A Time to Laugh

It was our first elder ordination. I knew the man being ordained. His little girl. And his wife. I don’t want to gush too much because I might embarrass her (she reads here occasionally), but she is the “salt of the Earth” kind of person. The kind of friend you hope to find in a new church. I’ve only known her for a few months, but I’m really thankful for her. She’s a gem.

So I felt invested in this ordination. I listened closer. And the pastor explained:

The elders are here to protect you from me.

Excuse me? Did he just say that himself or was I thinking it that loudly?

I mean, I know that in my head. But I’ve never heard any pastor admit it plainly and from the pulpit.

There are no more tired people than the regular lay people in independent fundamental Baptist(ic) churches. Tired of the sham leadership, tired of not being heard, tired of the flat-out abuse. It’s a total mess. It’s intended to be congregational polity — that’s the heart of the American Baptist tradition — but it’s developed into a rank feudalism. American Baptists used to be the stinkers who challenged corruption, but that’s pretty rare today. So that instead of hearing about an ecclesiastical checks and balances, all Baptists might hear from the pulpit, “Submit to your pastor! He’s your authority!”

Then I read about Presbyterian polity. That it’s not congregational or episcopal. It’s not a group of people leading like a democracy or a single leader like a monarchy or patriarchy. It’s a representative democracy.

Yeah, you read that right. Our founders modeled the American government after the Scottish Presbyterians.

Now I know enough about the American representative democracy to know that it’s pretty resilient. Randy Balmer argues that the first amendment’s “separation” clause puts James Madison’s “faction” fears to rest by containing zealotry within the (private) religious sphere. Now, if that’s true, could the same be argued for the Presbies? Is their ecclesiology more robust because it contains enthusiasm in another sphere? The political sphere perhaps? Do we end up with a dueling spheres? Both strong, both weathered, both fairly resistant to change?

Maybe. I don’t know. But I like being in a church body that’s built with some seismic resistance. It’s good for the laypeople. It’s good for the elders. It’s good for the Faith.

Maybe you know the story of Scotland’s most famous hero of the Faith, John Knox. I didn’t. All I know about Scotland came from Lucy Ricardo’s visit in 1956 and our West Highland Terrier.

The guy was a stinker! He was a Catholic priest, a lawyer, a teacher, and George Wishart‘s body guard who led Knox to convert to Protestantism. He spoke out against all things Catholic — Mass, Purgatory, Mary. You name it, he ranted against it. He got into such trouble that he was exiled to the galley of a French ship, hopped to Frankfurt, and eventually fled to Geneva with Calvin himself.

Mind you — Knox made Calvin look like a diplomat. Knox’s pamphlet against female sovereigns — The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women — was too extreme for Calvin’s taste and was, in the end, even according to sympathetic historians, a “tactical error.” He was too bifurcated in his thinking, aligning all things Catholic with all things feminine and all things Protestant with all things masculine. He got too caught up in his own argumentation.

Knox ended up being one of the few countryman who wasn’t charmed by Mary Queen of Scots’ feminine wiles. When he spoke out against her betrothal to Don Carlos, she called him to Holyrood to essentially ask him: “Who do you think you are?” His response, in sum, was: “Nobody but a guy who must warn about dangers ahead.” Some contend that modern democracy was born right then and there when an ordinary stinker stood up to the seductive Sovereign! When she started to cry, he responded: “Madam, in God’s presence I speak: I never delighted in the weeping of any of God’s creatures; yea I can scarcely well abide the tears of my own boys whom my own hand corrects, much less can I rejoice in your Majesty’s weeping.”

He was a plain-spoken dissident. A bigger rabblerouser than Calvin, and the grandfather to all of Machen’s Warrior Children. And while fundamentalism might claim this Scottish stinker as its own, in reality it replicates more Samuel Rutherford and his intolerance than Knox and his fire. Being a stinker without tolerating opposing stinkers ends up being nothing more than narcissism.

So these Presbyterians don’t fear disagreement. When we were taking the “New Members Class,” for instance, the pastoral staff member explained:

You don’t have to agree with Calvinism here. Not at all. But you should know what our perspective is and what you’ll hear from the pulpit and in the Sunday School classes.

And Grant and I did another double-take. What? We can disagree? In fundamentalism when dissent is even suggested, the passive-aggressive  and dysfunctional answer is “Why would you want to be here if you don’t agree with us?” Or “Sure you can disagree, but just don’t mention it.” Some covert fundies even insist that all members agree with bylaws and doctrinal statements before joining and label dissidents as “sinning through questioning.” But outside fundamentalism, it’s a big tent with dispensationalists and postmills and amills all worshipping together. There are Democrats and Republicans. Pedobaptists and credobaptists. Homeschoolers and public schoolers and private schoolers. American-born and foreign-born. Upper- and working-class. We’re all there.

So with John Knox as the founder of our polity, dissent isn’t just patriotic. It’s positively Presbyterian!

Let kings fear, let them tremble, because there is judgment coming if they do not do what is right.

John Knox

When we left our previous life, two arbitrary things got quilted together:  (1) my blogging and (2) Grant’s singing. Because of my activity online (pre-October 16, 2007), Grant was no longer allowed to sing solos at our church. This was simply punitive — one unwarranted, unprovoked, painful action against Grant that was virtually unrelated to my “sin” of blogging. It would be like taking away a teenager’s car keys because her sister wrote a “Letter to the Editor” which her parents disagreed with.

This drove me deep underground emotionally. Think Anorexic Spirituality again. My spiritual neediness, I concluded, was sinful and, thus, shameful.

We had started to look for a new church by then, and we had whittled it down to two choices: our present one and another brand-new PCA church just up the road here, Blue Ridge Presbyterian. This newer church was precious and homey. The people were so kind. Their gentle spirit made our eventual decision very difficult.

The elder in charge of music at Blue Ridge was a dear old friend from BJU, Steve Griner. He often accompanied Grant back in the day. It was nice to hear him play hymns in his characteristically masculine style (male pianists play with such vigor). And he had asked Grant to sing a solo one Sunday.

We were both so touched. We weren’t even members! Here we were broken and bruised — kicked in the spiritual kidneys while we were already curled up on the ground. I had really, seriously wondered if we were good enough for any church since we were clearly not good enough for our last one where we had pretty deep roots. And still Steve asked Grant to sing. Grant chose the song that Steve had arranged for Grant’s BJU ministry team years before, “Take the World but Give me Jesus.” Look at the last verse:

Take the world, but give me Jesus.
In His cross my trust shall be,
Till, with clearer, brighter vision,
Face to face my Lord I see.

Early that same Sunday, while Grant rehearsed with Steve, I sat in the nursery with our boys. And Pastor Griffith came in. Apparently, he had been looking for me. He had sought me out. He said, “Camille! I read your blog this week. And I just had to find you and give you a hug. . . . I’m so sorry!”

And there in his Geneva robe, that dear Christian undershepherd gave me a great big bear hug.

So . . . on the same day that Grant sang again was the same day that a Pastor empathized with and accepted me.

I still tear up thinking about it all. I hadn’t been hugged by a pastor since I was six and getting ready for my baptism. And to get hugged after all that and even because of all that. . . . well, God’s got a good sense of drama.

Now I must admit, I still duck and hide when I see our current pastor or any ecclesiastical leader for that matter. But I do see what he’s after every Sunday and its contrast to what I got even very recently though perhaps unintentionally in fundamentalism. When Pastor Lewis (no relation) preaches about our humanity, he says:

Take off the fig leaf.

In fundamentalism, it was “Shut up or else!” But outside of fundamentalism it’s okay to admit your flaws and struggles. In fact, it’s a sign of spiritual health. Because we’re safe in God’s love, we can admit our frailty and even our not-so-popular and still-forming opinions. We can let our “sins be strong, but let [our] trust in Christ be stronger,” like Luther told his buddy Melancthon.

It’s really just another way of singing “In His cross my trust will be.”

I’ve been keeping a running tally over the last several months because it’s usually the case that Grant and I sit agape during church. Our collective jaws drop, we nudge each other, point and nod and giggle, and then I scribble and he iPhone-taps it all down so that we can remember.

This Message outside of fundamentalism is so different. So very different.

The first time I started recording these epiphanies was last December before Communion. Our pastor said:

You sin. You go to God. You ask forgiveness. He forgives you. You leave.

You sin again. You go to God. You ask forgiveness. He forgives you. You leave.

You sin again. You go to God. You ask forgiveness. He forgives you. You leave.

You sin again. . . .

I literally held my breath and stiffened my back. I was braced. I knew what was next, right? You do too. Said in a loud, scolding, harsh voice (summoning the spirit of the great revivalists): “When are you going to get your act together and stop sinning!? How can you even call yourself a Christian when you keep sinning like that??!”

But that’s not what he said. Instead:

The problem comes when you stop going back to God — either because of your moralism or secularism.

Huh? . . . Wait a second. Say what?

It went by so fast. Grant and I were blinking at the pastor and then whispering to each other. We were sure we misunderstood something. What did he say?

He was right, of course. It’s not about me being perfect because Christ did that. If it were about me doing all the right things, then I wouldn’t have a very clear sense of my full-of-sin status. It’s not about me getting all my ducks in a row before I go to God. The church is a hospital, not a pageant.

How wrong I heard it for all those years.

But this? This really is Sola Gratia.

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The Book of Remembrance

Then those who feared the LORD spoke with one another. The LORD paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who feared the LORD and esteemed his name. “They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.

“For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the LORD of hosts.

Malachi 3:16-4:3

If you’ve spent any time talking with me over the last 5 years, you know that I am a big Jeff VanVonderen fan. And I’ve never even seen his TV show! It was VanVonderen that began to clear out the legalistic cobwebs in my own head. But I’ve said that before.

I know now why VanVonderen’s books were so offensive in my previous life — why my having that big stack of his books on my desk and giving them away as gifts was such a problem. He’s an integrationist. ::gasp:: You know, that tainted sort of person who would dare mix psychology with theology.

As if psychology were some sort of devil chord that would taint our singing praises to a supreme Being. Whatever.

Anyway, he’s got a new book out — Soul Repair — and I “just happened” to be reading it while I was working through these last few posts. And I landed on this chapter, “Anorexic Spirituality.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. This is it. This is what I got. Not in my undergraduate years at BJU, mind you, but following that. This is the most lucid description of the problem, and I can’t help but wonder if some of my other (physical) “habits” were compensating for this (spiritual) dysfunction.

I can’t even “digest” it all now. But I had to share.

On this Holy Saturday, when we all remember the Pharisees’ unbelieving conspiring to keep Christ’s body in the tomb (because those sneaky disciples might steal It), I thought it would help me to see one way we stand-off from God’s love. We think they are right. That Christ won’t come back. That He’s not the Victor. That their power overwhelms the real Power. That our needs are too cumbersome or too weak or too silly. That we don’t need nurturing. That we would be better off if we just disappeared.

But they are wrong. Their god is not-God.

I love gardening. Well, I love it in the Spring. And the Fall. I just about hate it in the South Carolina heat.

We did our spring planting last week — just in time for this week‘s frost. Doh! We lost a few tulips, but we didn’t lose the tomatoes I foolishly planted too soon. And I grew these babies from seed. Brandywines!

But every time I go out in the backyard the same thing hits me.

We bought four creeping figs last year for our new wall. We had talked to a green-thumb-friend about it. We consulted our gardening books. We went to the best nursery in the city. We asked the people there for advice. We planted them carefully and watered them regularly. We did everything right.

They died. Well, all but one. And my first knee-jerk response is “It’s my fault. I didn’t work hard enough.”

I walk past the Space Bags at Target. I have about a dozen of these already at home. None of them work. Not one. And I think, “It’s my fault that they don’t work. I didn’t try hard enough.” And I have to stop myself out loud (“Keep moving, Camille!”) to walk away and not buy more. Capitalism thrives on this kind of egocentric self-loathing.

I find a bag of moldy pumpernickel in the pantry. Pangs of guilt shoot through my body. “Why did I let this happen? I’m not careful enough.”

Fundamentalism taught me this. “No doubt the trouble is with you,” right? Well, living in an abusive ideology taught me this. And it’s not just my previous life. There are countless examples. The hyper-focus on sin and an obsession with humility is a tactic for control, not a command from Christ. It’s too egocentric to be from Christ.

As I read these early contemporary conservative evangelical books, I realize that this ideology — whatever I should call it — reduces the entire person to the will. There is no body or even gut or heart — no “dreams and bones.” Just a will. You either choose to do right or you choose to do wrong. That’s all there is to it. An on-off switch. Simple compliance. And every problem can be explained away as such. If you can’t do the right thing, you have too weak of a will. If you can’t stop doing the wrong thing, your will is too strong. Back and forth — same old Keswick crazy-maker.

You see, ’cause no doubt the trouble may not be me. The world doesn’t rise and fall on my making simple choices. Take the creeping figs. Maybe the sun is too hot in that spot. Maybe the soil is bad. Maybe the plants are diseased. Maybe the bugs got ‘em. Maybe they were just cursed. Whatever it is, it’s not all about me.

And gardening forces this very product-oriented INFJ to throw caution to the wind a little bit. It forces me to stop the habits-for-the-sake-of-habits and think about what works. “Well, the petunias didn’t work here, so let’s try them over there. Or forget them altogether. Let’s get azaleas. Carrots taste bad in this red clay, so I’m not planting them again!” Habits are not a virtue. And when I reduce myself or when I’m reduced to mere habits — mere will — I’m no longer acting, but simply just moving.

Besides, I can plant and I can water. But come on now, God gives the growth. Inch by inch. It’s not all about me.

For the last several years, my main motivator for those deep-down personal things that would probably go unnoticed to the world at large has been self-loathing. Egocentric self-loathing. I would (can I use the past tense for this?) actually shame myself into sticking with a particular habit, telling myself that I don’t deserve any different.

Stupid. I admit that it’s stupid. But I have to get it out in the open to work past it. It’s not the way I was raised. And it’s taken this long to realize that what I endured 10-15 years ago is the same thing I’m reading about in my project and that pushed us out the door of fundamentalism. It’s a pair of book ends around a multi-volume set.

Sigh. . . .

I found some brown romaine in the vegetable crisper drawer today. And slimy cilantro. So into the new composter it goes. It’s really invigorating to do that, you know? Turning slime into black gold. Composting is like grace for garbage. Turning my failures into the best fertilizer for the flowers.

Now if I could just find a composter for these Space Bags.

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But even in my re-telling this wanting-to-be-forgotten story, it’s revealing to find the persistent theme: God gave me good roots. Grant was my ally. He reassured and loved on me. My brother, too, was a reliable friend — honest but gentle. My dad was also a rock — ever the cheerleader.

But who was there reading, listening, comforting, reminding, dragging, and even nagging me all the way through? Who remembered the deep-down-all-of-me before the seeds of that abusive ideology took root?

My dear mother.

We were talking the other day. Mom had read my church‘s newsletter from this month and had noticed their support for CEF. My church and my parents’ new church, too, sponsor Good News Clubs at nearby public elementary schools. They even send kids to C.Y.I.A — CEF’s training for summer missionaries.

I was in C.Y.I.A. back in the day with no small amount of skepticism and criticism from the fundamentalists around us. My parents ignored it and so I did too. It had been a terrific experience for me. Instead of taking it all in, I was giving back. And it was when I was 16-year-old C.Y.I.A. summer missionary while teaching a little disabled child in my 5-Day Club that Jesus loved her that I really, truly realized (again) that Jesus loved me too.

Mom has said more than once in this mutual transition which moved us out of fundamentalism: “After all this time, I finally don’t feel at constant odds with my church’s philosophy. What took us so long?”

I guess we really never were fundamentalists, were we?

You know what they say: when you have a hammer, everything becomes a nail. Well, when you have a blog, everything becomes a blog post.

In reading all this stuff from the 70s-80s-and-90s iteration of conservative Evangelicalism, I’ve had more than a few demons to exorcise. And one I’ve been intentionally avoiding talking about here. I just don’t want to think about it because the tears come too easily. I want to forget it. Ignore it. Hope it goes away. And so . . . I think, then, that I really should talk about it.

::deep breath::

It all came to a head 10 years ago just before my 30th birthday. But it started about 5 years before that. If I had had a blog back then, this is what it would have been about.

I won’t bore you with all the medical details. Who wants to hear the gory specifics about someone else’s medical condition, right? But suffice it to say, I had all the symptoms of Cushing’s Syndrome. Consistently my cortisol levels were double the normal values. That’s high, but not really that high.

I don’t know exactly how I got to that point. It may have been the birth control pills I started taking after I got married. I don’t really know. Nobody knows. But, ironically or not, as soon as I had invested my entire life into fundamentalism, it started.

Things weren’t right with my health, and my mother taught me that when things weren’t right, you need to go to the doctor for help.

When I told the (BJU-employed) doctor everything and that I had been exercising to lose the weight I had gained, she didn’t believe me. She said something like, “It’s quite obvious that that couldn’t be true.” Or something like that.

She didn’t believe me! How is that even possible? How dare she! A health-care professional who, at first blush, accuses her patient of lying!?? She, in sum, patted me on the head and sent me on my way, assuming, I’m sure, that not indulging my sinful lie would put a stop to my troubles.

This really bothered me. It still bothers me. Because I still assume that people aren’t going to believe me when I tell them what I’m doing or not doing. And I don’t live a raucous, devil-may-care life. I exercise — I have pretty consistently except for pregnancy and sickness my whole adult life. I don’t drink. I have never smoked. I take my vitamins daily. I’m a square. A total square. But when I see that white lab coat, I assume that whatever I say will be disbelieved. It’s a kind of learned helplessness for my health.

Anyway. . . . I am nothing if not stubborn. And so I set out to prove her wrong — like her opinion of me mattered somehow. I continued to power walk like mad — between 16-20 miles per week. Our lab-collie mix joined me. Back campus there. I’m sure my neighbors from that time remember seeing me in rain or shine, winter and summer.

I didn’t lose a pound. I actually gained weight. And we were so BJU-poor, that I let my shoes get too far gone. And I developed a pretty serious pain in my foot.

So back to the doctor I went. Here I had a definite, material symptom this time, right? And this doctor was supposed to be the best one, I was told. The female. The one that understood. I told her about the foot pain. And she actually told me that it couldn’t hurt that bad. That I was imagining things.

I insisted. She belittled and accused. I insisted some more. In time, I got worse; the symptoms seemed more mysterious (more Cushing’s like). I brought Grant with me. We made big enough pests of ourselves that in disgust she passed us along to a specialist although she did make it clear to him beforehand that I was a nutcase.

Thankfully, he took one look at my symptoms and blood work and did not agree with her character assessment.

But he didn’t have any answers either. Nor did his buddy up the road. Or his buddy in Indiana (we moved to Bloomington at this point). Or his buddy. Or the other endocrinologist. I got poked, prodded, infuriated, mortified, and still no answers. The pain in my foot was so intense, I’d have to crawl to the bathroom first thing in the morning. I eventually got a cane.

Because this last Indiana guy was Dr. Wait-and-See, I took the bull by the horns and got an appointment at the Mayo Clinic during my summer break in 1998. Grant had summer school and couldn’t go with me, so my mom joined me. We took the Amtrack up to Minnesota that summer. That entire experience is a blog series in and of itself. But King Hussein of Jordan was there at the same time! I didn’t bring my sedan chair though.

It was mostly a waste of time. They told me nothing new. I got poked, prodded, mortified, tested, and even photographed (!!). As before, they’d take one look at my symptoms, act all positive that they could solve everything, and continue with the testing. But when the results were neither normal nor abnormal enough, they’d shrug and pat me on the head and wish me well.

No character assassinations though. There are small blessings.

I found a NIH trial at the University of Michigan on Cushing’s Syndrome. I got in. If I remember correctly, they were testing the effects of cortisol on memory. They did the same old stuff and were headed quickly toward the same conclusion.

Until. . . . a physician’s assistant listened. Really, really listened. She asked me about the pain in my foot. I described it to her like I had described it a dozen other doctors: it felt like a nail was stabbing my heel. It’s the worse in the morning and then it gets better, and then there’s a point of no return and I can hardly walk at all.

She, God bless her, said, “I think you have a heel spur.”

A HEEL SPUR? Really?? You’re kidding?!?? . . .

One $35 X-ray later and we had our proof. There it was. For five years I had had a lousy, plain-as-day, ordinary, run-of-the-mill spur. I wasn’t imagining it at all.

I was still in denial, but my darling mother dragged me, hobbling and weeping, to the orthotic store the next day. I didn’t believe this would work. How could it? I still wondered if it actually was my bad character that was causing these problems.

Within 2 days, I could walk normally. And within a few weeks I was . . . well, all the Cushing’s Symptoms started to clearly diminish. I got back home to Bloomington and visited a sports doctor (tons of them in that college town). I told him what was up and he said, “You poor thing! You have really suffered.”

That was the first doctor among all those others to empathize with me. And the first to offer me actual but really inexpensive solutions.

I used to say that what I learned from all this is that doctors are really just mechanics. You need them, of course, but they aren’t much more than technicians at some point. And Occham’s Razor, of course: the simplest answer is usually the correct one.

Now I think what happened is that the birth control pills messed with my system, so I walked like a fiend to fix it (and prove my worth), got that heel spur, and the pain from that caused my stress-hormone cortisol production to rise. That was a form of “Pseudo-Cushing’s” in the end.

In the grand scheme of things, one doctor was just as incompetent as the next. Probably they were so focused on their own endocrine specialty that they couldn’t listen to the whole problem, although you’d think the famed Mayo Clinic could sort through that. It took a PA to get to the bottom of it. And it took a sports doc to understand and actually solve the problem.

Usually specialists rely on general practitioners to catch these heel-spur sorts of problems. But my general practitioner was stuck. Stuck in a lousy ideology that made it easier to accuse an Other of sin than listen. Confronting was more her job than diagnosing. Judging was more important than thinking. The metaphysical heart was easier for her to “see” than a malformed heel bone.

I still hear her voice in my head. Or perhaps, reading Jay Adams and his ilk accentuate her long-forgotten self-righteous and ill-proven diatribe delivered to me at a time of physical pain and fear while I was wearing nothing but a paper dress. Through all this, I’ve discovered that my main motivation in fundamentalism was shame and self-loathing, and that’s a deliberate systemic thing. It’s described, defended, promoted, and assumed. It’s the first knee-jerk reaction. “No doubt the trouble is with you,” right?

This is all just another layer to a recently-realized problem. A layer that lies a little closer to my gut. Another layer that needs to be sliced away a la William of Ockham.