Lyrics of A Faith Change

 I stumbled across the writing of Rachel Held Evans and would never be the same!  Her writing and use of stories and words broke me open and brought the lyric lover in me back to life! She was raised in a church very similar to mine and she writes so beautifully in her books Faith Unraveled, Searching for Sunday, and Inspired about how she lost her faith from her childhood but in its place found a truer to her soul faith.   I saw asking questions and sitting with those questions for days, months, and in some areas, years was what I needed.  My questions led to others and others and slowly I began uncovering answers and new meanings to teachings and ideas.  This of course did not happen overnight; nor did it happen without shaking up my life.  The ripples spread.  I stepped down from leading the small group I led, I just could not fake it any longer, my faith was changing behind the scenes.  I learned new ways of relating with faith, religion and especially the Bible.  I only thought this cherished book was meant to be read literally.  The words were to be taken just as they were said, and we were to interpret them that way.  When I learned that I could look at these words and this book with different eyes I could see the beauty in it. The metaphors, the stories, the lessons that are not meant for literal interpretation or to dismiss and place meaning according to the desired message being given.  In fact, reading the bible in literal interpretations is a fairly new and fairly American way of reading the bible.  I could argue and search for meaning in a story like the Jews did with their sacred texts, and then come back to the same story and experience it totally different as I grew and changed.  It was not a literal “it says this so do that” reading; I discovered I could look at it and see “it says this and it says that” so I can sit in the contradictions and just wonder.  I was learning to say, “I don’t know,” and I found such freedom in it!

Is evolution or young earth creationism the right teaching?…. I don’t know.

Are all religions leading to the same God figure?…. I don’t know.

What happens to us when we die?… I don’t know.

Is the book of revelation literal or metaphor and vision?… I don’t know.

 

It is still amazing to me how 3 little words can lift a weight off your chest.  Saying them is freeing when you truly do not know.  You can let go of any ideas you may have that you should have a yes or no answer to any and everything.  But after you say them the work then starts to find words to form your own thoughts and opinions.  When you seek clarity, you move from the I don’t know phase into the I am learning phase.

 I may start with a question in my head like, “Can there be gay Christians?” I have been taught my whole life the answer is No way.  God is 100% against homosexuality.  Then I hear accounts of actual gay Christians like Matthew Vines, Glennon Doyle, and B.T. Harman and imagine there is so much more than the lyrics I had been taught on this topic.  I learn there are way more verses on us being loved unconditionally as we are than on condemning homosexuality.  I progress to questioning who wins in the teaching of homosexuality as an abomination?  What is the goal in this teaching?  Does it even matter and why?  Then after sitting with the answers that I uncover FOR MYSELF I can form my own thoughts and opinions based on my digging and learning from those who are affected by the question.  In this way the freeing language of ‘I don’t know’ can lead to the uncovering of what I truly feel in my bones at any moment.  I can still hold those beliefs loosely and let them evolve and change as I learn more and seek new perspectives, but it would never progress if I could not admit “I don’t know.”

            The ripple effect from this sort of unraveling of long held absolutes has reached all areas of my life.  After really working through the question on homosexuality, for example, I concluded I would never again sit in a church that would make anyone I love to feel like they are not whole and perfect just as they were made.  I rejected the “hate the sin, love the sinner” teachings and excuses I heard from many in the evangelical church when the topic of homosexuality came up.  I would never again outsource my faith and that of my kids, as Glennon Doyle beautifully writes in Untamed (Chapter called Decals) “There is no more silently disagreeing while poison is being pumped from the pulpits and seeping beneath our children’s skin.”  Our connection to God does not come from a man behind a pulpit or even an ancient text called the Bible.  I choose to rewrite the lyrics to this song of my past faith: my heart, my mind, and this earth are my connections to God.  “There is no church that owns God.  There is no religion that owns God.  There are no gatekeepers.  None of this is that easy.  There is no outsourcing your faith.  There is just you and God.” (Chapter called Conflicts in Untamed.)