A zebra in Macy’s

Let’s start with this:

Sometimes, I feel like a zebra in Macy’s.

Here’s the deal: I am a Christian from New Jersey. I wasn’t born in the Bible belt and I didn’t grow up going to Sunday school. I went to Sunday school, but only during my mother’s brief spiritual revival and I can’t say it had much of an impact on the lexicon of my childhood. (Although I did meet one of the childhood loves of my life at that church, so maybe I should reconsider. He brews beer somewhere in the south now, and we’re Facebook friends, for whatever that’s worth.

Anyway, I was a nominal Christian — we celebrated Christmas only because we didn’t celebrate Hanukkah or Ramadan and we didn’t come from a country where the Judeo-Christian triad had no stronghold. But when I was about 22ish I had a “conversion experience”. I “got saved”. I “accepted Jesus.”

Whatever.

The point isn’t so much what you call it as much as it is the fact that Jesus became the main dude in my life. I decided that day in that tiny little Baptist church in NYC, with the former model / heroine user / gay-man-who-married-a-woman pastor up at the front beckoning and the other 20 or so folk who were all Broadway performers singing something akin to “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling…..” I, reluctantly and with great annoyance, slammed shut my hymnal and walked down that aisle.

It was mainly to shut up the voice of God in my head that was saying, Yeah, I really want you to do this.

And I thought, Crap. This was going to be highly inconvenient. I was in theater after all. You can’t become a Christian when you’re in theater.

That was twenty-plus years and a whole lot of spiritual immaturity ago. So let’s stop for a second and get the timeline right here: about twenty years ago, I decided I believed in Jesus. Then, for lots of reasons, I kind of fell away from the church, and spent a lot of time hiding from God. About 4 or 5 years ago, I came back out of the God-closet, and got involved in a church. Now, I work part-time for that church.

It is, by all standards, a cool church. We have hipsters. We have really good music. Big screens. Chill peeps. But I often feel like a truck driver in La Brasserie, or like that time I accidentally walked into the men’s locker room at the gym. Like a zebra in Macy’s, sometimes I think, I’m in the wrong place.

Don’t get me wrong — I love my church. I love THE church. But I’m a feminist. I curse. I don’t “stay silent”. I watch Fox news for laughs (because really, how can you take that crap seriously?). I am affirming of homosexuality. I think evolution is evidence of God’s creative process, and I think this country has a real problem with shooting its young black males.

I yell at the Bible as much as I underline it. I once wrote to Eugene Peterson to challenge his use of the word “harlot” in one of the passages of THE MESSAGE. (For the record, he wrote back and said I’m right.) I think Paul was a real troublemaker at times, but I adore his sarcasm. I relate to Peter with his passion and stupidity. My favorite part of the Bible is when the disciples ask Jesus if they should smite a whole town, because I laugh when I imagine Jesus smacking them all on the backs of their heads and then walking away muttering under his breath and rolling his eyes, much the way I do when my children do something utterly stupid, as children are apt to do.

The bottom line is, the Bible belt doesn’t fit around my waist.

I’ve lost a whole lot of spiritual fat lately, a whole lot of the kind of stuff that keeps me judge-y. I’m still pretty judge-y, but a lot less than I used to be. I’m not sure where I fit in what with my “liberal” politics that I’ve been told will lead to a bad place and my desire to be vocal about things that bug me. I’m not sure where me and this thing inside me that wants justice and longs to love people and sees all the grey areas and can’t seem to hate people enough to leave them will land.

I think it’s time for me to just go and do the work of Jesus (that would be where the LOVE comes in) and I’ll trust that Jesus can make whatever decisions need to be made. I’ll just do my best to love on the gang members I get to mentor, my kids, the people I work with at my church. I’ll just try to love them.

The jury is still out as to whether I’m cut out for this church stuff — I’m still waiting for the universe to implode every time I walk in — but I’m trying. I’m learning how to ask for help, to speak truth (even when it sucks) and to not curse around the folks who get offended by it. When things go horribly wrong — as they are apt to do whenever human beings are in the room — I try to not add to the stupidity. But sometimes, it’s unavoidable.

I’ve come to realize that there is a whole group — a movement, if you will — of Christians who are reading the Bible in a new way, who are addressing the old issues with a new sort of grace. But mostly these people are coming out of those Bible-belt places. They’ve grown up in the church and, as a result, have a different kind of healing to do than I. They are learning what it’s like to break down a different kind of altar.

I’m coming into the church from outside, trying to negotiate my New Jersey upbringing with the Holy Spirit. I am healing from all the junk from my pre-God days, but I don’t think it’s time to lay down my Jersey girl attitude. I think, sometimes, Jesus likes my spunk. Eugene Peterson liked it — he said so in his letter to me. So that’s what Jersey girl, JESUS is all about. It’s my faith, with attitude.

It’s trying to work out this messy, messy humanity — and we are all hot messes, I don’t care where you’re from.