Michelle Van Loon's Blog

I’ve been blogging for a long, long time. Digital platforms come and go (anyone reading this who had a MySpace site?), but the human need to connect and communicate is hard-wired in us by our Maker. I wrote a little bit about my history as a blogger here as a way of announcing that I’ll now be sharing blog posts and news from my Substack site: https://michellevanloon.substack.com/

I’d love to have you sign up on the site to receive those occasional posts (once every month or so) right in your email inbox. You can also read them on the site. It’s nice to have a choice!

In any case, I am grateful to you for reading my words.

If I could extract two things from the American Church and cast them into the Lake of Fire…one would be Dispensational Eschatology and the other would be this Spiritual Warfare stuff. Because I think it has done way, way, way more damage than any good. And rather than looking at our own culpability in the way that we ourselves are subject to greed, jealousy, racism, pride, arrogance, and all the other besetting sins, we don’t look at that at all. –Skye Jethani, on Holy Post Podcast #550: Demons, Democrats, & Dominionists 

The Holy Post episode covered some of the same territory in the podcast as this week’s article in Baptist News Global entitled “The New Apostolic Reformation drove the January 6 riots, so why was it overlooked by the House Select Committee?”, while making some additional connections between other influential characters and movements in pop Evangelicalism including Bill Bright, the 10/40 window, and the Fellowship.

Teachings about Dispensationalism and Spiritual Warfare have shaped and shadowed my journey in Evangelicalism since the mid-1970’s. The two themes are inexorably intertwined. According to those teachings, we are engaged in a spiritual battle that is unfolding according to a plan for the ages, the truth of which was miraculously unlocked by a disenfranchised Anglican named John Nelson Darby in the mid-1800’s. For eighteen centuries before his revelation, per adherents, the Church got it all wrong. 

I wrote here about the effect that the dominance of the Rapture as settled orthodoxy has had on Christian culture. I’ve also written about my burnout with those who see everything in terms of spiritual warfare. The net effect of these teachings seems to be a strange brew of terror of being left behind and hubris at having a front-row seat at the spiritual WWF going on all around us. 

Two authors of fiction cemented this default worldview of many Evangelicals, even if said Evangelicals never read the work of either author: Frank Peretti’s spiritual warfare stories beginning with This Present Darkness, which released in 1986 is a kissin’ cousin to Jerry Jenkins’s Left Behind series, which became a best-seller beginning in the mid-1990’s.Themes of demonic activity are baked into the Dispensational script for the End Times. These authors weren’t creating new ideas, but they transformed already-dominant pop theology on those two topics into consumable spiritual horror stories that promised to help adherents win the real-life battles they’d face during the dark, dark Last Days. These were key theology texts for Harry and Mary in the pew. 

I’m with Skye. I, too, have witnessed incredible damage unleashed on both Church and culture because of Dispensational Eschatology and Spiritual Warfare teaching, including creating real trauma for many who grew up in Evangelical circles, cultivating an environment ripe for conspiracy theories to flourish, or storming the Capitol in Jesus’ name.

i believe Jesus is returning to the world he loves, and that spiritual warfare is a reality until he does – but I also see the effect that bad theology (Dispensational Eschatology) and flogging a secondary thing into primacy (Spiritual Warfare) has had on us all. Error has had breathtaking real-world consequences, as it always has throughout Church history. We are reaping what has been sown like invisible poison into the spiritual air we all breathe.

One valuable gift that the spiritual deconstruction conversation has brought to the American Evangelical Church in recent years is a willingness to challenge the dominant narrative created by Dispensational Eschatology and bad Spiritual Warfare teaching. While some who may question that narrative risk being branded as anything from “Lukewarm” to  “Apostate” to “Flaming Heretic” in their specific Church circles, there is space today like I’ve never seen before to do the hard work of growing toward maturity, and allowing the Spirit to prune fruitless, faux branches from our faith. As Russell Moore wisely noted in this Christianity Today piece, “The question is not whether we will deconstruct, but what we will deconstruct.”

After I listened to the Holy Post podcast earlier this week, I found myself imagining what it would have been like to be a part of an Evangelicalism for the last five decades that wasn’t influenced by Dispensationalism and so much Warfare teaching. It was an interesting thought experiment to dream of an Evangelicalism that looked like this:

Instead of creating an environment where conspiracy theories flourished like a fallow field full of weeds, there was instead a commitment to cultivate a desire for truth. Instead of allowing culture warring to be a proxy and extension of our addiction to spiritual warfare, there was a seriousness about the spiritual disciplines of regular self-examen and confession as a way to address those besetting sins and learn to love our neighbors as we love ourselves because we are loved by God. Instead of fetishizing the idea of Fantasy Israel using those decoder ring Dispensational charts, there was a commitment to addressing anti-Semitism in the Church’s history, theology, and present practice and in truly cherishing the single unbroken story of redemption contained in Scripture from “In the beginning” of Genesis 1 to “Come, Lord Jesus” at the close of Revelation 22.Instead of endlessly attempting to decode the books of Daniel and Revelation for those who are looking for special knowledge that is a kind of spiritual equivalent of insider trading, the Church both individually and corporately sought instead to decode what it meant to be salt and light in this hurting world. Instead of pillorying people who questioned Dispensational Eschatology and lopsided Spiritual Warfare teaching as Bad Christians (or worse), there was a movement toward meaningful John 17 fellowship with those who share a common confession to core dogma, with plenty of grace for differing convictions on matters of doctrine and opinion.  Instead of believing that fear and anger are virtues, we cooperated with the Holy Spirit in cultivating the fruit of the Spirit in our lives and in our faith communities. 

What would this church look like? I am hoping that as more in the Church come to terms with the corrosive effects of Dispensational Eschatology and the unhealthy emphasis on Spiritual Warfare and repent, future generations might find out. Lord, please help us. 

 

Cover photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

When there are generations of moral failures in our family, what hope is there for us?

It turns out, the shape of our our spiritual family tree looks dramatically different than that of our physical family tree.

An example: His great-great grandfather had blood on his hands. His great-grandfather started out strong, but the bloat of a supersized life of luxury left him morally compromised by the end of his life. His grandfather’s life was marked by war and division. His father was an idolater who died after only three years on the job.

With that kind of family history, there didn’t seem to be much hope for Asa, who became king of Judah, the southern kingdom of a divided nation. Yet Scripture tells us he’d gone in a radically different direction from his forebears (here and here).

Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father David had done. (1 Kings 15:11)

Asa’s great-great grandfather David is simultaneously named by God as “a man whose heart beats to my heart, a man who will do what I tell him” and as the person who used his position to assault another man’s wife, then send that man to his death. Even so, God promised that the Messiah would come from the line of this complicated man. The next three generations of leaders that descended from David didn’t seem to have gotten that memo, as each generation’s disobedience muted the sound of God’s heartbeat.

By the time Asa was born, David had been dead for decades. Asa’s direct mentors were not faithful to God. If I lived in those days, I wouldn’t have had much hope for the direction of Asa’s life.

And yet, when he stepped into the role of King of Judah after his father’s short three-year reign, Asa showed himself to be a radical reformer. He expelled the male shrine prostitutes from the land. He got rid of the idols that had multiplied under the leadership of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He removed his own grandmother from her cushy position as Queen Mother because of her addiction to idol worship. While he didn’t destroy entirely the high places in the land that had been devoted to idol worship, he turned the focus of the people back to worship of the one true God. Though battles with Judah’s cousin-neighbors in Israel to the north continued throughout Asa’s 42 year reign, the focus of Asa’s rule was in aligning his people with the words of life God gave to Moses hundreds of years earlier.

Scripture gives no clue if there was a catalytic incident in Asa’s life that caused him to  change the direction his family had been heading for generations and return to him. It simply tells us that he did. Just as his forefathers did, Asa hand-scribed a copy of the Law when he ascended the throne. But in his case, he received the words as a gift from the Author.

Whether it is Abram leaving his family to follow God into the unknown or Saul who was excelling at walking in his family’s spiritual footsteps until the risen Jesus apprehended him on the Damascus Road, Scripture emphasizes that every person in every new generation must decide to follow God for themselves. We receive an emotional and spiritual heritage through the family tree in which we’re placed, and those can be great gifts that point the next generations toward faithfulness and offer them the blessing of a solid moral foundation on which to build.

But they are not guarantees.

Nor are generations of lousy, abusive, addicted, or absent parents a guarantee of unfaithfulness in every subsequent generation. The parable of the prodigal sons highlights the fact that a good father may have children who wander in dramatically different ways from the childhood nurture they experienced. One child may choose an obvious sex, drugs, rock-n-roll rebellion; another may be a well-behaved but soulless legalist. In King Asa’s case, he chose reverse rebellion. His faith was his own. Itgrew despite being planted in some sour soil, fertilized by the sin of his forebears.

There is no genetic heredity for living faith. Faith is a ssed planted, direct gift from our heavenly Father, not our human parents. Even if we come from a family marked by many generations of living faith, the reality is that each new branch of that family is connected directly to the Root. Every believing parent learns at one point or another that we can not graft our children’s faith onto our own and cause their faith to grow. But Asa’s story reminds us that faith’s seed does not contain human DNA, but that of The Creator, Sower, and Harvester Himself – our God.

Faith does indeed take root in every generation – even when family history or even current inhospitable growing conditions seem to predict a different outcome.

 

Related! Coming in September – a great opportunity to think more deeply about our family stories:

The very first Sage Forum Book Club is slated for September 8th, 15th, and 22nd at 7 PM Eastern time. I’ll be leading three interactive sessions via Zoom surrounding the content of my latest book. We’ll explore why our unique family history matters, take a look at the effect of trauma and challenge in our family’s past, and talk about the gift of legacy we are creating now with our lives. Purchase of the book is recommended, but not required, and there is no charge for this event. Click here before 5 PM on Thursday, September 8th to register.

One generation commends your works to another; they tell of your mighty acts. (Ps 145:4)

Dear Church in America in the year of our Lord 2062 –

Faith is passed on from one generation to the next. As I write these words in 2022, I wonder what elements of the Evangelical faith currently being practiced in America will take root in the generation to come if the Lord tarries.  

A lot can happen in forty years. The church I am a part of today is the direct descendant of the church I first experienced as a young adult four decades ago, just as the church of the early 1980’s grew in the soil of those who’d preceded us. But when I reflect on a church world that had been flooded by Boomers drawn to faith as a result of the renewal sparked by the Jesus Movement I can the imprint of some habits of those days of what read to many as a time of spiritual renewal: rock music, casual dress, and a focus on the simplicity of the Gospel. Back in the day, I attended more than one impromptu baptism on the shores of a muddy Midwestern lake; I have taken communion with red punch and saltines. I have passed a KFC bucket to collect a free-will offering at a Randy Stonehill concert. It was easy for me in those days to see my connection with the first century community of faith as I imagined myself sitting cross-legged on the shores of the Sea of Galilee with my fellow Jesus Freaks, listening to Jesus teach in an unfiltered, unmediated environment. That’s what I thought I was signing up for when I stepped into church life.

But I learned that there was a whole package that came with that simplicity, and to be a committed follower of Jesus meant buying the entire thing. Rapture fever was everywhere as many Bible prophecy “experts” predicted with certainty that Jesus would return by 1988, which was a generation removed from the 1948 founding of the modern State of Israel. The nascent Moral Majority worked to merge the decentralized Evangelical movement with the Republican Party, cemented by Ronald Reagan’s presidency that held such spiritual promise for social conservatives. Big business shaped Evangelical culture in almost every way from the founding and franchising of mega churches like Willow Creek to the emergence of a distinctly Christian subculture that aped and sanitized pop culture (“If you like Def Leppard, you’ll love Petra”). Worldly success created a culture surrounding elite leaders that allowed greed and abuse to flourish unchecked in too many churches and Christian organizations.

Over the last 40 years, Evangelicalism has moved from singing about wishing we’d all been ready for the rapture to embracing a dystopian, apocalyptic vision of the world that could only be combatted with conspiracy theories and electing morally compromised authoritarians. We moved from sitting around a campfire, singing our hearts out to the Lord to sitting in megachurch auditoriums watching a professional band performing Top 40 Christian music hits. We moved from an often-lukewarm (and sometimes downright hostile) reception to the gains made in the areas of civil and women’s rights to becoming people who demanded the world return to a past that never existed except in Mayberry. We moved from a period characterized by both humility and an openness to the supernatural works of God to a warped prosperity “gospel” that promised adherents health, wealth, and power. Every one of those elements has fused into a barely recognizable syncretized new religion many are calling American Christian Nationalism. There is nothing new under the sun, of course. This new American religion is a kissing cousin to the Nazi-friendly German Christian national churches in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

The late Phyllis Tickle observed that about every 500 years or so the Church has a rummage sale to purge the accumulation of theological garbage and clarify the Church’s identity and mission for new generations. The first major rummage sale took place in AD 481 when the Council of Chalcedon met to draw some hard lines about what it meant to believe in Christ as a response to the rise in the Church of so many freelance sects and unorthodox innovations in doctrine. In AD 1054, the Great Schism between the Catholic and Orthodox church became final after a couple of centuries of increasing doctrinal friction between Eastern and Western European Church leaders. Then in the 1500’s, the many different varieties of Reformation swept across European churches. I think we’re in the midst of another slow-motion rummage sale today.  

There has been great angst in the current day about the declining numbers of people in Protestant Mainline churches over the last 40 years. Though the stats suggest that Evangelicalism is not losing members at the same rate as their Mainline siblings, there is no denying that Evangelicalism is at a crossroads right now. Some of my age peers have bailed on church entirely. Others are in various states of faith deconstruction, which for many might more accurately be described deconstruction from toxic churches. Others have embraced a nostalgic version of church as a way of holding on to their own good old days, and many, many others have been discipled primarily by conservative political media and have stampeded like a herd on a freeway toward Christian Nationalism and away from the narrow road of a cruciform life.

My future siblings in the faith in 2064, it is unlikely that I will be alive on this earth to see what you’ve kept from the rummage sale has likely been going on for at least a couple of decades and will be continuing for the foreseeable future. I do believe that there may be a division coming between those who have embraced Christian Nationalism and the faithful confederation of lower-case o orthodox believers. The two groups may use some of the same religious vocabulary and symbolism but are not worshipping the same God.  

I also believe that the anger toward Christian Nationalists will grow in our culture. In 2022, despite claims of persecution for things like being hassled for saying “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays” in retail stores, Christians of all stripes and convictions are free to practice their faith. I suspect that eventually many in the “Christian Nationalism” camp will drop the “Christian” part and turn on those who are their spiritual opponents in the name of making America great again. Real persecution for true believers may be lurking around the corner, which will clarify what it really means to follow Jesus.

The world will go differently than I can imagine, of course. In any case, Confessing Church of 2062, I pray for you, and thank God for you. I believe the Holy Spirit is at work in 2022 as the dividing line continues to form between the faithful ones and those who’ve embraced Christian Nationalism as the shortcut to the blessed life they’re sure God owes them. I believe the Spirit is at work right now, exposing abuse and injustice in the Church. I believe he wants a pure, spotless Bride, and that means a rummage sale.

Not everything from Evangelicalism will probably be sold or given away at this rummage sale, even if Evangelicalism fades as a category in the church world, which I suspect it will. Just as earlier generations discovered, there are some things worth saving. Bebbington’s Quadrilateral describing Evangelicalism’s unique emphases is a worthwhile starting place as I ponder what you might recycle and repurpose from this stream of the Church in AD 2022:

The Bible: With the prosperity gospel’s heretical influence fading, and suffering and persecution on the rise, in 2062, Jesus’s followers will approach Scripture more seriously and reverently.  The Cross: Being one of those serious, believing Christians means you’ll be living on the margins of society in 2062. The Church will discover there the same thing that believers in the first century knew – meaningful lifelong discipleship is a cross-shaped communal existence.Conversion:  While there always have been crisis conversion stories since Paul met the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus, the Church in 2062 will have moved beyond building a culture around “once lost, now found” stories and instead will dig into God’s call to be converted every single day.Evangelism: Gone are the days of marketing the faith with tracts, gimmicks, and PR campaigns. Many weren’t buying what Evangelicals were selling anyway. Evangelism in 2062 is marked by self-sacrificing love in the community of faith, and courage and care in interactions with both  neighbors and enemies.

Bebbington’s Quadrilateral highlights historical strengths of the movement, but what’s missing from the list reveals some pretty major spiritual deficits of Evangelicalism  including a disconnection from Church history, a hit or miss approach to ongoing discipleship, and a pragmatic approach to faith that has no space for mystery or doubt. Thankfully, you who are in the Church in 2062 will be free to recycle not just the best parts of Evangelicalism but from the whole of Christianity’s past, even as the Holy Spirit creates new expressions of his body – new wineskins – to pour out his goodness into the world he loves.   

Those who’ve come before you have passed on the unchanging message of Jesus from one generation to the next, along with the baggage of the ages in which they’ve lived. His love for you is greater than our failures, blind spots, and miscues, just as it is greater than your own failures, blind spots, and miscues. He is faithful, even when we are not.

Even as I pray for you today in 2022, I hope to be in the great cloud of witnesses who will continue to pray for you even after I’m gone from this earth. I’m cheering you on.

Cover photo by Chad Peltola on Unsplash

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It’s been at least 15 years since I’ve gone AWOL (absent without leave) from the culture wars I had been told it was my duty to fight when I was a young Evangelical. I never saw myself as anything but a dutiful foot soldier in that army. My primary interests were always in other areas like parenting, Bible study, reading, hanging out with friends, and church life.

But like a lot of Christian Boomers, I learned in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s from Francis Schaeffer’s How Should We Then Live video series my husband and I viewed on Sunday mornings at the first church we attended after we married that to be a follower of Jesus defined the call to be salt and light included sharing my faith with unbelieving friends. But it also meant saving Western civilization both for and from those unbelievers by being involved in things like boycotting Proctor & Gamble and Disney, joining pro-life marches, home schooling our kids, and voting straight-ticket Republican. To be a good Christian was a package deal and didn’t come with a la carte options. If I wanted to follow Jesus, it meant buying the entire matched set. I became a private in the Culture War army, fighting for Team Evangelical.

I wasn’t a very good soldier. I wasn’t consistent when it came to boycotting stuff. My kids wore Pampers, a Proctor & Gamble brand, and liked Disney movies. I discovered I was somewhat better at showing up at marches and writing letters in support of pro-life legislation to my congressional representatives. Though we chose to home school, our primary reason for doing so was academic. But we found ourselves immersed in a home school subculture full of Bill Gothard legalists and Doug Phillips Dominionists. Some of that stuff leeched into our home school because it seemed it was all part of the package we’d chosen. But one way I showed my fealty to my team was to march to the ballot box and vote straight ticket Republican. I was a proud one-issue, pro-life voter.

When our kids were in high school, my husband taught a class for home schooled families at our church about what it was to have a Christian world view using some prepackaged curriculum, and we even sent one of our kids to a world view summer “camp” for a week. The material was a descendant of Francis Schaeffer’s material, packaged for a new generation. While I appreciated the platform the material gave us for discussing big ideas and the philosophical underpinnings of cultural trends, it wasn’t geared toward cultivating questions as much as it was about creating good foot soldiers who were ready to enlist in the army ready to fight the Culture War.

It was about this time that I read an opinion piece that quoted some leading Republicans who knew that they could count on Evangelicals as a solid, unquestioning (dumb!) voting bloc as long as they kept us one issue voters. The way to do that was to knead related culture war issues into the dough, keeping us angry at just about everything and feeding on our fear about a changing America and an anti-Christ One World government.

And then our own government, led by Republican President George W. Bush, invaded Iraq in 2003, based on the falsehood that there were weapons of mass destruction in the country. It didn’t matter that the Republicans lied to us all, my church friends told me. The party of Lincoln was the pro-life party – the party for “real” Christians. They told me that was all that mattered.

I didn’t like feeling used or being lied to. That is not what I signed up for when I began following Jesus. So I went AWOL from the old Culture War army. And I wasn’t at all interested in switching sides and becoming a Democrat – not then, and not now. (I voted third party or not at all from 2004-2018. I voted Democratic in 2020 in order to see 45 removed from office, but will not register to vote as the member of either party in my state.)

I haven’t changed my core beliefs as a follower of Jesus but I am much more comfortable living from the a la carte menu than I was a half a lifetime ago. Since then, I’ve been involved in traditional pro-life efforts – as well as issues often ceded by Evangelical leaders to “the Left” including immigration, unfair lending practices at payday loan companies, food deserts in urban communities, and standing up against antisemitism and the horrifying rise of Christian nationalism.

Recently in our new home state of Florida, a whole slew of culture war legislation has been enacted that includes banning books, new limitations on what teachers may or may not say in a classroom about race (“Stop Woke!”) and gender (“Don’t Say Gay!”), more stringent limits on abortion, and a hastily-created law designed to punish Disney, the largest employer in the state, because it used its First Amendment rights to challenge the governor and legislature. I share some of the social concerns of those who’ve championed this legislation while being horrified (and to be honest, a little scared) by the authoritarian id fueling this activity. There are a lot of my fellow believers who are rejoicing over these seeming victories in the culture war battles, and they don’t seem to care much about what is being lost.

I recognize and regret that I was part of the culture war army a generation ago that contributed to today’s current divide. In all of the talk I heard back then about making America great again (though no one used that phrase in the way it has been used in recent years), I don’t recall anyone ever discussing what the consequences of all this warring might be. The messaging to the culture war troops was focused on saving the lives of the unborn, but there was not much talk about cultivating a vision beyond that that included flourishing of all of the other marginalized groups in this country. When what motivates your culture war army is a focus on bad news, it seems an oxymoron to try to brand yourself as people devoted to the Good News. 

I was a foster mom to newborns in the late 1990’s. I had to take those little ones to a government clinic in order to procure their formula. I remember waiting for hours while sitting in a sea of parents and children who were living at or below the poverty level, and it occurred to me that Jesus would not be wining and dining our legislators as a well-paid lobbyist in order to change a law. He would be sitting with us in those hard plastic chairs with us while we were waiting our turn for our monthly vouchers. (And who knows? He might even do a loaves and fishes thing with those vouchers, so there would be abundant provision for everyone in the room!) 

While I may have gone AWOL from my membership in the Culture War army, I am not exempt from God’s command to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with him. Sometimes, that command connects me with some of my old compatriots, many of whom do not appreciate the fact that I’m no longer in their army. And sometimes, I find myself among unfamiliar companions, and I realize I am exactly where I need to be right now – which is exactly where I should have been all along. 

Cover photo by Filip Andrejevic on Unsplash

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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When Christian Boomers and Gen-Xers became parents, the influential voices of people like Dr. James Dobson and Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo offered us iron-clad principles that seemed to promise parenting success. The rise of the home schooling movement in the 1980’s and 1990’s brought another crop of parenting “experts” to the fore in those circles, with guidance that focused on a strict, authoritarian approach, represented by now rightly disgraced figures including Doug Phillips, Michael and Debi Pearl, and Bill Gothard.

Though my husband and I never encamped in the world of a single self-proclaimed parenting guru, we were influenced in our active parenting years in varying measures by each one of them. Some provided direct downloads into the life of our family, as in the case of a couple of Dobson’s books and his radio show. Other friends in our church and home schooling circles exhaled the teaching of the Ezzos or the Pearls like it was secondhand smoke in the social spaces we shared with them. We absorbed a measure of all of it, plus the input of numerous lesser lights who offered variations on the theme that there was a Biblical Parenting Formula in the form of a book or seminar we could buy and apply to the life of our family. If my husband and I could input just the right principles in just the right measures, we might be able to give our kids better, happier childhoods than the lives we’d had when we were growing up. You’ve heard of Prosperity Preaching? Well, this was Prosperity Parenting

Those Biblical Parenting Formulas were not without value as a basic framework. For example, when I was a kid, I received a lot of teaching from my unbelieving parents about why “little white lies” were actually virtuous things that needed to be deployed frequently and with finesse so I could get what I wanted from a situation. I’d rather go to Kathy’s party even though I’d accepted an invite from Jan? I told Jan a little white lie about getting grounded, and then went merrily on my way to Kathy’s house.

I was a young believer by the time I became a parent, and craved different examples than the ones I’d grown up with. Yes, the Bible told me that lying was wrong, and my newly tenderized conscience was open to the Holy Spirit’s correction and instruction. But I needed to see what a commitment to truthfulness was supposed to look like in the context of a family. I was anxious to learn a better way of living so I could pass it on to my kids.

I wrote this in Translating Your Past: Finding Meaning in Family Ancestry, Genetic Clues, and Generational Trauma:

When I first committed my life to Christ, I assumed that my family story didn’t much matter because my faith was different than that of my parents. After all, I was living for Jesus now! But that kind of narrow thinking kept me from fully embracing the good gifts God had given me through my forebears…When I was younger, I wished I could erase the painful chapters of my family’s story and start my life afresh with a blank page. But I discovered the past didn’t go away just because I wished it would.

In the early years of motherhood, I viewed my childrearing choices as a battle between Biblical Parenting Formulas and the not-so Biblical patterns I’d learned in my childhood. It wasn’t that the Christian community ever taught me that this was a winner-take-all choice. But the tidy certainty of those pre-packaged principles drawn from the Bible seemed a bulletproof way I could give my kids a better life than the one I’d had.

That desire is by no means limited to Christian parents. It is renewed in every new generation, all across the world. Every parent wants a better life for their children. In my life – and in the lives of more than a few of my Boomer contemporaries – the way to guide my children to that better life seemed possible if I leaned hard into the promise I thought I heard in those “one-size-fits-all-good-Christians” Formulas.

As with all Prosperity teaching, there was an element of magical thinking mixed in with the desire to help my children flourish via formula. It didn’t take long for me to learn that the human beings God lent to my husband and I were far more complex than any formula could address. God’s Word was an essential foundation for us as parents, but in order to begin to make sense of the complexity of each child I began to realize (sometimes too late) that God wasn’t asking me to cancel* my family of origin in order to be a faithful follower of Jesus in my role as a wife, mother, and grandmother, but to reclaim and reframe it. By ignoring my family story, I was starving out a source of identity, strength, and wisdom (the latter gleaned from an entirely human mix of noble and awful choices) that played a much larger role in my parenting journey than I ever imagined when I was imbibing formulas. Some of the formula-givers liked to quote this passage as a promise that our families will be a sanctuary on earth:

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land. (Psalm 68:6)

Strip notions of Prosperity Parenting from this passage, and I see no promises of “input these principles, receive a guaranteed happy outcome”. There is no certainty that existential loneliness will fade or rebellion will dissipate just because a person belongs to a family guided by Biblical Parenting Formulas. Instead, King David’s song tells us about the character of a Father who does not leave us orphaned, will not allow injustice to script our destiny, and provides us sanctuary in an oft-hostile world. God’s parenting of me has illuminated my family story both past and present, which has given me a fresh understanding of what it means to be placed in this specific family by him.

The Bible is not a parenting handbook, nor a set of tidy principles teased from its pages a golden ticket to happily-ever-after family in this lifetime. But God offers us something far more powerful: He meets us in the context of the people, place, and times in which he’s chosen to place us by offering us himself.

*Note: It is important to note that in some cases, certain family relationships may need to be muted if they are toxic, abusive, or dangerous. But don’t silence that family history, even if it is painful. You may need the companionship of a good counselor to walk through this part of your story.

    This book is releasing 2-22-22. Click here to pre-order your copy today!

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You can tell only so much from a Sunday worship service or by mucking around on the church’s website. In most cases, if you’re a visitor, those things are the welcome mat. They are the public face of the congregation. 

At this point in our lives, if my husband and I make it beyond an initial visit, we’ll then return several more times to listen and participate as anonymously as we can. I have no desire to be a church consumer, but in these initial visits, we’re trying to get a sense of who this body of believers is, what’s valued in the congregation, and what their lived theology looks like. Is this a place we can belong?  

The real questions usually can’t be answered in a Sunday service. What’s going on when you get beyond the welcome mat? It can take time and relationship to find out what the unwritten rules are, and how power is used and/or shared, and what gifts are cherished among the body. Part of that discernment process is to sit down with a church leader and have a conversation or two. Because we’ve moved frequently, and have had to search for new congregational homes as a result of those moves as well as our decision to leave a couple of toxic churches along the way, I have a bunch of questions I try to ask the pastor or leader of a congregation. We share our story as well. (It also helps that I have a long list of published credits to my name. My spiritual life is kind of an open book.)   

Yes, I get the irony that these questions make it sound like we’re interviewing someone for a job when we’re the ones looking for a place to serve and a community of believing friends. That said, here’s what we hope to learn in these conversations: 

1. Tell us about your faith journey.

What is their church background? What led them into ministry? What have been the pressure points, challenges, and losses? 

2. What is your understanding of/adherence to historic Christian orthodoxy? 

Sure, I could read the church doctrinal statement or investigate its denominational affiliation, if it has one. (Spoiler alert: I already have, long before we have a conversation with a leader.) But what does this statement mean to the person or people guiding this congregation? What are the non-negotiable beliefs at the core of congregational identity? 

3. What is the history of this congregation? 

Why was it birthed? What has past leadership been like? Have there been any splits? Which leads us to…

4. What are some areas of past conflict in the congregation? How was it handled? What have been the lasting effects?  

We know they can’t go into detail. We have enough church leadership experience that we can fill in at least some of the blanks. But we do need to hear how they talk about conflict, and what the lessons were. 

5. Have there been issues of sexual misconduct or abuse by congregational leaders? How has this been handled? 

I have pointed at least one church leader to this piece I wrote a few years ago. I have no more capacity for a church leader who tries to cover up a past mess – because for a victim, it is never fully in the past. 

6. What is your theological understanding about the Jewish people and Israel? 

This is not a theoretical question for my husband and me. It is an existential one. This piece begins to explain why.  

7. Let’s talk about the role of women in this congregation. 

Complementarian, egalitarian…there’s a whole spectrum of conviction on this question. How does their  conviction on this issue this play out within this fellowship? 

8. What is your relationship with the other pastors in this area? 

My work with Catalyst/Christ Together in Chicago showed me how powerful it is when local pastors pray and care for one another across denominational and church turf lines. 

9. How much has the rise of Christian nationalism among conservative voters affected the life of your congregation? What role do American politics play in the life of this congregation? 

We never would have dreamed of asking questions like these a few years ago. Now we can’t imagine not asking them. Sadly. 

10. How are you handling the Covid pandemic in terms of gathered corporate worship? How are you maintaining relationship with those who can not attend in person? 

Yes, this directly affects us because I’m immunocompromised. But it also reveals how they view the least of these among them, as well as their relationship with all the neighbors in their town. 

11. What are you reading right now? 

What is fueling their mind and soul? What are they curious about? What inspires them? This reading question has been pretty revealing over the years when we’ve asked it. One pastor told us he didn’t have time to read. That was a red flag alerting us to burn out in progress. (And that’s just how it played itself out in this person’s life.)

12. Is there a place for us here? 

The answer is always supposed to be ‘yes’, but it would be refreshingly honest if a pastor or leader said, “No, because you ask too many questions.” We’re trying to figure out if our gifts and experience are welcomed and needed, and how they might fit in what is already happening in that congregation. 

What would you add to this list? 

* * * * * * *

I want to put in a plug for an event coming up this Saturday, January 15th for women at midlife and beyond. What do women in their second half bring to today’s conversation about church? 

Some of us step into greater leadership roles in our local churches as get older. Others find new places of service. And find themselves on the sidelines, unsure where we fit as we move into this new life stage. And we are all living in a time when “the big C” Church is facing challenges on many fronts.

Women in the second half of their lives play an essential role in the body of Christ. Our experience, our gifts, and our wisdom are needed in this hour. Our voices matter. Four speakers (including me) will offer a frank and hopeful look at the questions and some helpful action steps. 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO REGISTER

 

 

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Chanukah begins at sundown on Sunday, November 28th this year. Just as we finish the last bits of those Thanksgiving leftovers, it’ll be time for latkes, the delicious, crispy fried potato pancakes traditionally eaten by many in the Jewish community. It is traditional to eat foods friend in oil for the eight night holiday, a nod to the story of the miracle that happened as the Temple was cleansed and rededicated to the worship of the one true God about a century and a half before the birth of Jesus.

The holiday is not mentioned in the pages of the Old Testament in either Hebrew or Protestant Bibles, but an account of the events that led to the first Feast of Dedication is contained in the apocryphal books of 1 and 2 Maccabees found in Catholic and Orthodox Scriptures. Interestingly, it is mentioned in the New Testament in John 10:22. I’ve written about Chanukah in my book Moments & Days: How Our Holy Celebrations Shape Our Faith, and blogged about it in these two pieces as well:

Were there really 400 years of silence between the Old Testament and the New Testament?A bit of historical background about Chanukah

Central to the holiday are military exploits which featured the heroism and faith of male freedom fighters. But this year, as I was searching for interesting laktke recipes, I ran across a recipe for cheese latkes, and then another. I discovered that for many Jewish communities, cheese latkes were a festal food for Chanukah for hundreds of years, long before potato latke were a thing. Potatoes were first introduced to Europe in the 1500’s, and eventually made their way into the cuisine of my Ashkenazi forebears. Cheese latkes pointed to another related account that happened around the same time as the story contained in 1 and 2 Maccabees.

History + a recipe for cheese latkesA reflection on the story cheese latkes tell us

This story is found in the apocryphal book of Yehudit (Judith). Other than knowing her name represents courage to many, I am a little ashamed to tell you I didn’t know much about her story until this week. I’ve read a number of different accounts, as well as tracing her words and actions through the book named after her. (Her story is featured in Judith chapter 8 through 16.)

Here are a couple of the links that summarize her contribution to salvation history:

From Chabad.org – The Story of Yehudit From the Jewish Women’s Archives – Celebrate Judith; Celebrate Hanukkah

I’m sharing this her as I know many of you reading this are stepping into Advent beginning this Sunday. My husband and I will, too, but the beginning of our Advent will be focused on observing the Feast of Dedication as we light the candles of our chanukkiah, The acts of the Maccabees – and the courage of Judith and her maid – were directly responsible for preserving the Temple and the family into which Jesus the Messiah was born. Judith 8:1-3 contains her genealogy, which is remarkable in an of itself as just about every other genealogy in the Old Testament proper traces the lineage of men. Judith 8:8 summarizes her character (“No one had anything derogatory to say about her, for she was a deeply God-fearing woman.”) and the rest of the book proves that thesis. She acts with the wiles of a spy, the strategic communication of a diplomat, and the courage of women like Deborah, Jael, and Esther. And her prayers, recorded in Judith 9 and Judith 15:14-16:17, are worth contemplating. God used her to rescue the people of her town from almost-certain destruction.

Your strength does not lie in numbers nor does your power depend upon strong men.
You are the God of the lowly, the helper of the oppressed, the support of the weak, the protector of the forsaken, the savior of those who have lost all hope.
Please, please, God of my forefather, God of the heritage of Israel, Lord of heaven and earth, Creator of the waters, king of all your creation, hear my prayer. (Judith 9:11-12) 

The reason cheese latkes are served at many Chanukah feasts is to remind us of the meal featuring salty cheese and wine that Judith served to Holofernes, the military leader planning to annihilate the people of her town. So we’re switching up our Chanukah meal this year as we remember her courage and trust in God. It’s a lesson I need right now more than ever. 

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When he joins the Church the Christian steps out of the world, his work and family, taking his stand visibly in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. He takes this step alone. But he recovers what he has surrendered – brothers, sisters, houses, and fields. 

I’m finishing up my journey through Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic The Cost of Discipleship with a response to the final section of the book, which covers how a disciple’s life unfolds in context of the church. (Click here to review earlier posts in the series.) The Church he describes is in many ways the Church I thought I was signing up when I first came to faith in Jesus as a teen – an embodied community that looked and acted like Jesus, devoted to him and one another, reflecting his beauty to the world. Bonhoeffer could not conceive of people who would disconnect from life together with other believers. In fact, his Lutheran-sacramental view of the church meant that those who opted for a Lone Ranger expression of their faith were cutting themselves off from the life found in the gathered assembly where the sacraments of baptism and communion were practiced, and where the preaching of the Word replicated resurrection life among the community of believers. 

Since the ascension, Christ’s place on earth has been taken by his Body, the Church. The Church is the real presence of Christ…We should think of the Church not as an institution but as a person, though of course a person in a unique sense.

Even after decades of sorrow because of some stunningly heinous behavior by people who claim the name Christian, I still hold to much of Bonhoeffer’s idealized vision of the Bride of Christ. George Bernard Shaw said that inside every cynic is a disappointed idealist. I fight cynicism about the Church on the daily, and I’m disappointed in much of what I’ve witnessed, but the ideals Bonhoeffer expresses are so beautiful that I can’t look away even now. 

Let the slave therefore remain a slave. Let the Christian remain in subjection to the powers which exercise dominion over him. 

That isn’t to say that I agree with everything Bonhoeffer expresses here. He writes at some length in this 1937 volume about accepting one’s place in the world, saying, in effect, “If you’re a slave, then stay a slave to the glory of God because only your position in the Church really matters in this life”. He would go on to challenge the leaders of Germany’s mainstream Lutheran Church, which had become a tool of the Nazi government, and then work behind the scenes to bring down Hitler before he was arrested and eventually hanged in 1945. In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer seems to advocate a kind of separatist, pietistic passivity in the name of the kingdom that doesn’t match what unfolded throughout the next few years of his life. 

…it shows contempt for our fellow-sinners (when we withdraw) from the Church and pursue a sanctity of our own choosing because we are disgusted by the Church’s sinful form. By pursuing sanctification outside the Church we are trying to pronounce ourselves holy.

Because it is sanctified by the seal of the Spirit, the Church is always in the battlefield, waging a war to prevent the breaking of the seal, whether from within or from without, and struggling to prevent the world from becoming the Church and the Church from becoming the world.

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul paints a powerful picture of the community of Jesus as a human body, needing all parts to function as God designed it to do. So much of what I’ve participated in through the years, and been wounded by, is church as organization. Even the healthiest organizations still have a structure that is not organic, but machine-made and architect drawn. And it never seems to take long before many religious institutions demand to be fueled and staffed only in certain ways, and patronize, squash, or jettison the parts that just don’t fit the org chart. Do a search of the word “exvangelical” on Twitter or Google and you’ll find some of the leftover pieces. 

Bonhoeffer’s book reminded me afresh of the difference between an organism and an organization. There are a lot of people who have grown weary of searching for organic life within Religious Organizations, Inc. The Church is in a time of re-formation, and though none of us alive right now will see what emerges from this period of great upheaval, I am confident that while institutions may fail (and some of them need to do just that!), the true and living organism that is the Body of Messiah will survive. 

Reflect: If you are a part of an institutional church, where do you currently see the life of Jesus expressed most clearly in your midst? 

Pray: Jesus, please help me not to mistake the structure of our religious institutions for the life of your Body. In this chaotic time in our world, teach me what it is to follow you in wholehearted discipleship as a necessary and beloved member of that Body. Here I am. Amen.   

Cover photo by Benjamin Ashton on Unsplash

 

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To try to force the Word on the world by hook or by crook is to make the living Word of God into a mere idea, and the world would be perfectly justified in refusing to listen to an idea for which it had no use. –Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Was I thinking I was trying to force the Word on the world during my one-issue voter days in the 1980’s and 1990’s? No. And yes, probably. 

I grew up in a mostly-secular Jewish home during the 1960’s and 1970’s, which meant I was immersed in liberal Democratic voting values. I was still a relatively new believer by the time I was able to vote for the first time in a presidential election. At age 20, I voted for Ronald Reagan after our church viewed the Francis Schaeffer film series How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture. I don’t remember much from that series except for the alarming warnings about the slippery slope: Legalized abortion was a gateway to a culture of death. One way all committed Christians could work to stop the slide down that slope was to vote for pro-life candidates. And the party that branded itself as pro-life was the Republican party. I did my part for Team Christianity and voted for Ronald Reagan in an attempt to slow that slide toward a culture of death.

Jerry Falwell, Sr.’s Moral Majority had burst onto the scene during that election. Not many of us who were swept into the notion of one-issue voting at the time had any idea that the roots of the Moral Majority weren’t planted in a right-to-life ethos but instead grew from Southern segregationist (in other words, racist) reaction against the Civil Rights movement. Some very clever – or cynical – Republican political strategists saw a way to energize and consolidate a bloc of conservative-minded voters around a single issue: legalized abortion. I can admit now I liked knowing I was voting not just for a candidate, but for God’s Only And Obvious Choice. I was consumed during the 80’s and 90’s with childrearing, and appreciated the fact that I didn’t need to think deeply about political issues. Someone else had already done the thinking for me, and all I had to do was vote straight ticket Republican. Doing so promised to put the skids on the slippery slope, and maybe even usher in a great time of national spiritual revival. 

After a hiatus this summer, I’m back blogging through the remainder of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. (Click here to read earlier posts in the series.) My reading of Chapters 18-20 in the book, covering the final movement (Matthew 7) of the Sermon on the Mount, unmasked some of the shoddy foundations of the one-issue voter approach to politics. In my 20’s and 30’s, I didn’t understand the implications of the Dominionist underpinnings of Schaeffer’s theology. One grassroots expression of this theology is the rise in “Christian” nationalism that is now a centerpiece of today’s Republican party.

As I read these chapters in The Cost of Discipleship, I had a moment of fancy trying to imagine a debate between Schaeffer and Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer’s clarity about the night-and-day difference between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world stand in stunning contrast to the “let’s take this country back for God” crew. It is a good thing to act as salt and light in this world, by our presence and advocacy to add traction to the slippery slope, but many have called those efforts “discipleship”. Not Bonhoeffer. And I can imagine that a debate between the two men would have been one for the ages. As Schaeffer advocated for Christians to engage in societal and cultural transformation, Bonhoeffer would have said that Christians need to learn to walk in the way of Jesus up that slippery slope. One advocated for a Christian culture. One advocated for Christ. 

Bonhoeffer wasn’t calling for pietistic escape from society but the kind of engagement that was a byproduct, not a goal, of a disciple’s life. Because of his convictions, he was involved in the politics of Nazi Germany in a way that Schaeffer never could have matched in the America or Switzerland in his heyday of the 1970’s. Bonhoeffer paid for his involvement with his life. In summing up his thoughts about the essence of the Sermon on the Mount, he writes,

Here is the crucial question – has Jesus known us or not? First came the division between Church and world, then the division within the Church, and then the final division on the last day. There is nothing left for us to cling to, not even our confession or our obedience. There is only his word, ‘I have known thee’, which is his eternal word and call. The end of the Sermon on the Mount echoes the beginning. The word of the last judgement is foreshadowed in the call to discipleship. But from beginning to end it is always his word and his call, his alone. If we follow Christ, cling to his word, and let everything else go, it will see us through the day of judgement. His word is his grace.      

 Bonhoeffer was a one-issue person, and that issue was Jesus. 

Reflect: Have you been more influenced by ideas of transforming the culture in Jesus’ name or by a single-minded emphasis on obedience to Jesus? Are these two things mutually exclusive? Why or why not? 

Prayer: Jesus, you said in your word that your way is a narrow way. You ask us to defy gravity in following you as we climb the slippery slope with you – not withdrawing from the world, but not trying to create it in our own image of what we think you want. Help us to live loved by you and die known by you.

 

Cover photo by Arnaud Jaegers on Unsplash