Category: Faith

Giving, Accepting and Celebrating Love

Posted on by Hilarey

I received some council this week, which I desperately needed. And I will share some of my thoughts processing it in honor of today.

If you swing from opposite ends between pride and debasement, arrogance and self loathing—try to remember that following God is all about walking in the uncomfortable tension in the middle.

We see tension everywhere in scripture. Like the “already—but not yet” concept of salvation. We see it in that tenuous path between law and grace, where we are completely commanded to follow the Lord in fearful-awe, and completely forgiven when we do not, trusting his loving long-suffering and gentleness.

Abstinence can be easier than moderation because it’s difficult to balance. Some of the most unattractive things about faith groups are when they do not walk in this tension and set up camp on either end. All fearful law or cheap grace. But again, and again, we rest in knowing that two things can be true.

As you love yourself

The admonition I received was that inside the greatest two Commandments, a third component is inferred. That you are loving yourself.

Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Somehow, we translate this into “love your neighbor more than yourself.”

It seems to be coming full circle for me, with the book I read last fall on boundaries. Setting aside the false doctrine of unworthiness, allowing destruction to wreak havoc in your life because, after all, “Christ laid down his life as a sacrifice.” So all Christians should be devalued as a reflection of him.

Somehow, we know that’s not right, and here’s where we dabble in riding the pendulum. Trying to counteract shame with self-exaltation. Deep insecurity often fronts with bravado.

Intentionally laying down your life as a gift is far different from allowing others to control you and orchestrate destruction in your soul.

But, it’s quite a journey from:
you don’t have a right to boundaries…
to:
boundaries are godly…
then:
not only do you have a right to them, but it’s poor stewardship if you do not protect your relationship with God.

You actually have a responsibility, believer, to create a divide that keeps chaos out of your soul.

Back to self

I was also encouraged that the middle tension between pride and self debasement is actually self-confidence.

Confident in God’s love for you. Confident in who he says you are, and that you are made in his image.

So on this day we celebrate love, I want to encourage you to confidently love yourself.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

I decided to rewrite this verse to myself, so I could see how I was doing. Whether or not you received a love letter today, I think it would be beautiful to rewrite this verse (or paraphrase it out loud) to yourself as well.

Here is what I found:
I’m impatient when I want a quick fix. I’m not kind in my self-talk. Internal pride and external boasting destroy me inside and out. My body is a temple, and I am free to honor it. Self-seeking is choosing the moment over the lasting. Being angry with myself and then listing my wrongs is mimicking the accuser, and not my Lord. Instead of taking pleasure in things that are not from God—rejoice in seeking and finding truth. Protect and guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Trust that you’re made in the image of God, and his arm is not too short to save you. Hope and persevere, which is to anticipate in joy, even while you endure without seeing the promise.

To compare: I’m impatient when I want a quick fix. (Love is patient.) I’m not kind in my self-talk. (Love is kind.) Internal pride and external boasting destroy me inside and out. (Love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.) My body is a temple, and I am free to honor it. (Love does not dishonor.) Self-seeking is choosing the moment over the lasting. (Love is not self-seeking.) Being angry with myself and then listing my wrongs is mimicking the accuser, and not my Lord. (Love is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs.)

You get the picture.

If your first self-check doesn’t reveal any areas of confident success, that’s part of the process. Next, rewrite to yourself as a promise.

Happy Valentine’s Day. You are loved.

Dismantling Human Tradition

Posted on by Hilarey

When I was young, I told my mom a name I wanted to give to a future child. Her quick response was that if my future husband had ever known someone by that name—and didn’t like the person—he wouldn’t want the memory of them in his home.

The same name, the same word, can have different connotations.

The term “Deconstruction” has taken on a definition all its own in Christendom. It is basic etymology. As words popularize and morph meaning, they assume new preconceptions and sometimes baggage.

Maybe you know someone who deconstructed and ran screaming from the faith, destroying others. So, you hate the concept. It is scarier to watch someone else do it, but this is where westerners get to experience “Though none go with me, I still will follow.”

When God reveals a lie that I’ve believed, it’s usually painful. But it is an exhilarating process and increases my faith. The writers in my critique group who wrote for Love Inspired Suspense always incorporated a lie that their heroes and heroines believed: to be overcome before the end of the novel.

But what happens when it isn’t just a lie about your worthiness or purpose, but a lie about your faith? And what if it’s a dozen at once, more confusion than you can handle, so you are not sure if you can trust what is truth from your entire foundation?

I feel like continuing to build upon lies because you don’t want to lose your faith is more dangerous than realizing that you have something weak in the foundation and then inspecting or tearing it down.

A few years ago, some of my foundational bricks eroded.

An existential crisis of faith can become a spring cleaning if you don’t fear what you’ll find. Be more afraid of ignoring it. Deconstruction for me was merely inspecting which bricks were made of hay and stubble, fingering them out of the foundation, and replacing them with something worthy.

I guess that’s more like dismantling. When you want to keep all the good parts of a machine but pull every piece out and line them up to find the broken cog and replace it.

When terms take on baggage, we can try renaming them. But that’s just semantics. If everyone started using the new term, replacing deconstruction with dismantling or something else, it would just morph in definition and still offend some and not others.

Dismantling Human Tradition

For me, deconstruction was not questioning the Bible. But it has involved not fixating on single word inerrancy and literalism. Because it’s a simplistic translation that says Eve was created from Adam’s rib. Man doesn’t have one missing rib and, metaphorically, the word could mean side. As in, a side of man that is no longer in him is now embodied in woman.

But more than multiple translations of a single word—I’ve had to wrestle with the way the Bible was deciphered in our country and era. It was through the lens of human tradition that made me assume what certain things in the Bible meant.

As I’ve altered my view on eternal conscious torment I realized my belief can reinforce my understanding of scripture when I’m reading.

Some form of deconstruction has to happen to every believer. At least everyone who comes to faith as a child or is raised under someone else’s faith. That’s how to make what you’ve heard your own faith.

We also need to dissect things we’ve heard that were just a tangent of someone else’s faith journey. A situation where you never heard the resolution, only the plaguing question. “Why did he have to die?”

Or maybe we only heard the answer to something, but not the process. This is frequent in the New Testament. We’re often given a specific answer to a specific question in a context that is not explained, because everyone knew it. “Women cover your heads.”

Misunderstood

Premarital sex in the church comes with a lot of shame, so I remember someone quoting to me, “The marriage bed is sacred.” It was lovely… very redeeming… and good in the moment I first heard it. But it was also quoted to imply that “everything goes” in the marriage bed. If you’re married, it’s kosher…

Without the whole-Bible framework, this example of misquoting scripture can become license for anything. Because the verse is actually a command to, “Keep the marriage bed sacred.” Imagine my surprise when I found it written very different than free-license. Keep the marriage bed sacred is a lot more congruent with the whole of scripture which says God will judge fornicators and adulterers.

The Letter of the Law But Not the Heart

Scripture does not need to be misquoted to be taken out of the whole-heart of the gospel. If you read that someone cannot deny their spouse intimacy without also applying God’s design for equality, consent, and selfless love, it allows marital rape and oppression.

Or the popularly quoted OT scripture that a girl must marry her rapist. At the time, and still in some current cultures, a rape victim was utterly destroyed. She became ineligible for marriage, and since children were the only way to provide for her future, she would be completely destitute. So, giving her “raised status” as a wife, in a home, and then not being allowed to divorce her actually redeemed her living needs.

This is why I bristle when someone wants to look up a scripture to prove a point.

Be careful when you accept thoughts and statements that sound biblical. Be careful when you quote a portion of the text without the whole-heart, or use it as a weapon against yourself or others. You might lay a brick of stubble in someone’s foundation.

Also, be wary of taking your interpretation or personal directive as prescriptive law. Just because God revealed to you that you should not masturbate, it doesn’t mean you should tell the whole high school youth group that masturbation is sin. Rather, share how God can speak individually through the heart of scripture for a specific need in the moment.

Acts 18:24-26 says Apollos was mighty in scripture and knew many things but a husband and wife team, Priscilla and Aquila, took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.

More Accurately

Some many people have used the verse “God hates divorce” as a weapon. God hates me, or God hates that a person got divorced. It’s quoted with disregard that God is speaking about hating the violence of divorce against the vulnerable, inside of a covenant which should protect them. Doesn’t it make more sense that he hated the blood on the garments of men who abused women by treating them like objects and divorcing them?

Yet, my grandma couldn’t teach Sunday school because she’d been divorced. That’s human tradition.

The Bible Project App has a great series right now about the Sermon on the Mount. You listen to a pleasant reading of scripture, a snippet of a discussion, and a short video commentary each week while working through the passage.

Week 20 speaks to divorce, and it helped me wrestle with some of the misquoted verses and lies I’ve always had. (Week 18 also validated why looking at someone with lust dehumanizes them.)

The Bible Project unpacks the specific question surrounding that cultural debate of divorce. It speaks to a situation which doesn’t align perfectly today, since men can’t cast aside their wives without income and protection because she ruins dinner. But when we take this reply from Jesus and repeat the Bible literally word for word, we think the only legit reason for divorce is infidelity.

Human tradition uses the Bible to justify social power. Dismantling and deconstruction can remove the barbs of weaponized, incomplete thoughts from scripture to see the larger context of God’s provision for humanity. Dismantling human tradition has been beautiful. I am meeting a good God.

Deconstruction isn’t just pulling the entire structure down because of tragedy or tough things you don’t understand. It’s testing all the bricks with fire. And even if most of them burn up—can’t God build from the ground anew? All we need is the cornerstone. Hold on to Christ and wrestle with everything else.

You don’t need a brick that says “7 day creation with dinosaurs.” You don’t need a brick that says “musical instruments and dim lighting followed by a 35 minute, three-point sermon.”

I mean… wasn’t the Jesus freak movement just removing the bricks that said, “men can’t have long hair” and, “you must wear shoes to church?”

Don’t fear the wilderness if your worthless structure is burning down. Let human traditions turn to ash, keep only the cornerstone.

Unquestioning Obedience

Posted on by Hilarey

I think I always trusted that you could wrestle with God, but felt there was a warning, or at least a caveat. If you wrestle with him, you’ll come away with a limp. So, if you want the easiest life, just trust him implicitly.

I remember a time when I felt uncomfortable and said to my kids, “Please follow me.” They slipped in behind me and we left the theater without another word. In the car, I thanked them for obeying without question. My daughter reflected on that, saying it was weird to be thanked—because it never occurred to her not to obey.

When I consider the situation, I assume they were uncomfortable as well. I don’t think they were always unwaveringly obedient. Unquestioning submission is helpful in certain situations where a parent or military commander does not have control. But I don’t think it’s something to strive for, or to be expected. Because when you’re raised to be overly obedient, you have a hard time learning to distinguish who can tell you what to do later in life.

To a human mind, obedience from others might feel like trust. Or even love. Obedience is a facade of trust, though, because you can obey mindlessly. Even if you come to a place where you implicitly trust whatever someone says, it isn’t proof of love or trust. It could just be fear of punishment. Fear of walking away with a limp.

However, I think when you really love God; you do really trust him.

Interestingly, though, I don’t see God asking us to trust or to follow without question and reasoning. It might seem like we are sheep because he describes himself as the Good Shepherd. But I don’t actually see any indication that he wants us to act like ignorant animals with our heads down, only thinking of our needs, destroying our path, biting each other, and mindlessly responding in obedience when a staff snacks us.

There’s definitely more than one way to question the Almighty God. In Luke, when Mary asked, “How can this be?” she received an answer and her praise song is recorded. When John the Baptist’s dad, Zacharias asked, basically the same thing around the same time, he gets in trouble and his voice is temporarily removed. So an insolent heart might affect the interaction.

But…think about this: Zacharias still received the blessing of his son, got his voice back, and finished in praise like Mary!

I don’t know that an easy life without wrestling wounds, questioning, or needing correction is the goal. Don’t be afraid to fall into the hand of the Lord, because his mercy is very great, but may we never fall into human hands!

Obedience with some details

God tells Ananias in a vision to go get Saul in Acts 9:10-19. I love his reply. “God, I’ve heard about this guy. Are you sure? He has authority to put me in prison.” God replies, “Go. He is my chosen instrument.” He replied with a challenge because of his fears. But when he got clarification, he went.

Peter does something unthinkable in Acts 10. He goes inside the home of a gentile. (Possibly an ancestor of a modern Palestinian—essentially making it possible for you and me to be a Christian.) Peter sets aside racial superiority and, dumbfounded, says, “I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him.”

But Peter didn’t start that way. First, he received a dream. One so shocking it created offense. Peter was incensed and declared that nothing unclean had ever touched his lips. God rebutted him and gave the information he needed to walk into the waiting circle of gentiles.

Allowing doubts

I found an intriguing idea about doubt helping you maintain your faith in an article regarding a classical education school in town. They found their graduates were more likely to pray alone, to read religious material, to practice their faith… But also more likely to doubt their faith than evangelical and homeschool peers. The higher percentage of admitted doubts encouraged them because it meant they had “…a healthy level of curiosity and are willing to express doubts and find answers.”

I think there’s a link with not allowing yourself to question God because of fear of him, fear of others, or fear of what you’ll find, breeding a fundamentalist version of faith based on “intolerance, tunnel vision, and dogmatic rigidity.”

The key is finding the answers. Not staying numb, distracted, lazy or fearful.

Wrestling with God

Peter was prepared by the miracle he witnessed of the fish when he was first called to follow Christ. He was prepared by the dream when he went into the home of the gentiles. And Ananias asked for clarification. There are times in the Bible when only a command and an action are recorded, but we don’t know what groundwork was laid to create that trust or what dreams and visions built the faithful one up to that point.

For the most part, I try to keep my darkest wrestling and greatest fears pulled back from others. Is this the best thing? Would it have helped my young children if I had been more open about confusing things? I guess I would have first needed to be honest with myself.

I want to be quick to follow the Lord. Even to jump without asking for questions—so it’s hard to get my mind wrapped around not being required blind trust as sort of test… with correction waiting on the other side.

I see it working that way in the world, but not in scripture. I haven’t experienced it with God either. He is not scrambling for a semblance of control like a military leader, or a parent who doesn’t have the words or patience to explain more than, “Because I said so.”

I can think of times when God told me to move, and I sat still. I’m more likely to look back on my life and consider opportunities where I hesitated, and possible blessing was lost. Humans are prone to measure success through the temporary, worldly terms of what we can see.

I can wonder if I missed a blessing while arguing, but the love and trust I’ve developed after questions are answered make a better bedfellow than unquestioning obedience.

Growth through reasoning with him might be a more valuable treasure than avoiding a limp.

The Things That Are God’s

Posted on by Hilarey

I’m not thinking of taxes, yet. I will be in a few weeks when I sit down to organize everything. I’m just thinking about how much I love the interaction between Christ and the political/spiritual leaders who tried to trap him in his words regarding taxes.

In Mark 12:13-17, they asked if it was lawful to pay the imperial tax, thinking it was a no-win situation for him. Who wants to pay tax to an oppressive military occupying your country and taking all the money back as tribute to the conquerors? Most don’t want to pay their own government–even when it funds schools, parks and public services. Especially because the school bonds never seem to end and very little appears to trickle down into books and teacher salaries. People spend other people’s money flippantly.

We want to be in control of our own money.

But, I think this is one part of why we should tithe. Of course, there are several valuable reasons. To acknowledge, consider and then care for the poor. To have personal investment in other believer’s needs, so they become like family. To keep money flowing and fund important things instead of hording like a dead sea.

But really, the point is to not be in control of our own money.

There was a time years ago when I wanted to tithe, but did not see where we could. We’d come to Idaho to serve in a ministry. Life had always been tight, but then, we had to ration everything to make it. Lights, gas and heat. Our fridge was typically near-empty a few days before payday. We did not have any entertainment or unnecessary spending we could eliminate. I didn’t know where charitable giving could be squeezed from.

Wealth wasn’t my goal, and I certainly wasn’t thinking that God would owe me worldly baubles if I did tithe. I was growing, and wanted to be obedient to him, and I believed that we needed to tithe to do it. I added a line in my spreadsheet with Malachi 3:10, just to take him at his word.

“Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”

I remember driving down the road and asking God, “Will you please give us enough money to tithe?”

Shortly after, my husband received a raise that netted about 10 percent to our budget. Enough for the traditional tithe, but not enough to add Netflix (which was RedBox at the time) or a trip to frozen yogurt as a family.

I knew right away that God had answered my specific prayer. I think when I asked him if he would keep his word–he asked me if I would keep mine.

We started to tithe. But I will tell you, even though we now had enough, it was not easy to send the money away. The church we attended had a frivolous spender at the helm, so there was a learning curve of how and who to tithe to. But every month we’d give our money away, we’d juggle our bills, and we’d live frugally.

A lesson worth more than money

Notice in Malachi that God does not promise blessing in the way of wealth. As we did this, I discovered that I gradually trusted God more and more. Especially when there was exactly enough. But in order to do it, I had to write out our paper check and verbalize, “God, I need you…more than I need fifty-three dollars.” It was almost comical to say sentences like that out loud as I spelled the numbers in long hand. Duh. The God of the universe who holds all things together is just a little more security than fifty bucks. Even then.

But then later, as the amounts changed, the sentiment never did. “God, I need you more than one-hundred and thirty-two dollars.” It has gotten to where I’ve not seen an amount that would give me pause to write out without declaring that I need God more than that number. (Although I don’t write physical checks anymore.)

It wasn’t flawless. There were growing pains. On more than one occasion I would hold back a tithe because we “couldn’t afford it.” Something unexpected like a random bank fee would usually come up. I remember one unexpected bill that was the exact amount of the tithe I held back.

I learned that I really did need God more than one-hundred and thirty-two dollars. And when I’d write it and say it, I’d imagine intangible blessings my storehouse could not contain, and not want to be without whatever God would pour out over me in my trust.

Money seems like one of the hardest things to relinquish. So, you want to be able to see the monies of this world as belonging to the Caesars of this world. But there are so many other arousing things that whisper provision and satisfaction.

If you belong to God

When there is a thing, a person, or an action promising joy, fulfillment, pleasure, tranquility… but it means to step outside of a relationship with God to embrace it, we can use same phrase. Even if it is something good or benign, but it isn’t the right time, I have found success saying it out loud.

God… I need you more than I need this item.

God… I need you more than I need this relationship.

God… I need you more than I need this sin.

God… I need you more than I need ___.

In his hands are the depths, the heights, and pleasures forevermore. Don’t be afraid to ask him if he will keep his word.

Oh the Molehills I’ve Died Upon

Posted on by Hilarey

Originally Posted on August 15, 2022

I remember when I first heard about the difference between Calvinism and Arminianism. It was a season of spiritual growth. I was a young mom seeking to know God for the first time even though I had technically asked him “into my heart” ten years earlier. The pastor presented both positions in a good light and said that our flavor of Christianity (Calvary Chapel) landed on a mixture of the two.

A handful of years later, when I had space from baby-making and time to look things up on the internet, I began to hunger for more knowledge and details about my faith. Our community and many of our friends were LDS, and that prompted me to seek confirmation of what I said I believed, and to discover what I actually believed. It was a good time of study and discovery.

I sat down and made a five row chart with three columns. Next, I looked up verses to compare the two theologies with my undenominational-denomination. Then I pulled out my Bible to solve it, once and for all. Somehow, I still believed there were only the two camps, and I needed to pick one. With my high school education, and the Holy Spirit, I would discover, unequivocally, what hundreds of years and thousands of scholars could not.

I looked up the verses and tried to read a verse before and after—you know—to keep them in context. Not necessarily in context with the whole Bible or even the individual book, but at least in context with the sentence.

There weren’t just two or three ways to look at it. I landed on my own mixture but with a subtle distaste for most of the Calvinistic points. I thought only authoritarians would agree with Calvinism because they saw God to be like them. Based on my personality and the combination of my life experiences, I needed to know that following God was my choice. An irrefutable call didn’t inspire love. I preferred resistible grace even to the point of conditional salvation. Agency was too important to me for it to not be part of my relationship with God. I saw God to be like me.

Since I understood that if someone believed differently from you, the solution was to talk louder and faster until they backed down—I could prove my stance in someone’s bewildered silence. I knew what hundreds of years and thousands of scholars could not determine.

Then one day, a young woman told me she had learned something wonderful about God. What I heard in her description was elements of Calvinism. She didn’t have to worry about failure. God had chosen her. It was up to God to preserve her until the day of salvation—and she was not responsible for staying saved. She wasn’t even responsible for choosing him. He had it all covered.

My initial thought was “Nooo!” and if she wasn’t the most precious woman in the world to me, or I hadn’t learned through the pandemic how words break nations, I might not have stayed silent. When I heard the love and relief in her heart, I had a second thought. “Who are you, to take this away from her?” I knew that there was compelling scripture for both sides. Unconditional election could be true and not break me or destroy my autonomy.

I did not need her to be wrong in order to be right. Her love and joy in this doctrine did not kick me out of the kingdom. I could rest in my ability to choose, she could rest in her provision.

There are so many theologies like this. And I wonder if it has something to do with God meeting us where we need him, even though we don’t all need him in the same place.

I know some people panic at the thought of multiple things being true because the gate is narrow and few find it, so we better be sure we’re on the right path. (And then prove it by everyone else’s bewildered silence.)

This makes me reconsider, with a blush of embarrassment, the times I’ve said, “Catholics believe this…” and “LDS believe this…” since I cannot even delineate what one flavor of Christianity believes. Maybe we don’t need to agree with all the details. In fact, it would probably be unrealistic to have two humans completely align from top to bottom with every thought. I know my husband and I don’t.

One of my favorite resources is the Theology in the Raw podcast. One thing I’ve learned through it is that if you can’t see legitimacy on the other side of debates like this—you aren’t looking honestly or thoroughly.

It is possible to decide emphatically how you believe and to still see the opposite point of view. And if you can’t acknowledge alternate positions, it’s probable that you just formed the opinion. Then you found material or a network of people to support it. Which is easy (if you haven’t been on the internet lately, you can find proof of anything), but detrimental if you find out later that you built your life on a lie. Ask anyone who has deconstructed their faith.

I believe there are mutually exclusive truths about God. I just don’t accept that humans have all the details—or that we will have them this side of eternity. It is unattainable. Even in the attainable truth, there are specifics we can’t comprehend.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t search the unsearchable because God promised, “If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.” I think it will take more than a lifetime though. But don’t worry, he’s got you covered… even though the choice is yours.