who may or may not know how best to use it.
As people of faith, the other option we have is prayer. "Pray without ceasing," we're told again and again. But if we're honest with ourselves, many of us feel we are throwing our wishes for world peace to the sky. Our prayers must have gotten stuck somewhere, and we think they're never going to come back down.
But here's my question: what if we did have the power to change the world?
We say we want peace, but if we had the power to institute it globally, would we use it?
Whether we believe it or not, our power is infinitely greater than we realize. World peace actually begins with us, as naïve as it sounds.
In the first place, it is because violence is found much closer than we like to think. It’s not only in the Middle East, or in Central Europe, or on the border. It’s not just being perpetrated by people who are less "civilized" or who have a different skin color than we do. The same seeds of violence reside in our own hearts, if we allow them to remain there.
The inner violence of American society can so easily be observed online. The current dialogue about any hotly debated political topic right now reveals how obsessed we are with being right, and how little we actually care about justice and truth. Even (especially) in Christian circles, we see pride oozing from the arguments of both liberals and conservatives, along with assumptions, hyperbole, and lies for the sake of attention and reaction. We see accusations, defensiveness, and escalations of outrage until the Internet is one big glowing ball of anger and malice.
Indeed, there is a very tangible difference between verbal violence and the kind that’s going on right now in Gaza. But Jesus preached that, with regard to the perpetrator, there is no distinction between violent thoughts and actions. “Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer,” he said.
We cannot say that the violence is far away, and that we are therefore unaffected by it. And we have to accept our own responsibility in perpetuating it.
But if violence produces more violence, so too does goodness.
In The Science of Being and the Art of Living, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi wrote that every single thing we do has some influence on the universe, whether for better or worse. Studies have shown that talking to a plant, especially in a positive way, will help it grow much faster. Similarly, he writes, “a good, sweet, loving expression to a child produces a loving and life-supporting influence in the whole of the cosmos."
Maharishi’s wisdom parallels that of Christianity. In addition to teaching that thoughts and actions are intimately connected, Jesus preached that we should not only love our friends and families, but our enemies as well. And to make it even more ridiculous, he called us to “pray for those who persecute [us].” Why?
Because somehow, our acts of kindness have an enormous, even cosmic effect. The "mere" act of praying for others creates a set of ripples -- ripples that begin with love instead of hatred. When we see our actions this way, with everything we do contributing to a chain reaction of either goodness or violence, we realize the importance and the potential of every single moment. As soon as we shift our perspective, it becomes easier to choose kindness over anger.
The great instigators of peace in our world – Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi, countless others -- weren’t afraid to look inward to find this peace. Mandela said that “We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.” Gandhi, likewise, wrote that peace starts in our souls: “A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”
As many of us know, we can’t be purely good on our own – we need grace. But once we have received grace, what restrains us from living truly radical lives of peace?
I challenge us, as we’re reading the news about the sobering events throughout the world, to never entertain the idea that we are powerless. World peace begins with you and me.
Rebekah
Mays is a Barnard College graduate originally from Austin, Texas. She
currently works and writes in Prague, Czech Republic. You can find more of her writing on her blog The Prague BLOG or follow her on Twitter @smallbeks.
You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
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by Rebekah Mays
“Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife.”
Many of us remember this immortal advice from Antoine Dodson, the unsuspecting star of one of the most famous YouTube videos ever. It all started in July 2010, when a man broke into the Dodson home and tried to rape Antoine’s sister Kelly.
Obviously shaken, Kelly and her brother spoke to a local news station about the incident. “Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife, and hide your husbands, too, cuz they’re rapin’ everybody out here,” Antoine said.
Dodson’s lively speech and personality caught the attention of the Gregory Brothers, who auto-tuned the interview and posted it on YouTube. In less than a month, the “Bed Intruder” song had more than 16 million views, quickly making Dodson a celebrity. It was the most viewed amateur YouTube video of 2010, and although four years have gone by, we still know the lyrics by heart.
I used to really love this video. But just last month while staying with some friends in Germany, I decided to introduce them to this bit of American culture. One friend was actually appalled that I was laughing and singing along, and he asked how I could make fun of a rape victim. Of course I denied this – I was making fun of the rapist, not the victim! – but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it wasn’t completely true.
Part of me wanted to defend my laughter by pointing out that Antoine Dodson profited from the video, and that it improved his quality of life. After doing some research, I learned that this was true: in fact, Dodson made enough money from iTunes sales and merchandise to move his family out of the projects.
This was great news, but it occurred to me that many of us who watched and shared the video over the years never bothered to find out what happened to the Dodsons. And though most wouldn’t admit it, I imagine that many of the viewers still don’t know – and perhaps don’t even care – that the rapist was never found. While I can’t say that these sentiments are true for everyone, I have to admit they were at least partly true for me. I’m sad to say that I was never really invested in the Dodsons beyond their entertainment value.
Baratunde Thurston, a comedian in New York City, identified another problem with America’s “Bed Intruder” obsession. He smartly observed that viewers are engaging in something he calls “class tourism.” “Folks with no exposure to the projects could dip their toes into YouTube and get a taste,” he said.
Thurston’s criticism could also apply to some of my other (formerly) favorite auto-tuned videos, namely “Back It Up,” and “Leprechaun Song – Where The Gold At.” While the subject matter of the latter two isn’t nearly as serious as that of the “Bed Intruder Song” (the topics are an attempted robbery and a leprechaun sighting), they nevertheless, at least at first glance, all feature the foibles of uneducated and lower-class subjects. By watching and sharing the videos, I’m touring their world for my personal entertainment – all from the comfort of my living room.
And Thurston is right about something else – I was laughing at each and every one of them.
Here’s the good news. From what I can tell, it's becoming less and less trendy to post videos making fun of the poor and vulnerable. Rather, what seems to be gaining in popularity is sharing videos that humiliate the ones in power.
Take the plethora of memes and posters mocking Putin, for example. Or John Oliver's takedown of FIFA, what he portrays as a cartoonishly evil organization that robs every World Cup host country of its funds and resources. Or the video series “If Black (Or Asian) People Said the Stuff White People Say.” All of this humor is at the expense of those who have abused their power. Satire in response to oppression is nothing new, but it seems to be growing, and this is a good thing.
The contrast between these two kinds of humor isn’t any clearer than in Oliver’s video, starting at 9:45. After he spends several minutes cataloging the ways in which the president of FIFA is a terrible human being, Oliver shows a YouTube clip in which the man stumbles and falls as he’s making an entrance at some formal event. Oliver laughs hysterically, saying, “That is, wonderfully, the one time you can genuinely say, ‘I’m glad that old man fell off that stage.’”
Perhaps Oliver is taking it too far, but he does so to make a point: humor, when it's directed at a person, takes away some of that person's power. If the person is weak or vulnerable, it's the exact opposite of compassion to laugh at that person – it’s cruelty.
But change the object of ridicule and it’s a completely different story. Humiliating people or organizations who are misusing their power is a potent way to lessen, or even stop, their oppressive behavior. After all, Jesus didn't give a nickel about hurting the feelings of the Pharisees – they were a "brood of vipers" in his book.
Thankfully, not all humans have the same sense of humor. A video mocking a political figure can be side-splitting to one group while enraging to another: a lot of it depends on our perspective, and whether we find the accusations true or baseless. In the same way, it’s perfectly OK that people have different definitions of what constitutes an “offensive” joke or video. But we can agree that mocking the weak or the vulnerable is a separate category, one which should offend all of us.
I'm asking, both myself and you, to think about what we post on Facebook. I’m asking us to consider what we laugh at, both publicly and in private. I’m asking that in our laughter, which can at times be ruthless, we spare those who are already humble.
Rebekah Mays is a Barnard College graduate originally from Austin, Texas. She currently works and writes in Prague, Czech Republic. You can find more of her writing on her blog The Prague BLOG or follow her on Twitter @smallbeks.
You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
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by Rebekah Mays
As a child, I used to spend hours coloring paper doilies. I’d click my Lion King cassette into the tape player and line my markers up, single-file. I could sit like this for hours and color for a whole afternoon, filling in the spokes of those doily wheels with the shades of the Crayola rainbow. Beaming, I’d present the finished work to my parents, who would marvel over my creations and hang them on the wall.
I’m thankful to say I never had to worry about how they would react. I never had to worry they’d say it was a stupid way to spend my time, or that the doilies weren’t good enough for our refrigerator. I wasn’t afraid they would reject my gift – they were my parents after all, and they’d love whatever I gave them. It was my offering, and they accepted it.
It’s funny that I felt so confident expressing my love to my parents. When I later developed into a devout Calvinist, I became a big believer in TULIP and resonated in particular with the concept of total depravity. The idea was that I was so hopeless on my own that I needed God to swoop in and carry me, kicking and screaming, to the foot of the cross. After that, any good things that came out of my life were, apparently, all because of Christ and not any action on my part.
For a myriad of reasons, I’ve since distanced myself from my Calvinist upbringing. I’m Catholic now, and if there’s one difference in my faith, it’s how I see myself in relation to God. I still believe it’s God’s grace, not my own works, that have saved me. I still believe that ignoring Christ’s call and instead living only for my own desires would be an enormous mistake, to put it mildly.
The fundamentals of my beliefs are all the same. But here’s the big change: instead of seeing myself as a worthless sinner haunted by my past and future failures – which I tended to do in my early years – I now see myself as infinitely valuable. The world and I are extravagantly loved by God. And therefore I imagine that God doesn’t see our devotions and offerings as disfigured by our “total depravity.” We’re made in his image and glorify him by our mere existence. And when we love him, we glorify him even more.
A declaration of the Vatican described it this way:
“The good works of the justified are always the fruit of grace. But at the same time, and without in any way diminishing the totally divine initiative, they are also the fruit of man, justified and interiorly transformed.”
If you’re skeptical, think for a moment of the woman who anointed Jesus’s feet with perfume. The disciples were shocked, criticizing her for her wasteful actions. This expensive perfume could have been sold, they say. But Jesus didn’t rebuke the woman. He saw the extravagant ritual for what it was – an act of love, a “beautiful thing.” Certainly God’s grace working in her life prompted her to honor the Lord like this. But she was also a woman in love, interiorly transformed and willing to do something profligate. And the fragrance of her devotion, we are told, filled the entire house.
Many denominations in the Protestant church, as well as many parishes in the Catholic Church too, for that matter, have long started moving away from language that focuses on how terrible we are and how imperfect our worship is. I think this a step in the right direction. By dwelling too much on our sinful habits instead of honoring God with the incredible lives given to us, we’re missing out on a host of opportunities.
The way I see it, God loves our limp, bleeding paper doilies. He takes them in his hand and examines them. He doesn’t criticize our offerings and our attempts to love him, and so we don’t need to dwell on how unworthy they are, either. Because the longer and more deeply we love him, the more intricate and the more gorgeous our lives will become. Our love won’t be confined to eight shades of Crayola, but to colors even the naked eye can’t see.
Rebekah Mays is a Barnard College graduate originally from Austin, Texas. She currently works and writes in Prague, Czech Republic. You can find more of her writing on her blog The Prague BLOG or follow her on Twitter @smallbeks.
You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
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by Rebekah Mays
As a writer, I often wish there was some magic pill I could take that would instantly transform me into Flannery O’Connor. I’ll look at a page I’ve written, think it’s genius, read it again an hour later, delete the whole thing, and start over.
Supposedly, all writers suffer this inferiority complex, and logic and experience tell me that no one becomes great at what they do overnight. But the impulse to think otherwise is really strong. It tells me that what I write needs to be perfect the first time round and that any failure is an omen I won’t “make it” as a writer.
Two years ago, when I was first thinking about converting to Catholicism, I viewed faith a little like a ‘magic writer pill.’ I thought the sacraments would transform me in a way that Calvinism and charisma had not.
The sacrament that first got me considering Catholicism was confession, or “reconciliation.” I was eating pizza and discussing religion with a Catholic friend, and after I made some insensitive comment about the pointlessness of confession, my friend quoted John 20:23. Apparently, Jesus once said to his apostles, “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” How could I have missed this?
As an evangelical, I believed that to be absolved from my sins, all I had to do was tell Jesus I was sorry, ask for forgiveness, move on, and repeat when necessary. But it was never as simple as that. There were sins that, no matter how many times I confessed them in my prayers, I didn’t stop committing. Confessing in front of friends, which I tried a number of times, didn’t help much, either. There were a few moments which seemed like breakthroughs, for instance, that time at camp when we threw links of paper chains representing sin at the foot of a wooden cross. At first, it appeared successful. But the cycle would soon start over, and I’d fall back into old habits.
When I began studying the Catholic faith two summers ago, I was struck by how tangible everything was. The sacraments, the saints, the rosary – I realized that this wasn’t idolatry after all. These were tokens to help believers taste and see Christ, and I hungered for this kind of solid grace. I wanted to be a part of this faith, as old and rich as a bottle of wine, vintage 1 AD.
The day came for my confession. I was unbelievably nervous, but ready. Maybe this act would be the religious experience I wanted. Maybe receiving absolution would at last bring me peace and would once and for all free me from my guilt.
I opened the door to a small room. A priest was sitting there in a metal chair, facing the wall. There was no screen to separate us, and my stomach tightened into an even tinier knot. It took a few minutes for my confession to come bubbling out, but I told him everything – my sin, my shame, how distant I felt from God. The priest patiently listened. Then, he spoke about grace. He told me that the love of God is what really mattered.
A few minutes later, it was over; I closed the door behind me, spotless as a sacrificial lamb. But I didn’t feel so different. I was expecting the world to be brighter, my heart to be freer, the weight that had been pressing down on my shoulders to be gone. But I felt more or less the same as before. I was relieved, to be sure, but mainly that the priest was kind, and that the confession was over and done with. I’d hoped that partaking in the sacraments would change everything; it was disappointing to find I was the same messy person.
This was all about a year ago. And then, quite recently, I realized that God had been at the dirty work of sanctification all along. Last month, I managed to forgive someone. It was someone who’d hurt me, someone (like my writing, the sacraments, and a host of other things) through whom I’d tried to define myself.
I realize now that when I let go of my anger, it wasn’t just the other person I was making peace with. It was myself. It was relinquishing the idea that I’ll never be good, talented, or beautiful enough to make my life exactly what I want it to be. It was the unpleasant truth that there is no magic pill, that a lifetime of failure and faith is the only option. Solid grace is not some mountaintop experience that centers on the self – it’s living for others, forgiving them when they hurt you, and accepting God’s forgiveness when you hurt them.
And I was able to do this because of Christ, whom I’d met in the form of that priest. This was Christ, whom I’d received in my palms and dissolved on my tongue mere days before, at work in me. This was the sign of the cross over my chest, saying that despite my protests, I really am free.
Rebekah Mays is a Barnard College graduate originally from Austin, Texas. She currently works and writes in Prague, Czech Republic. You can find more of her writing on her blog The Prague BLOG or follow her on Twitter @smallbeks.
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by Rebekah Mays
The Sunday before Christmas, I attended a church service with my family. The pastor was discussing a familiar passage from Luke 1, commonly known as “The Annunciation,” where the angel Gabriel came down to Nazareth and informed Mary that she was going to “conceive and give birth to a son.” I’d heard it dozens of times before, at least once every Christmas, and year after year I listened as preachers praised Mary for her obedience, her willingness to carry a child into the world at the risk of cutting herself off from all good society. I prepared to tune out for the next few minutes.
But this time, hearing the story from my rather newly-formed liberal-feminist ears, I was offended. It seemed misogynistic and just plain creepy that God would (somehow) impregnate a woman and force her to have a baby. And given Mary’s status as an unmarried woman, the next nine months and potentially the rest of her life would be hell since her acquaintances would assume she’d committed adultery. Part of me, hearing the story this time, wanted Mary to stand up, look the angel in the face, and say, “No.”
I realize that would leave me and the rest of the human race completely screwed. If we accept what scripture says, it’s precisely because of Mary’s subservience, her desire to do what God asked of her that our salvation became possible. We could argue that it was her choice to obey, and someone more fundamentalist than I am would probably say that the act of obeying is in fact defiance against the pressures of society. But was it really a choice, considering God’s power and the relative powerlessness of Mary?
Luke makes it clear that Mary was excited about it, or (twist!) at least a really good faker, as she later says to her cousin, “My soul glorifies the Lord … for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.” But think what would have happened if she hadn’t agreed to it. IF she even had a choice in the matter, it was between obedience and, perhaps, going mute or blind until she relented and agreed to give birth to the kid. Before you excommunicate me, Catholic Church, remember what happened to the many others in the Bible who didn’t obey God immediately? Like Zechariah? Adam and Eve? Uzzah, who was struck dead because he reached out to steady the Ark when the oxen stumbled?
All this to say, while listening to the Annunciation story, my carefully watered, Biblically liberal, skipping-Ephesians-4-when-I-read-the-Bible Christianity-in-a-pot began to wither. A part of me had been convinced that, if I focused on the “Jesusy” passages in the gospels, I would get to the heart of what Christianity was, and not have to worry about troublesome things like the sexism all over the Bible. But this isn’t even a passage that you can skip over. This is the story of how Christ was born – it’s kind of important. And even this story is problematic.
For a moment, though, I was able to step out of my anger. As I sat in my chair staring at the pastor, silently boiling and wondering why this had never occurred to me, I realized I was relieved to be offended. It was a good thing that I hadn’t grown completely stony and impassive to this story. All too often, we sit in the pews and let this insane, radical, life-changing stuff bounce off of our seats as if we had force-fields protecting us. We need to let ourselves react, whether it’s in joy or anger or simply confusion. I don’t want to sit in church and think, “That’s nice.” No, it isn’t. If something in scripture makes you uncomfortable, that’s meaningful. Think about it; examine why.
For me, it’s often passages that I see as anti-progressive that make me squirm. And then there’s all the scripture that condemns greed and wealth, verses from Jesus himself that ask us to give away all our possessions to the poor. I dig them, but they don’t exactly make me feel like a saint.
Non-believers have asked me, “If you’re so offended, then why are you still a Christian?” I don’t know. Perhaps I’m a lousy feminist. Or perhaps because there are fundamental human rights that I firmly believe in, and I think God ingrained those beliefs in me, even when they seem to contradict the scripture that makes me believe in God in the first place (yikes!). There are a lot of confusing and offensive passages in the Bible, and I still don’t really know how to think about them. At the same time, there are many other passages that I can get behind, verses like this one from Isaiah: “Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” Yeah!
Despite my knee-jerk revulsion to parts of scripture and even some fundamental parts of orthodox Christian faith, I know that I don’t want to believe in a higher power that is just a better version of me. If I’m never challenged by my worldview, if there is nothing in my beliefs that seems sort of contradictory, then I may as well have made it all up. I can’t expect to understand, or even agree with, a being that’s supposed to have existed for all eternity and will continue to do so forever.
I could end with some wise quote from C. S. Lewis or Tim Keller or the book of Job, but I don’t want to. I don’t want anyone to nod along to what I’ve “concluded” and say, “Oh, that’s nice.” It isn’t nice. Faith is anything but nice.
Rebekah Mays is a Barnard College graduate originally from Austin, Texas. She currently works and writes in Prague, Czech Republic. You can find more of her writing on her blog The Prague BLOG or follow her on Twitter @smallbeks.
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