This past weekend, I finally got to watch The Ledge - the movie that has made the rounds as an “atheist movie.”

Wow.

It’s taken a few days to process everything, but my general opinion is that every person in this country needs to watch this movie.

Honestly, parts of it were pretty uncomfortable for me to watch. Joe, the Christian antagonist, sounded exactly like me at certain points in my life. I do think his character was a little over caricatured as a whole, but it was really eye-opening to hear those words and see what they sound like from the other side. It was disconcerting. It was a little embarrassing.

 
I may have had a little more passion in my eyes when I spewed those words, but I have argued those points many many times in my life.

Now, I see things the way Gavin does. And seeing my old self through those eyes isn’t really pleasant.

The movie isn’t atheist propaganda. Its purpose isn’t to plant atheistic ideas in your head (though if it makes you stop and think, all the better). The tag line of the movie is “What would you die for?” and Gavin is telling his story while standing on the ledge of a very tall building.

People think that just because we don’t have a god in our life that we can’t have meaning in our lives. That we can’t live or love. That we have no convictions or morals. That there is nothing that we believe in enough to die for.

This movie intends to change those perceptions. And I think it does so wonderfully.

This morning I woke up to three emails from him. One long one, that was fairly harsh and completely and brutally honest and from his heart, and two shorter ones that followed up with a few nicer, toned down words that were almost apologetic in nature.

I responded immediately, telling him it would take some time for me to process his accusatory tones and blanket assumptions. He replied once more, apologizing for his tone, but not for his message.

After reading and re-reading and re-reading again, I finally think I can respond. At first I was hurt. But the deeper I reflected and the more I read, the more I realized that some of what he says is true. Some isn’t, but some definitely is. (Note: You won’t see his entire email here, I only reference his pertinent points as this is already a very long post).

It has obviously been a difficult and emotionally turbulent journey for you, and for that, you have my deepest sympathy.

It absolutely has. Even now, I question my decision. But then I realize why I question it, and it strengthens my resolve.

I think you nailed it on the head when you wrote in “All for nothing”
I’m not in this for the relationship, I’m in it for the validation.
You have said over and over that your Christian life hasn’t been real, it’s been to please other people.

A word before- I’m sure it’s more complicated than that. The devil always makes us think things in simple black and white answers that feel like these “freeing revelations.” “Wow, I never realized that ALL of my faith is just for validation”. That kind of blanket statement is never accurate.

You’re right. I’m not sure how I let myself get bogged down under such a blanket statement. There were times, for sure, where my faith was real. There were times I lived for God. The things I did and said were for Him. In my life, His existence was what mattered.

It didn’t hurt, however, that I was surrounded by people with similar opinions and lives. It became easy and routine to do “what I was supposed to do” without having the right motive behind it.

However, I think that you have a lot of insight into your life and what drives you.

I do, now. I wouldn’t have such a level of insight into who I am and how I function had I never started this blog. The deep reflection I’ve done as a result of this website have been absolutely essential in my journey. Granted, had I never started this site, I may never have ended up where I am today, but I would also be a lot less honest with myself.

I think you know that much of your life and the way you spend your time is fueled by feelings of rejection and inadequacy, and the need for approval from others.

This was definitely true in the past. The last year of my life, since my “coming out” if you will, has been completely fueled by feelings of rejection and inadequacy. I feel (yes, present tense) rejected by nearly every single one of my friends. The friends of my former life. The friends who are Christian. That has pushed me to live life pursuing different means of escape – primarily Medievia and reading. Even now, as I’ve given up Med (again), I’ve replaced it with books.

I have, however, come a long way as far as my need for approval from others. Yes, it’s still there. It’s a hard habit to break after twenty-six years. BUT. It’s less than it used to be. Proof of that is in my vocal declaration (finally) of the changes in my life. It’s a need that gets less and less every day.

You use the internet and your online life to construct a version of yourself- I have no idea how real it is.

Quite frankly, the version of me that I present here is the most real version of me that exists. Here I am, usually, unabashed. I am uninhibited. I am confident in what I say, or at least in my ability to say it. The shy/timid nature that I present in my real life when meeting people is driven by that need for approval. That doesn’t exist here. Here, I am who I am. Take it or leave it. (With the exception of my period of silence that was a necessity, lest I lose my job).

I have never met anyone who had their own .com website with their name as a blog. I’m sure it seems natural to you at this point because many of your online friends must do the same thing… But you have a whole .com website which is a web community of people who talk about your life and argue over which decisions are the best for you to make. I wonder how many of your readers you know in person. You said in some of your posts that you liked your online life better than “real” life. I’m sure this has gone up and down, and hasn’t always been true. But I find myself looking at this slick website with your nickname and middle name and this smiling picture of you…and you sign your emails “joyfully…” No one else I know does that. Especially because half of your posts aren’t joyful at all, many of them are tormented or depressed. Something in me is like…I don’t believe this. This isn’t real.

You make me sound absolutely narcissistic here. And while there’s some truth to it (no one has a public blog who isn’t a wee bit narcissistic), the goal of my website was never to be a big banner shouting, “Look at me! Look at me!” I started it because I had something to say, and I wanted somewhere to say it. I didn’t care if anyone saw it. I still don’t. I still write, though most of my posts get zero comments, whereas many of my posts before got dozens. I write for me. No one else. If someone out there reads it and can identify with what I write, or offer advice or support, then I will gladly hear it. If someone out there disagrees with me, I accept that too. It’s never been about me having a voice to shove down people’s throats.

These are guesses that I would bet money on:
1)You sign “joyfully” because you want to tell the world that your new found agnosticism has brought you joy and you want to express that…
2) That’s why your blog is called “Free to be me”, because when you believed in Jesus you were “bound and held back” but now that you don’t you are “free to live life and be happy and express your true self.”

Then you would be wise to get your money back.

1. I sign “Joyfully” because it used to say “Joyfully His.” Once I could no longer call myself a Christian, I could no longer call myself His. So I changed it.

2. My blog is called “Free to be Me” because, after a year of silence, I don’t have to hide anymore. I can speak freely and publically about the choice that I have made and the journey that got me here.

You have an extraordinarily developed web personality which is not based around selling a product or helping others, but it is totally based around telling other people about your struggles and having them affirm you.

It’s not about affirmation. I post here regardless of whether people agree with me or don’t. In fact a good portion of this blog has been spent talking about differences of opinion and belief systems. If all I was after was affirmation, that would not have been the case.

Like, for instance, a pastor at my church has a web community based around her…but the point of her website is to share her wisdom and provide mentorship materials for women with dreams. But your .com website isn’t about that- it’s just about you and your ups and downs, and you have a crowd of people who read your stuff and argue with each other about what you should do, but both sides are cheering you on telling you you are beautiful and that you should be yourself.

So now you’re holding me accountable for what my readers do? That hardly seems fair.

It’s also clear that you aren’t familiar with my online presence at all. There was a significant chunk of time where I was wholly transparent about my personal life and the struggles I was having. And the people who had become regulars to read all of the things I had written that had nothing at all to do with my personal life rallied around me to support me. That’s a good thing, even though you make it sound so negative here.

The whole thing screams affirmation. Amanda, I’ve got news for you. If you really liked who you were, you wouldn’t need to name your blog “Free to be me.” Those are fighting words- words used to declare independence and fight for an identity that you want to have but you feel might be stripped from you by someone- maybe “God” or an old boss or someone, I don’t know. And if you really liked who you were, I doubt you would spend so much time online blogging everything that happens to you, in detail.

Everything? In detail? I do? Wow, you really haven’t spent much time around here. When I started this blog, I averaged 50-60 posts a month. Now, I’m lucky if it’s 3 or 4. That’s hardly “blogging everything that happens to [me], in detail.”

In fact, I’d say it’s pretty much the opposite.

But you are right in that I don’t like myself. I like myself better than I did 6 months ago. And each day is better. But self-worth has always been something I’ve struggled with. Some days I have it. Some days I don’t. But you know what? That’s life.

Life is so much better outside of the computer, but it’s super scary for intelligent people who have deep, unanswered questions and who struggle with inadequacy- people like you. So online seems so much safer. Especially if you are good with the web and are incredibly articulate, like you are. If you have those qualities, the internet is a dream come true. You can construct a whole world for yourself and use fonts and colors to decorate your eloquent words to form an identity for yourself online.

I have put a lot of thought into the whole “create your own web personality” thing. It’s so much “safer” than real world relationships. But just to say this, I believe in real world relationships more than internet relationships. My closest friends are in the real world, not online, and I remember the days when it wasn’t that way. It was horrible!

Look Amanda, *I* am an intelligent person who has deep questions and who struggles with inadequacy. I have had numerous close friendships that were based on online interaction, including several this year, which ended badly. I know the game you are playing. And I’m calling you out on it. You’ve said on facebook before that you didn’t have much of a social life and that you lived for a while in a place without making many friends. So your web personality is your escape and your outlet.

It is horrible when your closest friends are online, not in the real world. I can absolutely agree with you there. But what’s your point?

So far all I’ve really seen you say is that you thing my blog is a horrible idea, grounded in my narcissistic need to feel liked, needed, and affirmed. What does that have to do with my relationship (or lack thereof) with God?

What’s been the point of anything that you’ve said so far, other than to tell me how crappy I am? You’ve made a lot of assumptions about who I am based on a small portion of the picture. If I’m not mistaken, you read only the listed links on the page I sent you… which is how many? 30? If that? Out of a total of about 1,000 posts on this website. Is it possible that you don’t have all of the information you think you do?

What’s the point of me saying all this? Is it to fry you and make you feel terrible? No. The point is that you have junk in your life, just like everyone. Everyone has junk, and so do I, and you do too, a whole lot of it. But if you want to move forward in life you have to face your junk and own up to it and say “this is MY junk, I have to deal with it.” That means dealing with the rejection, dealing with the inadequacy and the fears and the need for affirmation. It means stop taking advice from musicguy and techskeptic and going to an actual counselor who can help you and telling them, “I need to deal with my pain. I need to deal with these fears.” And realizing that your real fears aren’t about theological issues- your most terrifying fears are actually about whether or not you are lovable and whether or not you are valuable, or if you are worthless and hateful.

So you do have a point. But here’s some news for you. This is my outlet. This is how I deal with my junk. You have no idea how freeing (there’s that word you don’t like) this whole thing has been for me. In my life before the blog, I kept everything inside. I had no self reflection. I hurt all the time, and I didn’t do anything about it. I never knew why I hurt. Now? After writing so much and looking within and without, I know who I am. Sure I still have doubts and struggles and questions, but they are out there instead of stuck inside, killing me.

After reading your blog for several hours I’m convinced, along with you yourself, that most of your relationship with God was just you trying to deal in some way with your feelings of inadequacy and rejection. And some of the time when you considered yourself a “believer”, all that meant was that you intellectually assented to God’s existence and love for you while you were in a place of not praying and of living a lifestyle of unrepentant sin. And in this state, you were unconsciously dealing with God being like your dad, who did something hurtful to you, and like your mom, too, and maybe some others, who all hurt you, and trying to get this “God” who was supposed to make you feel better about yourself and solve all your problems to actually live up to what was advertised. And I’m guessing you had Christians all around you the whole time praying with you and telling you “God fills the void” and stuff like that and that he would do it if you just believed or worshiped in a certain way or read the latest Rob Bell book or went to the right church. So you followed around the books and churches and small groups trying to get God to fill the void in your heart. And it wasn’t working so you would write about it on your blog and your atheist friends would give their atheist advice and your Christian friends would say “God will fill the void, He loves you” and stuff and you would go around and around. The one stable thing during all this time is your internet personality. This whole process has been documented on your website in your blogs in your online life, because real life wasn’t cutting it.

You keep going back to this blog as being some sort of source to my problems. I’m not sure why you have such a hard time understanding why a blog is a good thing. Or why you think it’s such a bad thing.

When I started this thing, I had a great social circle. For two years, my real life social circle was very much a part of my readership here. The online friends trickled in and gradually, together, they created my readership. They created the community that I found here. That community is now gone, but it was certainly not the detrimental thing that you seem to suggest.

I will concede to your statement about my relationship with God having been a wholly intellectual one. It was something that in my mind I knew I should have, but I didn’t feel in my heart. Or at least, it got to the point where I didn’t. When it started… it was everythiing it should have been. There was repentence. There was salvation. But as time passed, things changed.

My advice to you is to find a good counselor and talk about your parents. Talk about the divorce, talk about your feelings of inadequacy and your need for approval. Deal with your junk! If you don’t deal with your junk, you will continue to live your life on the computer. I would love to see you discontinue your blog because you got so busy with great friends and an amazing life. Not that blogging is bad- it’s just that for you, it’s a crutch. Your blogging is not an exciting sharing of the cool stuff that’s happening to you in the real world, a journal of the adventure you are on with God and amazing friends- your blog is a journal about your turmoil and struggles and you have a community of other internet personalities who go through it with you. It should be flipped around. Your real life should have the friends who help you through life, not your internet life. Does that make sense?

Sure it makes sense. That’s what this used to be. That’s the problem with coming in at the end of the story (well, the middle, since hopefully I’m far from the end of my story). You don’t have the whole picture. You’re judging me and my choices based on a small sampling of the picture.

I think that if your issues of rejection and inadequacy actually started to get dealt with, you would be getting at the root of your whole “faith” struggle which really wasn’t about faith at all- it was about your self image. And because your Christian friends didn’t help you enough with that junk, no matter how much theology they knew or how many books they read, you thought God wasn’t helping you with it.

You have a point. But I don’t agree with it. I think what you’re talking about here is true, but merely a…consequence of what ultimately happened. One inherent flaw in this entire email to me so far is that you’re assuming that I still believe in your God. You’re assuming that if someone can get to me well enough, that I’ll realize that God never left me and suddenly be healed of all of the hurt and anger and doubt that I’ve had.

If I believed in your God, this might be possible. But I don’t. That belief is gone. To the bottom of the ocean. It’s just gone.

Why did I say all of that? I’m sure it sounded harsh. Here’s the reason: You can’t overcome anything you don’t confront, and you can’t confront anything you don’t identify. I am calling you out, Amanda. I’m calling you to “get real”- i.e. get off the internet and get and be your real self. deal with your brokenness. deal with your pain, and go to someone who can help you with it. Get rid of the façades and the html tricks to make you look more appealing and put together. God sees your brokenness and he sees your sin. And he wants to help you and move back into your life even though you have rebelled against him. But the problem is you have held onto your sin because you don’t trust God because you don’t know him. You don’t really know God and you never have, because you thought he was like one of your parents or something. And you have always been afraid that he was going to reject you or didn’t like you or something- you never really *knew* him because your sensors for knowing God were broken because of your terrible self image and your feelings of rejection and worthlesness. And he is calling you to himself but he is saying Look Amanda, you don’t know me. I can help you but you have to trust me. He is calling you to repent of your sin and your blasphemy and rebellion even though you can’t feel his love or his presence- because the truth is, your senses to his love and his presence are broken, because your soul is broken. He is going to bring you to a place of choosing, and you are going to have to choose to either actually repent of your sin and choose to live a life repenting of sin [and accept all the temporary struggles that entails, including temporarily feeling worthless and unloved because you have to accept the idea of being sinful- until you are healed- because right now you can't fully comprehend what it means to be loved and valuable and sinful at the same time] or to continue in your online game and the façade and the fakeness and everything.

This is the single most frustrating paragraph out of your entire email to me. You have me all wrapped up in a box tied with a neat little bow.  It starts well. Your initial statement is true. Maybe even a little profound. But you’re wrong in laying the blame in my online life. My online life, what it is currently, is the escape from the problems. My online life here, has helped me deal with my problems. My problems being what has happened in my real life. You’re right to point out my family, my childhood, and my friends as all having had something to do with it. I don’t need a counselor to tell me what I can see as plain as the nose on my face.

Because the truth is, he loves you. He loves you so much. And you expect so much of him. You expect him to just come in and make you feel happy and complete just because you prayed a prayer or believe in God or read your Bible. Well it doesn’t work that way. It’s a process- you have to deal with your junk and get healed for it to work.

I never believed that. I never believed that all I had to do was say a magic prayer and God would magically make everything better. But after I started having doubts, after I begged and pleaded and cried and screamed and hoped for God to show himself to me… he didn’t. He wasn’t there. Even when I decided that the problem must be me, for surely God wouldn’t forsake me, and I continued to walk the path of faith, even though I couldn’t see Him or hear Him or feel Him, He never showed up. So I was forced to come to one of two conclusions. Either 1) I had rebelled too far and God would never again forgive me or 2) there is no God. And all of my Christian friends at the time were quick to loudly proclaim that 1 couldn’t possibly be true, because God is love and would never forsake someone who was open to Him. So that left me with option 2.

There is no God. At least, the God that I grew up believing in, the God of the Bible, doesn’t exist. And if, somehow, I’m wrong, and he does exist? I want nothing to do with a God who would let me go through what I have, the begging and crying out to him – the brokenness, and leave me that way.

Now I know you sent me yet a final email, re-iterating what you had stated above in a slightly kinder way. But I’m not going to rehash the same things over again.

The fact of the matter is that yes, I want to believe. Reading the words that you wrote to me about God loving me and wanting me was wonderful. I want that to be true.

But it isn’t.

And no amount of me “dealing with [my] junk” is going to make that true. Giving up this blog won’t make that true.

I have problems, certainly. But so does the rest of the world. This space that I have created here has helped keep me sane, hell it’s helped keep me alive. And I won’t be made to feel bad for it.

Wow.

It was interesting. I’d written a lot of stuff I’d forgotten about. Was reminded of a few things that made me cry. But it was all my journey. All of it is part of who I am. And the reason I went through it all was so I could put together a new page for people. A page that explains who I was and who I am.

Face the Strange will take you through my journey from faith to agnosticism.

It’s funny. When I started writing that page, I was all gung-ho about how liberated and free I feel. And then I read all of those posts and felt the pang of missed familiarity. The pang of regret. The pang of sorrow.

It’s not the faith I miss. It’s who I was. The people I once had in my life.

But maybe I do miss the faith just a little bit. The certainty of knowing why you exist and what you’re going to do.

But likely, it’s just a small case of “homesickness.”

Face the Strange is my story. It’s how I became who I am today.

Enjoy.

Monday afternoon I spent several hours in a car with a coworker driving to DC for a conference. Three and a half hours provides time for ample conversation, and naturally the changes in my faith came up. For the first time, I actually took the time and made the effort to think about and articulate what I believe now, and why.

It was quite liberating.

I said out loud to someone that I don’t believe Jesus is the Son of God, a redeemer, or the Messiah. She asked me who my redeemer is, who I go to for strength, what keeps me good.

My answer? Me.

I choose to live the way that  I do because it’s the right thing to do. I have no fear of eternal damnation. What I do have is empathy and compassion for man. That’s what “keeps me good.”

I still pray. Because prayer, for me, is me talking to myself. It always has been. It’s a time where I talk problems out. I vent, rant, or even express gratitude. But it’s still just me, talking to me, for me. It’s a time to get things off my chest. It’s NOT me talking to some other being, asking them to magically make life better or give me strength to deal with life. My strength comes from within.

She asked if I believe in fate. I do not. Life is the consequences of the choices we make. Nothing ever “just happens.” It’s the same with good and evil. I don’t believe anyone is inherently good or evil. who we are is a product of the choices that we make. I choose to be good. Sometimes I choose to be selfish. A lot of times I want to be selfish, yet still choose to do the right thing.

It’s all about choice.

There are still some irrational beliefs that I hold. Or maybe irrational is the wrong word. While I no longer believe in the God of the Bible, I still look around in awe and wonder and can’t help but think that something had a hand in it. Is it an all-loving, involved in our lives, infinite being? No. Is it an all knowing punisher? No. But who or what it is, I don’t know. I don’t really care to know as it doesn’t affect my life one way or the other.

I do believe in a spirit world. I can’t tell you what it looks like – it’s strange for me to believe in spirits when I don’t believe in heaven or hell. It’s just this feeling I have that there’s more to this world than what I can see. But this probably has something to do with my silly fascination with the supernatural – vampires, witches, werewolves, etc.

But Mandi, haven’t you said over and over again that you’ve experienced, felt, and spoken with God?  Absolutely. But after more objective reflection, I’ve realized that what many people had been telling me was correct. It was emotional. It was all purely emotional. And realizing that has actually been a great relief.

Ultimately though, in the things that matter, it’s all about me. I know that sounds horrible, but it’s not. Life is a product of our choices. What I choose – how I live – is what matters. What you choose is what matters in your life.

-fin

I’ll readily admit that this desire/need began when I lived a life devoted to faith. But it hasn’t changed with my loss of faith. If anything, it’s gotten stronger because the motivation behind it comes from inside myself, rather than some deity in the sky.

So my question is… where are the organizations who seek to change lives that don’t rely on faith to do so?

I absolutely love Rescue Mission Ministries because of what they do. But where are the Rescue Missions that aren’t faith based? Where are the organizations that change lives simply because it’s the right thing to do? Where are the appeals for donations that don’t use “orders” from God as a motivation?

Where are the people who choose to have significance without faith?

I’m not writing this as an accusation, or even with the assumption that these types of organizations don’t exist. It’s just that I’ve never heard of them. And I want to.

Download audio file (Always Be My Baby (American Idol Studio Version).MP3)

Now. I think I’m schizo. I don’t mean to make light of people who truly have the disease, but I swear that something is wrong with me.

I had coffee (well I watched her drink coffee) with a good friend of mine tonight. It’s so easy to talk to her. And she’s convinced that most of my problems in life stem from self-hatred. Even my faith wishy-washiness.

And my faith is… wishy-washy. I vocalized something this week at Common Ground that I’ve been afraid to say, especially here.

My faith isn’t real. My faith is a series of actions that I do because people are watching me.

I know what you’re thinking. Not again! And no, not again. Still.

One thing my friend said to me tonight was that I shouldn’t disregard God and Jesus just because of all the things “God’s people” do. My response to her was that I’m not trying to disregard them, I finally trying to not disregard all of the stuff I’ve been taught to disregard.

When I made my choice for faith, I began going through the motions. I’ve walked the walk and talked the talk. But God, to me, is a giant void. I don’t feel God. I haven’t in a very long time. And that makes me ask if He’s there.

I know He’s there for some people. It’s evident that He’s all over my friend. But what if it’s okay that He’s not there for me? What if it doesn’t matter? What if her God is her God, and my God is… nothing?

Can I live with that? Yes, I think I can. The question is, can my friends and family live with that?

And… am I ever going to stop this going back and forth between faith and no faith?

And I hate that it’s there. But honestly, I want someone to validate that bitterness for me. To tell them that I’m right. To justify these feelings I’m having.

And there’s nothing Christlike about that.

I just finished reading Adam, the new book by Ted Dekker. It’s a psychological thriller that, like most of his books, deals with spiritual warfare. This one specifically deals with demon possession. In talking about why he wrote the book he said:

The reason I wrote this novel is because a significant portion of my readers are under twenty-five, and these people in large part, even within the church, have no understanding of Satan. They no longer believer that evil is anything more than a generic force that is set against all humanity. Evil: the bad things we do, temptation. I wanted to write a dramatic story in which one person who didn’t believe in evil as a personal force ultimately became trapped by the very evil he dismissed.

So how can a book about Satan and posession and evil relate to me, right now, where I am? Easy. Dekker goes on to say that demon possession is very dramatic, and is obviously not the struggle the we deal with on a daily basis. He asked the question, “How would you say Lucifer and all of his minions wage war on an average Christian in the course of an average day?”

John Eldredge, author of Wild at Heart, answers:

Well, he seeks to steal, kill, and destroy. And Jesus said you should know them by their fruits. This is such a simple test. You just look at the fruit of some event, or some sabotage of a relationship, you look at the fruit of some thought you’re believing, some emotion that you’re feeling, and should ask, “Well what’s the fruit of that?” If it looks like something is being stolen, or killed, or destroyed – guess who’s involved? You shall know them by their fruits.

Yeah. That has me written all over it. At least lately. Bitterness. Relationships destroyed. And this is why I haven’t been able to get over it. I haven’t turned it over to God. I haven’t resisted .

As a Christian, I understand that there are two worlds. Two realities. And I know that most of you reading this will laugh and scoff and tell me I need a stint in the loony bin. But it’s true. There are two realities. There’s this world of flesh and blood that we can see with our eyes, and there’s also a spiritual world. And in that world, there’s a war being waged.

Right now, I completely surrender everything to my God and Savior, Jesus Christ. The bitterness. The destruction. The thoughts that have held me captive since last summer. Today I am freed from the voluntary bondage that I have put myself in.

Realizing that has renewed my hunger and thirst for Him. But it’s a different hunger and thirst than I’ve ever felt before. I still have to battle my cynicism – it runs very deep now. But I long to make a difference. I long to be the kind of person Jesus was.

We just started reading Velvet Elvis in my small group (yes, I’m reading it again), and I was once again struck by the difference in how Christianity is versus how it should be.

For thousands of years followers of Jesus, like artists, have understood that we have to keep going, exploring what it means to live in harmony with each other. The Christian faith tradition is filled with change and growth and transformation. Jesus took part in this process by calling people to rethink faith and the Bible and hope and love and everything else, and by inviting them into the endless process of working out how to live as God created us to live.

The challenge for Christians then is to live with great passion and conviction, remaining open and flexible, aware that this life is not the last painting.

Times change. God doesn’t, but times do. We learn and grow, and the world around us shifts, and the Christian faith is alive only when it is listening, morphing, innovating, letting go of whatever has gotten in the way of Jesus and embracing whatever will help us be more and more the people God wants us to be.

Isn’t that a beautiful picture? It seems so unrealistic to those of us who have fallen prey to fundamentalism. But this is how it should be. There’s no legalism in this picture. There are no pharisees here. Only people who strive to be like Jesus. But unfortunately, too many people who proudly proclaim God’s name have screwed it up for everyone else.

The problem isn’t Jesus; the problem is what comes with Jesus.

For many people the word Christian conjures up all sorts of images that have nothing to do with who Jesus is and how he taught us to live. This must change.

How true is that? How often have you heard the c-word and just cringed? I know some of you have. Heck, even I have of late. What happens is that somebody out there gets this idea that the truth that they have is all there is. They forget that as times change ideas need to be revisited.

Here’s what often happens: Somebody comes along who has a fresh perspective on the Christian faith. People are inspired. A movement starts. Faith that was stale and dying is now alive. But then the pioneer of the movement – the painter – dies and the followers stop exploring. They mistakenly assume that their leaders words were the last ones on the subject, and they freeze their leader’s words. They forget that as that innovator was doing his or her part to move things along, that person was merely taking part in the discussion that will go on forever. And so in their commitment to what so-and-so said and did, they end up freezing the faith.

What gets lost is the truth that whoever painted that version was just like us, searching for God and experiencing God and trying to get a handle on what the Christian faith looks like.

I can say with certainty that I’ve experienced this. If you’ve ever gone to a baptist church in the South, I’m fairly certain that you’ve also experienced this. And it must change!

Living a life in Christ is about joy. It’s about helping people – all people. It’s about generosity, forgiveness, compassion, peace, and honesty. It’s about not being bitter. It’s about humility. It’s about love. It’s about living.

It’s time that those of us who use the name of Christ to describe ourselves started living up to the name.

Brent brings up several good points in his article, “Engage” by Being. He talks about how Christians don’t really know how to engage in the surrounding culture.

The first thing that needs to be said is that we Christians are prone to extremes. Pendulums rarely correct themselves in small increments. Instead, as it swings from one extreme, it rarely stops right in the center, no, it swings to the other end (maybe not as far as it had going the other way). For Christians, this often means complete immersion in the surrounding culture so that there is little difference in the lives of those professing Christ and those not. LIBERTY! is the battle-cry of the day for these people. For others, however, it is not immersion but exclusion. Many Christians withdraw as much as possible from the surrounding culture. The extreme form of this, is of course, monasticism. Both are errors of the extreme.

This is definitely true. I’ve seen myself hit both extremes very hard. It’s like once you realize that what you’re doing isn’t working, you run just as hard and fast as you can in the opposite direction and don’t stop until you hit a wall. And often, you bounce off that wall so hard you end up back where you started.

Very many Christians who seem to be concerned with “engaging the culture” don’t actually seem to participate in culture. Rather, they study it from afar trying to learn the secret handshakes without ever actually shaking hands with anyone. We see this of course with Christianity’s now troubled relationships with the arts. Many Christians can point out what is wrong with Hollywood or music or the visual arts but very few Christians are actually doing anything meaningful about it. Instead, we throw stones from inside our fortress and call it engagement. We live sterile lives, afraid of getting dirty in culture, the very thing we ought to be shaping. In order to sculpt, you have to get your hands in the clay! Those gorillas know that there’s something just not quite right about that hairless thing over in the corner with the binoculars and note pad and culture knows when we’re just studying that we don’t quite fit in.

But not only do we observe culture more than we actually shape it, the truth is that, most Christians who try to be accepted by the surrounding culture end up doing so by trying to be people they are not. It’s as if they put on the costume of “cool” but it doesn’t quite fit right and they can’t believe why people can tell it’s just a costume.

I see this in myself everyday. I want to make a difference. I want to shape the culture around me. But… I don’t know how. As a Christian, I’ve always been taught to “be in the world, but not of the world.” That’s why a lot of Christians do more observing than anything else. Going out into the world and joining in is taboo. There’s a fear that the unholiness of the world will rub off and make the Christian unholy. That’s why it’s easy to point fingers at what’s wrong without actually doing anything about it.

I’d love to change that. I’d love to stand up and do something meaningful that will benefit not only me, but the people and community around me. I keep seeing commercials to buy the movie Amazing Grace. Each time, I’m reminded of the inspiration I felt when I saw it last fall. William Wilberforce wanted to change the world, first because he saw the injustice against humanity, and then because he wanted to honor God  - and he actually did it.

Brent goes on to talk about how people can tell when Christians are faking it and just trying to fit in. People recognize that when Christians are like that, it’s because they have an agenda. He concludes with this:

If you’re filled with Scripture, Scriptural truths will naturally emerge in a natural, unforced manner. In other words, when we’re ourselves, when our “clothes fit,” people are much more likely to listen.We must realize that our message is offensive enough. As Paul says: “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life” (2 Corinthians 2:15-16). We must understand and accept that much of Christianity is profoundly “uncool” to the rest of the world. We must live transformed lives in a fallen world. Any attempt to cover our new lives in the the grave-clothes of sin so that we are accepted benefits no one. This is why Joe Thorn’s “Six Rules of Cultural Engagement” will be so helpful for many. Though they are listed as separate steps, they are centered around the concept of being a real, genuinely real person:

1. Be Present
2. Practice Discernment
3. Develop Your Theology
4. Find Courage
5. Speak Clearly
6. Love

Far from the costume of cool, or a rigid system, these are things every believer ought to be doing naturally. I think most Christians would be truly shocked at the doors of conversation that open when you show that you’re genuinely interested in other people and in Truth. People respond to conviction much more than gimmicks. People want sincerity more than they do costumes and we’d better believe that they know the difference.

It all goes back to authenticity. I know that’s a huge buzzword in Christian circles, but it’s true. If people would stop talking so much about being authentic and actually start being authentic then we wouldn’t get so much crap from the rest of the world. And we’d be true to the message of Jesus.