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.
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.
“Take Luck” was from a skit by stand-up comedian Brian Regan, where he talked about intending to say, “Take Care,” and then switching to “Good Luck,” halfway through. It’s a funny one.
I think of it when sending a meaningless salutation. To offer without really offering. Take some luck from somewhere, and have it. Keep it with you. I also think of his skit when I see generic signs that say something like, “have faith” or “be blessed!”
Have faith in what? Be blessed how? Take some luck with you—I think there’s a bowl on the counter.
James 2:16 says, “and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?” It’s like when you pass a homeless person on a frigid night, on your way back to your car, and you call out, “Stay warm!”
There is power in words and power in prayer, and it is significant when you speak a blessing over someone’s life. That’s different from when someone has a need, you see it, and you have a tangible item like a spare coat. Something to hold on to.
Substance
Have you ever experienced making up a story about someone in your head? You go into the creepy part of Wonderland (down a dark rabbit trail.) And then when you see the person, or talk to them, you know right away that none of it is true. Your theory had no substance. Nothing to hold on to.
All it took was a conversation to find out the truth.
This used to be the annoying thing about simple romances to me when I was a young girl… especially because I value (kind) directness. I could never get behind a heroine whose entire conflict was a misunderstanding or an unspoken clarification. If they would just have that conversation already, there would be no book.
I have another quote from Good Boundaries and Goodbyes by Lisa Terkeurst, since it’s what I’m reading right now, “Relationships often die not because of conversations that were had but rather conversations that were needed, but never had.”
It’s true, we can write out scenarios that seem like reality. And then a bit of truth, not even a deep dive, and we find out differently.
Making it up
We watched a few episodes of the Good Place and their funny world-building includes a heaven that “no one could imagine.” They have a picture in heaven’s office of a guy who got really stoned and said, “This is what I think heaven will totally be like.” He’s heralded as the guru who got the closest.
It’s meant to be hilarious, but many people treat things of God, and eternity this way.
Most people believe they are critical thinkers, not emotional. But faith without substance is stoned-luck. No matter how critically you look at the void, it’s still empty.
Scales and measuring cups
My friend mentioned something to me that has proved itself true again and again. She said she thought she was eating in her caloric budget until she started writing things down. I’ve seen it myself. Recently, I saw somebody order something in a restaurant that looked delicious. So I tried to copy it at home. I made a light shrimp and fettuccine salad. But when I added it to MyFitnessPal, it was 800 calories. The restaurant had served double. Not exactly a light lunch.
And even more than just logging what you’re eating, you can think that something looks like an appropriate portion—until you weigh it. It’s doubtful that the average eater actually knows what 25 grams of fiber looks like over the course of a day. Due to years of cooking, I can judge weight and volume close to accurate and often cook without measuring. But when it really matters, I still get out the scale.
So, upon closer inspection, you see details more accurately when you actually weigh yourself against the Bible.
And let’s be honest, another interesting correlation is that the days I don’t want to obey or know the scale… those are the days I don’t measure food. So there’s a submission/discipline factor of not wanting to know if I measure up. Sometimes I just want to eat like an asshole. This is likely a larger contributing factor (besides laziness or time management) for not looking in the Bible. We don’t want to see if we measure up.
But here’s the problem, someone who is a Christian, but doesn’t read the Bible, is really susceptible to the weird tangents of Christian religion. Taking someone else’s word for what the scriptures say inevitably lays the groundwork for future deconstruction. This is what children do: accept the world through the lens and experience of those over them. This is not what a maturing Christian does.
You don’t want to have a void or ungrounded faith that can’t weather storms. Take some luck, and keep it with you. Care for it.
So, you can be frustrated with what you think about God. You can be frustrated with what you think about the church. But if you’re not holding it up to a depth of study in the word, you are not frustrated with substance. You’re following a rabbit down a hole. If you look at the way the letters to the church explained the right way to live—and then you see how Christians are disobeying—that’s something to hold on to.
I used to get annoyed when I saw a verse partially quoted. (Romans 8:1a) But then I realized that the chapters and verses were added. So even memorizing a whole verse can miss the larger context. That isn’t even to mention re-wording and misquoting. I’ve seen people defend mis-worded scripture with tears. This happens when you “already know what it says” before you read it. But that’s another topic.
I love a quote I heard from Theologian Preston Sprinkle. He says, “Let the strength of your conviction reflect the depth of your study.” Pick the mountain you’ll die on.
You are doing yourself an extreme disservice if you hold your convictions tight in your head and heart, without opening the Bible to check their weight.
So the point is, get out the scales. Grab on to something solid. Read for yourself.
I remember when I first moved to the Boise area. I didn’t work outside the home, or know anyone, so at church I tried to introduce myself. Every week.
In the repetition, it started to feel like an elevator pitch. An almost memorized teaser summing up my reason for living, moving, my hobbies, and experiences. Basically, all my labels—in the hopes of a followup question of interest. It became tedious. I just wanted to be known already.
In a few years, I had community. And when I could say that people knew me, my paradigm changed. I became an empty nester. I won’t go into all the details, but many things like work and hobbies, which defined “me” also fell away with my job of full-time-mom-with-kids-in-the-home.
I was without an elevator pitch, except to say, “I’m in pain because I don’t have labels anymore.”
I began searching and grasping to organize my faith. I couldn’t find the book I needed the most, so I wrote it. (Some of you have read it in draft form.) Essentially, it was a way for me to process all the identities and labels that I had worn over my life. And how at some point they were all retired, made meaningless, or became unwanted…
I’d forgotten this until recently, as the conversation about identity keeps coming up. My midlife memoir was partly about holding all labels loosely and accepting only the unique identity that God has for you. It came with a subtitle message that a diverse community was better than matching identities.
Are the following labels, identity, or both? Gay Christian, divorced Christian, vegetarian Christian, freedom-loving American Christian. What about Christian-first language: A Christian widow, a Christian worship leader, a Christian with trauma? What if you’re bothered by the descriptor “Christian” because of the Salem Witch Trials and the Crusades?
The goal of labels
It’s more than wanting to be known. I think labels are an attempt at grasping to see where you fit and to find your people. Name the enemy. Name the comrade.
Maybe they’re even to feel fully resolved about who you are. Summed up. A finished work before your time. So we can forgo the bother of sanctification and change.
I don’t fully understand all the nuances of Side A, B, X, or Y, so I hope it doesn’t appear as though I have a secret agenda in arguing against the concept of labeling your sexual identity. My context comes from the use of labels like Mom, homeschooler, really-cool-job-title, wife.
And let’s be honest, we can wear an identity we never label. Sometimes our identity is our experiences, trauma, vocation or lens merely because we bring it into every part of life—even though we don’t claim the descriptor in our elevator pitch. It consumes our every thought.
So, while the warning applies that all labels can become identities which supersede your identity in Christ, it is a little more complicated in some conversations, like LGBTQ labels.
I believe that complication stems from our earthly “purpose” to be mated as understood in the biblical mandate to “be fruitful and multiply,” and is somewhat influenced by both modern romance (you complete me) and the purity movement (virgins earn blissful married sex.)
Christians have deified marriage with verbiage like “Marriage is the only piece of the garden that survived the fall,” indicating that a union of two people is the purpose for which we were created, and a little taste of heaven.
So, with the cultural push for Christians to find an earthly love story as a necessary part of their walk with God—gay Christians are inhibited from fully bowing down to this idol with body, mind and desire. Which could be freeing in reality, but in the context of church conversation, I understand why some would want the clarification, “Hey, while we all have to lay down our will and submit to sexual purity as part of sanctification… there is a unique lens for how I experience doing life in a community of Christians. And I need you to know that it is going to influence how I process and receive everything from your statement of faith to your Valentine’s Day dinner advertisement.”
Of course, LGBTQ isn’t the only label that some Christians might need you to know. My church recently had a couples’ progressive dinner. For couples. To meet other couples. Ignorance makes a very narrow set of pews available to divorced Christians.
Look around the sanctuary on Mother’s Day. There is likely someone who flees from the “Mommas, your ministry is the most important one, i.e.: the salvation of a woman is found through childbearing” sermon in tears. Couples grow weary of explaining they aren’t using birth control even though they might not introduce themself as a barren Christian.
If someone views life and service so differently that they can’t interact inside your church without clarification, let them share their label so you can stop hurting them.
Allowing someone to add an adjective to their identity might help remove the shame of hiding. It certainly encourages a second person to share their story. Not so all the gay people can find each other, or the homeschool moms can start a Bible study solely focused around their unique struggles—but so the shame of the struggle doesn’t fester. I wish someone had shared more openly while my kids were younger. I wish they’d heard you could be both same sex attracted and a follower of Christ.
I wish the conversation wasn’t attached to the political election but only to eternal election.
I know that just as prayer can be used for gossip, sometimes confession, or sharing your story, can be an invitation to see how receptive the other person is in joining you in your sin. But more often it feels like there is no safe way to bring light into your darkness. Apparently, there are no parameters (no perfect garden) to prevent all future sinning. Because it also could alienate someone into sin if you communicate, “tamp that down,” through the words, “You shouldn’t be a gay Christian. Just be a Christian Christian, like me.”
Although, that is the goal: to become a child of God without a label. To not look within ourselves to define who were are, but to be image bearers. If our purpose is to reflect God and we are a mirror shining his light into the world, then we want to have the most unmarked surface as possible. (Even though he created us intentionally unique.) There are many names for God, so I have considered that we can be two things at once as well. But it might be worth meditating or contemplating on this if it smarts your pride to let the focus be wholly Him.
All labels will change and lose value. Family members die and you can lose your status as child, spouse, parent. Jobs change. Fluidity. Even though we are sexual beings, not everyone will have sex up to the day they die. I doubt I’ll feel sexual desire when I can no longer feed or wipe myself. If I’n still blogging, I’ll let you know when I get there.
How do you know your label has become an identity?
One of my prayer partners told me, “Identity is more than a characteristic trait. It is who you are intrinsically.” If you want to know whether you have let your label become an identity, see how long you can go without thinking about it or mentioning it.
How many conversations do you have that aren’t about your kids? How many people can you meet without telling them your job title? On the other side, how many days can you go without mentioning what Christ means to you?
You can become just as fixated on the things that you are “not.” Otherwise, the romance book and movie industry wouldn’t profit so much from people who wish they were someone’s beloved. The makeup and plastic surgery industry wouldn’t be able to sell youth. You can live in a space completely obsessed with how broken you are. How much you are not.
Often you won’t realize your identity was an idol until you lose it, or cannot use the name. If the ground shifts underneath your feet without that label, you have built your life on sand. If you are afraid of losing who you are without the description, then you have chosen a false god.
And some of us need to throw that label as far from ourselves as possible. I know my mom said that she never wanted cuss language in her life as a way to differentiate who she was after she became a believer. Cussing was like an identity or label that marked a lifestyle outside of Christ.
A mystery known only to God
I want to share a quote by Elizabeth Elliot which I found in Being Elizabeth Elliott by Ellen Vaughn. It says, “The Christian realizes that his true identity is a mystery known only to God… And that any attempt at this stage on the road of discipleship to define himself, is bound to be blasphemous and destructive of that mysterious work of God, forming Christ in him by the power of the Holy Spirit.“
In our attempt to define ourselves, name the enemy, find the friend, join the club—I think it’s worth reflecting on how Jesus renames Simon to Peter when he calls him in John 1:42.
“Jesus looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas’ (which means Peter).” It isn’t the first time in the Bible. Abram is renamed Abraham. Jacob becomes Israel. Saul is changed to Paul.
What if who you are, your label, name, destiny, identity is not for you to name?
Consider Revelation 2:17 “…and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.” I suspect whatever names, job titles, identities or labels you claim now will be renamed just like when God called Simon, Jacob, Abram and Saul.
Coming to terms with a shifting identity is important. So is walking forward in willingness to let it be stripped away. But some are not there yet. I think not letting people judge you for how you handle new moons, sabbath festivals, or refusing meat because of weakness goes both ways. (If you are not in a place to exhort) then do not judge those who need to choose their labels, or those who need to violently disassociate themselves from one.
But when you’re ready to step into uncharted wilderness and grow, let God pick yours.
The day my daughter turned 18, she sought me out and asked breathlessly, “So, when does it happen?” I looked at her earnest face and asked what she meant.
“I’ll know everything.” She wanted to know when all the confidence and knowledge adults seemed to have would download into her brain. Or did she need to wait until she’d been 18 for 24 hours?
Come to think of it, she might have had more smirk than earnestness in her smile.
I have a friend who used an interesting phrase about teenagers. She calls it the stage where they “try on different personalities.” I love the grace in that because we shouldn’t hold kids to all the things they say and think when they’re 14. Neither should we freak out about them. Maybe that’s why many people sever ties to their youth at some point. They aren’t who they were.
However, nearly 50 years old, I’m not the same person I was last summer. I’m not trying on personalities like a freshman in high school, but I am different. Maybe this is one reason a prophet has no honor in his hometown. Everyone knows who you were. They changed your diapers. (Or they’re going to change your diapers in the future.)
Recently, I asked my dad, “Do you still believe (this thing you said)?”
Incredulous, he replied, “Why would I have said that? It’s not true.” He didn’t feel like he’d ever believed it. How unfortunate that I’d held it in my heart for so many years.
Now I realize the danger of all my verbal processing. Even when I’ve done it in front of family—maybe especially with family. I think of the things I’ve said to my kids which I no longer believe, and the things I said out loud, which I never believed.
The problem is, sometimes you need to say it out loud to hear the truth from the lie. Sometimes you need to try it on. And some thoughts we wear are not true, they’re just fashionable. So let them change.
You’re lucky if someone loves you enough to call you out and say, “Do you still believe this thing you said?” More often, people probably just let that statement define you in their mind.
I think there’s two points. First, let someone come back from something they’ve said. Don’t always assume their words are a definitive and notarized last statement. Even if they act like as though they are fully convinced of the matter.
Second, be careful who you work out and verbalize ideas with. It should be someone safe. I have a friend who once said to me, “But you know that’s not true.” No judgement, she let me say it. She let me come back.
Sometimes you need to have the conversation out loud, so you can hear it, but alone with God. My favorite place for that is in the car.
Since I’m essentially writing what I process on this blog, I’d like to reserve the right someday to direct you back to my first point.
Is there anyone you love enough to clarify what they meant?
I learned in a writing class that no one is a hundred percent evil, so, writing your novel’s villain that way will actually make him less threatening. That kind of antagonist is comical—a caricature like Snidely Whiplash.
If you aren’t old enough to remember the cartoon that made me fear handlebar mustaches, Wikipedia says of him, “Whiplash is obsessed with tying young women to railroad tracks; he has no reason to do so and realizes no gain, profit or advantage, but is simply compelled to do it.”
The writing class suggestion was to show your villain do something kind. The instructor mentioned a scene where a bad guy stops on the way into the house where he planned evil, to pet a kitten. (I think the example came from a book or movie, but I can’t remember where.)
Even better, give the killer something he loves. Or a complicated emotion, like a desire to protect something in the midst of his mayhem. This makes him more realistic, and therefore, scarier.
I’ll tell you, I have met abusive people who were overly dramatic and affectionate to their dog in public. “Animals trust me, you should too…” as though dogs don’t lick an abusive hand. So, making the antagonist more realistic this way rang true for me when crafting fictional characters.
Relatable
Besides the realism, another reason a complicated villain becomes scarier is that you can see yourself in them. But isn’t it unnerving if they’re too redeemable? It’s hard to cheer at their destruction if you see yourself in them.
We want God to take us as a package and hope the redeemable outweighs the rest. He wouldn’t annihilate me if there is something redeemable, right? (Part of coming to faith is realizing that the only thing redeemable is Christ’s covering, and any good you’ve done was a work he created you to do.)
But what if that measurement of being redeemable tipped in favor of someone you hated? Could you still call them an enemy or go to war with them? Could you desire their destruction?
Un-relatable
I think it would be too hard to justify war if you thought of the people as redeemable. You need to view them as evil with nothing salvageable. And I think one way we do this is to disregard individual faces, to see them as a whole. They are collectively unredeemable.
And the first step to seeing them as a collective is to name them.
Us and them
I think of conversations I heard when I was a child regarding people we’d gone to war against. Pejoratives serve the purpose of naming, grouping, and defacing. They enable the speaker and the listener to disassociate the humanity of the one being discussed. It tips the scales. It lowers them from your status of being made in the image of God, a divine image bearer.
You might never use a slur but still say the nationality, religion, sexuality or politics of your “enemy” like it is a cuss word and mean the same thing.
I remember my grandma’s fear when she mentioned The Bataan Death March by the Japanese during World War II. It’s a story that loses some of its shock, though, when you look at the United States’ inhumanity during the Trail of Tears. For several summers we hosted Japanese exchange students, and they were no longer some less-than-human group from a foreign place. They were kids. With faces. If you want to see this working for Israeli and Palestinian teens, check out Friends of Roots.
Governments plan and execute war. Unless we are the government, our responsibility is different. Psalm 131:1 says, My heart is not proud, LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.
The matters I should be concerning myself with are how I think of and speak of other humans. Both those in my sphere, and those on the other side of the world. Even if the other group wants to destroy my country, take my money and my freedom. Even if they are my enemy. If I only love those who love me, what good is that to me? Just because salvation is free, why do we think everything after is easy?
Made in the image of God
I can speak from experience what it feels like to be less than. A false doctrine I had to put into words to unearth was that God made man for himself, and woman was a trinket that he made for his beloved (man). I really stumbled over 1 Corinthians 11:9 when I was a young mom coming back to Christ. Learning that woman is made in the image of God, not just created for man, gave me identity and joy. And when man does not value woman as equal, he is not acting out the hand of God. It elevated me, and I’ll never let that identity go. We’re a tool of the enemy if we ever let anyone believe they are less than a divine image bearer, with equal worth and status.
A fool
I used to be confused why Proverbs spent so much ink on defining and calling out who is a fool—but Jesus said if you called someone a fool; you were in danger of hell-fire. It felt like a contradiction since I could see so many fools by Proverb’s standards.
Partly from the Bible Project’s Sermon on the Mount series, I’ve come to understand Christ’s intent as: don’t even start down that path of lowering someone in status. Declaring someone unworthy is the first step to murder. How you speak of your antagonist is one way to live out the call to love your enemy, as we’re told to do in Matthew 5:43-48. And the names you use to describe your enemy can either deface them or remind you of their God-given status.
We’ve been told to judge people’s fruit and actions because there is demonic evil in the world. Still, discerning evil does not excuse you from loving your enemy. If we have the law written in our hearts, we have different expectations, regardless of how the world operates.
My point is to tread carefully anytime you use labels for yourself and others. Because that path leads to disassociating their humanity, their status as image of God.
All humanity is capable of evil
No villain is a caricature. We are each capable of atrocity by starting down the path of looking at someone as less than ourself. We should remember Christ’s warning wherever we think, “They’re an idiot.”
We should think of the danger of hell-fire when we use a slur or dehumanize a group either for their political agenda, nationality, or religion. Yep, even their religion.
Well, unless you are not a bondservant of the Lord’s. Then you can do whatever you want with your body, mind and money.
