Real Life Christianity

(This week, I’m blogging from the Carolina Conference Camp Meeting, where I am the speaker for the youth division. )

 

With a sweet smile on her rosy-cheeked face, Marie* approached me after yesterday morning’s devotion.

“Can I ask you who’s in charge of the music?,” she asked.

Her request was so polite and her demeanor so sincere that I just presumed that she wanted to make a request or even ask to sing herself for the evening’s meeting.

“You know, I’m not really sure,” I told her. “Let’s ask Pastor Tim.”

After a few more consultations with staff, it soon became apparent that her inquiry wasn’t about becoming more involved at all. It was about the drums. And her discomfort.

Pastor Mike, who is in charge of the youth division, apologized and we all thanked her for her honesty. At our staff meeting later that day, however, the decision was unanimous that the youth band was great and we were making no amendments.

Then, the evening meeting started.

I somehow missed the organized protest of 20 youth who got up and walked out, but let me tell you, the other leaders did not. In fact, soliciting the attention of all but two of us (and one of us was preparing to preach at the time!), they continued to loudly complain about “the drums, the guitars, and the girls strutting their stuff up there [referring to the vocalists]” right outside of the meeting room. Their ringleader was a sixty something year old conservative Adventist who also managed to wrangle the conference president (who was conveniently walking by during “the protest”), the division leader, and a few other important people into the conversation.

For an hour after our evening meeting let out, the leaders discussed what the appropriate course of action should be. The division leader, Bill (the same one who invited me to speak), was adamant that not only was there nothing inappropriate about the current praise team, but that we were not about to amend our current program based on the complaint of one group. Also, the protesters have been complaining since their group of home schoolers was in the primary division (for ages 7-9).

As leaders, we made the unfortunate mistake of allowing the praise team to be present during the first half of our meeting. The ultimate resolution was, of course, to allow them to continue, but the hurt expressions on their faces revealed what we all knew: the protesters had missed the whole point of worship.

By focusing on the fact that a (muted!) drum was being played and two guitars were accompanying the piano, they failed to notice that almost 100% of the youth present were engaged in worship. They were singing loudly and were experiencing God. Outside of the worship meeting, while staging “the protest,” those twenty youth were not.

I had just returned from my sister’s place in Asheville before this meeting and was so rushed that I didn’t get a chance to change out of the black pants, casual top, and flip flops I was wearing. I am the child of a West Indian mother, so you can imagine the horror I experienced not preaching in a suit—much less in flip-flops! And, of course, it would be this night that Bill stopped by to hear me and then, had me sit next to him during the hour long staff meeting.  (I was blissfully ignorant of “the protest” while preaching, by the way. I noticed that the leaders only came in for the last ten minutes, but I didn’t know where they had been until afterwards.)

Worship is so much more than the way we express ourselves or the way that we look, though.

Tonight, after I was already dressed in one of the five suits I brought to preach in, I thought about why I felt compelled to wear it. I knew that not only did I have a better time preaching in flip-flops, but the only reason I really thought I should wear the suit was in case a conference official happened to walk by. Then, maybe I’d earn more credibility and get invited back—maybe even to do something bigger! Nobody else would really care. I mean, the kids are running around in shorts and t-shirts and so are the other leaders (including me, during the day!).

I wasn’t invited here based on the way I dress or anything I do in or of myself, though. I was invited on the merit of God working through me and absolutely nothing else. So, I hastily flung my suit onto my hotel room bed and changed into a pair of black slacks with a simple dressy shirt and heels. It was in this attire that I knew I was more approachable and that the focus was unmistakably on Jesus–not on me. Besides, even after the flip-flops, Bill was in attendance for the second consecutive night.

 

*Marie was not actually one of the “protesters.” I realized that was not clear after I finished writing this. She just happened to complain on the same day. Thankfully, she was a lot more tactful and appropriate. Also, names have been changed.

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I wasn’t really in the mood to talk when his conversation bubble popped up in Facebook.  Feelings of congestion, head pain, and coughing were seducing me back into the embrace of my down comforter.  I had only logged in to quickly reply to a message.

“Hey, what’s going on?,” the white conversation bubble taunted me. 

Usually, we communicate by email.  He is, after all, a busy medical student whose replies are more easily facilitated at his leisure.  This was unusual.

“Not much.  Am sick.  How are you?,” I replied, forcing myself to engage his comment. 

He was never known for his brevity.  I knew this conversation would not be succinct.

We met in college, unified by our common Christian beliefs, and later, residence in South Florida.  Now, he was almost finished with his 2^nd year at the University of Florida School of Medicine.  He had been goading me since he found out I was applying to consider UF.  As a result, most of our conversations now revolved around such a prospect—with special attention given to discussing the program, the track record of residencies, and the strength of the academic preparation. 

The necessity of outlining my current activities, list of schools, and progress on MCAT studying were not unexpected.  I purposely chose to exclude, however, the preparation for a week long series of sermons being preached at the Carolina Conference Camp Meeting going on concomitantly.   I fly to North Carolina the day after I sit for my MCATs. 

Mention of such an activity has heralded varied responses—especially from my classmates–but they are usually never positive.  Even my mother questioned whether or not I was “taking on too much” and scolded the meager compensation I will be given for my efforts.  It is a common plight of ministry.  

Eventually, my friend asked what he could pray about.  It was then that everything came tumbling out.  How I need to focus on MCATs, but feel distracted by the immense planning of 14 messages.  How I am not completely finished with my application, but have so many other things vying for my time.  How I somehow got sick right after classes ended and have wasted four days nursing this awful virus, instead of studying.

Then, he said it. 

“Sometimes God purposely gives us more than we can handle in order to demonstrate His power.  Without Him, it would be impossible to succeed.”

I guess it could have been considered a twist on the adage that, “God never gives us more than we can handle,” or “With God, all things are possible.”  The way that he said it, however, was what I didn’t know I needed to hear. 

The fact that God is always trying to teach us about His character always seems to be forgotten when we are stressed, strained, or in my case, slightly delusional from our low grade fevers.  Yet, there is a reason for the popularity of pithy adages.  They are, after all, completely true.

I used to think that after my teenage years, the life lessons from God would (finally!) be over.  Day after day, I realize that He’s nowhere close to finished—with any of us.  And, no matter what I say, I am thankful for that.

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“Do you like me less now that you know I’m not Catholic?”

My classmate, an undergraduate student taking the same lab, was pulling on the stained white lab apron draped across her midsection and squinching her eyes nervously.

“Oh please, why would I like you less?,” I responded lightly.

From her more than casual associations with the Catholic Student Association, I had just assumed that she was one. Besides, from conversation, her knowledge of the operations of the Catholic church was more advanced than most.

“Well, I don’t know. Because I’m agnostic…?” she asked.

“No, I don’t like you less,” I reassured her.

“It’s not that I have a problem with God,” she continued, hovering close to me as I suspended a test tube over a hot sand bath, “It’s that I have a problem with Jesus.”

And, there it was. It was the very argument heard ad infinitum from the unbelievers in my life.

Just last month, as I sat in an evening service at Sligo SDA, a (non-Adventist) friend I once dated told me,

“I really like these [worship] songs. I actually know most of them because I accidentally found this radio station that I liked and it was playing all of them.”

I started smiling, in anticipation.

“But then when I realized they were singing about Jesus one time,” he continued, “I changed the station and stopped listening to it.”

This notion of Jesus, in fact, was the very reason that our relationship never progressed beyond serious. No matter how appealing the church, a loving God, or very obvious answers to prayers were, it was just too much to accept Jesus.

This week in our Sabbath School lesson, Roy Adams has been investigating the demise of the theological basis of Jesus’ existence. It was when humanism (“the optimistic belief in human capacity and progress”) started, he asserts, that the acceptance of Jesus as a mere historical figure did too.

Without the lens of faith, I can actually understand the reservations of my friends. (I’ve never seen an ordinary man born to a virgin and then transcended to heaven after dying, have you?) But with faith, the universality and specificity of the disbelief just seems a little too…crafted. After all, without an acceptance of Jesus, the notion of a loving God who would take such extreme measures to ensure salvation for His creations is unbelievable. Then, without a belief in a loving God, there’s no reason to hope for anything beyond this life. There’s no need for Christianity. Or, in the case of my lab mate, any religion at all.

The worst part is that because of this planted disbelief, blindness to the greatest love ever known ensues. Salvation is never understood, much less embraced, because this notion of Jesus is used as an overwhelming stumbling block.

So, what about you? Am I the only one with friends who don’t believe in Jesus? What do you tell people when they ask you about Jesus’ existence?

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I didn’t know how to explain the situation, so I just assumed as much gentility as possible.

Staring beyond the thick-rimmed glasses of the young reference librarian, I started with my query.

“I’m doing a research paper on the pursuit of the perfect love-making experience and the role of pharmaceuticals in its evolution.”

Young librarian guy started smiling at me.

“So, umm…I’m sort of having trouble finding documentation of ancient…umm…love-making rituals. Can you help?”

“Well, that was very tactful,” he said, pulling up a chair for me at his computer. “But, we should probably use some more recognizable words in this search engine.”

A few clicks and several more explicit keywords later, we were on our way. Sort of.

The organic chemistry portion of this project had been a breeze. One afternoon with PubMed and I was a fully educated woman on PDE-5 inhibitors and the new phase of guanylate cyclase activators. In contrast, finding a paragraph of documentation about boiling bark in the old country was taking days. Painful, boring days staring out the library window and wishing for the death of this paper.

Today, I was wading through more information about Greek gods, Indian arts, and African customs when I came across this,

“The hang ups and inhibitions that most people have…are largely the result of Biblical attitudes. Sex, was something to be done only in private behind locked doors, and only for procreation. Those restrictive ideas come to us from the Bible, in which nudity is condemned as soon as Adam and Eve ate the apple (or technically, the Fruit of Knowledge of Good and Evil).”

Later…

“Adam and Eve were living in Paradise without sex. They disobeyed their god’s order not to eat fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is only after they eat of the fruit of knowledge that they become aware of their genitals and sex. As a result they are caste out of paradise, out of the presence of their god, into a cold, cruel, uncultivated world–where sex is evil.”

Umm…what?

What was as shocking as the mention of the Bible out of the blue (this was a site on the history of Greek customs) was the blatant and erroneous interpretation of what happened in the Garden of Eden.

It wasn’t nudity that was condemned, it was sin. After all, man was created naked—in a sinless form (Genesis 2:25). In fact, Genesis 1:27 says that man and woman were created in “[God’s] own image” and in verse 31, God says that all He made “was very good.” Thus, Adam and Eve could not have been thrown out of the Garden of Eden because they were naked. They were thrown out because they had sinned.

Also, how could Adam and Eve have only discovered their genitals or sex after they sinned? Genesis 2:22 says that Eve was created from Adam to be his companion because “it is not good for man to be alone” (verse 18). Adam and Eve were to be “united to each other (Genesis 2:24)” and to become “one flesh.” Furthermore, all of God’s living creatures were instructed to “be fruitful and increase in number” (Genesis 1:28). Eve’s creation was rooted in emotional, spiritual, and physical unity with her husband before sin.

We already know, though, that using a small portion of truth to misconstrue Biblical events (and consequently God’s character) is an old trick. The nature of sin is manipulation and cunning. It is the reason that we are instructed to question, be aware, and be discerning in this world (Matt. 10:16).

Still, I find it interesting that people who claim to be “open-minded” and “educated” still single out Christianity for examples of inhibited and punitive close-mindedness. Not only does true exploration of the Bible prove the exact opposite, but such a claim directly contradicts the outreach methods employed by most Christians. Christians aren’t known for having a particular religion singled out to analyze and condemn. If we were, I would have mentioned specific ones already in this blog with preceding adjectives like “freaky,” “weird,” or “wrong.” So, who are real close-minded and inhibited ones?

I’m sure over the next year, I’ll have plenty of time to think about that answer as my Spam folder gets filled with “free offers!,” “proven results!,” and maybe one or two more blindly ignorant ramblings. In retrospect, I should have been doing this project on a school computer and not my own laptop.

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I think it was her second suicide attempt that brought her back. That, and her escalating substance abuse.

“I was raped twice…once when I was 11, then when I was 14. I did get pregnant last year, but I had an abortion…then, my depression got really bad again,” she stated, when it was her turn in group therapy.

Her revelations were disturbing, but sadly, not unique. Most of the adolescents in the outpatient day program had similar histories underlying their primary psychiatric diagnosis. Her most recent admission had been related to the suicide attempt that followed the depressive bout she was referencing.

I don’t know what she had been like in the days preceding this group, but today, her affect was bright and her mannerisms animated. After group, she happily chatted with me while we waited for her ride to arrive.

“Yesterday, Mrs. D told me that God will never give us more than we can handle,” she said. “I’ve felt better since she told me that.”

I wasn’t surprised that such advice had been offered, but of everything that had been said at the hospital that day—about the importance of taking medication as directed, applying coping skills when necessary, and coming to staff for help—I was incredulous that it was this pithy and almost trite piece of advice that had been the most meaningful.

“Well, that’s true,” I concurred, smiling. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

During our last staff in-service, though, we had been told that our hospital data showed that not only did patients with faith backgrounds recover faster, but their incidence of recurrence was markedly lower than that of other patients. Without crossing boundaries of political correctness, we were instructed to help our patients discover a reason to hope.

The need for consistent psychotherapy was still apparent, but what Mrs. D seemed to have made a difference. It was a simple and profound truth to her, but to our seventeen year old patient, it was a small source of hope.  Even if that hope would later prove fleeting, it was a start.  And, it was enough to make it through the day.

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