Tag: church

Good News to the Poor: What I Learned From an 80-year-old Nun in India.

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During the time I lived in the slum, I sometimes interacted with other Christians who viewed Muslims as spiritual projects. They were confused about why I would choose to live with people in poverty and/or people of another religion for any reason other than to use cloak-and-dagger evangelism to convert them.  If I responded that following Jesus compelled me to love my neighbors and seek to work for justice alongside them, other Christians sometimes concluded that all that neighborly love must be a way of warming up the crowd for the REAL message of Jesus later, and it seemed impossible to explain that–as far as I was concerned–love, justice, community, and belonging in God’s family WERE the message.

At a time when these sorts of conversations had left me feeling discouraged and misunderstood, I met an octogenarian nun with a crinkly face and a compassionate heart. Her understanding of my strange life was a much-needed comfort at the time, and to this day I continue to unpack the wisdom she shared with me in our conversations under the neem trees.  This month, I got to write about my friendship with her in an online article for Plough Quarterly. Here’s an excerpt:

“There were the unjust laws and corrupt officials. There was drought and impoverished soil in the villages our neighbors hailed from, where fields could not be endlessly subdivided between generations of sons. The education and healthcare systems were inadequate. And among those we got to know, malnutrition, family cycles of violence, and psychological trauma all took their toll. Generations of discrimination too often meant that people in poverty didn’t expect much from themselves.

We were discouraged not only by the enormity of the problems faced by our neighbors, but also by the church’s failure to respond. Of the local Christians with whom we interacted, many seemed focused on a “spiritual” agenda – gathering adherents – though to be sure, they had material concerns as well: maintaining historical church buildings and air-conditioned auditoriums…”

Head on over to Plough to read the rest!

 

Strong Enough to Hold Me

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communion

So, I’m writing about church two days in a row–that never happens.

This essay for SheLoves Magazine is a bit more raw; more up close and personal. It explores my journey with Church from a different angle, zooming in on what it looked like sort out my faith in burn-out mode after India. This is what it was like to show up in church, dragging my baggage and doubts behind me. In particular, this is what it was like to take communion on days when I wasn’t sure I was–or wanted to be–part of the Body of Christ. This was what it was like to experience grace on the other side of failure. Here’s an excerpt:

Seeing the delight that the entire congregation took in including small children in the service, gave me hope. So did the fact that there was an old woman who felt free to dance in the aisle while the rest of us sang worship songs with typical Baptist understatement, slightly swaying or clapping where we stood.

For the past two and a half years, I had lived in slum communities in India where children were always buzzing around the edges of adult conversation and activity, but were rarely the focus of constructive attention. I had seen kids locked inside of dark rooms while their parents were at work during the day; I had seen them slapped around, kicked, screamed at, threatened, and neglected…

Head over to SheLoves Magazine to read the rest of the piece.

Why I Still Bother With Church

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Today RELEVANT magazine online published a piece I wrote about my evolving relationship with church over the years. At different stages in my journey, following Jesus has led me in and out of organized Christendom. Sometimes church has been a place to find helpful answers; other times, church has brought my most troubling questions into being. Church has both shown me love and stoked my darkest fears and insecurities. Like a dysfunctional family in which you alternately (or simultaneously) treasure your sense of belonging and resent your unflattering resemblances, church has been for me an exasperating, unwieldy community that reflects the fractured beauty of the messy human beings who comprise it.

There are times when I want nothing to do with it–usually when I am confronted with the very real damage the church as done in the world by choosing violence, power, and tribal allegiances over the humble way of Jesus (who includes and serves everybody, loves even his enemies, and is never swayed by desires for control or self-preservation). Cynicism is such an easy release, but so far I have never managed to permanently make my home on that lonely promontory of self-righteousness. This piece maps the journey so far, and describes the new territory I’ve recently discovered. Head on over to RELEVANTmagazine.com to check it out!

Is Hell the center of Christian faith? guest post for Greg Boyd

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heaven-or-hell

A couple years ago, one of our sending churches withdrew financial support from Andy and me.

This came after a theological discussion with the pastor and staff about why we were in India. We explained that we wanted our lives in the slum to mirror the way that God chose to be with us when he entered into the human condition and into poverty through the incarnation, and we described the practical ways we had become involved in our neighbors’ lives.

Yet there was confusion over whether or not these things were part of Jesus’ message; whether they were “focused” enough to merit church support. As the conversation progressed, both we and the staff realized that we were operating under different assumptions about what “Good News” means, why Jesus came to earth, and what the mission of the Church is.

The pastor and staff were not careless or hard-hearted–they probably asked the same questions and handled the situation in much the same way as would many evangelical Christians across North America. They were simply acting out of a belief that hell is the central problem for human beings, and that saving people from hell through right belief is the Church’s primary purpose. Against the backdrop of looming eternal torment, any efforts to alleviate suffering in the here and now or to address its systemic causes in society quite logically seem like a waste of time, or even a dangerous distraction from our spiritual rescue mission.

I wrote a guest post about this for pastor Greg Boyd’s blog over at ReKnew Forum. Recognizing how often our faith is “hijacked by religion, politics, and the assumptions of the day,” Greg’s vision for ReKnew is to create a space for “believers and skeptics alike” to “ask tough questions and consider a renewed picture of God,” one that authentically reflects Jesus rather than the historical and cultural baggage we’ve layered on top of him.  Click on over to read my post.