Self-loathing and Sanctuary: How I found Jesus in Sunday School

Ever since we started attending our new church, Sunday services had provided a safe place in the midst of a week of activities that invariably make me feel not-good-enough. I spend all week burnt out and exhausted working a job that I could have worked without my college education, or even without a high school education, for that matter. So I feel guilty for being exhausted. If I'm tired while I'm underachieving, how could I ever possibly contribute anything meaningful and achieve-y to the world? Day after day I am squandering any potential I may have, and I'm absolutely fatigued from doing it. So I feel like a failure. And I feel guilty.

One of the reasons I give for working the job that I have is that the flexible schedule allows me to be home with my children when they are home, to be a "better parent." But the fact of the matter is that I'm a mediocre, sleep-deprived parent at best. I'm jumpy, irritable, disoriented, and not-too-terribly domestic. I want to engage with my children, but mostly I just want silence and a dark place to curl up and hide. 

Socially, I'm pretty much addled with anxiety, which leads to depression, which leads to anxiety, and on and on. So I feel guilty and awful in relation to my friends because I spend most days in hiding, not engaging socially at all. 

I also teach preschool dance and I'm lucky if I can get ten minutes of instruction in before they start throwing shoes and licking the mirror. Yet another weekly marker of my ineptitude.

I get that most of these things are a matter of my perception. I understand that probably I am an okay mother. I get that my whole identity isn't bound up in what type of job I have (even if all of my time is). I know that social anxiety is at least a little bit chemical, and that I'm doing the best I can. And I have yet to meet a toddler who wasn't tempted to lick a mirror now and then. But I still feel the way that I feel. I still feel guilty and shameful and wasted.

So for me, looking forward to Sundays had been the one thing that could coax me through the week. On Sundays I could just go and be, and not worry about if I was failing or succeeding, achieving or just pathetically scraping by, presenting the perfect social face or just barely managing to drag my depressed self out in public wearing something other than plaid pajama pants. Sundays were the one time when I didn't have to worry about being not-good-enough.

Of course, church is more than just taking and enjoying (although sometimes it needs to be exactly that, and I think that's okay, too). I want to participate. I want to give. I want to share, and help, and be a part of things. And so I volunteered to teach Sunday school. My husband and I had been teaching elementary kids together at the old church, and it had gone well. They think I'm funny, and the feeling is mutual. I could handle elementary school kids. I understood them. I felt okay teaching them. Not exactly like a teaching superstar, but adequate...which is about as close to confident as I get.

But our new church needed a preschool teacher, and as the universe seems to be conspiring to fill my life with small people at every turn, I was placed with the toddler/preschool group. And I was terrified.

If I sometimes struggle with a small dance class of a half dozen three year olds, what am I supposed to do with a dozen toddlers? And on a Sunday, the one single day of the week where there is sanctuary from my self-loathing and inadequacy? Instead of having something to look forward to, something to cling to in order to make it through the week, there was something to dread and fear. Instead of being a part of something new, and feel-good, and worship-y, and wonderful, I would be confined to the basement never to be seen again. Woe is me!  Yes. I know how utterly selfish this sounds. And I'm not saying that I didn't want to contribute at all, but just that maybe I should have signed up to be a greeter, or a communion-give-y person because I'm sure that I will ruin preschool for everyone. And because The Basement Forever. Woe, oh, woe! (I am inadequate and so very many things, but one of the things I am admittedly good at is melodrama. I am so, so good at melodrama.)

But I don't want to be selfish. I want to be selfless and confident. I feel the way I feel, but I'm trying not to be a slave to that. Because how I feel doesn't have to be how I act. I may feel depressed, but I can act out hope. I may feel selfish, but I don't have to behave that way. I might not even die if I go against my feelings. Maybe. 

And so I diligently practiced the very-very-scripted story that I was scheduled to teach. I practiced making my hand circle "in a counter-clockwise direction" over the story scenery (because apparently, if you circle your hand in a clockwise direction, Satan wins?). I practiced not inserting snarky feminist commentary into the preschool Bible story, because I'm told they don't get irony. And then I told my inner whiny child to be quiet. And I made my way to the basement nevertobeseenagain. And I braced myself. Because I was going to mess this up so badly. 

An then something surprising happened. 

Preschool was amazing. 

Not perfect. There were weeping children, and bickering children, and children who just flat out did not like the song that we were singing, and children who ran too quickly to be caught, and children who absolutely would not put away the Play-Doh because their creations should be immortal. But all of the children were wonderful, too. They listened, captivated, to the story. They didn't even mind that the women didn't have names (I will have to work on that...they should mind). They shook my hand and offered me peace in manifold adorable ways. They took communion in as solemn a manner as anyone could ever hope for preschool children. And when we were done, I didn't feel defeated, or sad, or hopeless.

 I didn't feel anything about me at all. 

It turns out that the preschool children are exhilarating. They gave me energy. They made me smile and forget myself and all my crazy, neurotic baggage. I'm so excited to see them again next week. Even if they cry, run in circles, and fight over markers. Because even if I don't manage to construct the perfect Montessori-style preschool Sunday school class, I can for sure love and welcome these beautiful little people. I can marvel at how their eyes light up, and how their voices sing, and how curious and creative they are, and how they try so, so, hard to learn to live with each other. 

It turns out that I can meet God in the basement just as readily as I can meet God in the sanctuary (or the social hall, in our case). God is there in the midst of the little children. Of course, God is. 

Thank God for the little children. And thank God for the Sabbath. And thank God for every new opportunity to practice (heels dragging and heart racing) selfless giving and humility. And thank God for the knowledge that I never will or can be "good enough" at this selflessness. And thank God that there is love and grace enough anyway: love and grace that look an awful lot like Play-doh, goldfish crackers, and sticky little fingers. 

And honestly, I don't know if I can conceive of a sanctuary constructed of anything more beautiful than that.

This is not a cry for help (or, why I'm buying in a dark poetry journal)

Maybe it's the weather and I just need to invest in one of those ridiculous sunlight therapy lamp things. (But have you seen the instructions for those things? The ones you have to follow exactly or you might as well just throw them out the window?)

Maybe it's some sort of spiritual thing, and I just don't love Jesus enough. (Is there a depressed person's version of the Prayer of Jabez, some magic supernatural God-controlling silver bullet for emotion?)

Maybe it's because I'm ashamed of all my wasted potential and I just need a time machine to travel back in time in order to tell my defiant and idealistic 19 year old self to choose a reasonable college major.

Maybe it's solely physical and I just need to start taking all the medication.

Or maybe I'm just going through some sort of lovely third-of-my-life crisis, wherein I revisit the angst of my teen years. Maybe I just need to blast Nirvana, lock myself in my room, write dark poetry and hate my parents. Maybe.

Or maybe I'm still experiencing post-traumatic symptoms from almost losing my youngest child some seven years ago. Maybe I need therapy. Or again, all the drugs.

Whatever the cause(s) (let's just go ahead and decide it's because I'm a highly-sensitive genius, because I definitely favor that theory), I regularly find myself balled up on the floor, overwhelmed by life and just...sad.

Yeah, I know it seems ridiculous. My life is nice enough. There are people out there with real struggles who aren't angst-ridden basket-cases. I know. I hate myself for being this way. For inflicting it on other people.  But then I wonder how many people actually know? How many people see all that sadness and anxiety, and hopelessness that is raging just below the surface. I wonder if maybe I smile just enough and function just enough to hide all of this emotional nonsense from the people around me.

And I wonder if I'm not the only one.

A while back, I wrote this. And then I buried it. Because no one wants to hear me whine. But here's the deal. It's honest. And I hate burying honest things. I highly doubt it's healthy. This is my life. Every single day, mostly. For no apparent reason. It just is:

The morning before the afternoon that everyone found out that Robin Williams committed suicide I spent in bed murmuring the repeated mantra, "I wish I weren't. I wish I weren't. I wish I weren't."  This has been my mantra for weeks. Months. "I wish I weren't. I wish I weren't." Not a death wish, exactly. Not a plan for suicide. And please, understand this. Not selfish. Not trying to escape pain or sadness or hopelessness. Just depression, plain and simple. That cold, dull ache. That utterly heavy nothingness. And the gnawing, relentless belief that the world would be better if I would just stop burdening it with myself. That my children would be better if they had a functional, happy, wholesome mother who could do ordinary mother things like, say, fold laundry, wash dishes and brush hair without curling up into an overwhelmed fetal heap and weeping. If I could just somehow free them from the weeping mother, and leave them to some bubbly, busybody, maternal type who didn't go into existential crisis every single time she gardened, that would be a gift to them and to the world, right?

Depression is insidious. It gets a stranglehold on brains that move too quickly. That think too much. Nerves that feel too readily and with too much intensity. Chemicals that are so precariously imbalanced and that play with such reckless abandon on body and emotions. And depression doesn't let you stand detached and identify it for what it is. It lets you, no, makes you blame yourself. I am too weak. I am too melodramatic. I am too privileged and expect too much from life. I don't try hard enough. I am lazy. I am unmotivated. I don't care about my kids.

And so I try to do all the things everyone is always telling me to do to fix it. (People are oh, so helpful). I answer my phone even when it hurts (and when I can't because my fingers are made of lead and I panic and throw that terrifying intrusion across the room and curl up in a ball and hide from it, I make the very difficult effort to call back later). I leave my house. Every day. I try not to spend all of my free time in bed crying. I play with my kids, appreciate, and enjoy them. I list in my head the things I'm grateful for. Say prayers of gratitude. I eat as well as I can. Get out and do things. Smile. I try so hard to make the mantra, "I am glad that I am," instead of "I wish I weren't." But even when I succeed, "I am glad that I am" reverberates with "I wish I weren't." It's the obvious lie. No matter how many times I cheerfully tell myself that I am telling the truth, this little cognitive trick will not conquer the darkness.

I hate myself, the trajectory of my life (how did I fail to waste any and all potential I might have had?), my hatred of myself and my life, I resent other people for being successful and happy. I am tired, self-loathing, and...

...and in conclusion, I'm going to go ahead and get that high-maintenance light therapy lamp, therapy, angry poetry journal, and of course, all the drugs.

(This is not a cry for help (no worries, I plan to remain very much alive). This is not an attempt to get attention (not a fan of attention). This is definitely not an invitation for advice. This is just me trying to figure out, trying to articulate, why I can't sit through a prayer or a sermon with the message "you are loved," or "you are worth something" without feeling it as a full-on assault of everything I am. Why I can't hear "you are okay" without singing "shutupshutupshutupshutup" in my head. Maybe one day I will figure it out. In the mean time, the best I can do is not lie about it being otherwise.)

What About the Kids?

The morning she came out in church, my husband cried in the car. In the nearly 15 years I had known him, I had only seen him cry twice before--at the death of his grandfather, and at our wedding. "I just kept looking at all those people in the rows in front of us and next to us. So many of them were crying, holding each other. It was like they had been holding so much inside, so much of themselves. And hearing someone say out loud, in church, that she was who she was, was freeing to them, too. And I imagined if one of those kids were my daughter. If church had done this to her. Made her hide herself inside. Made her hate a part of herself. I kept imagining if it was my daughter up there asking to be loved, to be accepted, not sure what the answer would be. And I think about all the kids I grew up and went to church with who were abandoned by the church they loved. The church they grew up in. The church that taught them that God loved them as they were, and then encouraged their families to reject them when "as they were" turned out to be gay. I imagined if it were my daughters."

                   

We have been church-hopping recently, and I hate it. I don't hate it because I don't value variety of religious experience. If I could attend a half-dozen various churches a week, I would. But I don't like the possible implications of church-hopping. Are we entitled Millenials, mindlessly buying into the consumerist vision of church? Are we not willing to do the hard work that community requires? Are we too idealistic, too put off by real people, and real life? 

To be fair, some of our church transitions were inevitable. We moved two hours away from our college church, or we probably would have stayed there foreverandeveramen. One of the start-up churches we attended was too small to survive. And our house church was a lovely experiment, but it was always just that, an experiment.

But others, we left deliberately. The church we returned to after college was no longer a quaintly conservative, spirit-filled community, focused on prayer and study. Instead, it had become something very much less than the sum total of its (often very kind and beautiful) parts. It was cold, and seething with self-righteous anger, focused in absolute entirety on fear and exclusion. It was openly and unapologetically mysogynistic. It was a church defined by its homophobia. And it bore the spiritual fruits of its hatred and fear. I left in the middle of several services because I could no longer hold back the words that were raging in me. We could not stay. 

The mega-church we were attending was lovely. It was wealthy, educated, cultured, missional. It had wonderful pastors. It was comfortable. But we didn't fit somehow. Maybe it was the fact that, though we fit in beautifully, so did everyone else. I never met anyone there who didn't fit the cultured, well-educated, demure mold. I never met a brash woman with a loud voice. I never met anyone who knew how to ask questions. Maybe it was the fact that they handed my six-year-old a tract in Sunday school that reminded her what a hopeless sinner she was, and even though I know for a fact that she didn't, claimed that she had "accepted Jesus into her heart." She shook with terror that day and never really wanted to back to Sunday school again. Maybe it was how neatly, how quietly, anything or anyone controversial was swept under the rug, how privately decisions were made and hidden. The pastors were wonderful, the music was superb, but this wasn't our church. We did not stay.

Our newest church was by far our favorite since college. The children adored Sunday school and we liked the curriculum (they were even...gasp!...encouraged to ask questions). The people were friendly. They were smart, loving, interesting, diverse, and they were also a little bit charismatic, which was exciting, if a bit terrifying to my inner Catholic. Even though we had to drive a way to get there, we felt at home. 

But we seem to have a fatal attraction to churches in flux. As it turned out, this new church was no different. The sad fact is that embrace and inclusion are controversial, even in (especially in?) our communities that follow the One who welcomed those on the margins first of all. The organization to which our new church belonged was unable or unwilling to fully embrace all of its people. Those on the margins and those who supported them were just too far gone. They issued an ultimatum and the head pastor refused to comply. The church split. And of course, both because we cannot stomach the thought of any more exclusion, judgement or quiet conformity--and also because of our fatal attraction to the vulnerable communities, to the ones breaking and shifting and growing--we left with two of the pastors and half of the congregation for yet another new church.

I knew in my heart, and soul, and head, and all of me that it was not only the right thing to do, it was what we had been called to in the first place. Everything in me was singing and shouting out that this was right.

But then, a few weeks before we were to transition to our newest new church, a needling voice in my head asked the question, "What about the kids?" What was our constant church-hopping telling our children about faith? About integrity? Will they think that they should just find whatever place feels perfect for the time being and move on when it isn't? Will they question if their parents' faith was ever really genuine? If it was actually a selfish desire for a perfect and personalized experience? I don't want them to think that faith and community are easy, that they aren't a struggle. I don't want them to expect flawless perfection, lack of conflict, everything tailored to their personal desires. And our children were so happy at the church we had been attending. Sunday school taught them to express themselves, that who they were was good, that their questions were valid. Why would we force them to be church nomads yet again? I didn't want to be selfish. I wanted to think about my kids. What about the children?

But every last one of us is somebody's child. Every last one of us is a child of God, a child of the light. On the day she came out in church, on the day somebody's child, God's child, had to ask for embrace from her church, on the day other children, God's children, wept because who they were had been kept in the dark for far, far too long, my husband and I cried in the car. And we vowed that never again would our children go to a church that taught little children that who some of them were was not worthy of embrace. And we vowed never to put our children in a Sunday school that taught them that God loved them as long as they were quiet, demure, and didn't ask too many questions. We promised never to let our little ones grow in a church that taught them that who they were was beautiful, that their questions were valid, that God loved even the least of these, but that certain types of people just couldn't be in leadership, no matter how obviously they were meant to be there. 

What about the kids, indeed. The fierce mother bear in me refuses to rest until she finds a place where her children's big, beautiful hearts will not be crushed any sooner than the world is hellbent on crushing them. There are enough traumas and terrors in life that they will surely live through. The church is not perfect. The church, like any community, has its share of pain, conflict, and hard work. I will never reject that pain, conflict and hard work. It is how we grow, how we bring new things to life. But the church should not be a source of cruelty to children, even grow-up children. I will not be complicit in the rejection of any of the beautiful children of God. I will not be complicit in cruelty or rejection (well-intended or otherwise) in the name of God. I will not let my children believe that this is what following Jesus is about. I will not let my children believe that God cannot love them (or their friends and loved ones) as they are. The love that loves them no matter what--that's grace. It is not mine to deny. Or the church's. Not ever. 

And so we church-hop once again. And the children survive. And the children thrive. At our new church, the little one lights up more than she ever has before. She sings about Jesus with her whole being, which is made for love, which is made both powerful and supernaturally light with the love that fills it. She is a strong, loud girl. She asks questions. She loves boys, and girls, and cats, and cartoons and she wants to marry them all. Who knows who she will want to marry when she grows up? But she is not afraid of her loud voice, or her brash personality, or her questions, or her fierce, joyous love. And she knows that Jesus loves her. And she knows that God loves her, and that God always will. She knows that the infinite love she feels is a fraction of the much bigger love of God. A love that can embrace, and embrace, and embrace, so that none of the children are too far for its reach. Even the ones on the margins. Especially the ones on the margins.

"For it is true, together we live, and only

at the shrine where all 

are welcome will God sing

loud enough to be heard."

(St. Teresa of Avila)

You're doing it wrong

I recently came across a post that described the desire of the evangelical church to appeal to Millenials through the use of creative entrepreneurial techniques to entice us. To which I can only respond, eww. Gross. No. You're definitely missing the point. If you are trying to get us into church, if you are trying to get us to trust you, if you're trying not to be a Grade A manipulative jackass, you are doing it wrong.

And then I felt bad. Because I know evangelicals feel compelled to evangelize, and that somewhere along the line evangelizing got confused with marketing, and evangelicals, much like marketing experts, really love studies, graphs, and lists that give them a really clear picture of how to appeal to key demographics. I don't know that they can help it. And as a member of the key demographic (the mysterious millenials, the illusive nones), I could maybe make up for my previous unsympathetic posture by providing something that evangelicals church leaders with a (gag) "heart for the younger generation" crave more than anything in the entire universe: lists of things we hate about church. 

I mean, if you're trying to get warm twenty-something bodies in the door of your building, you really need to know what package to wrap Jesus in. I mean, we clearly aren't big fans of gun-toting, American-flag-swathed Jesus. We don't heart Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith like they did in the good old days. Men's Bible studies and ladies' luncheons just don't seem to be cutting it anymore, so what are we looking for? Or better yet, because we are a bunch of cynical postmoderns, what aren't we looking for? I know these lists abound, but people seem to really eat them up, so here are all the ways that, if you're trying to "entice" my kind, you're doing it wrong.

If you have hired a marketing specialist, you are doing it wrong.

If you've run analytics on the exact amount of tattoo, beard, and banjo that you need in order to bring in a desirable amount of Millenials, you're doing it wrong.

If you use the word "numbers" more than you use the word "love," you're doing it wrong.

If you have some guy somewhere who has a collection of graphics showing your "numbers," you're doing it wrong.

If you're concerned with a decrease in "numbers," you're doing it wrong.

If you're obsessed with said "numbers," but you also are a dutiful gatekeeper of morality, keeping certain undesirables out of your company, you're doing it wrong.

If you employ "strategies" for appealing to certain demographics, you're doing it wrong.

If you even refer to a group of people as a "demographic," you're doing it wrong.

If your services are so glossy and overproduced (even if they have beards and banjos) that they don't admit the beauty of our flawed humanity, you're doing it wrong.

If you think the church has to seem perfect and united and happy, you're doing it wrong.

If you shy away from necessary conflict, you're doing it wrong.

If it feels more like a mall than a community, you're doing it wrong.

If you refer to the church as a business, you're doing it wrong.

If you focus on quantity over quality, you're doing it wrong.

If you think that the quality of your evangelism is directly correlated to the business acumen of your church organization, you're doing it wrong.

If constraints of maintaining your massive and shiny building is placing a burden on doing the work of the Gospel, you're doing it wrong.

If your sermon sounds so rehearsed, there's no semblance of the real you left in it, you're doing it wrong.

If you're not struggling with hard things, taking up controversial issues, wrestling with the very real implication of your theology playing out in the difficult stuff of life, you're doing it wrong.

If the reason you are doing things (serving fair trade coffee, adding appealing "programs," changing the furniture/music/stock photos on your website, hiring/firing people), is anything other than "because Jesus," or "because love," or just "because it's the right thing to do," you're doing it wrong

If you are feverishly consulting lists/blogs/books that purport to let you in on the magical secrets of marketing church to Millenials, for the love of all that is good and pure in the world, you are doing it wrong!

Put down the lists. Burn your marketing strategies, your research on particular demographics, your lists, and your books. Stop trying to grow bigger, and more appealing. Start trying to grow deeper, and more honest. Do the right thing, even if it means that your numbers decrease (I know, I know, I'm asking a lot here). Be the voice of love, mercy, humility, compassion, welcome, reconciliation, even if that undermines safety, stability, and that glossy shininess that seems to throw a slick veneer over all things "church" these days. 

Because here's the deal, we don't like being manipulated and we see straight through your bullshit, and lovelies, that is exactly what all this nonsense is. If something is glossy, and perfectly constructed to appeal to us, if it looks schmooth and free of conflict, we know from experience that this isn't the truth. And so then we don't trust it. Or the church. So stop it. Just do the right thing. Do the loving thing. Do the Jesus thing. It will probably not look nearly so well-produced and attractive. But if you mean it, if you really mean it, we will come. Probably not in droves. We don't really do droves (we hated droves before it was cool to hate droves). And it probably won't up your annual giving amounts to nearly the degree you would hope, because we don't exactly have money. But then, you won't need as much money, because you won't have to pay all those research and marketing experts anymore. And best of all, you will have lured in those rare and mysterious Millenials. But you won't care anymore. And that's the point.

A Little Bit Like Jesus

I think my daughter's dance studio might look a little bit like Jesus. In fact, I think it might look more like Jesus than my church. Oh, I know it's not a perfect analogy. The dance studio isn't a suffering messiah, isn't resurrected, isn't the first-born from the dead. But in the ways that we're called to embody the love of God in the world, well,  it does a pretty decent job.

I've always suspected that the community it created was in many ways as "authentic" and "intentional" as those ideal Christian communities some of us postmodern Christians are so fond of discussing. Sure, there are mean people, gossip, and general imperfections, but for the most part, when it comes down to it, there's a lot more acceptance, sharing, and compassion. . When someone get sick or faces a crisis, everyone chips in to make meals and offer support. Older kids look out for younger kids. People feel responsible for each other. And everyone gets to be part of the family...even noisy little siblings and kids who aren't a part of the competition team.

The other day, I walked into the studio office and overheard the one of ladies in charge passionately setting forth her philosophy that, if nothing else (and I'm paraphrasing here, because I have an imperfect memory and it would have been weird if I had been taking notes), "This should be a place where every child walks in the door and knows that he or she is loved and accepted. Every child knows that no matter who they are or how they're treated anywhere else, they have a place here." Let the little children come. And that's exactly what happens. My daughter's classes contain children with disabilities, kids who have never danced before, kids who have been bullied, and kids who might tend to be the bullies. And they're all working on something bigger together, learning that they belong and that they are loved (no matter what)...and learning to love in the process.

I wish I could overhear something like this at church. But most churches seem much more interested in deciding who to keep out. There isn't a "no matter what" clause. It's like we're afraid if we embrace people like Jesus did, things might just dissolve into anarchy. It's like we say that if we love and welcome every person touched by sin or brokenness (all of us), we'll have to give up the things we believe and care about, like radical love is somehow a threat to our community and our faith. But of course it's not. Radical love is our faith. Mercy, compassion, sacrifice, helping each and every one of ourselves follow faithfully in the Way of the One who loved to the point of death is our religion. And if we forget that and focus instead on rules, regulations, committees, and how we look in the eyes of others, we might as well stop going to church altogether. Because that's when church stops looking a darned thing like it's following Jesus.

I'm not saying that behavior isn't important. I'm just saying we have it backwards. In order to create seemingly perfect communities where everyone is behaving the "right" way, the church has a set of beliefs potential members must claim they accept (this may involve not thinking very hard, lying, or painful cognitive dissonance on the part of the "believers"). Then there are the rules and regulations to be followed and the requirements to be met. These keep the church looking/feeling holy and perfect. Those who can't/won't adhere to these rules or meet these requirements are either cast out or relegated to the periphery. Of course, not every sin or blemish is on the list. Usually, the ones that are enforced are the ones that make the majority squeamish. Because, of course, if we enforced all the laws of holiness, there would be no one left. Once uniformity has been achieved, the church seems perfect. Seems perfect. It looks like everyone is behaving, because not everyone is present...and "behaving" is narrowly defined. People don't have to grow in faith or love because, theoretically, they already achieved it before they ever gained full admittance.

The reverse of this process goes like this: You are embraced. You are loved. You buy into the idea that love is the way things should go. You invest in the community of people who also want this. The community is messy and full of real people--all kinds of real people--and so everybody grows, everybody sacrifices, and everybody learns to love well. Good behavior (when it happens) is the product of love, and grows into more love.

In my daughter's gymnastics class is a little girl with Down's Syndrome. She is, of course, a bit different than the other kids in terms of her sense of boundaries and the way she socializes. I watch my daughter, who is kind of young to totally understand this and who really loves her rules and regulations, struggle as her patience is tried when this girl interacts with her in unexpected ways. But my daughters knows that in that place everyone belongs and everyone is loved (my rule loving daughter, the girl with Down's Syndrome, my tantrum throwing younger daughter, the little kid who shoves her fingers up other kids' nostrils...everybody). So then I watch her learning to be patient and compassionate. I watch her work on growing in love and self-control. And watching that is way more amazing than watching her work on cartwheels.

Does this method make for a sleek dance studio where no one's toes are ever sickled, the office runs like clockwork and every dance is exactly right? Nope. Does this method make for a very shiny-looking, perfect, efficiently-run, impressive church? Nope. This method looks messy and disorganized and real.* Kind of like Jesus' followers. But the Spirit moves through this. And you can tell. You really can. There's a sense of heart, a passion, a life that comes through that's more enthralling than any set of fouette turns (although her studio has plenty of those, too).

*This is not meant to imply in any way that this is how the dancers look...just how the process looks.

We need to stop worrying first about how we look. We need to stop trying to create the perfect institution, the perfect business, the perfect group of people. We need to follow Jesus' command to love one another. We need to give life and have life to the full. It's not shiny, or sleek or exclusive. It's not uniform, or efficient, or highly marketable. It's messy and ragtag and beautifully life-giving. And if my daughter's dance studio can do it, then the church should be able to do it, too.

It and Them

We haven't joined the mega church. But we still go there. Call it a senseless, fatal attraction. I desire its demise, or at least a general overhaul of everything it is; it seeks to assimilate us and our young. And I say "it" because, as with most institutions, this thing is bigger than people. It looms large over and above the collective of individual souls that are associated with the denomination/building/organization. And, as with most institutions, this is a dangerous scenario. When we hear about the "Body of Christ" we think of something greater and more able than any one individual, and we are often willing to hope that this body an even transcend the collective of individuals, that it can become something greater, something more, something powerfully spiritual. And I believe that sometimes it does. 

But the flip side of this is that, more often than not, the institution begins to become something more than the collective in terms of its power, but something very much less than the collective in terms of its spiritual discernment, compassion, and mercy. Imagine if the Pharisees had a well-managed childcare, fair-trade coffee and someone paid to manage graphic design...kinda like that. The system itself, the rules, the traditions, the regulations, the policies that govern the day-to-day running of the joint, take over. Heck, the money takes over, the desire for a good image, the longing to increase "numbers", the ensuing marketing campaigns. The thing runs itself, and the humanity gets sucked right out of it. And it becomes less. And you can feel that lack. It's enough to make you want to overturn tables and rage against the status quo...but of course, you're not exactly the Messiah and you'd probably bring your own self-interestedness into it and mess it all up...or maybe that's just me.

It's funny, because I get the sneaking suspicion that many in the church spiritual leadership feel exactly the same way. Maybe it's because I catch them sneaking moderately progressive theologians like Brueggeman, and N.T. Wright, and Campolo into their sermons. Maybe it's the subtle way they manage to almost say as much on the simulcast screens that I watch as I sip my coffee and settle into my uncomfortable chair. Maybe it's the look in their eyes as they cautiously navigate criticism by those who are heavily invested in the power structure of the institution, i.e. those with the power to end pastoral careers. Or maybe I'm delusional. Regardless, based on what they say, they're attracting a certain demographic of intelligent, critical, unconventional individuals, and they don't seem too upset by that. They seem--dare I say--glad that we are there. 

But the thing is, the newbies they're attracting aren't always joining up. We're not a generation that likes to fully submit to much, and swearing that we'll submit to a board of governing elders is, well, just a boldfaced lie. Add to this our--often fully warranted--wariness of alarmingly large institutions and you're going to get lots of young, vibrant, excited people that show up for a while, refuse to sign on the line (we think we'll lose our souls...I'm not saying that's rational, by the way), and then leave when we either:

A) Do what we do as a generation and become unsatisfied with anything's ability to fulfill us and shop around for something different (after all, we're very used to being marketed to at every turn).

B) Are rejected/feel rejected in any number of dehumanizing ways for violating often-superficial social mores, despite the fact that every sermon, every song, every message we hear speaks boldly to the opposite of the praxis of legalistic judgement and boundary-protection. 

C) Become infuriated watching spiritually vulnerable person after spiritually vulnerable person be cast out or driven off in this way while we become ever more deeply complicit in this creation of outcasts by our mere presence and our cacophonous silence.

Even if we did join the church, this doesn't mean we'd be able to affect much change. After all, we don't control the purse-strings and we probably won't for a very long time (if ever). Most of us still live in our parents' basements. Plus this thing is bigger than us anyway...bigger than all of us. It has the power to reject without compassion, to judge without mercy and to exert itself relentlessly in the name of God while doing the very things that Jesus was not-so-subtly against. The bizarre thing--the thing I really don't understand--is that I am still somehow drawn to it. At least, I'm drawn to the people inside of it. The people that seem to be thinking and loving and existing as people within it.  

It's not the "it", it's the "them" that gets my attention. It's the "them" that draws me inexplicably to the periphery and sometimes--oddly--to the center of this giant, bureaucratic thing. And "they" are lovely, and broken, and scared, and striving, and power hungry, and rejected, and self-righteous, and desolate, and vulnerable, and self-absorbed, and selfless, and legalistic, and compassionate, and infuriating and funny and--here's the really crucial part--longing. They are longing. Me too. Because we're people. And we happen to be people who recognize that we're not whole, that we need something more. 

I fear many of us (unconsciously) hope to find this something more in it. But lots of us know we won't. Because we're people. And "it" doesn't care about that. But maybe we'll find something more in us as the Body of Christ. Because we care that we're human. And God cares. And God will deal with Pharisees, and turn tables, and endure the wrath of the institution to save our precious humanity. And maybe sometimes we should too. Even if we're not members. 

Outcasts and Rejects

I know this should be obvious, but I just wanted to point out that Jesus was a big fan of rejects. He really liked to hang out with the people that were outside the accepted cultural boundaries of the day, the ones society/religion had a distaste for. You know, prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, poor people, people of different races, women who slept around, people who weren't as chaste as they probably should have been, etc. And he wasn't so into the guardians of the social order. The people that drew and protected the cultural boundaries (the boundaries that they saw, of course, as moral and religious imperatives) were high on the list of people that Jesus liked to tick off. Jesus embraced, welcomed and loved the outcasts and had a less-than-favorable view of those who would create outcasts.

I know, I know. This should be basic, obvious stuff. But apparently it isn't. Because recently I've been surrounded by the church's outcasts. And it turns out that there are a lot of them. And they are sad, and they are vulnerable, and they are angry, and they are ready to give up on church and sometimes even God, altogether. And I don't think this is what the people of the church generally intend. But it is what's happening. And it's happening all over, to lots of people. I'm aware that, as with anything pertaining to human beings, the church will sometimes unintentionally hurt people. People will feel rejected and leave, even if no one ever meant to leave them out. This is as inevitable as it is sad. But the thing that really breaks my heart is that it's institutions that exist in the name of the rejected One, the One who welcomes outcasts, that write into their very rules ways to create outcasts from the most spiritually vulnerable and hurting people in their midst. Something is dreadfully wrong when those in spiritual leadership feel that their hands are tied when it comes to allowing the church to express mercy and grace because the rules of the institution simply don't allow it.

Now, rules and boundaries--humbly held with the awareness that we are human and we are bound to misuse them at times--are not in and of themselves terrible things. But rules and boundaries that reject people are. Rules and boundaries that put themselves and the institution that created them before people are. Because rules and boundaries can do justice but they can't do mercy and grace. And if I rightly recall, Jesus was all about the mercy and grace. Rules and boundaries can do accountability (in a warped way), but they can't do love. And if I'm not totally mistaken, love was the thing that Jesus consistently commanded people to do.

I humbly propose that if the evangelical churches of the world would like to increase their numbers, or at least, stop losing young people (and we all know how very much evangelical churches desire to increase their numbers/stop losing young people) they should do their best to look less like boundary-loving Pharisees and more like outcast-embracing Jesus. This is dangerous and scary of course. But following Jesus probably should be. These churches would also stop losing the vibrant, exciting, passionate, sensitive, and intelligent faith of the people that might not look exactly like what a church person is expected to look like, but who love God with a beautiful and deep love born of the experience of pain or the experience of living on the periphery.

And again, I'm aware that this isn't anything new. It's not anything theologically nuanced, or subtle, or cutting edge. It's basic, basic, basic. Numerous books (some intensely theological and some utterly fluffy) have recently been written on the subject. But apparently it desperately needs reiteration. Jesus loves the outcasts. So the Body of Christ probably shouldn't be in the business of creating them.