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Social Media: A Happy Anniversary.

A line lies between the world of regular people and one where lots of regular people fear to tread. Two years ago this Friday, I crossed it. Some friends cheered me on. Some tried to stop me. Others haven’t spoken to me since. In some opinions, what I did is absurd. But in my opinion, what I did isn’t so bad.

I quit Facebook.

In honor of this — the anniversary of one of lots of steps I’ve taken away from social media — several posts this week and next will further fuel my passion for steering clear of the stuff (and possibly frustrate the folks who don’t share my sentiments).

Stay tuned.

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Fall upward.

“Did you know the first half of life has to fail you? In fact, if you do not recognize an eventual and necessary dissatisfaction (in the form of sadness, restlessness, emptiness, intellectual conflict, spiritual boredom, even loss of faith, etc.), you will not move on to maturity. You see, faith really is about moving outside your comfort zone, trusting God’s lead, instead of just forever shoring up home base. Too often early religious ‘conditioning’ largely substitutes for any real faith.

Usually, without growth being forced on us, few of us go willingly on the spiritual journey. Why would we? The rug has to be pulled out from beneath our game, so we redefine what balance really is. More than anything else, this falling/rising cycle is what moves us into the second half of our own lives. There is a ‘necessary suffering’ to human life, and if we avoid its cycles we remain immature forever. It can take the form of failed relationships, facing our own shadow self, conflicts and contradictions, disappointments, moral lapses, or depression in any number of forms.

All of these have the potential to either edge us forward in life or to dig in our heels even deeper, producing narcissistic and adolescent responses that everybody can see except ourselves. We either ‘fall upward,’ or we just keep falling.” –Richard Rohr

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Books in 2012: Evolving in Monkey Town

A few days short of three weeks ago, by way of what I could call nothing less than an Internet miracle, I stumbled upon Rachel Held Evans’s blog. She is a writer and a wife, a Christian egalitarian and a blogger in whose repertoire she tackles topics like gender roles, John Piper and why Calvinism makes her cry.

It was mild obsession at first sight.

Naturally, three and a half or four minutes later, I succumbed to the compulsion to order her book: Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions. As of tonight, it is the second book I’ve read start to finish in 2012.

The book is a memoir of her faith journey so far. Her faith’s foundation started at home and church and was fostered further by her Protestant education. The book explores her faith’s evolution through the years she spent in high school, in college and working for newspapers (I know what you’re thinking: “Are you and Rachel Held Evans the same person?” No. But if I were married to a guy named Dan and she were Catholic, that “no” might be debatable.). It defines the difference between doubting God and doubting what we believe about Him. It challenges the uncanny knack some Christians have for confusing “faith” with “certainty.” It encourages critical thinking and growth. And friends, it is fabulous. I laughed, I fist pumped and I forced my mom to let me passionately read excerpts of it aloud to her. Scroll down to see some of my favorites (with the best lines bolded):

“I’m an evolutionist because I believe that the best way to reclaim the gospel in times of change is not to cling more tightly to our convictions but to hold them with an open hand. I’m an evolutionist because I believe that sometimes God uses changes in the environment to pry idols from our grip and teach us something new.” – pages 21-22

“Dan always says that as soon as you think you’ve got God figured out, you can bet on the fact that you’re wrong.” – page 118.

“When we require that all people must say the same words or subscribe to the same creeds in order to experience God, we underestimate the scope and power of God’s activity in the world.” – page 132

“If the poor were the most receptive to Jesus and his message, then the religious were the most repelled by it. They benefited too much from the status quo to benefit the radical teaching of Jesus, so they tested him with trick questions, criticized him for hanging out with sinners and ultimately helped arrange for his crucifixion.” -page 153

“… I’m also convinced that our interpretations of the Bible are far from inerrant. The Bible doesn’t exist in a vacuum but must always be interpreted by a predisposed reader. Our interpretations are colored by our culture, our community, our presuppositions, our experience, our language, our education, our emotions, our intellect, our desires, and our biases. My worldview affects how I read the Bible as much as the Bible affects my worldview.” -page 192

“Sometimes I wonder who really had the most biblical support back in the 1800s, Christians who used Ephesians 6 to support the institution of slavery, or Christians who used Galations 3 to support abolition. Both sides had perfectly legitimate verses to back up their positions, but in hindsight, only one side seems even remotely justifiable on a moral level. On the surface, the Bible would seem to condone slavery. But somehow, as a church, we managed to work our way around those passages because of a shared sense of right and wrong, some kind of community agreement. Maybe God left us with all this discontinuity and conflict within Scripture so that we would have to pick and choose for the right reasons. Maybe he let David talk about murdering his enemies and Jesus talk about loving his enemies because he didn’t want to spell it out for us. He wanted us to make the right decisions as we went along together.” -pages 193-194 

Click here for more about Evolving in Monkey Town. And click here to read Rachel’s blog.

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How to talk to a Catholic.

So, I’m Catholic. As expressed in what I recently wrote for RELEVANTmagazine.com, how and where I worship Jesus has long frightened the bejeebers out of people whose religious leanings don’t align with mine. It has long inspired questions that range from adorable to asinine.

“Is that the real man?” -four year old girl, while pointing at the Jesus statue nailed to the giant cross at the front of my church’s sanctuary.

ADORABLE.

“Can priests be black?” -actual grown adult.

ASININE.

Nonetheless, whether legit or ridiculous, I never really have minded the questions much. That is not to say that talking about my church with people who disagree with my church is always easy. And you — Catholic or not — may have experienced that, too. These conversations are not necessarily limited to questions. In my own experience, few inter-ideological discussions had as much to do with a curious sibling in Christ’s questions about my church as with his or her efforts to edify me about “what the Catholic Church teaches” (which is code for “his or her perception of what the Catholic Church teaches.”).

I have a word for conversations like that:

FRUITLESS.

(Unless your goal is high blood pressure. Then, by all means.)

But not all conversations about doctrinal differences have to end with clenched fists, lost sleep and stress-induced acne. There is a set of ground rules, that when agreed upon, can make the experience both educational and enjoyable. I call it “How to talk to a Catholic.” But what it is actually called is the Dialogue Decalogue.

The Dialogue Decalogue is a Ten Commandments-style set of rules to which it is worth it to stick when you’re talking with someone of a different denomination within Christianity, or of a belief system not within Christianity at all.

Below, you’ll find my two personal favorites (a.k.a. the ones my often well-meaning Protestant siblings in Christ usually break when they want to talk Catholicism with me). Below that, you’ll find a link to the whole list.

Ground Rule Four – “One must compare only her/his ideals with their partner’s ideals, and her/his practice with their partner’s practice. Not their ideals with their partner’s practice.” PREACH.

This is like when a Protestant says, “My church teaches X, but you do Y — justify THAT.”

The answer is “I don’t do what your church says to do because I don’t go to your church.” Every time. Fruitless. The alternative? “My church teaches X. What does your church teach about X?” Like a Fig Netwon — fruit-filled.

Ground Rule Five – Each participant needs to describe her/himself. For example, only a Muslim can describe what it really means to be an authentic member of the Muslim community. At the same time, when one’s partner in dialogue attempts to describe back to them what they have understood of their partner’s self-description, then such a description must be recognizable to the described party. YES. Because nothing says “I don’t actually care about you.” quite like “Hi, Catholic. I’m Protestant. Let me tell you what you believe.” (And vice versa, Catholics who like to tell Protestants what they believe!) It is my job to tell you what I believe, and your job to tell me what you believe. Period.

Click here to read the whole Dialogue Decalogue.