Jerseygirl, JESUS
K is working hard to extricate herself from four years of Sozo Prayer ministry. She says her world was “completely shaped and defined” by it, and she is fearful of falling back into old patterns of self-blame. She says:
Being told, every single time you bring up a hurt that’s happened to your heart in real time, that you’re “being theoretical” and “living in your head”, is a super effective way to be trained to take care of all your personal and emotional needs entirely in the closet, and never engage in human interaction of any kind until your facade and shell is in perfect working condition.
K – email dated 7/23/16
She is working to peel back the layers of the toxic form of Christianity that has left her, in a sense, a religious orphan:
I think it’s just scary, peeling off these layers of Christianity that are not mine, and feeling like I’m tearing myself back down to nothing… the toxic rejection of whatever in me contradicts conservatism too directly — that is so intimately tied to the Christianity and all the literature of how I’ve learned to love people, that I’m afraid that rejecting enough to clean my system means rejecting all of it, the basic ability to talk to people and be social with people.
And then I ask, what is the point of the Christianity and the Christ-imagery? What is the point of professing my commitment to God, if I could just as easily be a godless poet-humanist with the same tools theoretically?
And then I speak into events and injustice, speak against the easy ways out and the pat answers, and I realize: Who of all the atheists and the philosophers and the scientists is going to give me the language to speak myself and my conviction with as much throat and lungs as Jesus does? Who among the most brilliant but godless progressivism has the words to convict as deeply as Jesus’ words about children and birds and throwing the first stone? to rebuke power and violence with as much truth and contradiction of carnism itself, as washing feet, blessing my most hated enemy, dying on the cross? And I find myself impatient with atheism, and cling fast to Jesus’ cloak.
K – Email dated 7/23/16
I so relate to K’s words here. There have been dark times in my faith walk, times when all I could do was hold fast to the edges of Jesus’s cloak. There have been times when I have thought, “This is all bullshit. It’s too crazy. It can’t be. It makes no sense.”
But Jesus.
I always come back to him. It starts and ends with him. But something happened 2000 that set the world on a different tilt. And that something was Jesus.
And K — like so many of us — still wonders.
More than anything else, “Who will take me in?”
I’ve spent four years being convinced that no one offers real intimacy and relationship, no one will be able to enter into true relationship with me, but people who have been sozo’d and people who Christian like we.
I’ve already found secret pockets and robust communities of support and love from criss-crossing networks of queer and women in the friends and alumni I already knew. I’m already connecting with bloggers and reading books, of Christians who give me words of truer affirmation than I’ve known in four years of church, and that I don’t have to spend hours contorting and changing myself…
I wonder if we, as Christians, are able to stand in the anger that K feels — to just stand there, allow her to be, allow her to feel, and not feel a need to defend, to justify or somehow prove her wrong?
And I feel all this, the direct contradiction of literally everything everyone ever said about non-Charisma anything… and I want to say, “Fuck you!” “Fuck you, Christianity!” “Fuck you, Christians!” And I know that I’m supposed to have grace, and I’m entirely too tired and hurt and angry to. My default mode is grace…This family quarrel with my Christianity of the last four years, I feel…so abused and used and discarded that I do not want to forgive, I do not want to give them more of the life juice they’ve been sucking out of me for four years even if they weren’t aware of it.
And my vacation time draws to an end, and I’ll be flying back there soon. But I know that they love me, I know they’ll be supportive; but I don’t feel loved, not by a Christianity that has to interact with me at theoretical distance and tolerance mediation because I am a pestilent *liberal* contrary to their core beliefs about money and compassion.
But you’re here. You’re Team Mystic. You have that personal relationship with Jesus that everyone says is Dangerously Pagan, you speak a dialect of the same heart-language that my heart knows of talking to God. And you are awake to the real demands of Love in our time and nation — black lives, queer lives, all the lives that white money wants us to forget about. How do you do it?!
I do not know if there is any point in saving a faith that I didn’t have until my adult life and that I didn’t even commit to on the deepest level. But I do know my heart is hurting and needs more hands to hold, more friends who will sit with me and just be with me instead of trying to fix and solve a problem right away in one brilliant stroke.
K – email 7/23/16
My words for K have been words of love, and I hope, affirmation. I wanted to move aside here, in this space, to give her room. I wanted to step aside and let you hear her voice, so that perhaps you will find understanding, and compassion, and maybe, just maybe, if someday a trans person walks into your space, you will give them open arms rather than a savior complex, a listening ear and not judgement.
Maybe, for once, we Christians can love without agenda.
Like Jesus.
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A message from Kerry: I know this one might be hard for some of you who really, really want to show love for all people but struggle with your understanding of scripture (we all struggle with scripture!). All I ask is that you show compassion and love for K in the comments. Remember — this is a person. A soul who is loved by God.
Hate speech, general idiocy, and ugliness in the comments will be removed immediately.
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