ElizabethEsther.com

What to do when God goes out of business

When I was little, God was sorta like a record-store owner: accessible and present and real like the music. But somewhere along the way, I got stuck with a scratched record, a repeating soundtrack in my mind:

You are not saved. You are not good enough.

I kept wanting to take that record back, exchange it for a good one but when I got there, the store was empty and an Out of Business sign was taped to the door. 

I guess everyone listens to God on iTunes now.

For a very long time, I thought I was stuck with that scratched record forever.

On Easter 2009, something happened to me and that repeating soundtrack just stopped--almost as if someone lifted the needle right off the scratched record. It has been silent for almost a year. 

At first, I thought it was a joke. Could it really disappear like that? I waited for the words to come back, for the fear to come back in like a rising tide. But it was gone. It is gone. 

I no longer worry about my salvation.

It's a surprising discovery, not unlike driving back to your old hometown and noticing that the junky crack-house has been torn down and now a cute little coffee shop is standing there. 

I mean, it's good. But dude. It's also a little disconcerting.

My therapist tells me that when chaos and confusion are the norm, it takes awhile for a PTSD sufferer like myself to get comfortable with stability. We're always waiting for the other shoe to drop, always living on high alert.

It has taken awhile for me to realize, oh! God didn't go out of business. He just quit selling records and now I've got this super cool iPod that has a new soundtrack on it.

That new soundtrack goes a little something like this: You are loved, you are loved, you are loved.

Sometimes I don't know how to deal with this new soundtrack. First of all, I'm not entirely sure I believe it. But I think that's my new mission: to start believing it.

Because for some reason, everywhere I go, He keeps repeating it. 

It gets a little sappy, really. It's all a little too much. OK, God. I get it. You love me in the sunshine, you love me in the rain. You love when I'm happy, you love me in my pain.

The craziest part of all is, I don't think I can screw this up. I mean, don't think I haven't tried. I have.

But then, there He is again: You are loved, you are loved, you are loved.

Which makes me think: well, OK then. I'm willing to make mistakes. Even publicly here on my blog. Sometimes I go too far. Sometimes I don't go far enough.

But maybe, also, making mistakes is how we learn about ourselves and about God.

Bear with me as I get used to this new soundtrack?  It's really kinda awesome.

THE SATURDAY EVENING BLOG POST, vol. 2, issue 2

 Welcome to
 THE SATURDAY EVENING BLOG POST!

This is where bloggers gather on the first Saturday of the month to share their latest and greatest blog posts. This month we're featuring posts from January 2010!

I'll begin by sharing my favorite post from last month: A Conversation with Frank Schaeffer, author of "Crazy for God." I chose this post because Frank's book was so helpful to me in understanding The Religious Right and the affect it had on my own fundamentalist childhood. Chatting with Frank was an enlightening, informative and indeed, affirming experience.

Now it's YOUR TURN! 

Here's how to participate:

1. pick one of YOUR posts from the past month and insert a link to it in The Mister Linky form here on my blog (remember to provide a direct link to your specific post, not your home page).
2. compose a new post at your site with a link back here so your readers can participate, too. The more the merrier--it's always fun to discover new blogs!

THE SATURDAY EVENING BLOG POST is a celebration of family-friendly art, so please no links to products or giveaways. I'm looking forward to reading your submissions! Enjoy!

The last thing the world needs is another idealistic church-planter

The best thing that can happen to a Christian is the death of his idealism. There is almost nothing more dangerous than an idealistic Christian. This is because an idealist is willing to die for his idealism--and make others die for his idealism, too. 

The tragedy here is that idealism rarely has anything to do with solid, Christian living. A Christian who is concerned with actually living according to Biblical principles will quickly discover that it is a rocky, difficult path.

In other words, holiness is difficult. 

An idealist doesn't have time for holiness because he has bigger things to do. Like plant new churches, compose pithy tweets, flat-iron his hair and rant against Religion. 

But make no mistake: the long journey toward holiness is a fiery crucible. It entails self-denial, invisibility, periods of spiritual despair. It doesn't includes cheering crowds or multi-million dollar book deals. At least, for most of us.

The biggest problem I see in emerging, missional, "transformational" churches is spiritual pride, remarkable chiefly for the grandeur of its delusion. It's as if they somehow believe they are immune from making the exact same mistakes they accuse "Religion" of making.

It's a very strange place to find myself. In many ways, I have not strayed too far from the fundamentalism of my childhood. At the very least, fundamentalism attempts to preach a straightforward Gospel and strives to encourage a holy lifestyle.

Either you're saved or you're damned. It's all pretty simple.

The emerging church seems more concerned with tattoos and competing over, as a weary Emerging Mummy notes, "who is posting more buttons on their blog for the One campaign." 

I mean, throw the word Hell into an emerging church conversation and watch them totally freak out. Or try Chastity. Now there's a word you don't hear much in emerging circles. Heck, it's difficult enough to hear the word "sin" from the living room couch-cum-pulpit anymore.

Sometimes I feel like the conversation, the "seeking" never ends anywhere. Because it's journey, not the destination that matters, right? It's like that Miley Cyrus song. IT'S THE CLIIIIMBBBB!

Ugh.

I dunno. Maybe the emerging church and Christian idealists are happy to camp out in some nebulous wilderness where "nuance" is everyone's favorite word. But I'm not.

I need meat, not rice cereal. 

My recommendation is that before any Christian idealist sets off to plant a new church, he should try raising a pack of kids. If you ask me, raising kids is the quickest, non-stop flight to holiness precisely because it destroys your idealism. 

But that idealism is replaced by something much, much better: sacrificial love. 

RELATED POSTS:
Losing My Idealism
Unsustainable Zeal
 

Reminder: THE SATURDAY EVENING BLOG POST is this Saturday!

Come participate in THE SATURDAY EVENING BLOG POST this Saturday, Feb. 6th! This month, we will be featuring our favorite posts from January 2010. Start combing your archives and then meet me here to join the fun! Can't wait to meet new bloggy friends! All are welcome.

EE Book Club: Chapters 2-5 "Evangelical is Not Enough"

Chapter 2: Spirit & Flesh

I grew up in a church that radically eschewed Christian symbolism. We didn't have stained glass, altar, organ music (or musical accompaniment of any kind). We especially didn't have crosses or crucifixes, incense or candles.

But despite our attempts to live a strictly "spiritual" Christian life--we ended up inventing our own kinds of symbolism. The women wore headcoverings, the chairs were placed in a particular order, we read the same passage every week before the Lord's Table.

Howard's observations are correct: "It is difficult to eliminate symbolism...all Christian piety and worship is shot through with symbolism of either gesture or objects or both." (p.23)

Our intention was noble: we fled from anything smacking of idolatry, insisting that true worship takes place in the heart--a temple not made with hands. Which was true, but in all our earnestness to strip every last shred of symbolism from our meeting houses, we unintentionally proved the point: symbolism matters.

It matters because we are human and we see the unseen in the seen. Howard points out that what the commandment against idol worship actually forbids is: "the worshiping of anything manmade." (p.26)

The idea that a simple meeting hall is better because of its spare simplicity misses the point. It is possible to mistake one's own exalted feelings as true worship--but this can happen at a simple kitchen table or, as Howard remarks, in the cathedral at Chartres.

This is where the Incarnation becomes so important. In Christ we see the chasm between spirit and flesh knit back together. Physical is no longer pitted against spiritual. After all, "it is the demand for things that Christ sets us free from, not things themselves." (p.33)

Rather than shy away from symbolism, I find that these things lead me into deeper reflection and meditation with God. They do not distract, they act as arrows pointing the way. For a scatterbrain like myself, it is nothing short of sheer relief to have focal points.

"The principle of focusing and bringing to a point did not disappear with the New Covenant. We mortals are still the same creature. We cannot live with abstractions. We cannot nourish ourselves on generalities." (p.39)

Chapters 3: Christian Worship: Act or Experience? Chapter 4: Prayer: Random or Disciplined?

One thing that often troubles me about the contemporary evangelical church is the idea of worship as an experience. Howard remarks, "Worship, in the ancient tradition, was not thought of as an experience at all; it was an act...the people had come together to make the act of worship. They had come to do something, not to get something. They had not come to a meeting." (p.45)

I grew up going to meetings. Meeting after meeting. The idea was that I went to meeting "hear God's voice" and/or to "get something out of it." Which was fine--to a point. But the liturgical understanding of worship is quite different. It has nothing to do with personal feelings, or The Takeaway. It's not about us, at all.

The liturgy is a form of worship not reliant upon variety, fervor, spontaneous expressions of ecstasy. While some might argue that this kind of worship is "dead," I agree with Howard that "the discipline enables, the structure frees." (p.69) The disciplines of liturgy and praying in an ordered fashion "orders your life" "undergirds it" and "gives it rhythm." (p.69)

One of my favorite parts of liturgical worship is the praying of Psalms. The spare, simple melody of a chanted or sung Psalm is like "a very simple frame around a picture, or an almost invisible setting for a diamond, it sets the text up and permits it to speak, or rather, to sing. The Psalms, after all, were made for singing." (p.51)

I can't tell you how many times my soul has been pierced by the powerful combination of Scripture set to the simple melody of a sung Psalm. There is something almost unspeakably satisfying about joining in the prayers and responses that have been repeated by Christians for thousands of years. It feels like touching eternity.

Perhaps this is why I'm so troubled by the quintessentially individualistic approach to worship that I've seen in many Protestant, evangelical churches. I can see it because I used to believe the same way. I believed that if I couldn't find it in the Bible, then--as Howard states--"I could abjure it." (p.67)

Too often I relied solely on my own Bible reading, and indeed, allowed a prideful attitude fostered by "sola scriptura" to inform my understanding. Like Howard, "there was no such thing as 'the wisdom of the Church.' It did not matter that this divine Word had been read and pondered by sage and holy men and women for two thousand years before my arrival." (p.67)

I was my own authority, able to hash through any and all theological mysteries using my own critical thinking skills. I'm embarrassed by that now. It was like trying to become a skilled neurosurgeon without ever going to school. And honestly, enthusiasm and Christian fervor only go so far.

At some point, I realized I was on this Christian journey for a very long haul. I needed something more solid, deeper, infused with discipline and practice. A catchy little worship song sung by a hip worship band was not going to sustain me for the long journey of faith.

Chapter 5: Hail, Blessed Virgin Mary: What Did the Angel Mean?

If there is one thing that absolutely freaks out evangelicals it can be summed up in one word: Mary.

For myself, it was a casual disregard. I didn't put her on the same level as the disciples or St. Paul. I ignored her because I had inherited the evangelical misconception that Catholics "worshiped Mary." And I didn't want to have anything to do with that. 

But I was wrong. Catholics don't worship Mary. Howard points out that Scripture and the Church teach "nothing may be worshiped but God alone. The ancient Church has always taught this, reserving for God alone the worship known as latria." (p.89) Worship of God alone does not preclude devotion to Mary anymore than many in the evangelical world admire and revere their own particular heroes of the faith: Martin Luther, DL Moody, Oswald Chambers, John Calvin.

Indeed, I had to ask myself: well, does it mean something special that Mary was chosen by God to bear His Son? Yes, it does. It means that "there is one whose dignity is shared by no other. She is a woman, the humblest of them all. No empress, prophetess, or conqueror she, only the handmaiden of the Lord." (p.88)

As an evangelical I used to say, "Well, she's just Jesus' mother." But isn't that it precisely? 

Mary is Jesus' mother. That's no small honor.

God chose her and even the angel calls her "blessed among women." The least I could do is agree with them.

Howard points out that to the extent devotion to Mary attempts to place her above or equal to God, it has gone awry. But I realized that the errant practices of a few ought not dissuade me from acknowledging that, like all who have gone before us in the Faith, "Mary unquestionably stands in the place of preeminence by virtue of her unique role in the drama of Redemption. Whereas all these others bore witness to the Word, she bore the Word." (p.86)

Please feel free to share your own thoughts, feelings and/or questions about Chapters 2-5.
Next week we will discuss Chapters 6-10. 

The question isn't: "Did you wipe-out?"

The question is: "Did you paddle back out?" 
This is my li'l grom, James. He paddled back out.

::

::James will be reading your encouraging comments::

Do Christian women have a responsibility to dress modestly?

The comments to my anti-Victoria's Secret catalog post were truly eye-opening. It made me realize how many of us are outraged by the onslaught of pornographic images in lingerie ads, fashion magazines and even fast food ads.

Most of all, I was reminded that modesty matters.

Perhaps the underlying problem of rampant pornography and sexual violence against women began with the mass uncovering of women's bodies. Somehow in the last 40 years, women abandoned one of the chief guardians of feminine dignity and safety: modest clothing.

Of course, uncovering one's body was done in the name of "empowerment." But there couldn't be a bigger lie. Public nudity will never be empowering. It will always be degrading because it displays what should be private. 

And by exposing the mystery, we make it cheap. We defile the sacred.

I've admitted to struggling with modesty. Part of this was me sifting through my legalistic past. Part of it was just plain ol' inconsideration. I didn't want to admit that, as a Christian woman, I had a responsibility to dress modestly.

I viewed dressing modestly as a choice between looking frumpy and looking fashionable. But now there are so many more options for beautifully modest clothing that I don't really have an excuse anymore (if you don't believe me, go check out Betty Beguiles' blog--she always has such cute picks).

Which makes me wonder: why do so many Christian women dress immodestly? Do they not know what modesty looks like or have they chosen to simply disregard it altogether?

This year I'm making a concerted effort to dress modestly. It's my own personal campaign against the proliferation of public porn. And it's also my way of tangibly showing my children (especially my daughters) that yes, modesty matters.

What do you think? Do Christian women have a responsibility to dress modestly?
Why or why not? 
 Do you have any links to companies that specialize in modest clothing? 
 Please share!

Sitting with the dead

::view from a cemetery near my home::

I like to sit with the dead. Sitting in the silent finality of a cemetery gives me perspective, reminds me to redeem the brief time I've been given. And in a cemetery, nobody minds if you're crying.

I love the cemetery because prayer comes easily there. I don't know why--perhaps the absence of distraction? The fading away of competing sights and sounds? In the quietness of a cemetery, prayer seems natural. And oh, how I've needed to pray.

I don't do well in small groups or prayer meetings. I'm far too self-conscious. My tongue is tied, my hands tremble. But when I'm alone and surrounded by silence, my heart is free. I can speak easily with my Lord, perhaps like an old friend.

After all, I've been meeting Him in prayer at cemeteries ever since I was 16. When I was a teenager, I would flee the cacophony of my communal home, the burden of spiritual exhibitionism, the compulsion to "prove" I was walking with God--and I would meet Him in silence. At the grave.

I know it sounds morbid, but it's actually a powerfully uplifting experience for me. There is no dread. No fear of death. Indeed, I find a source of strength that comes from being surrounded by those who have gone before, those who have finished their race.

I go there when I've been fighting the shadows in my mind. Sometimes I fear the shadows will overwhelm me. I feel the weight of responsibility--I have five souls to raise. I feel the piercing sting of grief--I mourn a life that has vanished like vapor. I grieve the divisions and soul-rending that were the fallout of my fundamentalist past.

But I always leave hopeful. For me, the cemetery is not a place of endings. It is a place of beginnings. 

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
  We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
 Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
 --William Walsham How

Why I've banned Victoria's Secret catalogs from my home

I've banned Victoria's Secret catalogs from my home. Not because I dislike lingerie but because I enforce a zero porn policy. And maybe that sounds harsh but that's exactly what a Victoria's Secret catalog is: soft-porn.

It's difficult enough at the mall--my sons know to avert their eyes every time we pass that store--without bringing it home. I know I'm not alone. I know there are thousands (perhaps millions?) of mothers out there trying to raise their children with a sense of courtesy, respect and morality.

I'm sorry, Victoria's Secret, but I will not allow blatantly objectified images to shape my child's sexuality. 

Images are powerful things and I think it's almost impossible for a young girl to develop a healthy body-image when she's fed images of photo-shopped, airbrushed, scantily clad, freakishly thin supermodels.

And what happens to a young boy whose unawakened sexuality is assaulted--yes, assaulted--from a young age by pornographic images? 

At the very least, these images present a false understanding of sexuality (all fun & games! no obligations!) and at the worst, they create pleasure centers in the brain that revolve around immorality.

I'm also troubled by the normalization of these images in public. Since when did a 2-story high poster of a mostly naked woman become anything other than an egregious offense to decency? Not to mention morality. If protecting my children means avoiding the Victoria's Secret corner of the mall, so be it.

I believe the porn epidemic sweeping our nation indicates we have a serious problem on our hands. Sometimes I feel powerless to stem the pornographic tide that actively seeks to hurt my children.

I know I can't control every single little thing, but so far as it pertains to my home, my turf, my sanctuary--I will fight back the tide. It's my job to protect and defend my children's sexuality.

But I can't do it alone. I need other like-minded mommies. Especially if we're going to protest the proliferation of public porn. Maybe we could call ourselves MAPP (Mothers Against Public Porn)? :)

What do you think about Victoria's Secret/Soft-Porn catalog?
Do you take your children inside the VS store? Why or why not?
Do you think VS would censor/moderate their store posters if enough moms complained?

EE Book Club: Chapter 1 "Evangelical is Not Enough"

Welcome! This week we're discussing Chapter 1 of Evangelical is Not Enough by Thomas Howard. I've recorded some personal thoughts and reflections/stories on Chapter 1 in the video below. Further down you'll find background information on the author and an outline of Chapter 1. Please feel free to join the discussion/ask questions in the comment box--even if you haven't read the book. This is the only week I'll be doing a video since we'll be covering more material in the next two weeks. Enjoy!

Author Background: 

Dr. Thomas Howard was raised in an Evangelical home. His sister is the well-known author and missionary, Elisabeth Elliot. Dr. Howard taught English for 40 years at Gordon College and then St. John's Seminary. He wrote Evangelical is Not Enough in 1984. 

Chapter 1 Summary: 

Dr. Howard opens the book by tracing the evangelical influences of his childhood faith. These included the Scofield Reference Bible, Campus Crusade for Christ, The Navigators, Wycliffe Bible Translators and Billy Graham among others.

A Biblical Base: the evangelicals of Howard's youth stressed "the Bible alone as the touchstone for our doctrine, piety and order." This resonates with me because, like Howard, I was raised to study and read the Scripture for  myself--and to believe the Bible as the inerrant Word of God. Like Howard, I am deeply grateful for the love of God's Word that was instilled in me at an early age.

The Atonement: evangelicals have a deep reverence for the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross and an understanding that our redemption was paid for by His own blood.

The Second Coming: liberal Christians seem to think that the human condition will gradually improve until finally, world peace is achieved. Orthodox Christians, like evangelicals,  say that things will probably get worse and only Christ's second coming will bring an end to all wrongs.

Judgment, Witnessing and Missions, The Will of God: evangelicals believe in a literal Hell and thus are compelled by a certain holy urgency to share the good news of Christ with any and all they meet. Even as young children, evangelicals are taught how to share their faith and pray for God to show them His will for their lives.

Behavior, Conscience & Piety: the conservative evangelical lifestyle can sometimes be distinguished by an abstinence from things like: gambling, drinking, cussing. Howard calls this "cleanliness" and admires the noble intention of promoting holiness. Again, evangelicals engage in daily Bible reading and consider it the defining practice of their faith.

Discussion:

Even if you haven't read the book, please feel free to join the discussion or ask questions. Next week we discuss chapters 2-5 and the following week, chapters 6-10.