The Fruit of the Spirit is a Plumb Line

How do we live our faith in a system we no longer agree with?

Years ago, I stepped back from the church. Before I say this, perhaps I should say that prior to these first steps, I was a well-kept infant, willingly and happily dependent on the upbringing I’d been given: Conservative and Demure. It’s a joke across the internet now, but for me, demure was life. I was well behaved and quiet, I did not ask questions because I’d learned they were not welcome. I did not stir any pot that wasn’t literal, like the Good Girl I was raised to be. I recognized much, to be certain, and from my earliest Spiritual Gifts Test discovered why: Discernment seemed to be my only natural skillset. But what is the point of keen intuition in an institution that demands silence? I asked this question in my prayers, a lot.

Then, as happens, I grew up. I left home, and went to Bible College, where the people I met did not fit the Conservative Demure label but they still fit the religious label so I adjusted with joy to my newfound boundaries. After four years, I left Bible College and joined the work force, where there is no uniformity of mindset. I met people that shocked me, people that should have scared me but didn’t because I did not know enough. Mostly, though, I found out that I liked the people I’d been trained by the church to think less of; how odd, I could only see them as beautiful.

So began the conflict: I still religiously adhered to the strict rules I’d been given but started to notice that those rules were not necessarily correct. The Grace I’d been so brazenly taught was singularly available to Christians, and the only worthy thing going for me, was visible in other places, too. I began to see humanitarian workers give food where my churches gave judgement, I saw Sikh temples give hospitality where my churches closed their doors. I saw how practically Indigenous communities care about our planet, where my churches ignored or laughed at the task we were given in Genesis. I began to see how my churches cared more for the Rule and less for the Person and I could no longer get on board.

In truth, I left the church because I was never really welcome in it. I always had too many questions. Curiosity kills the catechism, after all. Examinations are the death of an Evangelical. “But’s” melt the Baptist in lakes of fire. No, no, girl. Plant your feet, be quiet, and listen to the sermon.

When one brick loosens, the entire wall begins to crumble, and this is how it happened for the religion I’d been told to build. One of the final moments of my undoing came at a young adults group, where we watched a video declaring the Birth of Christ actually did take place on December 25 all those years ago. A man had studied star graphs and calendars to discover this faith-affirming fact, this accidental alchemy. There was a buzz in the room. How affirming! How brilliant to discover we were right all along!

But the man on the video was not an astrologer or scientist of any kind, he was a self-admitted novice who studied graphs on his own. When the video was over, I put my hand up, and asked what I assumed was a logical question. Seeking clarity, because wouldn’t it be great if this were true, I asked in gentle tone,

“Do other astrologers find the same information?”

The change in the room was immediate and palpable. Deathly silence and twenty seven turned heads toward the back row where I sat. The leader of the group actually glared at me, huffed what appeared to be steam out of her ears, and asked to speak to me after. And she did.

She told me I was a Destroyer of Faith. “I was only asking a question,” I replied in genuine confusion.

“Exactly.” She said.

I stopped going to that church for a little while. After some months I came back for a service. During the service, I had to use to washroom, so I left and did just that. One of the more visibly devout young men I knew approached me in the lobby as I tried to walk back in. He stopped me, blocked my return through the sanctuary doors with his body.

“You left the service,” he said to my eyes.

“Oh, um, yeah I just had to use the washroom.” What is happening here?

He repeats himself. So do I. We do that again, at least two more times.

A concerned look. A doubting smile. “But you left.”

“I had to pee, Brian,” I replied with some force. And then I really did leave.

It took some years before I could return, and only then with my kids, so I would have an excuse to leave a service, a conversation, a cornering of any kind. There was always a cornering.

I get it, I suppose. It was hard for people to believe that I had to leave the church to find my faith. That I needed fewer sermons and more conversations, less rehearsal and more practice, less certainty, and more room for doubt. I could no longer read about a Man who flipped the tables and questioned order in a place I’d been made to sit down and be quiet.

When I left the building I went to my proverbial cliff edge and sat with my God for awhile. We enjoyed the view and the expanse and He told me stories, listened to my crying, wiped my tears, and let me sleep. I asked a million questions and he delighted in all of them. I got the sun in my eyes and I ate wild morels and the wind disentangled my neatly done hair. He showed me who He made me to be and smiled the entire time. I drank real wine and found roots for my soul. I learned what a real laugh feels like. He helped me raise three babies and mother four. When I wandered, He stayed with me. When I rested, He kept the room quiet. When I rallied, He helped me rise again.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the plumb line: that point in the middle of every swing, that settled feeling, the un-swirled stomach. I’ve been thinking that our world seems to be stuck in the air on either side. I’ve been thinking about what it means to write in those brief moments I feel settled, if and when that happens. Or, how to write even if that feeling never shows up.

A woman of faith I admire recently posed a question to our writing community: as writers of faith, what is our responsibility in the current political climate? The struggle I have in answering that is personal: do I declare my faith and in so doing, declare what my faith is not? To talk about my faith I need to talk about the wounds, and the realities, that came with being raised in the church. This flies in the face of my upbringing: Questions are Not Welcome Here, and if you ask your questions, Neither are You.

The reason so many of us, who were raised in the church, are feeling visceral reactions to threats of authoritarianism is this: it feels familiar. We’ve been here before. We know this. We watched it every Sunday. I’ve met men who lead this way, have been in congregations of men who lead this way, have sat silently under the pain of authoritarian leadership in every aspect. I was baptized by a man who was cheating on his wife at the time. I dated a priest who threw me violently (and unapologetically) against the closet doors, in the same week he declared he was closer to God than anyone else. I’ve been accused of lacking faith because I used the washroom during a sermon. Bible as Weapon is my childhood. Bible as an excuse to rule took me a long time to escape.

I’m afraid of it because I’ve seen what it can do.

The caveat, because I’m well trained, is of course to say not all churches. Of course, and it’s not all pastors, or mentors, or men, or women. But it is more than enough, it is some, it is a lot, and it does happen. I no longer give permission for my experiences to be invalidated.

Curiously, with global unrest at continual peaks, I’ve felt myself drawn back to my faith. I know the words of Jesus well, I think: I memorized them and studied them and wrote papers on them, but the words of Jesus are not being played out by so many who publicly take His name. So I’ve grown curious. What did He really say?

The beautiful lifelines I have been lucky enough to hold, for the many years I’ve been away, have shown me that real love and faith and grace do exist within Christian communities. The pole on the other side of my religious universe is made up of friends and allies who are ready to love me where I am at, and not for what I should be doing. There is no top-down effect from my friends who are pastors, or pastors wives, or church leaders, or teachers, or mentors, or counsellors. They appear to walk well on the plumb line, and it is their faith that brings me safely back to my own.

These are the weeds I’ve been wrestling for weeks: how do I live or write about a faith I hold but can not in good conscience share title with? What exactly is the responsibility of my work, what is the value of my story, what happens when I finally call that cage exactly what it was?

People of faith, writers of faith, artists of faith, what do we do, then? Perhaps the time has come to start living from those gifts the church says you have, without silencing the voice you need to use to do so. Continue to wrestle, even when the wrestling looks like a protest. Seek truth above popular opinion. In essence, what we do as writers of faith, or people of faith, is the same as ever: while the world swings on the pendulum, our goal is to find and remind and live from the plumb line.