A poem my last post makes me think of for some reason...

Long Story by Stephen Dobyns

There must have been a moment after the expulsion
from the Garden where the animals were considering
what to do next and just who was in charge.
The bear flexed his muscles, the tiger flashed
his claws, and even the porcupine thought himself
fit to rule and showed off the knife points
of his quills. No one noticed the hairless creatures,
with neither sharp teeth, nor talons, they were too puny.
It was then Cain turned and slew his own brother
and Abel’s white body lay sprawled in the black dirt
as if it had already lain cast down forever.
What followed was an instant of prophetic thought
as the trees resettled themselves, the grass
dug itself deeper into the ground and all
grew impressed by the hugeness of Cain’s desire.
He must really want to be boss, said the cat.
This was the moment when the animals surrendered
the power of speech as they crept home to the bosoms
of their families, the prickly ones, the smelly ones,
the ones they hoped would never do them harm.
Who could envy Cain his hunger? Better to be circumspect
and silent. Better not to want the world too much.
Left alone with the body of his brother, Cain began
to assemble the words about what Abel had done
and what he had been forced to do in return.
It was a long story. It took his entire life
to tell it. And even then it wasn’t finished.
How great language had to become to encompass
its deft evasions and sly contradictions,
its preenings and self-satisfied gloatings.
Each generation makes a contribution, hoping
to have got it right at last. The sun rises
and sets. The leaves flutter like a million
frightened hands. Confidently, we step forward
and tack a few meager phrases onto the end

There's a story I need to tell...

While reading Same Kind of Different as Me (which I highly recommend), I came across this passage by Ron Hall with Lynn Vincent-- a passage that sums up a lot of thoughts that have been in my heart and mind in the past year or two:

I guess we were pretty good at the whole Christian thing-- or maybe we were bad at it-- because we managed to alienate many of our old college friends. With our new spiritual eyes, we could see they didn’t have fish stickers either, and we set about saving them from eternal damnation with all the subtlety of rookie linebackers. Looking back now, I mourn the mutual wounds inflicted in verbal battles with the "unsaved." In fact, I have chosen to delete that particular term from my vocabulary as I have learned that even with my $500 European-designer bifocals, I cannot see into a person’s heart to know his spiritual condition. All I can do is tell the jagged tale of my own spiritual journey and declare that my life has been the better for having followed Christ.

Hall’s words sear into me when he talks about verbal battles and saving others from eternal damnation. Faces of dear friends whom I tried to “save” in high school-- like that was my job and not God’s-- come to my mind, and I remember bitter cynics I met in classes in college who probably had every right to be cold and harsh toward evangelical Christians.   It doesn’t take many episodes of The 700 Club, news broadcasts about Christians burning holy books or storming soldiers’ funerals with signs that say “God hates you,” saccharine speeches of Joel Osteen, failed predictions of the end of time, or  fire and brimstone stories that smack of the same mixture of lie and ultimatum your parents gave you in the Santa Claus presents vs. coal scenario to make even a believing Christian like me doubt the whole crazy thing. Of course people are cynics. It doesn’t take much wit or way with words to poke plenty of holes in Christianity. I believe, and I like to think I can do it with the best of ‘em.

“Is there anyone who ever remembers changing their mind from the paint on a sign? Is there anyone who really recalls ever breaking rank at all for something someone yelled real loud one time?” So go the opening lyrics to John Mayer’s “Belief.” I think of these lines every time I drive I-40 East from Nashville to Newport and contemplate the gigantic billboard inquisition “If you died today, where would you spend eternity?” and as I drive through Knoxville, wondering if the city’s half a dozen billboards with rip-your-heart-out anti-abortion ads that say things like “Mommy, I forgive you. You didn’t know what you were doing. Love, the Unborn” have actually ever helped anyone escape hell at all-- either the literal, physical, eternal afterlife one or the literal, physical, emotional, here-and-now-on-earth hell that I can only imagine the experience of having an abortion must be.

I don’t know that I’ve deleted the word “unsaved” from my vocabulary, but I know I hate using it, and I hate using the word “saved” for that matter too. I don’t like to talk to about “when I got saved” like it was a one-time magical event or like I had even a speck to do with it in comparison to how much God had to do with it, and while the word is used to describe followers of Christ in Scripture, I think it has been tainted in our culture with too many unintended meanings to keep using it as a main part of my vocabulary at least. I do know, though, like Ron Hall, that there is certainly no way for me to tell if someone else is or isn’t saved-- whatever exactly that means-- and I’ve been quite through for a quite a long time with the practice of telling people that they need to get saved or how to do it. 

At the same time, however, it doesn’t sit well in me to stay silent about what I believe. I feel like a liar and a coward not being bold about my faith. As cynical as I am about almost every way I’ve ever seen evangelism happen, and as surely as I believe that not many people-- if any-- really change their minds from just the paint on a sign, I still feel that something is missing from my faith if I don’t talk about it, if don’t share it.

If I know of a sale at a clothing store that I know a friend loves as much as I do, I make sure she knows about it. If I read a good book, I lend it to a friend. If I know a good doctor or hairdresser, I recommend that person. I sang the praises of Indian Lake AT&T on Facebook and to everyone I saw for days just because the guy behind the counter let me in right at closing time and gave me a new SIM card so my phone would work again. I insist on sharing favorite movies and songs with others, and I tell everyone I know that they simply have to have Sweet CeCe’s if they haven’t before. Seriously.

So what must my faith, my Jesus, my God mean to me if I never really even bring them up? How important can they really be in my life if they’re less worth mentioning than the brand of straightening iron I use or what Taylor Swift song I’m really digging right now?

Of course, it’s not as simple as that. It’s not so much that I don’t think it’s important as it is that I don’t want to push my beliefs on anyone. Sharing interests and day-to-day information doesn’t have so much potential bite to it. After all, it’s not like I tell my friends that they’re going to go to hell or-- doctrines of eternity aside-- that their life won’t be as full or satisfying without a hot pink CHI or sprinkling cereal on top of frozen yogurt. Not even the president of the Taylor-Swift-Can’t-Sing Club is going to be that offended-- at least not for long-- just because I tagged her in a note with the lyrics to Taylor’s latest bubble gum sweet toe-tapping tune. It’s just not that big a deal.

But tag an “unbelieving” friend in a note about their need for Jesus, give them a Bible instead of your favorite recent bestseller for their birthday, or recommend the living water that can satisfy even long after the Sweet CeCe’s dish is empty, and you’re treading on much more sensitive, divisive turf. Religion, faith, belief-- these are so much more personal than a sale at the Gap Outlet. And I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, send the wrong message, be judgmental, push them farther away, ruin a relationship forever...

But, religion, faith, belief-- they’re so much more important to me than a sale at the Gap Outlet. Why am I willing to let relationships with people I care about stay at such a superficial level that I’m afraid to talk about anything more personal than musical preferences and places to eat? Even more important, less vapid topics that I can and do discuss with friends-- things like politics, thoughts and philosophies, education-- those things aren’t as important to me either. I act like they are. My time, attention, and conversations certainly reflect that they are. But I know that they’re just pieces, just parts, just shadowy reflections of what I really want to explore and know and be a part of-- God.

So here’s what I have to work on-- telling that jagged tale of my  own spiritual journey and learning how to explain, somehow, that my life is better with Jesus. And not better in a “I pray to God and He sees fit to give all good gifts to me to bless my life” way. And not better in a more holy or more “good” way. And not any better than anyone else either.

Just better. 

Better because it all just makes more sense, feels more complete, seems to explain what I feel echoed, whispered, promised in everything-- literature as old and older than the Bible, ballet, a sky full of stars, the ideals of love and compassion and sacrifice that seem to weave through every story that moves me, music, art, academia. Everything in history, all of humanity, is groaning for something-- striving for better, reaching for perfection, longing for and looking for wholeness. 

A student gave me a page of quotations she liked because she thought I would enjoy them, and I recently painted one of them onto a canvas to hang in my classroom. It's attributed to Ernst Haas, who a quick Google search reveals is a photographer and one whose work I want to explore and share with my students. He said, “A picture is the expression of an impression. If beauty were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?” That’s how I feel about God. Somehow, everything in art and history seems to proclaim that man is searching for beauty, finding glimmers of it, striving to preserve it, express it, create more of it, celebrate what of it he can find in himself and those around him. Art wouldn’t change if it had been perfected yet. Technology and society wouldn’t continue to advance if there were no room left for progress. All of human history, all of my history as a human, seems to be just one long story of progressing, advancing, carrying on toward beauty and perfection. How could we long for it if it didn’t exist somewhere? Why can we not attain it if it is not beyond humanity itself, if it is not something more, something purer, vaster, more full and complete than we can understand?

It is not possible for me not to believe in God. Surely He must exist. It seems to me it stands to reason that love, hope, joy, and beauty must derive from somewhere beyond the functions of chemicals in the human brain. Science tells us that matter can be neither created nor destroyed, but surely it must have a source somewhere; if it cannot be created, how does it exist at all? Surely there must be something to bestow the initial finite amount of “stuff” in the universe.

And surely personalities and spirits, emotions and thoughts have origin not in cold impersonal chemicals but in a spirit, in an entity with personality, emotions, and love. God.

Now I realize the next logical step is the question of who/what created God, and that is a “chicken or egg” kind of conundrum, but somehow I am not at odds with the idea of an uncreated deity as much as I am with the idea of an uncreated human. It is problematic for me to try to assume that nothing created humanity and that it simply exists. It is far more logical and fathomable to me that something exists beyond me-- something so complex that it is beyond my realm, beyond my understanding, somehow able to exist by its own accord and for its own sake. It is impossible, however, for me to believe that something as complex but ultimately powerless as humans could simply be, simply happen, simply exist without any idea of how we came to be so.

John Mayer goes on to sing that belief is “a beautiful armor that makes for the heaviest sword- like punching underwater, you never can hit who you’re trying for.” I’ve become fearful of the sword of belief, petrified of wielding it clumsily, misaiming, and shattering, scarring people I care about.

But “how will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard?” (Romans 10:14) How can anyone I know know of what faith, belief, God mean to me and have done in me, if I am always silent? If I don’t consider Jesus a name to be said more than those of human musicians, authors, and politicians? 

How do I even begin to tell my jagged story? What do I say? How do I convince anyone that this is not what John Mayer writes off as a “chemical weapon for the war that’s raging on inside.” Faith for me is not “an exhibition,” an attempt that I feel compelled to make at being good or doing the right thing. It is something that is real, liberating, all-encompassing.

I’ve got to get better at telling that story, and I’ve got to start telling it. Genuinely. Not in a way that’s like verbally condemning someone who’s lactose intolerant for not trying Sweet CeCe’s but in a way that’s like recommending a doctor to someone who’s actually looking for one, like lending a book to someone who might truly enjoy reading it.

It’s the story that defines my life, who I am, everything that matters. It’s a story worth telling to everyone who cares at all to hear...