Skinny Love

I haven’t typed for a while because I gave up my computer for a bit. I was on it too much and wanted to be present here. It worked. kind of.

So…

I went to a Bible study here on campus the other night, and I learned one of the most beautifully disarming things in my life.

We’re going through the new testament together… and there are people who are vastly different places in their walks with God and who have vastly different understandings of God. One of the people is just becoming aquainted with Christianity is asking a lot of good questions. He doesn’t yet consider himself a Christian, but he’s taken to reading the scriptures and he’s seeing the movement of God in his life through hindsight and reflection. He’s in a good but fragile place.

The man (Jerry) who was leading it  had stated in a previous meeting that he takes Jesus at his word…completely and 100 percent. He made it a point to say this.
Then he started bringing up some beliefs he has about Native-American spirituality (he’s half Native-American) and talking about the “spiritual realm” and how Native American’s tap into it and how the Phoenix flies as the red sun rises or something (I’m using hyperbole- he didn’t say that, but you get the picture).

I was immediately anxious. Even kind of mad. Definitely concerned. I raised my concern:
” Jerry, I really don’t like this language of “the spiritual realm.” and then kind of defended my stance and what have you, and he defended his and so forth, and then I asked ” Well okay… you say you take Jesus at His word..but you have these extra beliefs. You maybe comfortable with that and all, but do you think introducing people who are seeking and asking questions about the Christian faith to these ideas is something that’s wise?” (the subtext in my statement was obvious- i didn’t think it wise at all).

There was some back and forth and then other people started chiming in. A lot of things were said about ‘different paths to God’ and I even heard people saying a lot about conspiracies they’d heard about how the Bible may not even be legit because of the way it was put together and so we can’t even really trust what we’re reading… 

I had a lot of objections…and I was angry. The things people were saying (and what they weren’t saying) was grating on me. Hard. I did my best to defend Orthodox Christian thought. I was really rubbed the wrong way.
I’m at a Christian community! If people aren’t here because of the teachings of Christ then what the hell are they here for? 

after more discussion the meeting dispersed, and not on a sour note…my anger was held in, i didn’t explode or anything, and everyone seemed to be at peace with one another. I left kind of fuming, really worried and with a lower view of some people because of what they’d said- especially with someone who is seaking and asking questions about the faith in the room.

Then I had a discussion with a few people who had been there, and I realised something: I felt really superior the whole time I was in the study. I read a lot, I try to understand the scriptures as well as I can, and to follow what they say. I felt superior because I knew what i believed, why i believe it and i could articulate it fairly well. I felt superior because I had my mind rapped around some important truth that has set me free. And I was so very proud that I was not these other people.

And that’s when i realized that I’m a really big asshole. 

I know some right things. Maybe not a whole lot, but some. And I really really believe them. I cling to these things. I remind myself of these things.

And my intellectual assent to them has not enabled me to love my brothers and sisters in Christ any deeper than before.

Christ didn’t say “They will know that you are Christians by your theology.” or “They will know that you are Christians by your orthodoxy.” He said “They will know that you are Christians by your Love.”

And I just haven’t let that concern me too much. I’ve been shielding myself from having to do that with all the right things I’m learning. I want to be a Lover, not a scholar. I want show the love of God, not regirgitate Yoder or Barth or Bonhoeffer. And I need to repent.

I don’t feel like I’ve failed God or that I’m a huge piece of shit or anything… I actually feel pretty grateful that God would want me to know this. I think he wanted me to know this because God is about redeaming me. And every person in that Bible study. and this revelation is a testament of that to me.

Maybe I’m a bad “lover” of people. But God is not.  And I want to be more like God.

and that’s just where I am with that.