"It is vital and true and deeply required that we tell our story. We must trace the shape of it, speak of the place in our body where it still lives, weep the tears of it, allow it to be seen and known. To have someone know the story of how we came to be here, how we came to be this way."--Wayne Muller
A few weeks back, during our trek home from the Boulder Friends Meeting, Bob said to me through a chuckle, "there are A LOT of people at Meeting with lots of different ways of seeing the world." We were both laughing because Meeting that day had been peculiarly awkward, characterized by an assortment of random comments shared by several people during Meeting. If you've been following this story, you know that for the most part, our Boulder Quaker Meeting is a silent, unprogrammed Meeting, usually punctuated by a few people who stand and speak, to say something that feels inspired.
It was obvious to me, someone who is still fairly new to this Quaker thing, that something was out of whack at Meeting that day. Despite some guidelines to help us discern when it might be appropriate to speak our thoughts, too many people were standing to speak. There was too much response to what the last person had said, and not enough quiet between spoken words. It felt as if the people who spoke were speaking to share their point of view without really having listened to what the person who spoke right before them had to say. There was no contemplation or reflection, just reaction. I got to see some true colors, some of the more difficult aspects of humanity taking part in this otherwise pleasantly reflective Meeting. I felt uncomfortable, impatient, frustrated, and even slightly embarrassed for others---there were moments that I wasn't sure if I was squirming on the outside or the inside. I avoided any kind of eye contact, and just hoped things would simmer down, hoped people would pause long enough to decide if they needed to say what they were going to say. It triggered some familiar discomfort, and was a reminder of the overarching reason that I migrated away from my former evangelical worldview.
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I learned a really cool, new term recently: echo chamber. It is a term that media-types use to describe a current phenomenon in the information age. Echo chamber describes the common practice of deriving our information from sources that tell us what we want to hear. It makes it possible for us to only gather information that confirms our own point of view without ever having to interact with differing points of view, inadvertently confirming the correctness of of our own perspectives.
This term struck me because it perfectly put into words something that has been difficult for me to describe. The way I interpreted echo chamber expanded beyond use for media types and captured something that I think is common for most people, including me. Our echo chambers are how we get our bearings in the world, how we make sense of ourselves and others. In our echo chambers we intentionally and unintentionally seek out our own perspectives about life and the world from places and spaces that reinforce our way of understanding, bouncing back to us what we are comfortable hearing. Our echo chambers also protect us from dissonance--those sounds that make our ears and souls hurt. They can prohibit us from learning what other voices sound like, blocking our ability to make space for other ways of being and seeing.
After my last post "Wear it as Long as You Can," I got an email from a reader, someone I don't know, for whom my blog struck and uncomfortable chord. The subject line of his email summarized it all: My son is where you are and I don't get it. Through his email, he described the pain of having a son who's beliefs have changed. He addressed how his heart is torn between loving Jesus AND loving his son, perhaps implying that it might be difficult to do both. He explained how he could only understand life through the work of Jesus dying on the cross and that for him there is no other way to understand the world. He also told me he was praying a "father like" prayer for me because of the pain I might be causing my parents. I'm guessing that my story and his son's story are causing some discordant reverberations in his echo chamber.
There was part of me that was appreciative that he read my post (it is a commitment to read my long posts!) and felt compelled enough to share his perspective and vulnerability. He reminded me of the people in my life that might feel like him when they read my story. Through his email I got the sense that he genuinely cared for me. He also reminded me of what I fear most: that I might be causing others pain and risking rejection by being authentically me. He reminded me of myself not so long ago too, and I get why he doesn't get it. There was another part of me that was very annoyed by the email. I interpreted it as if he needed to tell me that he just doesn't get the way I, or his son, see things. Because he doesn't get it, he is going to pray for me, so that maybe I'll come around. This did not make me feel like he was really trying to understand, but instead felt condescending, as if he has the correct way of seeing things and that he will pray to God, who also shares his viewpoint, so that I might see the world the way he does. This may not have been his intention, but that was how his words impacted me.
For many years, I lived life in an echo chamber that was probably similar to the reader who emailed me. I just could not comprehend why someone would walk away from their belief in Jesus, or how it was possible to understand the world and the fate of humanity without Christ, or how I could ever have close relationships with people who believed differently than me. In fact, as I went through the long process of deconstructing my faith, Jesus was the last thing I let go of because he was the last thing that made sense to me. My relationship with Jesus was everything. Jesus was my guide for major decisions, as well as my compass for how to treat others. My community, vocation, education, and understanding of life and self, centered around my evangelical Christian Jesus.
At that time in life, I did not interact with many people outside of my echo chamber. When I did, most of my conversations were had in airports and coffee shops, where I'd strike up a conversation with a stranger and it would eventually came around to what I did for work and/or education (youth ministry; theological education), which would inevitably lead to a conversation about faith. I deeply enjoyed these conversations and felt great courage and fulfillment talking about why Jesus was the hope in my life, as well as sincerely hoped that the stranger would somehow come to Jesus someday because of the seeds I had planted. I even went on a few dates with a Buddhist, but broke it off with him because I thought we came from fundamentally incompatible perspectives. I could only understand the world through a Christian lens and I hoped everyone else would see it that way too.
There is a particular incident that has stuck with me over the years, especially as my own spiritual identity has evolved. Many years back, when I was working with youth, I had been leading a Bible study for some high school girls over a period of several months and was developing close relationships with them. One night, one of the girls showed up early to our study because she wanted to talk with me about something important. I thrived on one on one conversations with my students, and always thought it was privilege and honor when they wanted to mull something over with me. I was happy to have some extra time with this student. She arrived at my studio-apartment-like dwelling, sat on the floor against my dresser, knees to her chest, and confessed that she didn’t think she believed in Jesus anymore:
“I’ve been dating a guy who has had a lot of questions about God, and thinks its all bullshit. He makes a lot of sense to me and I don’t think I believe in Jesus anymore. I wanted to tell you that, and to tell you I won't be part of this group anymore.”
I didn’t know what to say. How could she not believe in Jesus when he meant so much to me? Did she know she would not be in heaven with her friends and family for not believing in Jesus? Did she really not believe? These questions were stirring in my mind as I grasped for something to say. All I could muster was, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” And she left. I felt so disoriented, and as if I had failed her. I wanted to say more to her, I wanted to tell her that I thought she was wrong. I anguished over this conversation and finally decided that I needed to go to her house and talk to her. I drove to her house a few days later, knocked on the door and her mom answered, happy to see me, and freely let me in. I went up to my student's room and sat on her bed with her, nervously beginning to say my piece. She was surprisingly patient with me as I told her, to her 15 year-old face, that she was wrong for not believing in Jesus, that she was making a bad choice. She simply listened, said "okay," as if she wasn't sure what to do next, then I left. My adrenaline was pulsing though my body as I drove home, I was concerned that I may have hurt her feelings, and I felt somewhat triumphant, believing that I had done and said the right thing; I had spoken the Truth to her.
All these years later, I wish I could go back and change that moment. I wished I could have truly tried to understand her, allowing her discordant words some space in my echo chamber. At that time in my life, I truly didn't get it, and I didn't know I didn't get it; I didn't want to get it. Through the miracles of modern technology, specifically, The Facebook, I nervously messaged this student a few months ago to ask how this conversation impacted her (and to apologize). Surprisingly, she told me she didn't remember much about the conversation, and that she didn't remember anything negative about our conversation. Then she said this: The thing that really has stuck with me all of these years was the sense of abandonment after I stopped coming to church. I went from being a person who was involved in church activities 2-3 times per week, to not showing up at all, and it seemed no one cared. Maybe people thought it would be best not to pester me about it, or maybe people weren't sure how to approach the situation- I don't really know. I just know that it solidified my decision that the Christian faith wasn't where I needed to be.
I was one of those who seemed not to care. It wasn't because I didn't care though, it was because I didn't understand, and I didn't want to bother her, and I didn't know how to interact with her now that she no longer believed in the fundamental element that allowed our relationship to exist in the first place. Ultimately, there wasn't space in my echo chamber for this student's questions and doubts, and when she attempted to talk about them to her awesome youth leader--me--I put my hands over my ears and a megaphone to my mouth.
Ironically, like my former student, it is for a similar overarching reason that I too have migrated from my evangelical faith. Just as my student who was questioning her belief in Jesus, many years later I began to ask questions too. Initially my questions were still within the bounds of traditional Christian belief, and I was asking them as a pastor and a seminary student (a nerve-wracking thing to do, I might add). My questions eventually lead to my resignation from the ministry, yet I still kept asking in my seminary classrooms, with friends, and with a variety of evangelical ministerial leaders. I really wanted to talk with pastors and scholars, the people who I perceived to be the intellectuals of the faith. I was seeking intellectual honesty and humility, people who would wrestle with the questions with me and perhaps normalize my curiosity. I was not expecting answers. Back then, and now, I was pretty sure there weren't a lot of answers to the questions I had.
One conversation that epitomizes the frustration I felt when talking with church leaders happened during a time I had just started going back to church after a two year hiatus. I really enjoyed the down-to-earth-ness of this church: they held services in a basement, their worship band was off to the side and performance was not a focal point. They were (and still are) doing very meaningful work in their community as well. I was getting to know one of the pastors and took a risk to talk with him about one of my pressing questions of the day: what did he think about universal salvation? For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it is basically a concept that claims that everyone goes to heaven. Universal salvation is heresy in evangelical theology, but accepted in other versions of Christian faith.
We talked, and per usual, I enjoyed most of our conversation....here comes the but...But, when we got to the point in the conversation where there wasn't an answer, or perhaps there were many answers but those answers existed outside of an evangelical theological framework, the conversation stopped. The response of my pastor was that my question was out of bounds, that we could no longer think beyond the boundaries of evangelical theology.
This was the type of response I got in one version or another when dialoging about the foundations of evangelical faith. It was so confusing for me. At the time I thought that if God created me with this brain and these were the things I was thinking, how could an out of bounds exist? But an out of bounds did exist. When I enrolled at my evangelical seminary, I had to sign the National Association of Evangelicals' statement of faith, and when I graduated from the same institution, I had to sign the same statement of faith again. This is strange to me, because in any other educational environment--med school, law school, college, grad school, tech school, high school--it would be considered failure if a student graduated with the same beliefs and understandings that they began with. The boundaries confounded me. In a weird way, I also understood that the boundaries must be held. If an institution or faith system is to maintain it's identity then there are certain core beliefs that must remain, otherwise it ceases to be what it is. Who would I be beyond the boundaries?
I must say too, that despite the boundaries, I still appreciated my theological education. In the years after I finished my BA in Biblical Studies, I often explained to people that I learned how to be a critical thinker in college. What I learned how to think about was how the Bible came to be, and how to linguistically, culturally, and historically interpret Biblical texts. It wasn't until years later, when I thought and socialized beyond my evangelical echo chamber, that I realized my critical thinking skills were excellent within the boundaries. However, something I had not learned to think about was how to critically think about how the boundaries came to be, and how my critical thinking skills broke down outside the boundaries. It's like when Christian kids go to a non-Christian college and have to figure out how to make sense of their faith in a brave new world: they either have to cover their ears, or learn to integrate their faith into a pluralistic context. They often don't know how to do the latter, because their critical thinking skills only work in their Christian framework. When they meet this challenge, they often decide that they can't reconcile their faith with all the other worldviews, and painfully "lose their faith." I think it is possible to remain a Christian in college, but it takes some intellectual, emotional, and spiritual flexibility that many students don't develop because of rigid boundaries. Like those college kids, I too was trying to make sense of my faith, and the world, outside of my echo chamber. As I asked my questions I was testing out my flexibility. What I really wanted and needed was an acknowledgement that my questions were valid, and willingness to admit that perhaps evangelical Christianity was not the only way of seeing things. I just needed to hear that, and not so I could say, "gotcha!", but out of a genuine desire to honor my curiosity and to maintain intellectual integrity. Some might be reading this and thinking, "well of course there are many other ways of seeing the world, why was this so hard for you?" while others are likely thinking the opposite. It can be difficult for me to communicate that when this was the only way I knew to see the world, it took me years to begin to imagine that there are other ways of understanding, and that considering those ways did not mean I'd been conned or mislead or blind or weak in my relationship with God. To ask the questions also made me feel vulnerable, risking separation from my community. And asking the questions made me feel free and alive.
I want to be clear that I don't think echo chambers are "good" or "bad." I see them as neutral, as something that we all create. I also don't want to come across as finger-pointing at evangelicals. The evangelical subculture is where I happened to develop my identity and understanding of everything, and many people I still trust and respect identify as evangelicals. As I have branched out into a more more liberal and spiritually eclectic community, it is just as evident that there are people who "don't get" how anyone else sees the world either, and will write off evangelicals as crazy. As a friend of mine, with a similar story as mine, so aptly said to me, "I don't think either one of us really wants to exchange one truth for another." Or as I put it, one echo chamber for another. I know what my echo chamber sounds like and I don't want to pretend that I am opinion-less or to trying to agree with everyone. Instead I want to allow space for all sort of voices, and do my best to simply listen and not try to change someone, and also say what I think without fear of being dismissed. This is incredibly difficult for me, yet the thing I value most in others.
The echo chamber concept has been the umbrella issue for me as I detached from evangelicalism--it is the pervasive element that helps me make sense of how I got to where I am. Beneath this umbrella there are a variety of topics that emerged over a long period of time, that I attempted to bring into the evangelical echo chamber: gender, sexuality, church history, salvation, Biblical interpretation, Biblical infallibility, homiletics, socio-historical contexts, theology, morality, mythology, social justice, and nationalism intertwined with evangelical Christianity. As I brought each of these issues into my evangelical echo chamber, I was unable to find the space that could hold different ways of understanding these concepts, and I was unable to reconcile what I was learning outside the boundaries with the absolutes within the boundaries. My story of how I got to where I am contains anger, bitterness, sadness, joy, relief, humor, forgiveness, acceptance, and as they sing in Moulin Rouge, "freedom, beauty, truth, and looooove!" As I continue to tell this story, hopefully you will recognize me through it all, and maybe even see yourself somewhere in there too.
And the Quaker Meeting that went awry a few weeks back, righted itself. Though it was an off week, the general pattern is that there is space for questions, for differing opinions, for all sorts of ways of being. During the awkward week, that space seemed threatened by lots of megaphones and too many closed ears when typically it is the other way around. Through the Quaker community I have been able to understand what I was looking for in all those past conversations: space for dissonance. My dissonance, or the dissonance of another. A space where I can be where I am in my process and I can hold the process of another, without cross examination and invalidation, but with honest discussion and a genuine intent to understand.
*Note: If this is my first post you have read, this story is the fourth in a series of posts starting with Coming Out Quaker...maybe. If you are having trouble accessing Parts I-III, please let me know.
