Like Jon and Trev I'm a lifetime evangelical Christian. Trev and I actually grew up in the same church so if you're looking for a sense of my early years, feel free to read his opening paragraph or two and just extrapolate.
For most of my life I had it in my head to be a pastor in a church. I never really had any other goals. So I went to Bible College when I was 18. I simply assumed that Bible College would be a breeze and that I'd know everything that needed knowing. Anyone who knew me then will be able to tell you that I was an arrogant tool an awful lot of the time (and anyone who knows me now will probably say little has changed ;) ). In any case, I did not expect to be challenged in real and meaningful ways.
I expect that most non-Christians or Christians from more liberal traditions would be surprised to know that the professors that work at an awful lot of conservative Bible Colleges in North America are very talented, well educated, and insightful people. That was (and is) certainly the case at Canadian Bible College (now Ambrose University College). I discovered at college that a lot of my firmly held beliefs about the world were not so monolithic as I had imagined. It's hard to say for sure, but I think that had I gone to a secular university I would have become very defensive about many of my fundamentalist beliefs and would not have been challenged all that much. At Bible College, however, my defenses were down. My professors and friends were all Christians and so I expected them to agree with me about everything. When they didn't I found the experience very, very unsettling. There are simply too many stories from that first year or two to tell here, but I will tell the one that I think changed me in the most profound way.
I can never quite remember if it was my first or second year, but I think it was year one. For some reason the issue of the role of women in the church was a really big deal to me then. I was, at the time, strongly convinced that women should not teach, or have any authority at all in the church, and that women should be subservient to their husbands in the home. I felt this very strongly. It seemed to me that any other position represented a departure from the Bible as inspired truth, and that was unacceptable.
One morning at breakfast in the cafeteria I was sitting with a group of friends from my home church. We were talking about our friends back home and the Bible study group they were forming now that they were finished with high-school youth-group. My friend K (for so I shall call her for this post) was so proud of her friends, two young women, who were leading the group. Naturally, as a budding hierarchicalist I found this idea appalling. Those two women shouldn't have be leading the group, one of the men should have been. So that's what I said. I was completely astonished at the vehemence of K's response. She was terribly angry and upset with me and we had a fairly unpleasant argument there in the cafeteria before she left, clearly exasperated with me and tired of my presence. A few hours later she called me and we sat down to talk about the whole issue again. This time she put up with me for longer, giving me the opportunity to say some truly hurtful things, and even to make her cry (which made me cry I think too). It was fantastic. That was the first time that I realized that I was kind of a bastard,* and that there was very little love or grace involved in my conception of God or of Christ, and thus of Christianity in general. I thought in terms of logic and rules, and so that is how I conceived of God. That conversation with K, though the consequences were long in coming, fundamentally altered the way that I thought.
I realized that I didn't want to be mean spirited, and I also realized that there were other honest, well-meaning, intelligent Christians in the world who disagreed with me. I couldn't paint them all as stupid or ignorant and so I couldn't simply ignore them. It was the first time that I truly realized that love must be the first rule of all conversations, even debates or disagreements. That love, that deep respect for the other as a person, is central to the Gospel of Christ as I have slowly been realizing. For me, at that time in my life, this was a sea change. It was the first time in my life that I thought it might be better to be kind than to be right.
*Please don't take this to mean that I believe anyone who is not an egalitarian is a bastard. This is a personal account and, while others may express views with which I disagree in an honest and loving way, I know my own heart from that time and the statement is, I assure you, true.
For most of my life I had it in my head to be a pastor in a church. I never really had any other goals. So I went to Bible College when I was 18. I simply assumed that Bible College would be a breeze and that I'd know everything that needed knowing. Anyone who knew me then will be able to tell you that I was an arrogant tool an awful lot of the time (and anyone who knows me now will probably say little has changed ;) ). In any case, I did not expect to be challenged in real and meaningful ways.
I expect that most non-Christians or Christians from more liberal traditions would be surprised to know that the professors that work at an awful lot of conservative Bible Colleges in North America are very talented, well educated, and insightful people. That was (and is) certainly the case at Canadian Bible College (now Ambrose University College). I discovered at college that a lot of my firmly held beliefs about the world were not so monolithic as I had imagined. It's hard to say for sure, but I think that had I gone to a secular university I would have become very defensive about many of my fundamentalist beliefs and would not have been challenged all that much. At Bible College, however, my defenses were down. My professors and friends were all Christians and so I expected them to agree with me about everything. When they didn't I found the experience very, very unsettling. There are simply too many stories from that first year or two to tell here, but I will tell the one that I think changed me in the most profound way.
I can never quite remember if it was my first or second year, but I think it was year one. For some reason the issue of the role of women in the church was a really big deal to me then. I was, at the time, strongly convinced that women should not teach, or have any authority at all in the church, and that women should be subservient to their husbands in the home. I felt this very strongly. It seemed to me that any other position represented a departure from the Bible as inspired truth, and that was unacceptable.
One morning at breakfast in the cafeteria I was sitting with a group of friends from my home church. We were talking about our friends back home and the Bible study group they were forming now that they were finished with high-school youth-group. My friend K (for so I shall call her for this post) was so proud of her friends, two young women, who were leading the group. Naturally, as a budding hierarchicalist I found this idea appalling. Those two women shouldn't have be leading the group, one of the men should have been. So that's what I said. I was completely astonished at the vehemence of K's response. She was terribly angry and upset with me and we had a fairly unpleasant argument there in the cafeteria before she left, clearly exasperated with me and tired of my presence. A few hours later she called me and we sat down to talk about the whole issue again. This time she put up with me for longer, giving me the opportunity to say some truly hurtful things, and even to make her cry (which made me cry I think too). It was fantastic. That was the first time that I realized that I was kind of a bastard,* and that there was very little love or grace involved in my conception of God or of Christ, and thus of Christianity in general. I thought in terms of logic and rules, and so that is how I conceived of God. That conversation with K, though the consequences were long in coming, fundamentally altered the way that I thought.
I realized that I didn't want to be mean spirited, and I also realized that there were other honest, well-meaning, intelligent Christians in the world who disagreed with me. I couldn't paint them all as stupid or ignorant and so I couldn't simply ignore them. It was the first time that I truly realized that love must be the first rule of all conversations, even debates or disagreements. That love, that deep respect for the other as a person, is central to the Gospel of Christ as I have slowly been realizing. For me, at that time in my life, this was a sea change. It was the first time in my life that I thought it might be better to be kind than to be right.
*Please don't take this to mean that I believe anyone who is not an egalitarian is a bastard. This is a personal account and, while others may express views with which I disagree in an honest and loving way, I know my own heart from that time and the statement is, I assure you, true.
6 comments:
ah Colin, I'm glad we are friends :)
ah man, that was really well expressed. i wish i could go back and re-tell my story in terms of the times when I had to personally realize that I was being a moron, as you did here. Not only the point you made but the way you made it have spoken volumes.
Good stuff, Colin. I knew you in your first semester, but I never thought of you as a bastard. That might have been due to the fact that I had my head so far up my own butt that I could only see your faults through my naval. Without making excuses for my or your "bastard-ness," I do want to attribute some of that to the brute facts of human development that come with being 18 years old and learning to see the subtlety of ideas. That doesn't mean the rest of us who treated others like garbage shouldn't follow your example and apologize to those we trounced on.
I also really liked what you said about confessional schools. I see it regularly in the world religions class I TA at university: students with strong religious convictions are often defensive against ideas that challenge their views (and often make fools of themselves in the process of protecting those views). This doesn't go just for some evangelicals but for certain Roman Catholics and Muslims too.
In favour of confessional schools, there is something about praying and worshiping alongside a teacher that helps you to trust them, even when they present ideas that threaten one's own.
Thanks for bringing these things out so candidly, Colin.
I think we have all had experiences growing up in the church where issues seemed to simply be either black or white. End of story. Growing up in the same church as you,I remember some of your debates and ideas, but I still love ya anyways!! So glad that we are still friends.
Your revelation about women in leadership is interesting in how it mirrors one that Jon wrote a while back (thanks Tara, for introducing me to this blog, and a whole slew of interesting people to check up on . . .) - men can adopt a hierarchical stance without having to face the cognitive dissonance that women do to reach the same conclusion. As a young woman who was considering ministry (which, in the end, is so not my calling - but not b/c of my gender . . .), I had to reconcile myself with passages in the Bible that appeared to say "ha ha - God gave you talents of leadership and speaking, but he doesn't want you to use them . . .". My husband, who is a pretty savvy guy, on the other hand - never struggled with those passages so young, b/c they didn't affect him directly.
(alright - rant rant babble babble, I'll quit now - looking forward to following your conversation from over in the "emergent" corner)
el maggie,
Welcome here, glad to have you. You touch on a subject that has always interested me, both theologically and sociologically. I mean, of course, women who hold strong hierarchical views with regard to gender. One of the (many) conversations on this journey for me was with a woman who described precisely what you do...that sense of frustration and alienation from what she had always believed was her calling. In the end she determined that either she must be a strong hierarchicalist and pursue that kind of reading of the Bible, or she had to take a much more egalitarian stance and pursue that kind of reading of the Bible.
I can hardly imagine what that kind of internal dialogue must be like for a woman. "Cognitive dissonance" hardly seems to capture it, but what else do you call it?
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