Rachel Ophoff recently shared her thoughts here on the RLC website about Brian McLaren’s crucial book, Faith After Doubt, in a piece called “The Only Way is Through.”  I second her recommendation for the helpfulness and necessity of McLaren’s book.  If you find yourself in a period of transition and change, it is a must-read.  I am able to locate myself within its pages.

I’ve been on a prolonged journey through loss, doubt, and change into a new stage of faith, the one McLaren calls “Stage Three Perplexity.” Following Stage One Simplicity and Stage Two Complexity, Stage Three Perplexity brings us gifts that don’t feel like gifts, such as humility, honesty, sensitivity, self-knowledge, insight, and courage.  “Perplexity is a path of descent,” states McLaren, “It is also a path of dissent.” (page 82)

It started with struggle – my struggle with a chronic illness that is difficult for others to understand and the accompanying bouts of depression that descend on me from time to time because of it.  I have not found a place for chronic struggle in the church as I’ve known it, which seems ironic.  

In 2015, my grandfather passed away.  Suddenly, a lot more of my theology rang hollow.  “This can’t be all there is to it, and I can’t just go along with it,” was a familiar refrain in my head.

Then came 2016 and the election of Donald Trump.  My theological questions and concerns intensified and then exploded in 2020 over the behavior of the church around me.  “Is this really who we are?” has been answered again and again throughout that time with a resounding, “Yes.”

I turned away from the appeals to agree to disagree and focus on unity—which can feel like a death sentence to people whose lives are in the way of power—and started searching online.

I attended a virtual forum one day that ended with a prayer that brought me to tears.  I felt hope flood back into my heart as I heard someone pray with such passion and compassion, love and strength.  I didn’t know it at the time, but that person was Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis.  I followed Jacqui and others online to uncover a whole host of beautiful examples of goodness and love in action (Shane and RLC being chief among them) that ring with truth and reality.  

I haven’t figured it all out.  I haven’t answered all my questions.  I haven’t replaced my old theology with anything as concrete.  And I don’t think I’m supposed to.  I know love has everything to do with it.  I cling to that, and it is enough, even in those times when it doesn’t feel like enough.

Leaving behind spaces you’ve outgrown is soul-stretching work.  It doesn’t often make people happy.  If you, too, are asking big questions and reaching deeper, you’re probably getting your fair share of backlash because your questions and doubts threaten the status quo.  It can be hard.  It can be lonely.  It can hurt deeply.  It can be confusing.  It can feel never-ending.  Every time I try to explain it, even now, it all gets heaped up in my head and won’t come out right.   How can trying to love as fully and completely as possible bring about so much upheaval?

I know I’m just another person online that won’t fill the spaces of belonging that readers have recently left, whether physical or emotional, but I hope you’ll take courage in knowing you’re not as alone here as you feel.  We might be going somewhere individually and together that is going to be bigger than we can imagine.  There is hope we’re going to make it to what McLaren terms “Stage Four Harmony.”   Listen to his overview of this process:

Looking back on my own spiritual pilgrimage, I have come to see ‘the still more excellent way of love’ as the telos whose gravitational pull has been drawing me through Simplicity, then through Complexity, then downward through Perplexity, and then deeper still, toward an experience that is too profound for words, the experience of Harmony…Faith was about love all along.  We just didn’t realize it, and it took doubt to help us see it. (pages 87-88)

I wish I could just get to Harmony now, but McLaren says it takes time and can’t be rushed.  It is best to lean into love, release control, and throw out timeframes and expectations.  

In the meantime, here are a few words for the journey, taken from a time I was fortunate to spend in the mountains, where trails often lead first over looming foothills before opening up to panoramic vistas of breathtaking, snow-covered peaks.

READ: Brian McLaren, Doubt, and Decoding

Perspective

Maybe

I need to climb the hill

of seeing God 

nowhere

before I can glimpse

the peaks

of God everywhere.

Am I close?

The light broadens 

on the path ahead.

Deep blue between the trees

might soon reveal the curves

and loveliness

of a vast, captivating 

beyond.

I travel alone

in courage and fear,

trying too hard

and not hard enough,

since breaking away from

the coming-up-empty 

left behind with nowhere 

new to bind.  Turning, turning.

Is this even the trail?

I overcompensate 

and irritate, push and prod, 

trudge and plod, drag and discard, 

rummage and root, rethink and roam, 

forward, blindly, 

into reality I hope

is too big to recognize

yet.

Long past my teenage years, into adulthood, I have continually been told, in different ways, that my body is problematic.  As a person with chronic illness, I am a wedge in a certain kind of privileged theology that is not big enough to account for long-term pain.

I encounter from others, again and again, a need to explain my body. They say my pain must happen because I am too stressed, too weak, or too sensitive. I have not gone to the right doctors or tried the right remedies. I don’t pray the right way or have the right kind of faith. It feels like I can be open about my struggle only if I am simultaneously counting my blessings and getting over it. This theology credits God for all the good and none of the bad. When a health concern arises, a person shares the concern with their faith community who joins them in praying for the problem to go away. God intervenes, the problem is resolved, and God is praised and credited. All good is celebrated and all bad is prayed away. (This has broad implications for behaviors in the COVID-19 Pandemic, but that’s another essay.) 

In reality, when you have white skin, enough money, a generally healthy body, and access to good healthcare, things do tend to break your way. I’m not sure God wants the credit for that because I’m not willing to say God is responsible for bestowing that kind of favor on some but not others. Think of the heartache and struggle endured by the majority of people in the world (the result of oppression, racism, poverty, violence, disease, disaster, and more). I believe God gives us strength, teaches us life-giving things, and loves us in many unique ways into greater wholeness. It is absolutely important to ask for and receive supportive prayers when enduring medical crises. However, is God directly responsible for one person’s healing while another suffers or dies? When God gets credit for the first outcome but not the second, it leaves the second person (and/or their loved ones) invisible, insignificant, and clearly excluded from God’s circle of care.  

The same people who hold this small theology seem to fixate on the word “blessed.” When I see or hear “blessed” or “blessing” used to indicate ‘chosen for special favor,’ or even to emphasize an aptitude for gratitude (i.e., “Blessed” home décor and jewelry), I think about the way Jesus uses the word “blessed” in places like the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12, NIV: “Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . those who mourn . . . the meek . . . those who hunger and thirst for righteousness . . . the merciful . . . the pure in heart . . . the peacemakers . . . the persecuted”). Is it possible that “blessedness” is more concerned with “what God can do through me and my struggle” than about “what God can do for me inside my abundance?”

READ: Untethered: On Exile, Chronic Illness, and Life in a Pandemic

I would like to know why and to what end pain and suffering exist. I know I am in good company. I firmly believe God cares and is up to something big. I wonder what suffering in this life will look like and mean in eternity. I believe Kingdom work involves the alleviation of suffering right now. Beyond that, I don’t understand. I feel guilt over the fact that I struggle to inhabit my body when I live a life of luxury and ease compared to most of my human siblings. I am privileged in so many ways. A pastor friend once told me that life is not “an Olympics of suffering.” The reality of existence is that you have to deal with what you have to deal with. The important thing is to deal with it so that you can be available to help others. 

To survive with chronic illness, I need to lament my pain and make space for it. I need a theology big enough to sit in solidarity with my suffering so that I can sit in solidarity with others.  

If you feel alone, forsaken, and smothered because you struggle with chronic illness, mental illness, different ability, or any other health-related condition, I want you to know that you are beautiful. I think your imperfect struggle is beautiful to God because the opposite of struggle is giving up. Struggle is faithfulness. Your pain and suffering are not your fault. Let any guilt or concern over that drop to the ground right this moment.  

I’m not saying don’t practice joy and gratitude.  I’m saying don’t let someone else’s demand for joy and gratitude crowd out your need to be real about your pain so you can survive.

If you suffer from health-related struggle as well as from struggle related to oppression, my heart swells with admiration for you. How do you do that? I can’t imagine the kind of strength required to navigate your daily life, the many obstacles you have to handle along with your sick body (including, in many cases, access to the healthcare you need for it in the first place). I am so sorry for all of your pain.  

No matter where you find yourself in life with chronic illness, please allow yourself to lament it. I recommend the Psalms as a guide. Find someone to sit with you whose theology is big enough to let your struggle breathe. Then sit with others who suffer. Listen to their stories. Read their words. God may, in this way, begin to redeem your own suffering and help you find your own “strange gift.”

A Strange Gift

In the morning,

the wind is furious.

White gusts tear at the windows,

which rattle and creak, but hold.

I am lucky on the inside.

Warm and lucky.

I am calm, even, at last,

because there is nothing

I can say that the wind,

in its bitter seethe of fury,

has not already said.

Listen closely:

To struggle is to survive.

Everything, even invisible suffering,

can be redeemed.

I see you.

You are not alone.

From The Unsaid Words (Finishing Line Press), used with permission

The story is long and complicated.  How can I explain the course and trajectory of a 30+ year relationship in a few paragraphs?  Let’s start in 2020.

I live with chronic illness.  Some of it diagnosed, some of it not.  The part that is diagnosed (Ulcerative Colitis) involves injections that affect my immune processes.  If I were to contract COVID-19, I would need to suspend my injection therapy in order to ensure recovery, thereby opening the gate for my overactive immune system to potentially come unglued.  It took me over 10 years and 3 hospitalizations to get said immune system under control, so I’m not anxious to take any chances.  

I’m one of the lucky ones.  My disease is currently in remission, meaning I’m not taking prednisone or other medications that would put me at high risk for severe illness from COVID-19.  I don’t have other conditions that automatically place me at high risk including sickle cell disease, Down Syndrome, major organ transplant, or cancer treated with chemotherapy.  I’ve always had access to good healthcare to manage my condition and advise me of risks and necessary precautions.

When the pandemic hit, I was in for a rude awakening.  High-risk people need their communities to care about them enough to adhere to distancing, masks, and other precautions.  My community, and our churches, in particular, went the other direction.  With Trump flags flown high, and “Jesus > COVID” signs littering yards, they insisted our duty as good Christians was to proceed as normal and not let fear rule our lives.  For the most part, the churches I know either spoke this or said nothing.  

It is awfully convenient to believe the right thing to do is whatever you want, at anyone else’s expense.

It felt like the lives of the sick and vulnerable didn’t matter.  Then George Floyd was murdered.  At that point, disregard for lives like mine in the pandemic was actually a gift because it allowed me to see Black Lives Matter and other cries for justice and equality with more empathy and more urgency.    Regrettably, it took something personal for me to actually feel harm from the lust for power in our churches and reach a point of no return.  It hurts.  It stirs up doubt.  I am heartbroken over it.  

If a good God moves in and through God’s churches, shouldn’t those churches be primarily a force for good?  Not a force for the proliferation of suffering and harm?  Those on the wrong side of power will tell you this is a centuries-old reality when it comes to white religious institutions.

Obviously, there is a continuum along which various actions and beliefs of both groups and individuals lie.  Just because someone disagrees with me doesn’t mean they don’t have worth, don’t do any good, and aren’t worthy of love.  However, if a person or a system is inflicting harm, standing by and saying nothing is not loving the inflictors of that harm any more than the recipients of it.

When I voice these things to the people in my church circles, I hear a lot about how “all have sinned,” about specks and planks, and above all, the importance of unity.  I acknowledge the truth and importance of these teachings.  I also read in the gospels what Jesus had to say to the power-hungry religious leaders of his day, and it doesn’t sound very unifying.  

The way we’ve been doing unity in white churches isn’t stopping the ebullience for Trumpism (and all its accompanying -isms) that is rooted and growing among us.  I may be wrong about a lot of things, but I’m just not ok with that.    

I don’t know what to do with all of this, honestly.  I continue to pray for guidance, direction, and forgiveness.  I try to speak up when appropriate or necessary.  I look for the ones in my circles of interaction who are pushed to the outside and stand with them.  I continue to read and seek wisdom. (I just finished Brian McLaren’s Faith After Doubt.  I’m currently in the middle of Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne.  Up next is Jemar Tisby’s How to Fight Racism.  In case you’re looking for recommendations.)  

One thing I know: My love for God leads me to love others. If I truly love them, I listen to them.  If they are suffering, I care, and I do what I can to help.  This involves the hard work of removing the blinders of power and privilege because my love for Jesus stirs me to love especially those cast aside and trampled down by power the way that he did.  

It is important to state specifically what this means: As a follower of Christ, it is imperative for me to listen to and stand with siblings in marginalized groups, including people of color, the LGBTQ community, the poor, immigrants, and people from different religious backgrounds.  To tell the truth about the white church’s ugly history of oppression and its modern manifestations.  To speak for the dignity and worth of all people as God’s people and take care of all creation as God’s creation.  To believe in science and medicine because to reject them is to reject reality.  To call out and refute the destructive force of Christian Nationalism that has destroyed so many lives.  To do all I can to spread God’s marvelous, boundless love as displayed in Jesus to all.     

The following two poems came out of all this…

Reality – A Song

There is music 

when there aren’t words.

Heartbroken phrases and surges

that end in soft discord.

No resolution, but a way

to release hearts to say,

“That turmoil is inside me too.”

Here is the pandemic truth:

When lives stand in power’s way,

power steps on the gas.

I mean even and especially 

the hoarded power stored up 

in America’s White Evangelical Church.

Where so many desperate prayers

dissolve into its resounding silence.

I finally learned this song

and played it for that church.  

It told me to play the familiar songs 

of unity instead.  But suffering 

roars its savage head.  Willful ignorance 

breeds hate disguised as righteousness.

And unity, as it’s meant here,

enables all of it.  

READ: A Viral Prayer in the Age of COVID-19

Reality – The Song I Play Anyway

There is a way.

It is all colors

and infinite space.

It is narrow and difficult

but teeming with grace.

Many will try to replace it

with power gussied up

in all sorts 

of righteous-sounding names,

with a wide gate

and easy access.

But nothing will replace it.

Nothing will stop it.

Not power, not death,

not suffering from circumstance

or the two-fisted slaughter

of free will.

Nothing.

It is love.

Always and for all creation – 

Love.

It is not in the churches.

It is in the churches.

It comes out of the churches

and gets bigger.

It is empty of fear

but full of questions

with no easy answers.

Full of seekers and finders.

Full of freedom and truth.

Full of justice

for the smothered,

the overlooked, the mown down.

Justice for the poor, the sick,

and the dismissed.

Justice for the extinguished,

the anguished,

the crying, the dying,

the dead.

To a single drop of water,

it is the ocean.

To one particle of light,

the Aurora Borealis.

To one grain of earth,

the Rocky Mountains.

To time, space, and matter,

…something unimaginably more.

It is for the last and the first,

but the last will be first,

and the first live like that’s true

now. Underway now

for each one.

Love for each one

from each one

courtesy of

The One who is Love.