The Word is Given: And the Word is Love (Let's All Get A Tiny Bit Naked)

Many of us knew pretty early on in our church life and Christian upbringing that we needed liberty.  Thing is, we got it, many of us, but we're feeling that something's still missing.

  It has been very hard for many of us to learn about liberty, and harder still to gain it.  We grew up, many of us, with the merest smidgen of individuality crushed out of us, soul shoehorned into a meek, quiet, sheepish, self-effacing, reserved, detached kind of non-life defined by negatives.  What we didn't do.  What we resolved not to enjoy.  We were like normal people, only without swearing, movies, premarital sex and alcohol. Ultimately, not normal at all.  For us, being a Christian was about a bunch of things we were, unlike our nonChurch peers, not free to do, and also unlike them, which we weren't to love or even want.  

  The "positive" element was nothing more than getting fired up by sermons about negatives.  About how wrong certain things were.  About "taking a position" against them.  About "standing against" certain people and things.  "Warning" everyone about bad stuff you might miss the error in.

  But many of us went to work on that problematic approach to life.  Some of us rebelled outright, breaking those rules and demonstrating that a bit of freedom made us more, rather than less, healthy and happy.  We'd been told that death and ruin lay down that road, and we'd been raised to fulfil that self-fulfilling prophecy.  Some of us did that too.  And some became atheists, because they never knew Jesus, but only knew church and its walls.  And for many of us, church just didn't work. 

  We needed more than the negatives church was giving us.  Anything presented to us as positive (many confused "cheerful" with "positive") , anything about Jesus, just failed to hit home.  We couldn't really feel it enough.  Either it wasn't quite real, we suspected, or maybe it was poisoned, or else something was wrong with us.  Something was wrong with us.

  And the agenda of the church was more about keeping bums on seats and controlling the outer appearances of the possessors of said pious bums.  Control.  Power.  How things looked.  There was a lot of shame and bullying and peer pressure.  Just like high school.

  Many of us, though, had some kind of spark of something that made us seek the Lord instead of becoming atheists or church folk.  Yet we kept getting that tangled up in the church stuff.  Took a lot of work to be able to deal with God only, and let the church take care of itself.  To be and do church, rather than have it done to us, to have it rule and define us.  Some of us have little or nothing to do with church stuff nowadays, either because we needed something more than all the shame and control, or because we needed something more than a bunch of talk.

We Got Free, So What Are We Missing?

And many of us are pretty free, now.  We have a connection to God. But we're missing something.  We can feel that.  Church people taunt us, demanding to know where our "positive" Christianity is.  Are we happy?  Like, really happy?  No, really, really actually happy?  And being badgered by them this way makes us far less able to be happy. 
  And those badgering us do not "count" what actually works for us: the casual, natural comings together of we few church casualties who eventually recognized that our church experience was crushing our heads, hearts and souls, but who didn't toss God out too.  The church badgers want to hear how much time each week we spend in a church setting.  And we want something deeper than we find when we go to those places.  We want something we can believe. 
  Many of us have almost never believed any Christian activity that more than about two people were doing.  Many of us have no faith in committees.  Some of us are using the Internet and trying to track down someone, anyone, we can connect to about Jesus.  Some of us find ourselves travelling much farther than the nearest church to  meet up with them and find, quite often, that despite having never occupied the same room before, that we're the same.  That we're accepted.  That we've got each others' backs.

  This weekend, talking to other church casualties/graduates, I was forced to see what actually is missing in my life.  When I was younger, I fought hard, and read books, and prayed and worked through my church stuff.  I did this until I got liberty without simply rebelling.  Most rebels follow up empty, stupid, reckless acts of rebellion by repenting in sack cloth and ashes and forever after teaching church folk not to do like I did.  I got to the point where I could breathe, feel, think and live more free.  But something remains unsatisfied.

  God is love, right?  I don't "get" that the way I should.  Because love is the missing thing.  And without it, the bible says, we have nothing.  I need liberty if I am to live and connect to Christ and Christians.  But if I can't feel and give and recognize love, it's like I'm dying in a bubble of my own devising.  Suffocating in there.  Keeping the rejection and enforced conformity out.  Getting nothing in.  Growing my own doubt in there.

What Does Love Even Look Like?

Many of us have troubled relationships with parents who don't get us.  Our coming out of the familial church was treated like a particularly acrimonious coming out of the closet.  There's a rift.  Some of us have parents and friends who, in their "real" minds respect and accept us (kinda), but in their "church" minds, we are failures.  Reprobates, even.  Scum.  Useful in cautionary tales to point to and say "aha! aha!"  Good for scaring church children.  "If you don't listen and fall in line, you might end up like him."

  One pastor said to me that I believe in a God who's always going to jump out and "get" me.  He wasn't completely wrong about that.  I thought about this and noted that I had a Dad who could always be counted upon to come out of nowhere, when I was a child, and remove any new thing in which I took pleasure, with some kind of church argument behind it (books and music and games and friends being ever disappeared at his decree, my life shrinking to the size of a walnut).  And I did tend to believe in a God who was that, and little else.  A devourer of pleasure, a ruiner of joy.  Someone who yanked the happy from your grasp and handed you some shame instead.

  But my Dad was there for me too, to make sure I was safe, and getting to work on time, and stuff like that.  And so I could believe in a God who was almost as good as my Dad in that way.  But I couldn't believe God was any better than my Dad at joy.  At letting me be happy, and pursue things that mattered to me.  Certainly not Someone who would bring me anything that would give me joy.  God was Someone who would toss monkey wrenches into my life to make me learn.  He's make me suffer.  For my own good.  Nothing good came without effort.  There would always be pain.  And His face was always on it.

  That's not a very insightful portrait of the source of all love.  You have never loved, without that love pouring through you, your having become a mere conduit, pouring that love out from whence it flows to begin with.  God is love.  Lovingness.  And acceptance is just the start of that.

  My understanding of love is so limited.  Sure, I believe that God will quite probably make sure the scary turbulence on flights to visit other people from my faith background isn't going to actually turn into a plane crash.  (Or He may not make sure of that at all.)  But I struggle to believe in a God who delights in us bruised church folk getting together to begin with.  And that's dumb.  Because if I look, although there's certainly enough trouble and complication in getting together, God's in our time spent together. It is natural and deep and fulfilling. I can believe in it. I can't not.  It's so deep and obvious.

  "Water seeks its own level," my father always said.  So easy to think that us church dropouts, who weren't hard-core about the rules, who played along only for a time with the crushing of our heads ever more tightly in that church vise, are lesser.  Are failures.  Are manifestly people who "made bad choices" and "couldn't cut it."  The disciples were competitive about who would be greatest.  Competition is inevitably part of any Christian community. And there's no place for it.  And we are cast as the failures.  What my dad called "light-weights."  

  Thing is?  My failed, light-weight church folk friends, whether they attend or not, don't feel to me like they failed.  At all.  They feel like they graduated.  When I talk to them about God, I can hear and feel and understand and believe them when they talk about their life.  There is struggle.  They have screwed up (having been tossed to the grievous wolves of the church scene, and then cut loose and left in the ditch to die, everyone passing by on the other side).  But whether they attend and have little status, or have walked away from that as not useful to them, they're "going somewhere" they could never otherwise have gone, so long as their heads and hearts were clamped in that church vise.

  And some of them do like to go to some church or other.  Some of them still go to the one we were raised in.  Invariably, they have no status.  They don't dazzle the masses.  They don't put show-off pious Facebook statuses.  But their hearts and heads got liberty at some point.  Sometimes I wonder how on earth they did that.  They can approach God and live a life for Him, rather than being programmed by their church, unable to think and feel unassisted and unchaperoned, with a control panel built into them with big red buttons almost anyone can push.  Most of us had that control panel.  With the buttons.  Some of us still do.

  But what's missing for people like me?  Love.  Many of us have parents who can't exactly make us feel they love us.  For many of us, it's not helped by the fact that in their "church" heads, they can't include and accept us.  Because sometimes, their natural parental affection and protective and supporting feelings get offered to church Moloch gods, and they let their children "pass through the fire" as Bronze Age parents did when they offered their own children in sacrifice to their religion.  Angry god religions are like that. They eat the lives of kids.  They ask mother and father to turn on their kids and offer them up to be hurt.

  I know about getting someone out of my face when they try to shame and guilt and reject me, when they question that I even know God at all, when they climb up the piety ladder, using my head as a rung, or when they see that I'm different from them, so they desperately need me to be wrong, and admit it or suffer the consequences.  I know about that.  Even if it's a parent or someone I grew up with doing that, if they do it, I will likely rip them a new one.  And I've got enough knowledge of the bible to go to war with scripture in my hand, too.  But that just makes more war. And I am so tired of war.

Naked

What I am slowly learning about is the essential role of vulnerability in anything to do with love.  With being a little naked.  "C'mon, baby.  Show me.  Let me get a look at your heart.  Just flash it quick, okay?"
  What is with us and our shame?  Acceptance is what we want more than anything else. But we make sure we won't ever get any, because we don't want to give anyone the chance to reject us.

  Don Miller has been going on in his blog entries a lot lately about vulnerability.  About how leaders of any kind who can be genuine, open and vulnerable are the only ones who can be trusted.  About how you can't trust ones who only show you a persona which is all about them being awesome (with perhaps a bit of "safe" showcasing a token flaw. Something that turns out to be as contrived as the awesome, once the sex and drugs and extortion scandal fully happens, or they have their nervous breakdowns).  Many put out an awesome persona, and then top up the awesome by being "gracious" or "humble" about how awesome they have convinced everyone they are.  Pro.

  I have noted that many people genuinely think being candid, open and forthcoming is dangerous and foolish.  They think that "being vulnerable" isn't safe. Well, of course it isn't.  But here's a more subtle reality: never being vulnerable will kill you.  You can't let anyone in and you tear yourself into pieces inside like a car engine with a handful of steel ball bearings poured randomly into every oil, antifreeze, water, electrical and fuel port.  Like a window fan with a ball of yarn thrown into it.  Being emotionally constipated will poison you.

  It's a high standard to talk one-on-one with pastors and other maybe-Christians, and insist upon seeing their faith credentials, if they want you to connect to them and trust them to advise and support you.  Often they will happily show their divinity degrees, or their church attendance, or their doctrine and bible knowledge, their sparkling wife, kids, dog and plastic-fish-decorated minivan.  Stuff that makes them look good. (And then can top that by trying to look humble about it all.  Humbled and blessed.)  But if they actually show you that they are as much a person, as convincingly human as you are, and are vulnerable and open and forthcoming with you, suddenly you can connect.  What are they like in their own living room when there's no audience but you?  Have you ever seen them without their shoes on?  Do you know what their worried face looks like?  Have you ever heard them change their mind, say "I don't know" or "I'm sorry"?  What's not working for them right now?

  I started something a couple of years back, where I offer to pray for Christian people about something specific that they want.  To do that, I need them to tell me something that troubles them or something that isn't working.  Stuff like that. I guess that's a tiny bit naked.  Thing is, I'm seeing that the vast majority struggle to admit they even have anything real for me to pray about.  And some don't seem to struggle with my request at all.  They just deflect the offer entirely.  Like I was suggesting something untoward and perverse.

  And when I want to see what Christians act like at McDonalds or a pub or in some other nonChurch setting, stripped of the coating of buffering churchfolk?  When they've shown up to connect, rather than as part of a church thing?  Well, they pretty much have never done that.  But when they have I find something troubling: an awful lot of us are "real" with our real friends, who aren't Christians.  A lot of us have Christian acquaintances we are seldom (or never) going to allow in the same room as our nonChristian friends. We are protecting them from each other.  The question is, what exactly are we protecting our nonChristian friends from?  Another question: "Why does letting Christians meet our nonChristian friends feel like we walked out of the house without our pants?"

We Need Love.  Like, Actually Need It.

We need love.  We need connection.  We need to be vulnerable, a bit naked with someone, and be accepted.  (I say "a bit naked," conscious of the fact that many of us are, emotionally, rather like the old-order Mennonite girl in the black Converse sneakers I saw texting at the airport, when it comes to "naked."  Neck to ankles to wrists, concealed in a garment made to hide, rather than clothe her.  The Converse shoes actually revealed who she was, more than concealed her.  Because she'd chosen them.  Don't think I'm trying to judge her.  I'm trying to say we need to show a bit of forearm or calf or clavicle sometimes, emotionally.  Or get some shoes that we relate to.  And be made to feel totally accepted for that.  Especially when it's not identical to everyone else.)

  Because the negatives aren't enough.  Not doing and loving stuff, so no one will be negative about us?  Not good enough.  We need more.  We need to show someone a bit of who we are, and have that someone know how to make us feel that acceptance. We really do.  

  But instead, many of us prepare for rejection, plan for it, and armour ourselves up against it.  And then we walk straight past any acceptance that's on offer, pretending it's not there.  We do this until we find someone who we can trust to reject us properly. 

  And maybe it's a fancy dress ball.  And we're wearing a suit of armour.  Over our evening wear.  And wondering why we feel afraid and alone and left out.    We're doing that, many of us.  We really are.  (and when I say "we" I mean me.  That's how I know we do this.  Because I'm trying to learn better.  To be a bit naked rather than very armoured up.)

  I'm learning by trial and error that when someone tries to hurt and reject and judge me, if I turn the other cheek, so to speak, dropping my rapier to the floor and pulling my shirt open so they can get a good thrust in if they're that determined to wound me, that something Jesus-backwards happens.  Suddenly they are helpless to hurt me without clearly doing more harm to themselves, their relationship with God and their precious reputations.  (People are watching.  Angels too.)  Suddenly something at first subtle becomes obvious: if you are locked away in your suit of armour, you can't hug people, you can't let anyone in, you can't dance, you can't run, you can't move freely.  You can't ace job interviews, or create art.  And ultimately, you can't have sex properly while wearing it.

  (and, of course, if you "turn the other cheek," this is vulnerable in a way I hadn't thought of: it reveals that you feel attacked.  It invites people to take a leaf from the Pharisee bible and say "You're crazy!  No one's attacking you! You're paranoid!"  But still, Jesus did this. They were trying to trick him into saying something subversive sounding like he was always doing, so they could have him arrested and executed, and therefore, removed from the piety chessboard.  He'd been knocking around it, clearly not playing the piety game at all, saying piety shouldn't be a game to begin with, and that they were playing it badly anyway. So they were trying to get rid of him. 
  Nowadays, people aren't actually trying to kill most of us, but still, I take comfort in Jesus' cutting through the crap in the way only he could, and instead of answering their trick question at all, asking them a question in return that they couldn't muster the honesty and self-awareness to answer: "Why do you seek to kill me?" 
  The honest answer to that question was as damning as anything he could have accused them of.  And it immediately made them flee.)

  If you find yourself getting pulled into a fight with some kind of zealot or tyrant or bully, you can count on one thing: if it becomes a vulnerability fight, they are always going to be totally unarmed.  Suddenly, if you are vulnerable, they can't answer that.  They will be completely overthrown and out of sorts.  

  It's almost like vulnerability is a kind of weapon, useful for dealing with tyrants and monsters.  Jesus and Ghandi, and every passive-resistant protester ever, all seemed to work this way.  And yes, you might well end up hurt.  But the thing is, that tyrant who hurts vulnerable people?  Isn't going to be in power very long.  You can be Hitler, but only for a few years.  And if everyone knows you hurt innocents, that's it for you, forever.  You will have lost all status and power.

  Anger is often a fake feeling that is hiding more vulnerable ones (shame, hurt, loss, betrayal, fear).  But if you've got it, sometimes you can even share that in a way that makes you vulnerable.  In my parents' marriage, my dad always had to be the right one, and my mother was always vulnerable.  Guess which always won in the end?  Guess who's the real power in that situation now?

  Love.  What will happen if I love my parents as people rather than power figures?  What happens if I show love to church people who won't talk to me unless I'm willing to attend their church regularly?  What happens if, when someone sets him or herself up as my enemy, determined to slander me and take me down, I look behind those unconvincing, cumbersome suits of armour, and see through to the hurt, to the sad little child?  What happens if, when I love someone and they retreat, I keep loving them instead of turning my hurt into anger and spite?

  I just might change my world.  That's what Jesus did.  And that's exactly how he did it. 

[the "armour" would be to put something at this point like "Of course I will probably never make any headway at this. I suck.  I need you to realize that I know that." 
But what if I reject that?  What if I just put the intention, the idea out there, by itself, nakedly unswathed in per-emptive shame and judgment, insulting and doubting myself quickly before anyone else can, like Kevin Smith does?  Kevin can't do one interview and feel comfortable unless he's hidden in his giant hockey jersey, making jokes about how fat he is.  This is me. Learning to learn.  Love is missing.  I'm telling everyone.  Acceptance would be awesome.  Especially if I learned of it.]