Owning my spiritual shifts, Part 2

Thanks for joining me again as I share about the deconstruction of my faith and where I am now.  Here's Part 1.  I'm not interested in debating any of the topics I share today, but you are always welcome to reach out via email or Facebook message.  Here we go!

I've had many, many religious beliefs uprooted in my heart and mind this year.  I wouldn't say that I believe something opposite for most or any of these things, but I've very solidly landed in a place where I just don't know the absolute answer anymore.  Or rather, I now believe that I can't know the absolute truth of everything, and putting an answer in the place of that mystery is not something I'm comfortable with.  Basically, I hold a whole lot of the traditional American conservative Protestant beliefs with an open hand at this point.  This may change in the future, but I'm currently comfortable with the understanding and lack of understanding I have.

Here's a selection of some of the very big things my mind has been changed on.  This is lengthy and scandalous a long time coming.

Creation without evolution and Adam and Eve as the first humans
I went to a creationism camp in middle school, watched videos from Ken Ham, and I have a fear of the ocean thanks to the belief that dinosaurs still live in the sea.  To branch off from the literal 6-day creationism belief has been a pretty big deal, but this was one of the first belief layers to fall off when I was trying to find my way back to God.  The biggest difference-makers was the podcast episode from The Liturgists about Genesis & Evolution.  As Lissa puts into words near the end, however God chose to bring this world into being, it is magnificent and it doesn't change His awesomeness, creativity, and worthiness of our worship and adoration.

Inerrancy of the Bible, God compelling the exact writings of the Bible, and literal interpretations of the Bible
When everything had been stripped away from my faith, I was left with great mistrust of the Bible.  How could I know if any of this was true?  I was pretty sure Jesus was a legitimate historical person, he had been verified by 5 independent sources as my husband was quick to remind me, but what about the rest of this?

The Liturgists talked about the Bible, too, and the episodes about it gave me hope that my relationship with scripture could be restored in some way, but it wasn't until immersing myself in Rob Bell's book What is the Bible? that I realized, no, my relationship with scripture would never be the same.  It would be something wildly different and immeasurably better.  Something vibrant, exciting, alive.  Something so absolutely desirable.  I can't help but get excited telling you about it now, and I can't express how much different my perspective and my value for the Bible is here in 2017.  I have so much more wonder and expectation for this library of books, more than I ever had in my entire life, which is truly saying something.  (You may remember I attended private Christian schools from 4th grade to the end of college, I completed 5 books in Awana, and I've loved Jesus since before I can remember.)  This is a really. big. deal. and I'm so, so happy about it.

If you're interested in checking out the book, go ahead and listen to the podcast episode where Rob talks with the guys from The Liturgists.  You'll also enjoy this illuminating episode with Peter Enns, a professor and writer who is where I want to be when I grow up, in regards to Bible knowledge.

I can't believe I used to think I knew everything about this book!  There is so much more that I don't know yet, but I am positive that the scriptures in the Bible were not meant to be a science book, a sex ed book, or an owner's manual, and I hope I never treat it as such again.

The existence of a physical hell
I have one real-life friend nearby who's going through deconstruction, and he absolutely shocked me with this one.  Probably around June or July, while I was starting in my own dismantling, He told me he wasn't sure there was a hell anymore, and for a second I thought this guy had for-real gone off the deep end.  But then I started hearing more from other Christian traditions' interpretation of the scriptures, more about how the scripture authors' understandings expanded and changed as history went on, and then my Orthodox sister-in-law told me that, "yeah, even C.S. Lewis considered the concept that the end of time where God's glory fills all things would feel like hell to people who rejected him."  What?  Right now, I have no definite on this one, and I just have to leave it at that until something changes.

The understanding of God as male or as only or mostly male
I don't think I ever heard any sermons about the masculinity of God, and I never heard any pastor or teacher explicitly say God is male, but even as early as last year, I was noticing how few people were talking about the feminine side of God.  For a long time I've believed that, since man and woman are created in God's image, of course, this means God has all of the masculine and feminine characteristics and traits.

I know what you may be thinking.  Back in college, I was scandalized when I read The Shack.  How could someone write about God as if God were a woman?  How could the author buy into such blasphemy?!  I'll tell you why!  Because God is as much our mother as God is our father.  It's a bold thing to say, yes, but this is one of the rare things I am absolutely sure of.  It's also brought me great comfort and even honor when I remember how God's image is reflected in my and my character.

God's full, not-only-masculine nature is sometimes a hard thing for me to remember, especially when my default pronouns for God have been He, Him, Him for 29 years, but I am trying to move toward whatever direction my understanding is taking me.  This often means referring to God as "the divine" instead of "Him," which has already caused some disturbance with at least my husband, but it feels more accurate for me to say that.  "The divine."  Saying "Her" would feel antagonistic at this point, though the internal thought of Her doesn't frustrate or disturb me like it did even two months ago.  The verbalization of this one will take some time, but I'm really, really happy and excited about where I'm at.  There's so much more beauty in God when I see Him/Her now, even if the lens is only a touch cleaner.

Female images of God suggest something different [from male images]. God is the one who gave birth to us and all that is. God wills our well-being, as a mother wills the well-being of the children of her womb. God is attached to us with a love that is tender and that will not let us go. And like a mother who sees the children of her womb threatened and oppressed, God can become fierce. 

- from Marcus Borg in Radical Grace via Richard Rohr and the CAC

What comfort there is in that paragraph!  What pure comfort.  I am so glad that I have a God like that.  (And, of course, there's a podcast episode to check out if you're interested in having your perspective challenged head-on.  I'm not kidding, this one is disruptive.)

Complementarian to Egalitarian Marriage
From what I've been learning about women in the church, God's perspective on women, and the writings of Paul and Peter, I think that the best description of a "biblical marriage" or "Christian marriage" looks like mutual submission, not the wife submitting to her husband only.  What changed my mind wasn't modern feminism (looking at you, Sutton boys).  It was noticing more and more how Jesus treated women in the face of how the people of His time and culture treated women.  It was noticing that Ephesians 5:21 comes immediately before the household standard written by Paul.  It was learning more about why household codes were important in this time period and how radical Peter's and Paul's codes were when compared to how the Romans and Greeks treated each other in marriage.

My favorite resource on this is a debate between Rachel Held Evans and Owen Strachan on the Unbelievable podcast.  Rachel shares cultural and historical information that brings this topic and my response to it into a completely different light.  For information on women in the church, I'd recommend checking out The Junia Project.  I also hold women teaching and preaching in the church with an open hand.  It's not something I disagree with at all anymore.  In fact, I'm starting to think that I'd really like to find a female preacher and hear what she has to say.  I've only heard male perspectives from the pulpit, and I know for darn sure that males aren't the only ones God reveals His truths to.

Meditation is awesome.
Growing up in the Southern Baptist tradition, I knew that yoga was demon worship and meditation was emptying your mind, which allowed space for evil forces.  But here I am now, thankful for how well yoga maintains physical health, flexibility, and blood flow in my body, and I can't tell you what a difference meditation has made in my mental awareness.  It's not about emptying your mind, by the way, it's about focusing your mind and allowing everything else to fall away.  So often we are distracted by the millions of things clamoring for our attention.  Even our own selves distract us with what's next or what's past.  So rarely do we really experience the moment of now.  This leads to not being able to recognize how we feel, how healthy our bodies are, or how we're processing and reacting to issues and problems.  We are disconnected from ourselves, and meditation can be the bridge that stands in the gap.

The form of meditation I use is mindful meditation.  Its goal is to cultivate awareness.  It involves slow mental body scans to encourage you to really feel what you're physically feeling.  It involves noticing sensations and emotions that come up and practicing only noticing them instead of responding in grasping or aversion.  It involves prolonged focus, usually on the breath, which promotes focus and attention in daily living, as well.  In fact, the whole goal of meditation isn't to be a good meditator, it's to be a good liver... I mean, a good person who lives.  Okay, I clearly don't know how to say this well, but meditation has helped me live and think and notice better.

Meditation is proven to, over time, build gray matter in the brain, make people less likely to get angry, anxious, and stressed, and it builds compassion for the self and for others.  When I meditate regularly, I've noticed a heightened awareness of my reactions and emotions.  One example would be noticing that, "ah, I'm starting to feel angry... let me take a step back and consider why this is and what I should do about it."  Before meditation, I would have been unaware of what was going on in my heart and mind until after I'd already hurt someone or made a bigger mess of things.

Meditation.  10/10 would recommend.  Science Mike (from, you guessed it, The Liturgists) shared a ton of information about the kinds of meditation, including prayerful meditations, and its benefits in this information-packed episode.  If you're interested in meditation, download the Calm app and go through their 7-day trial.  (Apple app store / Google play / Desktop version) It does a great job of and explaining mindful meditation and laying the foundations of how to meditate.  The sessions last around 20 minutes each, and it can be really difficult to sit still and rest and focus for that long, but I encourage you to stick with it and see how it can change your thought processes for the better.

For the record
I still believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, that He died, was buried, and rose again three days later.  I have experienced God's grace, forgiveness, and healing in my life, and I've seen it in the lives of others.  I believe God will redeem all things by the end of time and that I will spend eternity with God and the people who love God in some really awesome place I like to call Paradise.  I don't know what all that will look like, and a lot of times my belief looks much more like faith than certainty, but it's still a faith worth having.  And even though my story is still changing and fluctuating, it's still worth telling.  So is yours.