There's Something About a Baby

Four times.  Four precious times in this life, I have screamed and cried and experienced the last grueling moments of pregnancy.  And then a nurse or doctor has placed a brand-new baby onto my chest, and I have felt a love like no other.  Four times I have stared at this tiny new creation and felt the immense responsibility of caring for and guiding this child.  And everything was changed forever.  There’s something about a baby that changes things.  A difficult day is made brighter by the smile on a baby’s face.  The smell of a baby’s hair can calm an anxious heart.  When we welcome a baby into the world, there is great celebration.  Something new is afoot.  There is possibility and hope.  When we watch someone die, we feel the sense of release and completion of their journey.  When we watch someone be born, we feel the sense of excitement and anticipation of what is to come in their life.  They have zero mistakes, zero heartbreaks.  No one has told them that they have limits.  There is a concept called “tabula rasa,” a belief that a baby is born with a “blank slate” and that everything about that person is determined by events after birth.  I don’t completely buy into this psychological theory.  I think that babies are born with plenty of predetermined characteristics.  Just ask any parent of multiple children.  But certainly, a large part of who a child will become will be connected to their experiences. 

An unhealthy parent will look at this tiny new creation and make a (usually unconscious) decision to mold it into his or her own image.  This tiny baby that God created in his image with unique gifts and talents and personality and purpose will be required to grow into the image of his earthly parents, to think like they think, talk like they talk, vote like they vote, you get the idea.  Unhealthy parents seek personal validation from their children instead of seeking to support them as they grow into their own unique selves.  Healthy parents support and guide their children as they become who God created them to be. 

This week we will celebrate the birth of a baby.  This baby’s birth brought forth the ultimate hope.  This baby came with great excitement.  This baby’s name was Jesus.  And this Christmas as I look down into the manger and stare at this baby, this new creation full of possibility, I have one question for him.  “Who are you?”  You see, I fear that we have grown this baby up into our own image.  We don’t look at the baby and see the new beginning and the possibility so much as we look at the adult version of Jesus we have created or embraced.  And I’m afraid that we have some things wrong about him.  At least I have had. 

You don’t go through a life crisis like I have experienced the past couple of years without tearing down some things and rebuilding them.  You gain perspective and experience that make you see blind spots you had before.  You pay a painful price to get there.  And it’s hard in the middle of your life to rework major things about your belief system.  But this year I’m starting with the baby.  I’m looking at the baby, and I’m rebuilding my ideas of who he is to become.  You see, in America, we seem to have created a Jesus that is white, Christian, republican, waves an American flag and carries a pistol.  But the problem with that is that Jesus was actually a Jewish, middle eastern man who rebelled against the Roman empire and non-violently laid down his life on a cross.  I fear that what large segments of the American church have done to baby Jesus is to form him in our own image.  That is not healthy behavior.  We could start to understand Jesus better by learning about Jewish faith and Jewish culture.  He was a real person living in a real time period.  We would be wise to take that into account.  

Another image we portray of Jesus is one of the holy vending machine.  Allow me to explain.  We tell people that if they pray hard enough, have enough faith, live righteously enough - that Jesus will give them whatever they want.  The only problem with this is that if that were true, no devout father would ever bury his child, no devout woman would watch her marriage implode, no devout child in a third world country would die of starvation today or drown trying to get to a safer place.  You see when we try to sell the vending machine Jesus, we say to those who didn’t get what they wanted, “It’s not Jesus, it’s you.”  And in the most painful moments of life, when you feel like you are in quicksand, being told to pray harder or live better feels like someone pouring more sand over your head and tying your arms behind your back.  To support these “pep talks,” we use the verse in Matthew 22, “And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”  But we don’t talk about the fact that Jesus said this right after cursing a fig tree because he was angry that it had no figs for him to eat.  I think this is one of the moments in scripture where we really see his humanity.  His disciples are so impressed that he can wither a fig tree on command for disappointing him, and he tells them that they too can do miracles like this if they have faith.  Does this also mean that we can have whatever we want in this life if we just believe it will happen?  Some may question my faith, but I don’t think that’s how Jesus works.

One more image I have had of Jesus at various times in my life is that of a pious and judgmental Jesus.  Maybe you have seen an image of Jesus pointing his finger at you and asking you a guilt-inducing question.  Maybe you have read a passage where he addresses sinful behavior, and you wanted to crawl under a rock because you know that one all too well.  But looking down in this manger today, I just ask anew, “Who is this King of glory?”  Who is this God that in all his holiness, in all his splendor, instead of expecting us to ascend to his level – chose to descend to ours?  What kind of God steps down from heaven and lays in a manger surrounded  by the stench of manure?  What kind of God takes on a human body with all its aches and pains and submits to living inside it?  What kind of God becomes one of us?

When my oldest child was one year old, he came down with a bad case of croup.  After his going from fairly healthy to barely able to breathe and a temp of 103 in a matter of a few hours, we were sent to the hospital.  We spent the night in the ER that night with him.  No rooms were available in the hospital.  So, they rolled in a crib for him to sleep in.  And I remember that he needed so badly to lay down and sleep, but he wanted his mommy.  So, I did what most mothers would do.  I climbed over the side of that crib, curled my body around his, and stayed with him.  And when I think back to that night, I think it is a tiny glimpse of what God did and continues to do for us.  He came down.  He climbed into the manger.  He met us in our illness, in our despair, in our inadequacy.  He met us in our pain.  He had it all.  And he stepped down into our misery because he loves us.  And he still curls around us in our pain.  Emmanuel, God with us.  He laid his hands on people and healed them.  He wept with Mary.  He walked on water with Peter.  He hung out with Zacchaeus.  He defended the woman the people wanted to stone.  No one was off-limits for him.  He embraced people from every walk of life.  No crib was too dirty to crawl into.  In Luke 4, he told the people in his hometown why he came:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
  because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

            Has there ever been such a beautiful mission?  That baby in the manger would grow into a man that wanted to right the wrongs in the world.  He had brought a kingdom to earth that would change everything.  So, as I look at him today and ask him “Who are you?”, I trust that this year he’s going to continue to tell me.  I’m starting with the baby.  Because there is something about a baby.  God could have come as a full-grown human, but he came as a baby - full of hope, full of possibility.  I am throwing out my preconceived notions of who he will become and asking him who he truly is.  Because much more beautiful than my making him into my image is my being formed into his. 

Leaving a Better Legacy

Last year I took a Seminary course called “Gender in Ministry.”  We read many books and articles.  We dove deeply into scriptures that are often used to support the subordination of women and learned of the context and culture surrounding them.  I learned the origins of beliefs that women are to be subordinate and discovered some of the many holes in this doctrine.  My heart had known for many years that there was a problem with this doctrine.  I suppose the first time I felt the stinging injustice of it was when I was 16-years-old,  stood up in church to tell a story from a recent mission trip, and watched an older couple that I loved exit out the back.  Hierarchical theology has affected my life in more ways than I can or want to list here.  But the course I took last year and my continuing study since then has helped me reconcile the concerns of my heart with the knowledge in my mind.

My concerns about the negative impacts of the conservative church’s traditional views on women are vast.  But for a moment I want to discuss how our treatment of women in the church affects our children.  As a children’s minister and mother of four, I am passionate about what we are teaching our children as they grow in our churches.   We may believe that our churches are welcoming and nurturing to young women.  We may value them and love them.  We may have only the best intentions toward them.  But we seem to avoid the truth of how a male-dominated church affects our daughters.  Even if no one tells them that they are less in the kingdom of God or that their gifts are less welcome, children are brilliant, always piecing puzzles together in their minds.  When their model is a male-dominated hierarchy, it affects them.  When a little girl attends church every week and only sees men stand in front of her as preachers, prayer and worship leaders, communion presiders, etc. it sends her a message about who she is in Christ.  The message goes something like this, “Jesus loves you.  But he likes the boys better.”  Children don’t understand these messages that are being written on their hearts.  But the messages are being internalized all the same.  And the message doesn’t leave them when they walk out of the church building.  They carry the message about their inferiority in their souls.  Our daughters are taught that they can do anything and be anything in every area of their lives.  They can run corporations, lead schools, chair non-profits, and run for President.  But they walk into their churches, and suddenly they have very palpable limits. Many young women are leaving traditional churches because they cannot reconcile their calling with the limits that are forced upon them. 

A while back I watched the movie The Greatest Showman.  Phillip Carlyle, a wealthy white man, was dating an African American trapeze artist from the circus he managed.  Set in the 1800s, this was certainly not socially acceptable.  Phillip’s high-society parents caught them out together.  His father accused him of having no shame and parading around with “the help”.  His mother then said to him, “You forget your place, Phillip.”  And Phillip replied immediately, “My place?  Mother, if this is my place, then I don’t want any part of it.”  Like Phillip in this movie, I think many of our young women are staring the church in the face and hearing the messages it gives them of who they are and how they should be restricted.  And when the church tries to mandate their place, they simply say, “If this is my place, then I don’t want any part of it.”  But the girls who stay, who embrace the message and internalize it, those are the ones who may sustain the most damage.  Because many of those girls will live with a narrative that tells them they need a man in order to be complete.  They will feel like they aren’t enough in and of themselves.  As long as they carry these beliefs, they will always feel a little less than whole.

            It’s easy to see how an environment that disqualifies women would have a negative impact on our daughters.  But surely our sons are fine.  They have a good thing going.  They can live up to their potential and use all their spiritual gifts.  So, we don’t have to worry about them.  This system is good for them, right?  Absolutely not.  I venture to say that the systems in place are just as damaging, if not more so, for our young boys.  Our boys receive the not-so-subtle message that they are superior to women, at least in the kingdom of God.  They are filled with doctrine about how they are to be the leaders and they deserve respect and submission by default.  They are taught to marginalize the women in their lives, and it is spiritualized for them as God’s will.  They are infused with a sense of entitlement from the very institution that should teach them humility. 

            What kind of life are we molding for our boys when we model this standard for them?  Well, as mentioned above, we are teaching them entitlement.  They believe they deserve – fill in the blank – by no accord of their own, but simply because they are male.  At a minimum, we are setting many of them up for dysfunctional marriages because we are teaching them to undervalue their wives.  And at the extreme, we are giving abusive men spiritual backing.  I recently read in one of my textbooks on family therapy that men with more conservative Christian theology than their wives are more likely to be guilty of domestic violence than the general population.  Allow the tragedy of that sentence to sink into your heart.  Domestic abuse is rampant in our churches and is very rarely discussed.  Why?  Because actually dealing with it would require churches to admit that their theology is contributing to the problem, and having to rework theology is daunting and fear-inducing.  

Finally, we are teaching our boys to objectify women.  We are priming them for a life of pornography and/or sex addiction.  When young men are taught that women are supposed to be submissive and subordinate to them, it is not a far leap to conclude that women exist (at least in part) for the pleasure of men.  The inability to view a woman as a whole person in her own right is deadly to a young man.  Families are being destroyed in our churches due to pornography and other forms of infidelity.  Christian men very often fall into these behaviors.  And when women discover these behaviors by their husbands, the church will often advise them to just forgive and move on.  After all, they say, “Most men struggle with purity.  It’s just how God made them.”  And they excuse an entire gender from incredibly damaging behavior and leave the women who have been crushed to suffer in silence.  This all stems from the theology of subordination we have embraced.  Of course, we would never say that our theology encourages these behaviors.  But these behaviors seep out of the cracks of our doctrine infecting every area of our lives.  Our precious young boys are given a picture of who they are supposed to be that more closely mirrors worldly patriarchy than the heart of Jesus.  And many of them will spend years in therapy as adults learning for the first time that it’s okay for a man to have emotions other than joy and anger.  Our children deserve better.

The truth is that in the church when any one group is marginalized we all become vulnerable.  The enemy loves marginalization.  And he certainly loves the thought of half the people who love Jesus being quieted.  As men and women, we must join hands and work together to bring healing to this world.  God created us as teammates, not as competitors.  The idea of competition in the church is completely foreign to the Gospel message.  God calls us into relationships of humility, gentleness, and oneness.  Hierarchy and power structures do not fit well within this framework.  In the New Testament, we read that the last shall be first and the first shall be last.  The early Christian movement worked in contrast to the power structures that were in place and called for radical counter-cultural practices like mutual submission.  The Bible and other ancient documents make it clear that men and women, slave and free, Jew and Gentile, all joined forces in working together to spread the good news of Jesus in the days of the early church.  They all had the same passion - Jesus.  And his message was spread through this passion.  An important aspect of the message of Jesus was that everyone was on an equal playing field in his kingdom.  This was in stark contrast to the society of the time.  Social class and pecking order meant everything.  A person’s worth in society was completely determined by his or her station in life.  But in this kingdom, worth was defined by the Savior.  What a message of freedom to the slaves, the women, the poor, the downcast!  They mattered!  In Jesus’ kingdom, they mattered.

Jesus sat with the outcast, healed the most forgotten, forgave the most sinful, and met with the most reviled.  He went beyond “not shaming” those who had no status.  He embraced and honored them.  His treatment of women in a society that commonly used and suppressed them was nothing short of extraordinary.  Rather than marginalize them, he loved them, defended them, elevated them.  Jesus came to free the oppressed.  The Bible has been used to defend oppression throughout history.  It has been used to defend slavery, segregation, the Holocaust, denying women the right to vote, mistreatment of immigrants, and genocide.  I cannot help but believe that it grieves the heart of Christ when the Bible is used as a tool of oppression.  His example shows us a completely different way, a healing way.  May we follow his example in the way we teach our sons and daughters.  I believe the future of the church depends on it.  In the wise words of Maya Angelou, “Do the best you can until you know better.  Then do better.”

Longing for Fall

            Here we are in mid-September in Tennessee.  Everyone is ready for fall.  Anytime I log into social media, I see a trend.  People are despairing that fall seems to be nowhere around.  The calendar says mid-September, but the temperature says early August.  With highs in the 90s each day, it is more difficult to get excited about pumpkins, mums, and fall festivals.  And going to a football game before sunset feels equivalent to sitting on the sun.  We are dreaming about the brisk mornings, sweatshirts, and fall-themed coffee drinks.  We are looking forward to watching the trees change color and eventually give way to the force of nature that causes their leaves to fall to the ground.  The changing, dying, and hope of renewal in the spring await us outside.  And we want to see it all.  And as much as it seems right now like it may never come – it will.  It will come, and the cycle will continue.  And in March we will be thirsty for spring. 

            This year I find myself longing for fall in the depths of my soul.  I really love fall.  It is my favorite season by far.  If ragweed were eliminated from the earth, it would be downright perfect.  I love the coziness it brings.  The holidays and hayrides, the fall sports, the gratitude, the pumpkin bread, the beautiful leaves – they are all so amazing.  But this year as I wait to watch the leaves turn and give way and let go, I find myself pondering all the things I want to let go of in the coming fall season.  With the trees as my inspiration and partners, I want to drop some leaves and make way for new growth.

I want to drop my insecurities, the voice in my head that tells me I’m not enough.  I want to drop the trauma that made that voice infinitely louder and refuse to let it define me.  I want to drop allegiance to the systems that gave me a false notion of who I am.  I want to drop any version of myself that paints me as anything other than a loved child of God, created in his image.  I want to drop my self-doubt and second-guessing.  I want to drop my fear of what people will think when I drop my leaves - because holding onto dead leaves won’t nourish anyone.  I want to drop my need to explain myself over and over and over again.  I want to drop my tendency to apologize incessantly when it isn’t warranted.  I want to drop my tendency to look in the mirror and wish I looked differently.  I want to drop the tendency to fear people and ideas that are different than what I know.  I want to drop the constant temptation to tend to everything except the breathing of my soul.  I want to drop resentment.  I want to drop the picture in my mind of how things are supposed to be and the notion that I have to make everything perfect.  I want to watch these leaves fall from the trees.  And then I want to rake them up.  I want to jump in them and play and laugh at the fact that I’m not carrying them anymore.  I want to make leaf angels and pile them over my head, so I can jump out and shout.  I want them to know that they no longer have power over me, but rather that I can smile at the ways they have opened up the opportunity for growth in the spring.  And then I want to bag them up and send them on their way. 

            And when spring comes, and it will come, I want to grow back new leaves.  I want to grow back leaves that are vibrant and nourishing.  One leaf will be called confidence.  Another will be called peace.  There will be leaves of self-love and self-acceptance.  There will be a leaf called courage.  There will be leaves of more encompassing compassion and love for others.  There will be leaves of speaking up when necessary and not being embarrassed to take up space in the world.  There will be leaves of education and empowerment that I will spread across other people who desperately need them.  There will be leaves of new ideas and new experiences.  There will be a leaf of self-compassion and a leaf of perpetual hope.  There will be the beautiful leaf of communion with God, and really, I guess that is the root system of the whole tree.  And in the spring, when I have grown these new leaves, I will create oxygen that is clean and new and needed.  I will be able to breathe new and full, and my breathing will give breath to those around me.  And the leaves I carried before the fall, they will be a memory, an important part of my journey, and a reminder that things are always being made new.  And when I see one of those leaves on someone else’s tree, I will love them and know that I once carried that leaf too. 

A Letter to Myself on the Day of My Baptism

           

          Twenty-eight years ago today I walked down the aisle during the “invitation song” at church and asked to be baptized.  I had spent the previous week at church camp.  I remember that we learned about the “Armor of God” in Ephesians 6 that week.  I think something about the power and the courage that passage called out spoke to me.  I was a quite passive and fearful child.  At the age of (barely) 10, I decided that I wanted to walk with Jesus for the rest of my life.  I remember my Dad baptizing me.  I remember my mom and miss Betsy helping me get ready.  I remember the 1990’s denim dress I was wearing that day.  And I remember when I walked out of the front of the church building after getting dressed again that our preacher, Mr. Keith, smiled at me with his always genuine smile and said, “Well, do you feel cleaner?”  He meant metaphorically of course.  And I remember being a little confused.  At that point in my life, the worst thing I had done was a couple of years earlier when I stole a few pretty crafting stones from one of the stations at VBS.  I know - how wrong to commit my first crime at VBS!  I carried the guilt and agony about that one around for a long time, so I was glad to know I had washed that moment of insanity off.  But honestly, I didn’t fully understand the dark side of humanity or the deep need of redemption all around me.  But I knew I loved Jesus, and I knew I wanted to walk with him.  That part has never changed. 

            Some people have strong feelings about whether or not children should be baptized, and I guess it all depends on your starting point.  If faith in God is seen as an intellectual assent, then children may not be intellectually ready to make a lifelong decision or to sign onto a distinct theology.  But if faith is seen as holistic and spiritual, I tend to believe that children are able to grasp it more easily than adults.  After years of working with children, I am convinced that they understand and experience God on a level that adults rarely achieve because of our life experiences and intellectual attempts to explain God. 

            Today, as I close my eyes and try to connect with that 10-year-old little girl with a fire in her heart for Jesus, there are a few things I want to tell her.  So I am writing a letter to that little dreamer. 

Dear 10-year-old girl,

I want you to know that, yes, you are ready to make this decision.  You know God and experience him, and you are ready to make the decision to follow him.  But I also want to tell you that your walk with God started before you were born.  You didn’t have to be baptized before he would start working in your life.  He has been there with you every moment. I’m so glad that you want to follow him.  The innocence of faith and connection with God that you have now will be hard to maintain as you experience more life.  Don’t let it go easily.  He won’t let go of you. 

            Dear 10-year-old girl, I want you to know that faith is a journey that will take twists and turns you might not expect.  Faith is often treated like a destination.  But that is actually religion.  Religion says, “arrive at this belief, and your work is finished.”  Faith is a continuous walk with a loving God.  It has mountains and valleys.  You will find that things you once believed will fail the test of life and love.  You will find that things you once doubted will become clearly evident over time.  Twenty-eight years from now, you will have more questions than you have answers.  You will have given up on formulas and checklists.  You will realize the arrogance of anyone who claims to fully understand the things of God.  You will find that the deeper your faith in the greatness of God becomes, the smaller your need for a tidy theology becomes.  You will become more and more at peace with your questions because as Father Richard Rohr says, “The opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is control.”  You will learn a lot in your 30’s about the elusive and deceptive nature of “control.”  And as you let go of the illusion of control, you will feel more secure in the presence of God than you ever have before.  You will find that he’s not afraid of your questions. 

            It will take you a while, but eventually, you will learn to see the image of God in everyone.  You won’t only see him in the people at church.  You will see him at the grocery store check-out, in the prison, at the park, on the news, in the person who hurt you, and in the person who disagrees with you.  You will become increasingly sensitive to the tragedy of any human who is being treated as anything less than one who is created in the image of God.  And you will understand more and more that no one of us bears his image any more than another.  It is equally written onto our DNA.  When we turn away from goodness, when our darkest moments surface, we have simply lost touch with our inherent God-image.   We can help others find that image of God that is planted within them if we love them purely, because that is when his image is most evident in our own lives.  We can call that out in others by encouraging them and being honest about our own failures.  As Thomas Merton said, “Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.”  The world needs real people.  Be as real as you can be, trusting the God-image within you.  

Dear 10-year-old girl, you will go through years where it is hard to see your own worth.  I wish I could guard you from that pain.  I wish I could silence the voices that will demean you for your gender, your stature, your intellect, your personality, your choices.  Those voices will sometimes drown out the small still voice within you that reminds you of your lovability.  Remember that when people treat you this way, they have lost touch with their own God-image.  Eventually, you will be secure enough to know your own worth again, just like you do now.  And in a lot of ways, you will finally feel like that 10-year-old girl again.  And it will be beautiful.

            Dear 10-year-old girl, you have ahead of you so much beauty and so much pain.  They will intertwine so tightly that sometimes you won’t be able to unthread them.  Some days you will wish you could avoid the pain, but others you will know that you are uniquely you because of what you have endured.  And the beauty in your life will be absolutely breathtaking in contrast to the pain.  And believe it or not, you will even find a way to turn the pain into beauty when you release it to the one who has walked with you since before you were born.  Pain does not get the final word, sweet child.  Love does.  And that is why today you made a wonderful decision.  You don’t fully know what it means.  You don’t know what it will look like to walk with Jesus.  You don’t know just how faithful he will be to you.  But he will never leave you.  Now rock that wet hair and denim dress and get some hugs from the people who love you.  You’ve got a journey to continue.  And it’s going to be amazing.