THANK GOD THAT’S OVER
Steve and Josh are back from a hiatus for a second season of Stupid Church People and you have no idea how glad that makes me.
I was very excited for a few months when I discovered all these progressive blogs and started reading feminist theology in earnest. It was great, for a few months, learning new things and new perspectives. But now I’m afraid I’m right back where I started. I’ve read enough to know that feminism and Christianity aren’t mutually exclusive, and I’ve read enough to know that there are people who are finding new and interesting ways to practice and live faith in the modern world. But it still remains that Christianity is really difficult. It’s difficult to believe all the stuff you’re supposed to believe, and no amount of navel-gazing or study is going to change that.
At least, that’s how I feel right now.
Because when you think about it, Christianity is a really ridiculous thing, involving strange stories about fish and incidents of grotesque violence. You read the Gospels and you wonder, did Jesus even want anyone to understand his parables? Did he understand the parables, or was he just making it up? (I know I’m creeping over the heretic/blasphemer line here, but I don’t care anymore.)
There’s no way the Bible is completely “true,” so how is a person supposed to base her life on the teachings, stories, and traditions contained within it?
Look, I know I’m not the first person to go on about these things and people might even say that “wrestling” with these questions is the foundation of faith. I’m not pretending to be original, here. I just personally find it frustrating that I’m still wrestling. This might be a personal failing — a distaste for the incomplete, a latent strain of perfectionism that demands that the dots be connected and the pieces arranged so I can relax. Having a chronic illness has dulled these tendencies in my general life (I don’t have the extra energy to spare being all anal about stuff) but maybe hasn’t bled into my spiritual life. Not that I like to draw a distinction between the different kinds of “lives.” It’s all one life, to me.
I went to Church Pomo again on Sunday and it turns out a woman I know from childhood attends there and has in fact been involved since the very beginning of that church. She and I attended the same school for two years: grade one and grade nine. Grade nine was spent at a private Christian school, you can use your imagination about how that went. Also I almost choked to death in her back yard when I was six, but my mom gave me the Heimlich Maneuver and I survived.
THANK GOD.