A spiritual crossroads?

The other day, Mal wanted to do the Bible App for Kids, a great program from YouVersion and Life.Church. As we were going through the story-- I think maybe it was David and Goliath? Anyway, whatever it was, I was thinking, "When D was this age, we were already doing Bible stories every night..." When Mal was little, I read through the Jesus Storybook Bible (one, if not the best, of the Gospel stories EVER) two or three times; now he's too impatient to sit through a whole "chapter," so the app is about the only Bible he gets, unless he's paying attention in church, which he does not appear to do unless there's music or communion.

Anyway, while I was considering all of this, a few things crossed my mind: 1) With all of my intentional and careful input, Daphne couldn't care less about church and maybe God and spiritual things right now (or maybe she could, but just doesn't discuss it with me). On the one hand, I get it: I wasn't extremely interested when I was her age. The main difference is that it wasn't an option not to participate in church. Daphne probably thought so, too, until I cut her loose. 2) How much of the Bible do I want to expose Mal to as a youngster? I mean, what do I think it's important for him to understand and believe? Which led me to the million dollar question: How much of it do I understand and believe?

Over the past ten years, many of what I would say were my "foundational" beliefs have changed. That was after they'd changed drastically, becoming much more fundamental, probably fifteen years ago. For example, when D was born, it was very important to me: that there was a literal 7-day creation that happened within the past ten-thousand years, that homosexuality was wrong (but God love 'em!), that the Bible was wholly inerrent, that husbands were in a benevolent hierarchy over their wives (and with good reason), and that scripture interpreted scripture so that the whole Bible was understandable on its own, with no outside cues or context.

I don't know exactly when this started unraveling, but all I know is that when a friend of mine posted a "proof dinosaurs roamed the earth with man" conference the other day, I just sighed and thought, "Who cares?" I mean, ten years ago, I would have gone. I would have been so excited and interested. "Billions of dead things, buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth" and all that. Now, I just feel like God has more on our plates for us, here in the world, than convincing ourselves (the ones who allegedly believe in the Bible) that the Bible is correct. I love science. I believe that all scientific truth is God's because he designed everything. But I don't see anymore how it's necessary that the flood was worldwide to continue believing in God.

And there's another thing: The flood. Awful. It's difficult for me to live with this near-complete destruction of humanity as coming from a loving Creator God, and I start to wonder if people are right that we borrowed the flood story from other cultures, and that it's been tweaked to be a morality play, enticing us to believe or else.

I really toed the Beth Moore line of "If there's something that seems off when we read the Bible, there must be something else going on underneath that, because God doesn't ever do the wrong thing." That's a paraphrase, and she said it about the guy who died when he tried to steady the Ark of the Covenant with his bare hands. But now... I think it was Daphne who really opened my eyes to this, actually. She asked me once about the Egyptian first-borns who died. She had tears in her eyes, and asked how God could kill innocents like that. I explained that he'd warned the Pharaoh, and tried to make her understand that sometimes people pay the price for immoral leaders, parents, etc. But she was insistent that God could have freed his people any way he wanted to. He didn't have to murder children to make a point. And as I thought about it, I could understand her anger.

This doesn't sound like the loving, caring Father I want to know and worship and have as a deity. I have come to want to believe that this was also a story people put in to serve their own purposes. That's manipulative, but it seems better than the alternative to me.

And I get it, I've even said it: God doesn't have to explain his actions to anyone; He's God. But if he's a God who routinely wipes people out, including little kids, is that someone I can sincerely trust and respect? If the Bible is inerrent and tells everything exactly as it is, then God not only allowed but commanded his people to commit genocide, kill the wives and children of criminals, and keep some foreign women as spoils of war, in order to rape and maybe marry them against their wills.

These are things that have always been in the Bible, and when, say, my daughter was younger and asked about them, I had answers. Things like, "God is God and he's holy, and so the things he does are holy, even if we don't understand them with our finite brains." But that just feels like garbage to me now.

Another thing I've heard, and probably said, was that the times were much more brutal back then and God's law and ways still showed more restraint and were more humane than the barbaric culture of the day. Well, humans might have evolved since then, but my God, the one I believe in and want to believe in, doesn't change. I can't believe that the Lord I serve was at any point and for any reason less ethical than the Geneva Convention.

A few years ago, I read this article by Zack Hunt, formerly of American Jesus, I guess now he just uses his own name to blog. It's on how the Bible isn't perfect and doesn't have to be. You can read that if you want; it really stuck with me and I've thought about it ever since. I feel like most analogies break down at some point, so comparing the word of God to the word of his mom might not work for you, but overall, I thought this was very respectful and well thought-out.

There are a lot of Christians who will say that you either take the Bible as it is, or don't take it and, honestly, I'm at a point in my life where if those are the only two choices, I have to leave it. I can't explain why this didn't hit me sooner, but I can't serve a master who would allow anyone to throw rocks at their own child until that child was dead, much less prescribe it.

I have to believe that there are portions of the Bible that the authors put in there, and I can give them the benefit of the doubt in saying maybe even with all the best intentions, maybe even thinking that they were speaking for God... but they can't have been. Not the God I talk to. Not the God who loves me and whose Holy Spirit indwells me and tells me (as Jesus did) that things like murder, retaliation, and abuse of authority are wrong, while forgiveness and love are right.

I think that when I married an unbeliever, some people worried that my faith might suffer. But I'm going to be honest with you: my husband is supportive of my faith as a valuable and inseparable part of who I am. Do you know what has caused me to rethink so much of this stuff lately? It's the very vocal and visible "Christian" response to many social and political items of the day. I see mocking and anger and suspicion and hatred coming from people who are supposed to be known for our love (at least according to that pesky New Testament).

The fact that I don't like their means is one thing, but then I started realizing that I didn't really like what they were saying. I don't agree with a lot of the things they say that are based on the Scriptures, or their interpretation of the scriptures. I don't appreciate the way that a lot of "us" parent our children. I chafe against the way "we" stand up for our rights, when I don't see any new covenant example of that at all.

We can't all be right about what the Bible means. Maybe I'm wrong and those people up there have it right. If so, I can't and won't be a part of that belief system.

It's funny; at first, I wondered whether I was having a crisis of faith, but even as I was ruminating on that, I found myself praying a lot during the night as I woke up, or during the day as I thought about people. I am confident that there is a God. I believe that the Bible is important, and has much to say about who God is, and why we're here. But there are things, mostly from the Old Testament, but really even some things in the New, that I think just don't apply across the board to everyone's lives the way that the "one another" commands do.

If you want to get really specific, I'll tell you a couple of them right now: I'm not a complementarian; I'm an egalitarian. I believe there are numerous valid, God-honoring reasons to get a divorce besides just sexual infidelity (though I get why he hates it; it's awful). I don't think homosexuality is a sin - and if you're going to ask me how I can believe that when it's in the Bible, just take whatever answer you'd give as to why you're okay with women dressing up fancy or not covering their heads in church or having short hair, or why you think it's okay for people to divorce if there is physical abuse or why you don't give to anyone who asks, or how you justify praying in public, or why single people seek out mates, or how you can say the Pledge of Allegiance, and assume my answer would be something along those lines. Even more, you can figure out why you're not a Calvinist if you're not, because a pragmatic reading of the entirety of Scriptures allows nothing else. Heck, guys, I might not even believe in Hell. I'm chewing on that one right now. This post has some good thoughts, and I actually have "Love Wins" on hold through the library at this very moment.

None of this is really earth-shattering, but I realize that parsing it out like this means that many people I love and admire will probably think now that I'm not truly a Christian. But I still *feel* like a Christ-follower, and know God understands where I am and where my heart is. Also, the more I come to grips with these thoughts and beliefs, the BIGGER God is to me.

So there you have it. Wading on, wrestling on...



Edited to add: Thanks for walking with me, and thanks for caring about me. If you're concerned, you can pray for me, but you don't need to contact me to give me other things to think about because, I promise, I've probably held the same kind of views in the past... things about the sovereignty of God; about how we, as ants, can't expect to understand a concept so big as God so we shouldn't try to shrink him by making him make sense to us; about how all of those horrible, violent stories are a picture of how awful sin is to God, etc. The fact is that I believe in Jesus, and the God he is and the God he represents. So for now, I need to reject anything that seems inconsistent with that. There's plenty of "bad news" to offset the good news of the Gospel without it.

Another thing I've thought a lot about lately is the verse about how, in the future, people will reject sound doctrine for whatever tickles their ears. We hear that, and we shake our heads sadly, and we assume that "those churches" or "that preacher" with "that congregation" is doing that. We never assume that we are the ones having our ears tickled. Like we think if we hear a convicting message and say, "That's a hard teaching, but yes... yes..." that means we're not just sinking in to an easy belief system. I want to do the hard work of wondering, "Is my faith a little too comfortable?" every once in a while, and then parse that out with my very understanding heavenly Father.