I like to do series of #UnpopularOpinions sometimes on
Twitter. They are mostly ridiculous things like how mint chip ice cream is the best, how I am against leggings as pants, and how Halloween trunk or treat parties are still Halloween parties.
While this is a silly pastime over social media, I am
finding it increasingly obvious that I have some unpopular opinions about
things. People may actually agree with me more on ice cream than I thought (I
had six unexpected likes), but other parts of my life and my beliefs are not
exactly the norm. While I’m ok with that and I like to dialogue respectfully
about these issues, I find it necessary to stay true to myself and to my future
career as a religious leader in some capacity to be honest about what I
believe.
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To start off, I don’t
believe in any white Jesus and white God stuff. When I walk into churches
with pictures of Jesus as this white dude with a halo over blonde hair and some ocean blue
eyes, I’m wondering if we are making Jesus into more of our pop band superstars
than our savior. Geographically and historically, Jesus was born in the middle
east. If you’ve ever seen any people from the middle east, you would likely
notice that they don’t have white skin like I do.
I think people make God into who they want the divine to be.
It would be easy as a white person with privilege who has lived in the Midwest
for most of her life to say that God as human looks like me, but I cannot grasp
onto that myth with any truthful beliefs because Jesus and I look different in
being absolute opposites.
Actually, I really like that Jesus on earth doesn’t
look like me.
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To keep in line with Jesus not looking like me to make me
feel better, I see God as a
gender-inclusive or maybe even gender-neutral being. While it is often
shared of God as Father with a masculine pronoun used, I have been fascinated
by reading the Bible in places where God is cast as a feminine presence such as
Asherah (a traditionally-female Hebrew name) in Genesis, one who gives birth in
Isaiah, and one who has the wisdom of Sophia (an oft-used female name in
English).
I know many who refer to God the parent as both Mother and
Father, who use he and she interchangeably when talking about the Creator and
Sustainer of all life. Out of respect to my traditional-leaning friends and
family, I tend to talk about God without gender. The Creator who can make
females and males and all along the spectrum of gender identity from God’s own image is one who can encompass all distinctions and divisions.
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I find scripture to be essential – both from the Hebrew
Bible and the Christian Testament while also valuing the Apocrypha and extracanonical
works. They are a source of symbolic interpretation to be used in our current
context while studying the historical, geographical, cultural, linguistic, and
genre-based contexts from which the texts were written. And, because I find
these research aspects to be so important, I often do not
read the stories of the text literally.
Many of the stories of the Bible are encouraging, many blow
my mind, and many are confusingly baffling. I certainly think that plenty of Bible stories are based on true historical figures and events: the prophet Isaiah writing the
first part of the one book known by that name, the Israelite exilic period, and
Paul and his letters.
But, I see many great stories that I do not take literally:
Jonah and the big fish, Queen Esther, and Adam and Eve. As it is not often studied in traditional Christianity, these stories were
told orally to share meanings and provide symbols for life circumstances.
I
think the Bible is an amazing, sacred text that has so much for me to study further despite reading pieces of it for years. I genuinely believe that I have much more
to learn about how these stories originated and what they mean to me now.
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I was speaking to a professor recently about the struggle
between the literal interpretations that I was taught as a child and the more
symbolic approach through which I am currently approaching sacred texts. I said
that I struggle with how I can define which texts seem appropriate and which
need further study because of how they are used in harmful ways. The professor
presented the idea of seeing the text
through a lens of ethics, and that has resonated with me.
It’s not that I want to dismiss scripture that people before
me have deemed to be sacred texts as important in faith traditions. Rather,
I absolutely feel as if I must read the Bible through the ways in which others
will be treated. Scripture should not be used as something which can hurt and push away others.
Through the four sources of Christian life, also known by my
United Methodist peeps as the “Wesleyan quadrilateral” – reason, tradition,
scripture, and experience – I have learned this past semester in Systematic
Theology that different understandings of Christianity rank the sources in orders
that are pertinent to their interpretations.
My order changes sometimes, but I am
currently ranking experience first with reason, scripture, and tradition to
follow. To simply rate the four sources is rather simplistic because there’s a
lot of intermingling that happens within the quadrilateral.
This probably places me among the Christians who fall into
more progressive or liberationist “paradigms.” I’m sure I have been in this
realm for years, but I have been aligned with organizations of traditional,
conservative beliefs which I wanted to honor.
If someone would ask directly
about my opinion on something, I would determine if it was a time when I could
answer with honesty or if I could move around and past the question. I often
felt as if I had to give a disclaimer that these were personal beliefs that I
was working through and point out that the organizations and people with whom I
was attached would teach differently.
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When a favorite author / kind-of-friend through book
launching, Jen Hatmaker, disclosed that she was affirming of people who are LGBT in the church in October of 2016, I realized how harmful the backlash can
be – not only to the allies who are affirming, but mostly to the people of the
LGBTQI+ community.
If you had asked me ten years ago about my thoughts on
homosexuality, I would have instantly repeated all things against it because I
did not know of any other positions held by Christians.
If you had asked me six years ago about my thoughts on gay
people, I would have said that we should be friends but they are living sinful
lives. “Hate the sin, love the sinner,” is a terrible approach because of how
harmful it is, but I believed it. At that time, it had become more nuanced
because my friend (at the time, my recently-out gay ex-boyfriend)
and other people who I knew through theatre were approaching times in their lives
when they felt more comfortable coming out about their sexuality that defies
the heteronormative culture in which we live.
If you ask me now about my thoughts on the LGBTQI+
community, I am quite direct: I believe
in the full inclusion of people who are LGBTQI+. Full stop. For some
friends, this is not any new information and this is something we can openly
support as Christians. For some friends, this is an “issue” that probably seems
shockingly against their foundational beliefs as Christians.
When I heard Nadia Bolz-Weber speaking at an event in
October, I knew from her talk that I needed to write publicly about being
affirming; there could be people around me who have never been told that God has always loved them and will still love them if they come out as gay or even that God created them as
they are. This sounds very look-at-me-doing-good-things which I strive not to
do, but I genuinely mean it. Within three months of hearing Nadia, I had three
teenagers or young adults who felt comfortable telling me that they aren’t
straight. And that’s ok.
I recognize that this is just a belief for me, but it is a
matter of daily life for numerous friends and people who I respect. I
have way too many friends who have walked away from God because they were
rejected by Christians over sexuality. It makes me sick every time I think
about them and how they have been hurt. Because I'm in theological school as a
religious leader, I feel as if I am now responsible for speaking against the
hate that causes such hurt from this heteronormativity and homophobia.
Honestly, I have been so amazed with the number of queer
Christians who I have known throughout my life. I'm awed with their
perseverance and their persistence to be part of the universal church even though
the vocal majority of American Christian evangelicalism says that they should not be
included. I have much to learn from my friends, and all I can do is continue to use
my voice to affirm them.
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I’m living within the tension between conservative and
liberal interpretations of faith of those who are close to me in proximity and
in relations, but I feel as if I must be honest about where I stand within the
church and within structures of faith. It is not an effort to ostracize anyone, to
say that I’m right, or to ignore the foundations of faith that I knew growing
up.
In Sarah Bessey’s book, Out of Sorts, she writes, “If our
theology doesn’t shift and change over our lifetimes, then I have to wonder
whether we’re paying attention.” These certainly aren’t beliefs that I have
held within my entire life, but they’re also not entirely new concepts within
my theological framework. I am working not to limit myself in future career
opportunities as well as within Christian practices.
A guiding line for discovering and deepening my beliefs is “break
my heart for what breaks yours” from Hosanna by Hillsong. If I am following God, then my heart will break for what could symbolically break
the heart of God. I see people who are marginalized, placed as “others” in
society, called “the least of these," and experiencing other forms of oppression, and I believe that God calls us to
be a source of love and healing for people on the outside.
This is exactly the God whose model I want to follow. I want
to be known for what I'm for: love, inclusion, acceptance, justice, freedom,
creativity.
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So, here I am at the end of my first year of theological
school. So much has shifted and changed, so much has remained the same, and so
so so much is still to be explored. I can’t imagine what kind of #UnpopularOpinions
I’ll develop within the next two years, whether about ice cream (blueberry
cheesecake ice cream is actually pretty good, tbh) or about theology (so many
more classes to take!).
I have found that sometimes after I post
potentially-controversial content, people will dismiss me (if it’s your time to
peace out, I wish you well) or be worried (lol, I’m good). I do think it’s best
to have conversations when appropriate and when healthy dialogue will benefit all,
but I recognize that this is unachievable sometimes. I hope you’ll stick around
with me through this quest of discovering practices that are new to me and of building
up unshakeable pieces of who I am.
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