Thursday, July 17, 2014
I miss the Word of God...
I read this article about a former gymnast who is doing rather well on a show called American Ninja Warriors. Being an old lady, I used to watch American Gladiators when I was younger, as well as Battle of the Network Stars. Something about obstacle courses have always interested me. I liked them when I was an Outdoors Adventure counselor at a Christian sports camp. I liked them on that rather silly gladiator show. And I used to watch Survivor just for the obstacle courses ... only I stopped watching because I simply couldn't stomach the horrible behavior that happens when the challenges where not happening. When I saw promos for the ninja show, I was sort of interested, but never actually checked to see if I could stream it.
I watched the video of Kacy's performance. It truly is a spectacular display of athletic ability. Something that always came in play on the gladiator shows was the lack of upper body strength women had. Their obstacle courses where shorter and easier. They were never expected to excel at challenges such as the rings. This ninja course is 1,000 times harder than anything I have ever seen before, and this little slip of a woman, five feet tall, muscled her way through it. A course, apparently, men struggle with. An impressive video.
And I read the comments. SIGH.
I know.
I should not be reading comments.
Comments fell me. People have become so very cruel; civility is a thing of the ancient past. That really was the hardest part of Facebook ... seeing all the lack of civility even amongst Christians. When I would lament the cruelty being flung about so easily, folk would tell me that Christians are sinners. When ... when did we set aside that they are also saints? I know that I daily sin, but I strive against that sin with the help of the Holy Spirit. Or at least I did when I thought I had faith. The point is, even now, I would still strive against the baseness of human nature and reach out for kindness ... or at least civility ... not for salvation but because we ought to care for our fellow man. It is my opinion that folk use the fact that Christians are sinners as an excuse rather than to admit that there is no place for such blatant sin ... especially among brothers and sisters in Christ.
But I digressed.
I laughed so hard, reading this three-comment chain, that I actually had to go running for the Tesselon Pearls and try to actively calm the coughing down lest I ended up in the ER. Laughing used to be such a problematic asthma trigger for me, especially since I have cough variant asthma. I suppose, given then fact that I cannot take B2Agonists that are the standard of care for the emergency treatment of asthma attacks, it is a good thing that I do not laugh all that much anymore.
Anyway, whilst I am sure this will cause offense to someone, somewhere, here is the exchange:
I really, really, really wanted to "like" gymbeaux's reply. It cracked me up and still causes me to smile broadly.
I miss the Bible Belt.
Maybe the Bible Belt of yesteryear.
A while ago, ABC was brave enough to broadcast the absolute best "Christian" show I have ever seen. None of that 7th Heaven sap. No, ABC went for the heart of the Bible Belt in its show GCB. You can watch 10 episodes on Hulu+. It will scandalize most and, were the show a book, it would be both burned and banned. Me? Well, I think it would have made God chuckle, were He walking the earth again.
Kristin Chinoweth, who is a publicly professing (and rather unapologetic) Christian, is on the show. I read that she is from Oklahoma and I don't know if she ever lived in Dallas, but oh, my, was the show ever so authentic about the odd mix of Southern, Texan, Dallas society, Bible Belt life. Annie Potts is another actress on the show and her time on Designing Women schooled her in the southern part of that life, if nothing else. I do not believe that I have ever had so much fun watching a television show before.
You see, the women—the feral cats—claw at each other using verses from the Bible, going tit for tat the way the third commenter did above. There is this amazing mix of faith and reference even as it is all muddied by pettiness, deep wounds, and a whole lot of deception and saving face. Man, do we ever save face in the South ... in Texas ... in Dallas.
More of a I Corinthians 6:20 person!! That is so very priceless!
Personally, I can think of some Lutherans who could benefit from a careful study of GCB. Set aside the acronym title (Good Christian Bitches) and see how the Word of God is so deeply woven into the lives of evangelicals without understanding its meaning. I think the tendency would be to dismiss the show outright as some sort of mockery. It is not mockery. It is not even mudslinging against Christians. It is, perhaps, a slight spoof on the very real lives many Christians live.
Watching that show, I felt strangely comfortable, even though the whole saving face stuff drove me to despair when I was younger and living in that world. Two examples:
1) When I was in high school, I was involved in Young Life and Campaigners. Originally, Young Life was Young Life Campaign, but over the years it split into two different foci, with the former being on evangelism and the latter being on equipping the saints. We would have Campaigners' Bible study on Friday nights, for most of which I would walk about two miles to the location ... in the dark. Stupid, but I did not have my license for a long time and then wasn't allowed to drive there. Each week, the counselors would chide me about being unsafe and would ask for volunteers to take me home. My classmates would fall over themselves offering and would make comments about how they would have most certainly driven me there if only I asked. I did. I asked each week. Mostly, being very unpopular, I would receive vague replies about not knowing if the person was going. Lies. Then, on Saturday night, many those same Bible study attenders, would be out drinking and getting high. I never understood the duplicity or why it was that going to Campaigners was so popular when few were actually interested in the Word of God.
2) When I was at Baylor, on Sunday mornings, students would dress up to go eat lunch at the cafeterias. They would dress up to give the impression that they had gone to church, instead of the truth: they had stayed out late partying and had slept in instead of attending worship services. Appearances mattered more than the truth. Yet ... it was still there. The Word of God was still so intricately woven through all that stuff.
I miss the presence of the verses in the discourse of my daily life. Even though I know most of them were misused, like the commenter bibledoctor did above. [I suppose gymbeaux's comment was still law, but it was a freer law. And, it should be noted, that quoting Bible verses as a condemnation of a person's life or another's admiration of it in a news article is so totally and completely NOT the way God intended the Word of God to be shared and used and heard and written.]
Is it wrong to miss such a thing? Is it wrong to miss being daily surrounded by people who knew and quoted Scripture at the drop of a hat even when the use of said Scripture was often twisted at best?
When I sit out on the back steps, I often hear a train whistle. The sound comforts me. Last night I was talking on the phone to my sister, and Amos asked to go outside. So, she heard the train whistle and asked me if I was near tracks. Actually, I have never figured out where the sound coming from, if there is some crossing close by that requires a blast from a passing train. All I know is that I hear it often, even in the dead of night, and I am comforted.
I mentioned how much I savor the whistle and she asked me if it reminded me of being at my grandparents' house. I was surprised. I don't remember any train whistles there. She told me that we used to hear them all the time there while laying in our beds at night.
The things I actually remember from that house, I am not sure I can ever record here. Then there are the things that I do not remember, but that I know. For example, my grandparent's back yard was this rather elongated trapezoid, with the small side at the far end of the yard backing up to a crick. Not a creek. A crick.
The gate for the back fence was actually up by the house. I know that we would open the gate and carefully pick our way down the narrow (and oft slippery) path that led to the crick. I am not good with grades, but the crick was at least a good 20 or 30 feet below the height of the back porch. So, we were really not supposed to go down to the crick unless my grandmother was with us, holding our hands as we held on to the fence. Once at the crick, all bets were off.
Hours. Hours were lost perching on those rocks in the water, walking along the bank, counting the tadpoles, setting sticks and leaves to float downstream. Could there have been moss??
The thing is, my grandmother's house was not a safe place. It was not a comforting place at all. Along with the tadpoles came alcoholic rages and abuse. Yet my sister said that we would lie in bed listening to the train whistle and thought that might be why I found the sound of a train whistle comforting.
I have those beds. I slept in one until I bought myself a "big" bed as a graduation present when I finished my Ph.D. Maybe what was comforting to me was that if I was in that bedroom with my sister, it meant that a certain family member was not there ... else wise we would have been sharing the pullout from the couch. A very unsafe bed.
Really, I cannot fathom why a train whistle would comfort me now or how it could be tied to being at my grandparents' house. All I know is that it does. In the dead of night, when my fluffy white puppy dog is finally free from his fears and enjoying the outdoors from the safety of my lap as the two of us are perched on the back steps and the train whistle blows, I am comforted. I have a moment's peace ... a sort of respite.
I did not grow up in a Christian home. I was a teenager before I really entered the world of the Bible Belt. But for a while there, I lived in a world where the Word of God was part of the daily discourse about me. It was read by so many of the people I knew and spoken freely. We would weekly gather (sometimes twice or three times) to study the Word of God. Yes, it was all errant theology. But the Word was there. And I was surrounded by folk who at least maintained the appearance filling their lives with the Word and sharing it not only on Sundays, but on any day. Even if they did not understand its meaning or pursue its presence in their lives, it was still there.
I get how important doctrine is. Have I not created a blog with over two hundred cross-referenced and linked passages to help make navigating that doctrine easier? Have I not typed out whole swaths of that doctrine here? Even now, nearly convinced that doing so is wrong, I still crave to read and hear that true doctrine. But I miss the Bible studies and the fellowship meetings and the weekend retreats and the social gatherings that were filled with the Living Word.
A while ago, I asked someone if she would read the Christian Book of Concord with me. Her reply is that she would only ever do so with her husband. I have heard and read Lutherans say that Bible studies should only be taught by pastors. Well, in my experience, that means that the teaching of the Word is only on Sundays. If you are not a parent, then you have no family with which to have family catechesis. If you are not married, then you have no husband to be the spiritual head and lead catechesis or devotionals. If you are single and in liturgical Lutheran churches, there really is no place to gather together and study apart from Sundays ... no place to hear the Living Word about you the rest of the days of the week. But what about gathering together and just reading?
I miss that life.
I miss the time when that was not a weird or outlier thing to do.
I miss the time when I wouldn't even have to ask.
That's the other thing about Facebook and the online Lutheran world. In all that discourse, the Living Word and the doctrine were rarely present. Personal positions were flung about. If supported, most often they were done so with secondary sources ... church fathers or writings of Martin Luther that were not from the Confessions. And, in my opinion, when the Word was used, it was used as the commenter bibledoctor did. It was used to bind others to a legalistic life instead of sharing the freedom of the Gospel. [I like how Eric puts similar thoughts here.]
Is it wrong to re-watch GCB just to be comforted by a life were the Living Word was so prevalent, even if twisted? Is it wrong to long to be back in the world of Wednesday night bible study, Friday night fellowship, and something on Saturday, too, when I know the doctrine was errant? Is it wrong to miss the praise services that were filled with segments where folk were free to read aloud passages from the Bible, voices rising from pew to pew, everyone willing to listen as long as someone wanted to read, knowing those praise services were also filled with horribly errant praise songs? Is it wrong to long for other Christians in my life to want to sit and read the Bible together? To savor it, to take it in, to talk about the texts?
I have kept hidden so very many parts of my life, and it occurred to me that this part is now hidden, too. Come visit me, and I will ask you to cook with me or play Rumikub with me. If I feel safe with you, I will ask you to watch one of those shows filled with broken people with me ... or a 1970s disaster movie ... or Firefly. But I won't ask you to just sit and read the Bible with me, to talk with me about the Bible and the Confessions. And I will hide my own reading from you.
There was a time when all I had of the Christian life was the Word of God. I had (or so I thought, though I wonder now) been given the gift of faith at camp and came home with only verses written on small slips of paper. I went to Young Life some years later and heard the Word again and found out about a Christian Sports Camp. I went there and learned all about quiet times and devotionals and bible studies and worship services. I came home with a whole Bible, but still had no access to church. An eternity later, I gained access to church and all those things I learned about at the second camp. I lived in a world where the Word of God was spoken freely. Then, it became a world where the Word of God was replaced with Christian literature. Now, I live in a world where the Word of God is really only heard at the proper time and the proper place and spoken by the proper person. And I am no longer proper.
If I really am Saul, you could say that my life of faith began and ended with hiding this ineffable, inexplicable, inescapable longing for the Word of God in my life.
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