The topic of spiritual formation is a deep, often unexplored study. It can be as intimate as sharing a journal entry, or as prescriptive as a routine doctor’s visit. In an age of relativism, who holds the key and power to ultimate truth? Does truth change like a growing alder tree, or unfold like a tender pink rose? Does it develop and metamorph like the genetic blueprints of a baby child? Does truth have a timeline, a season, or a hiding place? Does it go into hibernation, or take a back seat to the gift of self will? Who are the children of truth, and does truth have an enemy? Am I at war with it, or its ally, or its long lost friend? In my desire to be a follower of Christ, have I settled for half-truths, or called something evil good, or good evil? I look at the fabric of my life—who I was born to, the nature of my conception, and I see such redeemable properties in ordinary mistakes. If life were rated on a pH scale, with absolute truth being a 7, which things would be basic and which acidic, and could we truly operate in this life if everything were neutral?
I have tried writing this article multiple times, wanting to adequately describe my frustration with spiritual abuse and the imposing legalism of today’s religion. I set out to tease these intermeshed fibers, trying not to be discouraged by their unending tangles. I desire to confront the obvious resentment I have for allegiance to one set of ordinances, or the culture of identification with only one congregation. I feel like an eagle on the ground among a species of four-footed animals that possess undiscovered wings, tethered by rules and legalism and an honest desire to please God through man-made religion.
I could spend time creating profiles of individuals I have met on this elusive trail to perfection and eternal bliss. In the wake of man’s attempt to gain holiness, are ditches full of carnage. There are hiding holes, nomads land, blackout windows camouflaging the lives of those who have found solitude and camaraderie among the unchurched masses. I myself have ventured from the narrow road, down into the highways and byways, searching for not only myself, but also those of a common revelation.
Somehow I lost part of me, you see. I traded in mystery for a set of rules. I idolized being right in the sight of God at the cost of unique and meaningful relationships. Yet pearls of great wisdom were gained, a few deep friendships of spiritual vitality were formed, and truths were forged into the deep foundations of my inner being that may not have been created had I avoided immersion in strict religion. The loss of something vital came in a subtle corrosion of creativity. I put away the fantasy novels, somehow lost touch with the eternal poet who grasped out inside of me and tried to write about greater things. I saw structure, walls, rules, black, white, do’s, and don’ts. I associated only with the elite—those who understood, what I perceived to be, the deep things of God, in an attempt to conserve an undiluted righteousness.
But I don’t want to discredit a mystic inside me. The Jesus who ate with prostitutes and tax collectors, who wrote in the sand and looked in the eyes of an adulterous woman with mercy and grace, was somehow living out his life in the 21st century through me. The Jesus who was accused of being an alcoholic and blasphemer, who was persecuted, rejected, betrayed, and hounded by people seeking a sign, sat with me in coffee shops and listened to stories of fishermen and world travelers.
He walked with me down the street, taught me things about nature, revealed mysteries to me in dreams and through books. He sent me friends who would never step foot inside my church, but were drawn to me with a tenacious loyalty. These friends, these books, these secular songs that seem so dark, have been my unpolished saints and unprinted scriptures that point me to this truth—the truth of a person who loves me and has divine qualities that I cannot deny.
And I see it now, the dualism of my own life and the division caused by modern evangelical Christianity. I read the scriptures with a new desire—as if it holds minerals and vitamins for my depleted soul. I think of the Old Covenant and how it has been taught that God never expected men to live up to it—it was set there as a means to convict us of sin. I want to relate religion to this in the same way—it seems that there comes a point when anyone desiring to follow Christ sees the shallowness of playing church, and hopefully it drives them to delve deeper into the person of Jesus Christ. With this discovery of who he really is, comes liberation from the need to be perfect. It frees of us the one-plane religion that keeps us associating only with those who are like us.
Fredrich Buechner writes in his book, The Sacred Journey, of the people who should be remembered who helped us get to where we are. He writes,
“On All Saint’s Day, it is not just the saints of the church that we should remember in our prayers, but all the foolish ones and wise ones, the shy ones and overbearing ones, the broken ones and whole ones, the despots and tosspots and crackpots of our lives who, one way or another, have been our particular fathers and mothers and saints, and whom we loved without knowing we loved them and by whom we were helped to whatever little we may have, or ever hope to have, of some kind of seedy sainthood of our own”
I will remember then with joy those who have shared my journey. I see myself taking a look at my past, and walking with gratitude down the road that got me here in reverse. With the same gratitude that the 10th leper had when returning to say thank you to Jesus, I will revisit these people in my past. Thank you, to the pastor who taught me to seek God first and then turned into a cult leader and turned half my friends against me. Thank you to the philosophy teacher who mentored my friend and oversaw her diversion from Christianity, but had the guts to present information that would challenge her shaky foundations. Thank you to the boss from the Middle East who bucked against my confident assertions because I am a woman, who took me outside and yelled at me to put me in my place. Somehow I don’t have resentment. Thank you to my favorite fisher woman who taught me to fillet a halibut, wants to talk to me about Jesus and struggle with the hypocrisy of those who call themselves Christians.
I have stepped outside the four walls of the church into a sunshine-filled day. I know the air I breathe is Holy Pneuma, the gift of the Father, sent because Jesus went to the cross. And I know that he will guide me, even unto death.
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