North Face Jackets for all

We all want some direction. I mean, who among us hasn’t asked, what should I do? Or who should I be with? Or where should I move? Or better yet, why am I here? We all ask these questions. I know I ask them daily. I feel like if you could draw a table of my life (which, as a complete nerd, I will admit, I totally have), there would be questions marks in almost every field. Slowly, as I get older, I answer a few of the questions. I want to be a preschool teacher and artist. But, I have no idea who I will be with or where I should be or when I should be there.

In junior high and high school, I looked for meaning all the time. I cannot be the only person who had a mother who told me I was “just figuring out who I am.” And I know I am not the only person who was dumped because the guy was still trying to figure out what he was supposed to be doing with his life or needed some time to figure his life out. And I think because of my church-going, I looked to God to answer all of my questions about my life at once.

For a romantic teenage girl, like me, the best thing God can tell her is whether or not she is going to be married and which cute boy she will marry. Looking back on it, I am so glad he a. has not told me whether or not I will be married and b. that it was not one of the boys I knew in high school. But, I had read the books and heard the testimonies of those couples who had just known in one instant that they would spend the rest of their lives together. I wanted that to be me. I actually thought I heard that voice once but that guy is married and I haven’t spoken to him in years. So I guess I was wrong. I have not even pretended to hear something similar since.

But as I got older, the questions got bigger. What would my career be like? Where should I move? What kind of mom will I be? What kind of person will I be? I always heard that we needed to be in line with God’s will. That it was important to ask him to show us what to do or where to go. If we were not in God’s will, he would not bless us and we would not be right with him. But, as much as I sought it, I did not know his will. I was often told that as doors close and windows open, we will know which way is God’s will. But that was not always easy enough for me.

One of my friends from youth group at the beige church (it’s just easier to identify churches by colors, it’s how I remember them) once told me that she did not know whether to play lacrosse or run track in the spring. When she heard it was going to snow, she prayed that if it was God’s will for her to play lacrosse, that it would snow exactly an inch. When she woke up, they reported we had gotten an inch of snow and she had her answer. I tried that a few times but it seemed a little too “church voodoo” for me. We think that if we set conditions (if only an inch, if I roll a six, if the lights go out), God will be happy to work in those parameters.

There is a story about a guy named Gideon. He wanted to know the answer to whether or not to attack a group of people. He put a fleece outside and if it was wet, he knew he was supposed to. I may have gotten that flipped- maybe it was supposed to stay dry. Anyway, it indicated he was supposed to attack. So then, he reversed the conditions and it again indicated he was supposed to attack. So he did and they won. It is really only about ten verses long. We often stop at that part of the story. What we don’t remember is that he went on to hear God tell him to cut his army by almost 90 percent and then go save Israel. We like the first part where we set the rules, God is happy to play along and we win. There have been a few times in my life where I have wanted to set up this same trial. As a seven year old, I figured my Patagonia fleece would have to do. But I was too embarrassed to actually set my jacket outside. To be honest, I probably also feared what my mom would say when she found my jacket lying outside in a rainstorm.

It is hard to criticize this method since it apparently worked for some people, namely the nation of Israel. But, I think we long for answers to the point that we are willing to put human constraints on God. If only we were taught that God’s going to do his will no matter what we do. Fleece or no fleece, God can make anything happen. It’s a matter of trust. If I am honest, I have to say that I would much rather rely on my sopping wet jacket than on faith.

But I also think we tend to use “God’s will” as an excuse. I used to think that if I woke up on time, I was clearly supposed to go to breakfast with a friend. If I did not, maybe God was keeping me from a car accident or something like that. I heard many stories of how people were supposed to be somewhere but then, there was traffic and so they avoided the snowstorm or car accident or whatever disaster awaited them. We use “God’s will” to allow ourselves to make choices others may not agree with or as the ultimate justification for our actions. I remember friends in youth group shrugging off meetings or plans because they said it wasn’t “God’s will.” In reality, we were just lazy. Or there were the times we would openly criticize one another (aka speak the truth in love) because God had “put it on our hearts” to do so.

As a history fan, I cannot think of two words that have caused more pain and suffering when misused than “God’s will”: The Crusades, the conquistadors, Manifest Destiny, wars, fighting, and ultimately manipulation. Who can argue with “God’s will?” It’s a hard statement to stand up to.

I still get angry when I think about how we have taken something good and turned it bad. Ultimately, I am happy that someone other than me is in control of the universe. It lets me relax and not be anxious. But, when I hear people say that it is God’s will for all of us to be healthy and wealthy, or that terrible things that happened are a result of God’s will, something deep inside me churns. I know we want some direction, but at what cost? Usually the people who are using the term “God’s will” are just trying to strengthen their own case. When his will is being spun to create support for our personal goals, I have to doubt that it is actually what he wants us to do.

I do not have much of a solution. Just perhaps when we talk about God’s will, particularly to adolescents, maybe we should talk about it as something holy and deep rather than something trivial and useful in debate.

Guilt and the Eternal Fanny Pack

My friend Grace called me last week in a panic. She left a message on my voicemail. “I hope you are home. I am near your apartment and just had a really bad experience.” I got to my phone on the third ring and heard the message. At the same time, I saw the “Bateria Baja” alert on my phone which is programmed in Spanish. I may not be fluent but I know the words for message, texts and outgoing call.

I plugged my phone into the charger and forgot about the message. I am not an excellent friend. I called her back around eleven. “What happened?” I asked, hoping I had not abandoned my friend in a time of great crisis.

“It was really weird,” she said. “I was in the park reading when a guy approached me. He was friendly and started asking me questions about what I do for fun and for work.” I could hear her voice start to shift. “Then he asked if he could read my palm.”

I remembered that another friend, Laura, had the same thing happen to her. “Grace, my friend had that guy or another guy like that approach her. It’s just a scam.”

“Well, then he asked if I wanted to go get a drink with him.” Internally, I kept thinking, please tell me you did not. But she did. “I just started to think what if God had this happen for a reason and I was supposed to share the Gospel with him.” She went, it was uncomfortable and she left pretty quickly. We talked for ten more minutes about the importance of safety and I praised her for going only to a public place and near people.

But I recognized the tone in her voice- one of guilt and anxiety. What if God needs me to tell this person about Jesus and I don’t do it? Would he be disappointed? Would the universe fold in on itself? I had a similar feeling when I was younger and did not share “the Gospel” (the main message of Christianity) with my ex-boyfriend. I had a mild panic attack about it before reminding myself that God is way more powerful than I believe and can bring people to him even without my help. I have done a lot of stuff out of a guilty conscience- confessed pretty much everything to my parents, writing letters to ask for forgiveness years after the offending act, trying to share my entire faith in four sentences so I could quit feeling so guilty for not sharing it.

Guilt is a terrible feeling. For me, it feels like when I eat too much. I feel like I could simultaneously throw up and sink like a rock. It is a pit in my stomach or really in my esophagus that just sits there as if I swallowed a squash ball and it is filling up with water or something that makes it feel heavier. I never experience guilt without this strange phenomenon that causes my skin to feel hot but the inside layers to feel cold- almost as if I were wrapped in saran wrap. Guilt eats us up inside and slowly destroys us. It takes away our abilities to see ourselves as we truly are because we obsess over the bad thing we have done. It clouds our opinion of ourselves until we cannot see the beauty in ourselves as the people that God has forgiven completely.

I just can’t believe that God would want us to share about our lives out of guilt. It has caused many problems in the world, this feeling of guilt. We worry that if we don’t do exactly what youth group taught us, we will fail as Christians. We fear missing out on the opportunity to convert someone. Leading someone to Jesus is the pinnacle of a Christian’s life- at least so we are told. It is almost as if we are all members of one of those sales companies that advertised on the back of Archie comic books where one sale would gain you points to redeem for things like a keyboard or a fanny pack. Only in the Christian world, the convert would gain you points to redeem in heaven or temporary relief from the guilt.

While I have shared my personal faith with people and while I agree it is one of my favorite things to do, I can’t believe that Jesus wants us to convert people out of guilt. I’ve heard before that we have to share the Gospel with everyone on the earth before Jesus comes back. As if he will only come back if we systematically talk to every country about him. I also heard that if we didn’t share the Gospel with someone, we would be personally responsible for his or her eternal life in hell. Do I believe that God uses people to draw other people to himself? Absolutely- I am proof of that. Do I believe that God wants us to feel guilty and thus put ourselves in terrible situations just to alleviate some guilt that we feel, to remove the squash ball from our esophagus? No- he has come to set us free.

This is not a pass to never talk to anyone about my faith. It does, however, cause me to use discernment in sharing my story. I have to do a double check to make sure I am doing it for the right reason, not to get the eternal fanany pack that I used to long for.

Boring Faith

I think we’re afraid of boring faith. Boring faith doesn’t sell books or movies and certainly doesn’t hold an audience at a youth group testimonial event. It doesn’t create a buzz around us and it isn’t generally the topic of many sermons. No one ever wrote “The cross and my homework” or “Finding Jesus after many years of thought.”

At the purple church, we celebrated the radical transformations that took place when people met Jesus. We cried with the young woman who told of her past abortion and reconciliation with her parents. We amen-ed the man who had quit smoking crack cold turkey because he heard the Gospel. Christians, like everyone else, are suckers for a blockbuster.

Being surrounded by people who celebrate dramatic changes, I thought my own story was boring. My family was a Christian family. We moved a little bit and my dad and mom went to counseling. My brothers and I spent afternoons playing together with neighborhood friends. The worst thing I struggled with (other than general apathy) was watching a PG movie when my parents told me I was not allowed to. I lied a few times and got caught a few times. But other than those minor infractions, I didn’t have the same compelling story. I prayed to “receive Jesus into my heart” when I was five and it’s not like I was a heroin addict or prostitute before that. When people asked me what difference my faith made in my life, I did not have a real answer.

I think a lot of Christian kids struggle with that. I know I personally wanted to rebel, to stray, to react against the perfect suburban life that I lived. And by making my struggles a little bigger or more dramatic, it was as if I had. My story became one of lies, to a great extent, of changing my story to pretend I had been such a terrible person that it was a miracle Jesus accepted me, but not terrible enough for people to judge me. That is the key to a good testimony: share a few struggles, embellish them to legitimate the grace you experienced, but remain within the acceptable boundaries. For girls, it is easy to mention an eating disorder- something many of my friends claimed to share. I think out of my twelve friends who claimed it, three could have been legitimately diagnosed. But no one would share that she was having sex with her boyfriend. For boys, I have heard testimonies of struggling with lust and peer pressure to drink. But again, no one would admit to bigger sins like looking at internet pornography or masturbating. But our stories all ended the same way, when we found Jesus, we quit doing such terrible things.

I think we also neglected to think about the amount of guilt and shame that our peers with great testimonies faced. By exaggerating my story, I was envying something that I should not have. I spoke with a friend of mine recently whose college girlfriend had gotten pregnant and had an abortion. It’s been a long time since that happened but he regularly deals with the guilt. The girl who cuts herself or with her finger down her throat in the cafeteria bathroom probably isn’t thinking, “When I find Jesus, this will make for some compelling sermon.” As Christian kids, we do not realize how lucky we are to have avoided much of the truly scarring events of these “great” testimonies. To experience a change like these people have requires many years of pain and loneliness. In my aggrandizement of my own story, I trivialized their suffering.

At the same time though, by changing my own story to one of sudden transformation, I lied to everyone around me. It is not the dramatic change that I want to hear about- the cold turkey quitting of heroin or the desire to leave a gang after twenty years because you found Jesus. I don’t even like the people who say that after they found Jesus, their entire lives got better. They usually don’t. My friends who were having sex with their boyfriends before they found Jesus, generally do the same thing, at least for awhile, after their conversions. The people who drank underage before their conversion generally still drink. I didn’t wake up one day and decide to quit being depressed and self-critical. It took months of work and I still see a counselor and take medicine. Our adoration of these sudden change stories is drawing an unrealistic portrait of faith.

If faith was only about getting us to be good people rather than the bad people we were, no one would care. And no one would want to join. I certainly wouldn’t. I don’t think Jesus died for my sins so I could quit using curse words and lusting after anyone. I do believe he changes us- but I didn’t suddenly quit resenting my perfect, talented brother. It took years. But none of us want to admit that we still hate ourselves or others, that we still judge other people around us, that we are not the perfect people deserving grace and mercy. We think that the only compelling thing about Jesus is his ability to turn someone’s life around 180 degrees. We don’t believe people will want to know a God who turns us a few degrees at a time, and even then doesn’t force us to be different.

It’s as if somehow we don’t think the mere fact that Jesus has invaded our lives is exciting enough.