Can't Get Right

Where I stand at the border of sanctification and sin

I want to cut open a vein and bleed for you today. I don’t want to waste your time with vagueness, beating around the bush, or couching my words so that they might land more softly. This series is about what’s behind my so-called “liberal drift,” and I want to be as honest as I can in communicating how and why I’ve changed on some important aspects of my faith. You deserve that. And so do I.

I come from a long line of people who just “can’t get right,” as my Maw Maw would say. If we traced back my ancestry to the beginning of time, I’d bet my house that it’s always been that way, more or less.

Poverty, abuse, secrets, violence, crime, perversion, addiction, and sexual deviancy (to name a few of the biggies) have haunted my people from way back. We are a rough bunch, not the kind you invite into precious prayer groups or to the church potluck, though perhaps we are the type for which you’d do an outreach of some kind or another.

But, of course, that’s not all we are.

We are fiercely loyal, generous, forgiving, and accepting. Those qualities had to develop over time, or we wouldn’t have a family at all. We know how to laugh and cry. We’re passionate and, very often, immensely compassionate. And there’s a wide and deep spiritual river that flows through our hearts and has kept God alive and active in our broken, collective story.

We are a people who, with trembling and ashamed voices, still call upon the name of the Lord, whether we deserve to do so or not.

And you know what? There’s something to that.

After all, we are Divine image-bearers, every sinful, broken one of us. There’s nothing anyone can do to change that. It’s an irrefutable fact, despite what appearances may suggest.

As much as I believe that truth now, there was a time in my life that I exiled this part of my story. As soon as I reached adult age, I took off running as fast as I could away from my roots. The trauma of having lived all my days in chaos was like a weight around my young neck and I ran to the Church for refuge.

And that was good. I’m so grateful I chose that path instead of so many others that were available to me.

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash

But I soon learned that to be a good, clean, worthy, respectable Christian woman there was much that needed to be cut off and cut out of me. And I got to work butchering myself in the name of Jesus. I wanted to be a part of this God-family and was willing to do just about anything to be initiated into it.

Coercion into beliefs about things like female subordination, original sin, eternal lakes of fire, God’s barely restrained wrath, and the gruesome end-times horrors awaiting all who did not have the correct confession at the right time in history were like a gang-style “jumping in” which gave me the ticket to acceptance.

I didn’t have the maturity, wisdom, or knowledge to see that the beloved, but misguided, people instructing me on sanctification, holiness, and discipleship were horrifically butchered themselves and completely unaware of it. They wanted the same thing I did – the love and acceptance of their God and God’s Family. Though there was immense beauty in this new family, there was much barbarism too.

After decades of being in church, ministering, being ministered to, engaging with Christians from all over the world, different denominations, and walks of life, I can assure you that there is just as much sin in the Church as outside of it. And I’m not saying this to throw the Church under the bus or point out hypocrisy. I’m just stating a plain fact that is also problematic for we Christians who are convinced it is our purpose and duty to expose, speak out against, exile, and condemn to eternal, conscious, tormenting hell, the sinners in the “world.”

An example of how this becomes problematic:

American Christians must extend grace for porn addictions, unforgiveness, violence, and greed because, if they didn’t, there would be no church. Let’s just consider sexuality for a moment since this is the sin du jour of our current cultural situation. Churches are aware that prohibiting lustful or porn-addicted folks from worshipping, volunteering, or leading would result in a cancelling of much of their membership. Therefore, exposure in this area is often avoided and the elephant in the room is kept in the corner. Think about this – statistics demonstrate that most people within the walls of a church “struggle” with sexual sin of some kind, but they can’t be open about it because it would disqualify them from the full life of the church. So, the solution is to hide and minimize (and even, in some cases, normalize) these sins so that we don’t have to deal with the aftermath.

It's like a big game of pretending.

If we consider something like greed, we see another type of avoidance/acceptance. Christians often stop short of applying judgement to their own lives in this area, growing defensive and belligerent if their self-indulgence and financial priorities are brought under the light of exposure. And because we tell ourselves that greed is subjective or contextual, we tend to avoid the topic altogether, even though the Bible has much more to say about greed than sex of any kind.

Again, pretending.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

By now, you see where I’m going with this. Humans sin. We sin often and throughout our entire lifespans. We never reach a pinnacle of holiness in which we are no longer part of the sinful bunch, despite what theologians like John Wesley thought was possible. He wrote and preached on progressive sanctification that could, theoretically, lead to Christians being completely sinless. A beautiful hope and even a worthy pursuit, but Wesley didn’t reach sinless status this side of heaven and neither will you or I. Even with the Holy Spirit living on the inside of us as Christians, we continue to sin in old ways, in new ways, and sometimes in pretty creative ways. Much like my family of origin.

But the big difference between my family and the Church is that my family acknowledges its brokenness. And this is something I’ve come to deeply appreciate about us. We are not so far gone that we don’t realize how utterly ridiculous it would be to pretend we are anything less than poor, weary souls desperately in need of a swim in grace. C.S. Lewis said this in his masterpiece Mere Christianity, and it’s one of my life quotes:

“But if you are a poor creature – poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels – saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion – nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends – do not despair. He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day He will fling it on the scrap heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all – not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school.”

I’ve come to see that Christians are often running from their roots the same way I did in all my young zeal. We want to be good, to be clean, to be better. So we run.

We cut at ourselves and exile the parts of our stories that bring us shame, and we try so very hard to be worthy of grace. And when we realize we’re still driving the same old “wretched machine,” despite decades of living into the Christian prescriptives for goodness, we are left with little choice but to deflect and scapegoat others “worse” than us so that we don’t have to do the hard, scary work of asking God why transformation isn’t happening as quickly and comprehensively as we expected it.

Here’s the bottom line for me. I’ve loved too many people who “can’t get right” to believe that things are as black and white as our version of American Christianity suggests.

People who have been traumatized from the time they were in their mothers’ womb and every day of their lives afterward. People who have done all they can to hack and cut their unacceptable parts away and ended up only bleeding out on the floor alone. People whose brains are literally broken. People who have never had a fair chance at any damn thing in their lives and so they exist literally the only way they know how.

Maybe you live in a well-ordered world in which everything and everyone is proper, courteous, safe, whole, and healed. If so, I’m genuinely happy for you.

But that’s not the world I inhabit, and it never has been, even when I did my level best to construct that world for myself in the name of Jesus. The funny thing is, that’s not the world Jesus inhabits either. There’s something to that, my friend.

I believe in Divine Judgment. Judgment is love because it enables us to come clean, be set free once and for all, and stand raw before God and ourselves to receive the truest love and acceptance we’ve ever known. Judgment is also what will enable justice to roll down like a river and make all the wrong things right one day.

 But I also recognize that we live here on earth in mystery. There’s so much we don’t know and understand about ourselves, the universe, existence, divinity, and human potential. I believe that God takes all of that into account for every soul as Jesus demonstrated on the cross, facing the very worst evil of which humans are capable:

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” – Luke 23:34

I’ll end with this. From the outside I check most of the Christian boxes. I’ve been faithfully married to one man for twenty-four years, I’ve raised seven kids, taken the vulnerable into my home and heart, fed the hungry, stood with the needy and rejected, visited and supported the imprisoned. I read my Bible and pray every day. I’ve been to seminary, helped pastor a church, preached sermons, and have provided soul care for countless people.

Yet, I am firmly in the “can’t get right” category. I cycle through seasons of hatefulness, greed, lust, discontent, selfishness, pride, impatience, and unforgiveness. There are significant issues in my life I’ve been wrestling with as far back as memory goes and my transformation in all these areas has been painfully incremental, fraught with stops and starts. You wouldn’t know all of that from looking on the outside of my life, but that makes none of it less real or dangerous.

Do you have ways you fall short of the glory of God? What opportunities for lifelong learning show up in your life as sinful tendencies? Have you ever wondered why transformation can take so long and be so subtle? Does it ever frustrate you how little some things in your life seem to change?

If so, don’t despair! God knows what kind of wretched machines we’re trying to keep on the road here. But, also, perhaps we’d do well to keep that in mind for all humankind. In so many profound ways, we do not know what we’re doing. In the words of Hamlet, “There are more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

I’m aware of what Jesus said about hell, and what the Bible says about God’s wrath and judgment. I’m well versed in biblical definitions of sinful behavior and how God feels about it. I’ve also read shelves full of theologians, commentators, linguists, historians, and internet bloggers who have ancient and fresh takes on Christian orthodoxy.

But, when I lay my head down at night, I know in my deepest parts that I’m accountable to God and humankind for the practical ways I loved and welcomed, the ways I tried to understand and learn, the humble heart I extended in good faith to others – or not. When I think of “sin” I don’t think of doctrines or theories or speculative theology. I think of people – flesh and blood human beings who I love and know and to whom I belong.

And I know I think this way because of Christ in me. When He looks upon us, He sees us – not as problems to be exterminated but as divine image-bearers to be preserved. He came for us, loves us, and won’t give up on us. That’s what I’ll explore next time on The Golden Thread.

xoxo,

AHJ