The Spirit makes me uncomfortable?

I wrote the following in the summer of2020 (and posted on the Campus Edge ministry blog). As we are looking at 1 Peter as part of our study at Graduate Christian Fellowship, I thought it might be helpful to post it again: 

As we were reading 1 Peter 2 and 3 this past week at study, a student noted that the text made her uncomfortable. As the text was talking about slavery, women, and submission, it was easy for me to understand why she felt uncomfortable. As we noted in our study on Colossians a number of years ago, too often those of us who’ve grown up in the church have seen how submission has been used to validate abuse, or, at the least, make women second-class citizens.

It would be easy thus to dismiss this text as no longer being culturally relevant to today. Yet, to do so would be to lose an opportunity for the Holy Spirit to work to challenge what assumptions we might bring to the text, whether that be errors in our own perception or unhealthy assumptions that we have learned from church/Christian culture and/or society at large.

For instance, the dominant voices of our society invite and encourage us to put me first and not let anyone hold us back from unleashing our inner potential. Might our discomfort with the word submission be because such a narrative of me first leaves little space or validation for submission of any sort? What picture of God’s love might we show when we actively choose to let go of some of our own personal wants and desires for the good of others?

Yet, might our discomfort with the word submission be a misunderstanding of the word submission? Might our submission be less of a diminishing of self and more of a living more fully into who God has called us to be, including through challenging systems of oppression, as Walsh and Keesmaat propose in their book, Colossians Remixed?

While dismissing the text might be the easiest way to get rid of the discomfort brought by the text, it is worthwhile to sit awhile with the text and acknowledge that discomfort. Through consulting wise teachers and allowing the Spirit to work (sometimes also through our peers), God can use our discomfort to help us grow in wisdom about the biblical text and ourselves.

Remaining in church: Thoughts from a gay Catholic

I find the rhetoric of Christians around sexuality to be problematic. This is not because I disagree with the positions of my church (although I would like to re-word the statement related to homosexuality), but because I think many have been hurt, both within the church and outside of it,  by how many Christians talk about homosexuality and treat those with same-sex attractions. I think it's hard for those who face same-sex attraction to remain within the church, and I am thankful for voices that address this.

I have appreciated the voices of Wesley Hill and Eve Tushnet. I expect that some find Hill's call to celibacy to be too much of a sacrifice but Hill also provides a very strong voice for the necessity of good friendships to help those who have been pushed into celibacy.

Eve Tushnet is a slightly different voice, and perhaps a slightly more controversial one (at least from what I have read of her blog). Nonetheless, I want to share her words from a recent blog post, as I think her words recognize the church as the body of Christ and the way that we are formed to be more like Christ. One ought not to dismiss her easily. At the same time, the Church is made up of broken, sinful people, and it is not always certain, even with God's protection and care of the church, whether everything taught and practiced within the church is good. 

The following are Tushnet's words:

We need to revive the role of the “Bad Catholic.” Being a bad Catholic can be very, very good for you; it’s a sign that you accept the Church as something (someone, our Mother) outside you and bigger than you, who gives your life its structure even when you can’t/won’t live entirely within that structure. (How many tears are shed because it’s so hard to tell can’t from won’t….) Being a bad Catholic means being assessed by the Church–accepting Her view of you, even if you accept it wincingly or ironically or in confused exhaustion, “Master, to whom shall we go?“–instead of judging Her. Her judgments of you will be more merciful than yours of Her, anyway.

You only get the spiritual benefits of being a bad Catholic if you take the “bad” part seriously. If you minimize the gravity of sin you lose the reminder it brings of our dependence on God; the more trivial the sin the less humility is provoked.

There’s obviously a danger of provoking self-hatred instead of humility by talking this way, but the literary figure of the “bad Catholic” calls up compassion and identification rather than judgment in readers. Maybe you should show the same compassion to him when he’s you.

 To read more of her writing, visit her blog: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/evetushnet

Resolving my commitment to the community with my commitment to my future spouse

In the last while I've been doing quite a bit of processing about my relationship to the community. This has to do with some of the things that have been happening in the community, especially changes in the core group. But a lot of it also has to do with the fact that my relationship to Matthijs changes pretty much everything.

Have I mentioned that I don't always handle change well?!?

So in the midst of these changes, I've been sorting out commitments and loyalties and looking closely at how I relate to people and what expectations I have (including trying to be honest about what's not healthy, in the hopes that it will become healthier). I'm deeply thankful for this processing, and I believe deeply that my relationships are generally improving because of this, but it hasn't been very pleasant - and not just for me, I know (Matthijs has received the brunt of my frustration sometimes, alongside of the lack of clarity found in being in the middle of processing, and he's still been really encouraging).

As part of the processing, I wrote an article for catapult magazine about communities and commitments and sorting out the balance. It can be found online: but nuns can't get married!. If you read it, it'd be helpful to remember the lack of clarity that's often found in the middle of processing - and that I'm still in the middle of it.

But even though it feels like the processing with all this stuff is not yet resolved, there's been some really great moments of clarity along the way. I have received a strong sense of two things -first: that I really want to be more honest, including in my relationships with others - and second: pray more. Those two realizations have been worth all the messiness of the processing.