Christian living

Dear Church, Do You Know Who I Really Am?

Lisa SpencerLeave a comment

Questionmark-faceThe following is a compelling guest post from Anonymous, who asked for the identity to not be revealed. I think this is a fitting follow up to my conundrums post.

Dear Church,

I hear everyone talking about me.  Always debating about what to do with me.  Ferociously drawing lines in the sand.  Articles, blogs, political debate.  Movie and pop stars eagerly rally around me and throw money at my trendy plight.  To them I am another Darfur, an earthquake in Haiti, the Invisible Children.  The US president has used me as a political move to gain support; a pawn in his agenda for reelection, for power.  My former denomination (amongst others) split over me, misunderstanding their cause.  You say that you support me, but do you?  Do you even know me?

I lived a decade in the most decadent of ways: proud and lonely and lost.  Drug use was a lifestyle, a way to cope, a way to survive in a world that I knew I didn’t belong to.  It lulled my feelings to a quiet hum.  Hushed my self-control but, ironically, never the remorse.  I allowed my body to be used in ways that now make me blush.  Men, women, it didn’t matter.  I considered it all an ‘experience’.[i]  To top it all off, I aborted the evidence of my shameless lifestyle.  More than once.

I never imagined the price that I would pay for such indulgence.  Never knew that it would interfere with a marriage that I once had no hope for.  Never knew that it would keep me a safe distance away from friends.  From you.  I still cannot fathom how our Savior could pay the cost, but I accept it.[ii]  He paid the price of death so that I would be seen as pure and innocent to the Father.  Something that we all know I am not.  But that is how God sees me.  How do you? Continue reading →

A Writer’s Quest to Pop the Pollyanna Puffycloud Bubble

Lisa Spencer1 Comment

blue sky-and-cloudI got into in interesting discussion on my Facebook page over this piece posted by the Daily Examiner in the UK. The piece is a chilling expose of the extreme feminism and maternal neglect of famed Color Purple author Alice Walker. The piece was based on an interview with daughter Rebecca Walker who recounted some sordid details regarding her mother’s behavior and the impact that it had on her growing up. But apparently, the interviewer took some liberties in truth telling that turned the piece into tabloid sensationalism. The Grio posted this interview where Walker clarifies that she never meant it in the way it was presented. I especially found this section of the interview compelling:

 When piece went viral, it was hard. I had not said a lot of what was in the article, a lot of it didn’t come from the interview, but they put my name on it as if I had written it and added their own energy to it. It was very complex. All of my work is revealing; my books, but it’s different because I can control the way the message goes out. It’s a question of how to handle being so vulnerable and truthful about your experiences without having to wake up the next morning and hide under the covers. It’s hard to find that boundary. How much is necessary to divulge. When I first handed in Black White and Jewish, there was whole first section that read, “I’m writing this book because I want to be known. I want someone in this life to know what I feel and who I am.” I ended up cutting that section [laughing] but I think that a lot of my work thus far has been about wanting to be known, wanting to connect, wanting to be seen, not wanting to hold up a veil, wanting to be real, wanting to share — needing to. If I hadn’t written Black White and Jewish, I would have lost my mind. I had to say those things. I had to say I was having sex way too young and I had an abortion, and that I had my race issues; all that. I needed to get it out of me.

Well, here’s the interesting aspect of the whole thing. These events really happened and they absolutely had an impact on her. But you can hear the struggle in her words of wanting to write out of experiences but at the same time not coming across as an injured or malicious person. Experience is fuel to a writer that gives the words life and meaning.  But writing out of experience also means sharing it. That’s hard when the experience isn’t pretty. So it causes this tenacious dilemma. Continue reading →

The Shame of Shame: Wielding the Sword of Defense

Lisa SpencerLeave a comment

shame_facepalmShame. What comes to your mind when mentioning that word? It’s a word that needs no definition for all of us have experienced it in varying degrees. Inadequacies, deficiencies, past and present failures…all bring that curtain of shame down on us. The problem, I think, is that when it strikes, instead of identifying it appropriate to what it is, we ride the wave of where it takes us.

I’ve been learning a lot about this dreaded animal over the past year or so. Not so much that it exists but the insidious behavior it encourages and has encouraged in my own life over many years. On one hand, there are those that accept it and go along with whatever behavior says it deserves. If you’re inadequate you might as well live like it.

Well, the problem with that for Christians is obvious. We are called to be holy and live according to our position in Christ (1 Peter 1:15-16; Ephesians 4:1). Although, living out shame can explain a lot concerning the presence and pull of sinful, addictive behavior. But any amount of time reading the bible, in prayer or fellowship with brothers and sisters will propel the need to live right and be a “good Christian”.

I personally believe that in our humanity, we are hard wired to earn our righteousness through moralism. It’s why the common response to acceptability to God is “I’m a good person”. The good is a reflection of the perfection that God requires. So good should be good enough. On the contrary, behavior that misses the mark is seen as not deserving any connection to or pardon from God . All this points to one thing: we want perfection. Because in perfection is beauty, goodness and acceptability. Continue reading →

Sex and the New Jerusalem City

Lisa Spencer2 Comments

Multicultural gatheringMy friend Damian and I had a recent email exchange regarding preaching tendencies related to the contemporary evangelical culture. This comes with a philosophy that we need to be so relatable that it ends up obscuring God’s overall redemptive program. He talked about this one class in his seminary program in which discussions of Song of Solomon which resulted in placing a good dose of emphasis on human sexuality. With his permission, I’m posting his full response:

 I am firmly convinced of the allegorical interpretation of the text as God’s love, expressed in anthropomorphic terms, for His people. Karl Barth’s idea, echoed by John Paul II – that sexual differentiation is the defining feature of our humanness, the key that unlocks the door to human identity – seems to have conquered the day in modern evangelicalism . But I would challenge this thesis: If Christ is truly the fullness and definition of authentic humanity, we must say that marriage, sex, and parenthood tell us nothing whatsoever of ultimate significance about humanness since Christ did not participate in any of these.

There appears to be an obsession in modernity, swallowed hook, line, and sinker, by the evangelical church, that by analyzing our own sexuality, we believe we will finally discover the deep secret truth of our humanness. To borrow from Foucault, he claims that we are obsessed not with sex itself (as a physical act), but with “the truth of sex” – with the idea that sex is a revelation of truth. Thus we form sexual sub-cultures; we worry about the ever-more-precise definition of all our sexual habits and preferences; we constantly think about our sexuality; we write about it incessantly; we “confess” our sexual secrets and peculiarities; we have never been fully honest about ourselves until we have given utterance to our sexuality. (A fascinating example of this is the way biographers assume that the sexual life of their subjects will disclose the deep secret truth about who they “really” are.) Continue reading →

Elevator Christianity

Lisa SpencerLeave a comment

You’ve been in an elevator, right? You’re on one floor and you need to get to another floor. You push a button, hop in, press the floor that you want and ride up to that floor. It is not uncommon to treat Christianity like this. I think this happens anytime we create a two-tier type of Christianity: distinguishing between the “haves” and “have-nots.” The “haves” do something to press that button, which usually comes in the form of some type of prescription – do this to take you from here to there.

This can come in many forms. It’s going to the next level. Or it’s following Christ as opposed to believers who don’t really follow Christ (don’t get me started on that unwarranted distinction between Christians and disciples. You either are in union with Christ and indwelt with the Holy Spirit or you are not). Or it’s those that are Spirit-filled vs. those who aren’t Spirit-filled.  Or it’s those who really go out and do big things for God vs. those who don’t. Or it’s those who make disciples vs. those who don’t…and the list goes on.

I also think there is a self-centered focus on elevator Christianity. What is most important is to do whatever is required to get to that next level for yourself. If you’re not discipling enough, or not Spirit-filled enough, or not doing big enough things for God or aren’t surrendering enough, do X, press the button and then you have sufficiently reached your goal. And that is the point of elevator Christianity. Step in, do what is necessary, to reach your goal so you won’t be like those Christians who aren’t doing x, y or z. Continue reading →