Archives For Grace

Top Ten Things My Kids Have Taught Me About God: #3

Jason Micheli —  April 30, 2013 — 2 Comments

leglamp10Someone leaving church Easter Sunday asked about my boys, musing ‘I bet you’ve learned all kinds of things about God from them.’

And that got me thinking.

Which got me writing: Top Ten Things My Kids Have Taught Me About God

#3: Fra-geee-lay

I met with a couple mourning the death of their son.

Actually mourning is too premature of a term. Mourning has the ring of work to it, and it is work. An endeavor. It’s an undertaking that eventually leads to healing.

Before mourning can really begin you must first get past the ‘I still can’t belie…’ shock that this is your life now. The stubborn disbelief that someone else’s life isn’t.

Anymore.

Their son was only a few years younger than me.

I can’t say much more than that, pastoral privilege and all.

What I can reveal:

Right after I left that family, I collected my youngest son, Gabriel, who was just down the church hall.

We got in the car. Closed the doors. Buckled our seat belts (‘I beat you Daddy’).

I turned on the ignition. Looked in the rearview mirror at Gabriel behind me; he was wearing my faded UVA hat and smiling.

And I started to cry, suddenly feeling like I’d gotten into my car wearing someone else’s shoes.

leglamp1Life is so infuriatingly fragile.

This isn’t something my boys have taught me. They have no notion that while God may be good and gracious, life is seldom fair or forgiving.

It’s not a lesson my boys have taught me. It’s more like a lesson my job has taught me, a lesson I wasn’t in a position to learn until I had children. It’s more like now that I have skin in the game my vocation won’t let me forget just how fragile are my boys’ own skin and bones.

They’re here today…(down in the basement playing Legos, actually).

But tomorrow? The day after tomorrow?

I bring my work home with me.

I watch my boy turn his bike out the cul de sac for the first and I close my eyes to wait for the inevitable sound of screeching brakes.

I can’t drive by a car accident without imagining my own impending, parallel nightmare.

Standing in line at a roller coaster with my son, I can’t look at the twists and turns of the track without imagining my boy in the statistical margin for error.

Death is a big part of what I do. 

If I punched a clock, several many hours of every year would be taken up by people mourning the sudden absence of someone who’d made their life whole.

I bring that absence home with me.

Or rather, like a nurse who comes home wearing a uniform with blood stains on it, that absence follows me home and there it gestates into something else: my own fear of absence.

Theirs.

And while if you caught me in a different mood I might say I’d prefer not to bring this part of my work home with me, it’s more true to admit that this near constant dread of their absence has woken me to something else, their presence in my life.

The sheer- as in flimsy- grace- as in unwarranted gift- of it.

Just like someone who doesn’t realize the pain of unbelief until they begin to believe, the fear of losing my boys calls out the greater joy of having them. 

Life is fragile.

It wouldn’t be worth it otherwise. 

 

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Top Ten Things My Kids Have Taught Me About God: #4

Jason Micheli —  April 29, 2013 — 2 Comments

599553_4192234766386_1070461117_nSomeone leaving church Easter Sunday asked about my boys, musing ‘I bet you’ve learned all kinds of things about God from them.’

And that got me thinking.

Which got me writing: Top Ten Things My Kids Have Taught Me About God

#4: Justified By….Grace

Worst Christmas gift to which I’ve ever been an accomplice:

Talking Woody Doll.

You know- Woody? The lanky, pull-string cowboy from Toy Story 1-18 that speaks in Tom Hanks’ earnest, incredulous voice yet gives off the overall annoying affect of Cousin Joey from Full House.

I hate- HATE- Gabriel’s Woody doll. He stalks my waking hours like Chuckie stalks the night.

Gabriel’s Woody doll can say: ‘A cowboy with out his hat is like a yodel with out a hey-hoo.’

Gabriel’s Woody doll can sing: Home, home on the range where the deer and the… you get the picture.

Gabriel’s Woody doll can ask: ‘Hey, who took my hat?’

Gabriel’s Woody doll talks and talks and sings and talks and sings to infinity and beyond.

I’ve never been in the grip of illicit drugs, but even if I had, I’d still count the day we purchased Woody at FAO Schwarz as the worst decision of my life.

And before you think I’m exaggerating, consider that even though he’s a pull-string toy, Woody can say the above mentioned things (and more) and can keep on saying ‘em whether or not any chubby first grade fingers have actually pulled his string.

Like the totem in Raiders of the Lost Ark, a slight variance in weight upon the wood floor of G’s bedroom is enough to set Woody off. Woody

Which sets me off.

I’ve been told just the sound of ice tumbling in a glass is enough to remind an alcoholic of their limitations; likewise, Gabriel’s Woody doll haunts our home as a near constant reminder of my chief and abiding fault as a father creature: my impatience.

I often tell couples on their wedding day that a life lived together can expose the very worst about two people, all their flaws and foibles. So goes parenting too.

My boys’ childhood is simply an ever-increasing realization of what their mom has already learned. Their father isn’t perfect.

His patience can be short.

His temper can be quick.

His tone can be unwarranted.

His threats (I’m going to beat that __________Woody toy with a baseball bat if you don’t get him to shut up) can be unfair.

As I said, my boys are an ever present reminder that I’m not as perfect as I pretend to be.

And dammit, they love me still. Anyways.

unforgiven_ver3Clint Eastwood’s character, William Muny, in Unforgiven delivers a spot-on synopsis of what Christians mean by ‘justification,’ the doctrine which confesses that we’re right with God not by any goodness or merit of our own but sheerly out of God’s profligate grace.

In reply to a young gun slinger who needs to feel exonerated- justified- for his crimes (‘They had it coming to them didn’t they?’), Eastwood’s tragic Pauline antihero says:

‘We all have it coming to us, kid.’ 

I’m no William Muny. My crimes are most often provoked by a plastic cowboy that was made by children in China. Nonetheless, I’d be lying if I claimed I didn’t have it coming too.

My boys, even if they’re too good and kind to ever admit it, know it to be true.

They love me still, no matter what ratio goodness to sin coheres inside me.

And here’s what they’ve helped me learn afresh: That’s exactly how God loves me us, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Top Ten Things My Kids Have Taught Me About God: #8

Jason Micheli —  April 22, 2013 — 1 Comment

524133_3597103688481_1374151714_n220px-Movie_national_treasureSomeone leaving church Easter Sunday asked about my boys, musing ‘I bet you’ve learned all kinds of things about God from them.’

And that got me thinking.

Which got me writing: Top Ten Things My Kids Have Taught Me About God

#8: Sanctification

Last Sunday we took the boys into DC for the afternoon. Gabriel chose the National Archives, home of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. More importantly for Gabriel, it was featured in the movie National Treasure.

Going through one of the galleries at the Archives, we came across an exhibit comparing the actual experience of black Union soldiers during the Civil War to how their experience was portrayed in the movie Glory.

The exhibit played a couple clips from the movie, including the scene where the black troops refuse their pay because it’s not equal to that of white soldiers and the scene which concludes the movie where white and black troops bravely march to their deaths.

And standing there in the National Archives, my eyes welled up with tears.

It’s not such an unusual occurrence these days actually.

The trailer to the (Lifetime quality) film The Blindside makes me weepy. The rally video they show in the bottom of the 9th at Nats games. The end of Finding Nemo.

Don’t even get started about what it’s like to watch my boys when they don’t know I’m watching them.

My boys accuse me of going through ‘the man-change.’

My wife calls it ‘manopause.’

I used to have the emotional landscape of a cactus. I never cried. I never even thought ‘a sensitive person would probably cry right now.’

I was never really silly either.

My emotions were cool and measured and never, not once, out of control.

Something about having children has changed all that.

When we first met Gabriel, our first son, I got him to stop crying by pretending to be a gorilla. I pulled out all the stops: gorilla noises, gorilla movements, gorilla facial expressions. I made an idiot of myself.

When we adopted Alexander, our second son, I reassured him about his place in our family by pointing out how most superheroes were adopted too. To get that message to stick, I made up a song about those superheroes. And our own superhero.

To make matters worse, I sang the stupid song to him. Every night.

Something I never would’ve dreamed of doing before.

Even though they would use different supporting illustrations, theologians call the above ‘sanctification.’

It means ‘to make holy.’

The word ‘holy’ actually just means ‘different.’

St. Athanasius, reflecting on the mystery of the incarnation, said that in Christ ‘God becomes what we are so that we might become what God is.‘

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, picked up on this theme of sanctification and taught his followers that it was possible, with the Spirit’s help, for us to become ‘perfect’ in this life.

Critics of Wesley accused him of downplaying the reality of sin in our lives and its power over us. It’s a fair pushback, but I think it misses the practical implication behind Wesley’s emphasis.

I know I missed it until I had children. Here it is:

We are not now, in the present, everything we could be.

We can always be more fully alive today than we were yesterday.

As long as there other people in our lives, we’re never complete.

We’re never a finished product because the people with whom we share our lives change our lives.

Change us.

They make us ‘holy.’

Or, if not, ‘holy’ they make us ‘holier’ than we were before.

My boys accuse me of going through ‘the man-change.’

My wife calls it ‘manopause.’

I call it grace.

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Top Ten Things My Kids Have Taught Me About God: #9

Jason Micheli —  April 18, 2013 — 1 Comment

524133_3597103688481_1374151714_nSomeone leaving church Easter Sunday asked about my boys, musing ‘I bet you’ve learned all kinds of things about God from them.’

And that got me thinking.

Which got me writing: Top Ten Things My Kids Have Taught Me About God

#9: Prevenient

‘Prevenient’ is from the Latin, meaning ‘to come before.’ 

As in ‘prevenient grace.’ 

‘Prevenient grace’ is one of those bold-faced vocabulary words United Methodist ordinands must be able to define by way of John Wesley (Methodism’s founder), unpack by way of soteriology (theology of salvation) and apply by way of personal experience.

And because ordinands are jumping through the hoops otherwise known as ‘the ordination process’ responses vary from the vanilla to the pedestrian. 

Take my own response, for example:

“The arc of the biblical story tells the good news that God seeks after us despite the distance of estrangement that stands between us. As Karl Barth said, the Bible is not the story of humanity’s quest for God. It’s God’s search for humanity. 

This seeking after us even when we do not seek after God is what John Wesley called ‘prevenient grace.’ It names God’s, often unseen, moving in our lives to bring us, one day, to a place where we can hear and be moved by the Gospel. 

God desires to make from aliens a covenant people, from strangers, sons and daughters. Salvation is a vibrant process of restoration in which God bids us come and we respond in loving faith. 

The doctrines of repentance, justification, and sanctification correspond to Wesley’s belief that Christ’s perfect obedience unto the cross is not truly perfect if its effects do not cohere in the present lives of believers. Nonetheless, the doctrine of prevenient grace insists that salvation is always firstly God’s initiative, not our own.” 

It’s not a terrible answer. It’s just not good.

It reads like the description of a sports car written by someone who’s never done 80 with the top down.

It’s an anemic answer; the words have no blood coursing through them.

What ‘prevenient grace’ is trying to capture is the notion that no matter where you are in life, God’s beaten you there.

God got there first.

As a student and later as a pastor jumping through those aforementioned hoops, I memorized a solid, working definition of prevenient grace. I carried a ready-made response around in my theological pocket.

But I had no idea what the hell I was really saying.

That is, until I had kids.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who has children, but I will say it anyway:

kids come with an entire hard drive all their own. 

That you didn’t install. 

Joy. Empathy. A quirky way of looking at the world. A guardedness that can only be undone with a good, long belly laugh.

My second but oldest son (such are the complexities of adoption) came to us just a week before Kindergarten. He came to us only after much upheaval in his life and not a little harm. The statistics of a background bio like his would lead you to sketch a very different boy than the one patiently playing baseball with his little brother in my backyard right now.

I believe the empathy and the (almost naive) trust that first helped him survive and now help him flourish have no point of origin other than the One in whom we also trace our origin.

When we frame children’s behavior in terms of nature vs nurture, I think we miss a whole other category:

God’s grace- who they are not because of biology or parenting but simply because God beat you to them.

God got to them first.

And God never left them either.

When Paul declared that God is the one in whom we live and move and have our very being, Paul didn’t then pull out one of those height restriction charts they have at Busch Gardens. 

Children are a canvas where you’re only one of the artists.

And for me, this provokes not only wonder.

It also insists that I adopt a posture of receptivity.

I try to listen to, and respect and learn from the thoughts and views of my sons- not because ‘active listening’ is good for their development, though it’s that too.

No, I try to listen because they actually thoughts and feelings from which I can learn. Because God is at work in them no less than in me. Or you.

‘Prevenient‘ comes from the same Latin word from which we derive the word ‘prevent.‘

As in: children prevent you from ever thinking you were first in your kids lives.

God got there first.

And he’s not leaving anytime soon.

* Which, by the way, is the only rational by which it makes any sense at all to baptize babies. 

 

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Questions about Forgiveness: Does It Mean We Have to Stay Friends?

Jason Micheli —  March 11, 2013 — Leave a comment

70X7This past weekend as part of our Lenten Sermon Series on Idolatry, Counterfeit Gods, I taught from Matthew 18. That’s the chapter where you’ll find Jesus’ double-dog dare command that we should forgive not once, not twice, not even seven times but just shy of 500 times.

Which is Jesus’ Jewish way of saying: Forgive all the time. 

And, because he’s the Christ of the perpetual offense, Jesus follows up that turd of a teaching with this parable, in which a servant- who’s obviously meant to be our doppleganger- receives grace and forgiveness from the King (ie, God, in case you’re terrible at reading stories).

Because the forgiven servant can’t extend forgiveness to to others, he’s thrown in Hell to be tortured for a debt whose math works out to about 64 million days.

Nice.

Of course, we did kill Jesus for telling stories like this.

Unexpectedly, the sermon’s subject elicited several dozen questions from folks who heard it or who’ve since read it online.

Questions about forgiveness.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. We all live life, to some degree or another, with other people. Bumping into people. Rubbing and getting rubbed the wrong way. Like milk and bread in a snow storm, conflict and forgiveness are just staples of weathering life with other people.

I’ll try to answer some of the questions in posts this week.

Here’s one question I got:

‘Does forgiveness mean that we have to stay friends with people or is it enough to let go of our anger/resentment and decide to no longer keep a score/ledger of their transgression?

Short answer: no. 

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you have to remain friends, and forgiveness doesn’t mean you have to restore a broken relationship.

I think we can all probably name people and situations where to do so would be naive, at best, and dangerous, at worst. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you have to stay married to someone who repeatedly breaks their vows. Forgiveness doesn’t mean someone should continue to suffer at the hands of an abuser. And forgiveness doesn’t mean you’re obligated to play the fool to a friend who’s shown they’re not actually a friend.

So if the answer’s no, then exactly what are Christians talking about when we talk about forgiveness?

I hate it when people pedantically cite Webster’s dictionary definitions but that’s exactly what I’m going to do. The clarity is helpful in this case:

Forgiveness = the action or process of remitting a debt

While I think some people overemphasize debt language as it pertains to the cross, the imagery can be helpful in thinking about our own relationships.

Forgiveness is forgoing what another person owes you. It’s declaring a pardon. It’s eating the cost of what was done to you rather than making the other person pay. Forgiveness is sacrificing what you deserve for the sake of the other. Forgiveness is you no longer needing what the other person has coming to them to come to them. It’s letting go of the (righteous) anger, and putting down the score card.

Forgiveness can be a form of suffering. It usually is, but it’s the only way to stop the cycle of retribution.  

Now, all that is different than:

Reconciliation = the action of process of restoring a broken relationship

Though we often merge them together so they become incoherent, forgiveness and reconciliation are two related, but distinct, terms. Forgiveness and reconciliation name two different poles in the process of healing. Reconciliation is the fruit of which forgiveness is a necessary first seed.

You can’t have a reconciled relationship without forgiveness. 

But, in a fallen world, you can have forgiveness- and sometimes you must- without reconciliation. 

Think of the servant in Jesus’ parable.

He’s been forgiven. His debt to the King was canceled. But the rest of the story shows that he was not in a reconciled relationship with the King because his heart remain unchanged.

Think of us.

Jesus declares us pardoned from the cross. We’re forgiven. The debt, for all time, has been paid. But that does not mean every person- or even every Christian- enjoys a reconciled relationship with God.

To answer the question behind the question:

The hard, scary work of humility, I think, comes in discerning whether you refuse to seek reconciliation with your former friend/spouse/whatever because to do so would be unwise (ie, they’ve hurt you too many times) or if instead you refuse the possibility of reconciliation because you haven’t truly let go of the debt.

You’ve forgiven them in name only. 

Which means you haven’t really forgiven at all. 

And that, Jesus says, has scary stakes. 

 

 

 

 

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By the Book

Jason Micheli —  March 11, 2013 — 8 Comments

Here’s my sermon on ‘Forgiveness’ for our Lenten Series on Idolatry, Counterfeit Gods. You can listen to the sermon in the ‘Listen’ widget on this page or download for free in the iTunes Library, under Tamed Cynic.

70X7

This isn’t the sermon I thought I was going to preach when my week began.

I started out on Monday writing a sermon about the prophet Elisha and a leper named Namaan, but then, because of a decision I made weeks ago, I had an encounter this week that provoked a much different sermon.

If you read my blog, then you know that a few weeks ago I made a Lenten commitment that once or twice a week I would strap a clergy collar around my neck, which I usually only wear to weddings and graveside burials.

I made a commitment that I’d strap a collar on and go to some public space, like a coffee shop or pub or cafe, and just see what conversations came my way by exposing my faith and vocation in plain sight.

 

Since then I’ve worn it to Starbucks a couple of times.

Last week, I went to Barnes and Noble.

This past week I went to Whole Foods to eat lunch in the cafe and sketch what I had planned on being a very different sermon.

I sat down in a booth with my food and a few books about the prophet Elisha. And aside from the check-out guy asking me who I was going to vote for- for Pope- it was an uneventful day.

And I was about to call it a day, when a woman pushing a grocery cart crept up to my booth and said:

‘Um, excuse me Father….could I?’ 

 

     She gestured to the empty seat across from me.

 

‘Well, I’m not exactly a Fa______’ I started to say but she just looked confused.

 

‘Never mind’ I said. ‘Sit down.’ 

 

She looked to be somewhere in her 40’s. She had long, dark hair and hip, horn-rimmed glasses and pale skin that had started to blush red.

 

No sooner had she sat down than she started having second thoughts.

 

‘Maybe this is a mistake. I feel ridiculous and I just interrupted you. I just saw you over here and I haven’t been to church in years…’ 

 

She fussed with the zipper on her coat while she rambled, embarrassed.

 

     ‘It’s just….I’ve been carrying this around for years and I can’t put it down.’ 

 

‘Put what down?’ I asked.

 

‘Where do I start? You don’t even know me, which is probably why I’m sitting here in the first place.’ She laughed and wiped the corner of her eye.

 

‘Beginning at the beginning usually works’ I said.

 

‘Yeah,’ she said absent-minded, she was already rehearsing her story in her head.

 

And then she told it to me. She confessed.

 

About her husband and their marriage.

About his drinking, the years of it.

About his lies, the years of it.

About her making every effort to help him, to stick by him, to do whatever it

took to keep their marriage together.

She told me about how he’s sober now.

And then she told me about how now the addiction in their family is her anger and resentment over how she’ll never get back what she gave out, how she’ll never receive what she spent.

 

Then she bit her lip and paused- like she was mentally censoring a part of it.

 

And so I asked her: ‘Are you asking me if you’re supposed to forgive him?’ 

 

‘No, I know I’m supposed to forgive him’ she said. ‘My priest told me that years ago- that’s when I stopped going to church. I know I’m supposed to forgive.’ 

 

‘What’s your question then?’ I asked.

 

‘I’ve sacrificed enough. He’s the one who owes me. Why does forgiving him just make me feel like a victim all over again?’

 

     ‘Why can’t I just wipe this from my ledger….and move on?’ 

 

And when she said that, I knew I had to write a different sermon.

When Peter asks Jesus about forgiveness, when Peter asks Jesus if forgiving someone 7 times is sufficient, Peter must’ve thought it was a good answer. Peter’s a brown-noser, a butt-kisser. Peter wouldn’t have raised his hand and volunteered if he thought it was the wrong answer.

After all Moses had said an eye for an eye, do in turn what was done to you but no more. So 7 times must have struck Peter as a generous, Jesusy amount of forgiveness.

I mean, think about that. Imagine someone sins against you. Say, a church member gossips about you behind your back. I’m not suggesting anyone in this church would do that, just take it as an illustration.

Imagine someone gossips about you. And you confront them about it. 

     1. And they say: ‘I’m sorry.’ So you say to them: ‘I forgive you.’ 

     2. And then they do it again. And you forgive them. 

     3. And then they do it again. And you forgive them. 

     4. And then they do it again. And you forgive them. 

     5. And then they do it again. And you forgive them. 

     6. And then they do it again for sixth time. And you forgive them. 

 

     I mean…fool me once shame on you. Fool 2,3,4,5,6 times…how many times does it take until its shame on me?

 

     It’s got to stop somewhere, right? 

 

And Peter suggests drawing the line at 7 times.

7 is a good, biblical number and, whether we’re talking about gossip or anger or adultery, 7 is a whole lot of forgiveness.

So Peter must’ve thought it was a good answer; Peter must’ve expected a pat on the back, gold star from Jesus. But he doesn’t get one.

 

     Instead Jesus says: ‘You’re off by about 483.’ Not 7 times but 70 times 7. 

 

     490 times. And- it’s even worse than it sounds.

     490 was a Jewish way of expressing perfection. Infinity.

 

So Jesus is saying there is no limit to forgiveness, that forgiving someone is something we never get done with. It’s something that goes on forever.

That forgiveness is not a favor we offer 490 times but when we finally get to 491 we can stop.

     No, Jesus is saying that forgiveness is a way of life that never ends.

 

And as he likes to do, Jesus goes straight from answer to illustration and tells a story that starts with grace and ends with hell.

 

‘And oh, by the way,’ Jesus tacks on, ‘that’s exactly what God will do with you unless you forgive in your heart.’ 

 

On the surface that’s a really crappy story. 

     You must forgive or else. You must forgive or else your heavenly father will lock you in hell and throw away the key? You must forgive…out of fear? 

     That doesn’t sound like Jesus- at all. 

     So, there’s got to be more going on in this story than you can hear the first time through. 

     In fact, what we need is a couple more takes to notice what’s going on in Jesus’ parable. 

So what I need is a few volunteers…

The story revolves around 3 main characters: a King, a servant and a fellow servant.

     Take One: Re-narrate Matthew 18.23-35

    So in the beginning, the king opens his ledger to settle accounts, and he finds a servant who owes him 10,000 talents.

The amount of the debt is key to the whole logic of Jesus’ story. In case you’re rusty on your biblical exchange rates:

1 Denarius = 1 Day’s Wages

6,000 Denarii = 1 Talent 

     This servant owes the king 10,000 talents. When you do the math and carry the one- that comes out to roughly 60 million days’ wages or 164 years and 3 months of labor. 

So when Jesus tells the story, Peter and the other disciples would’ve known instantly that this man owes a debt he could never possibly repay. It’s not just a large debt; its an un-repayable debt.

But no sooner is the man forgiven his debt and set free than he encounters a fellow servant who owes him, about 3 months wages. No small amount but small potatoes compared to the debt he owed the king.

So even though he’s been forgiven and set free he grabs the man, chokes him, demands what’s owed him and sends the man to prison, ignoring the very same plea he’d pled: ‘be patient with me…’

And when the king finds out he has failed to extend the same mercy he had received,  the King has him thrown in jail to be tortured until all his debt is repaid, to be tortured.

To be tortured for 10,000 talents worth of time. 60 million days.

     Take Two: Re-narrate Matthew 18.23-35

     Here’s a question:

Why does the king cancel the debt?

Because of the servant’s plea? Because he promises to pay back everything he owes? 60 million days worth of wages?

He can’t ever pay that back.

So if the king forgives the servant because the servant promises to make it up to him, then the king is stupid.

The king just forgives him. Gratuitously. The king offers him grace.

And how does the servant respond?

Immediately he leaves the king and then turns to a fellow servant and demands from his peer what he has coming to him.

Somehow this servant has managed to receive the king’s forgiveness yet he’s remained completely unchanged by it. 

     He’s been forgiven something he could never repay. 

     He’s been spared a punishment that should have been his. 

    He’s been offered grace and somehow its not converted his heart or his character. 

     He’s still the same person he was before. 

     The king’s grace has not made him a person of grace. 

     Take Three: Re-narrate Matthew 18.23-35

     Here’s another question: what happens to the debt? In the story?

The king examines his ledger and sees what’s owed him. But when he forgives the servant, what happens to the debt?

Where does that debt go? What’s the king do with his ledger?

Because the debt doesn’t just disappear. Someone has to pay the debt- that’s the way the world works, that’s the way accounting works.

And this servant can never pay what is owed. So who eats the debt?

The king.

     The king pays the debt.

     The king will have to suffer the cost of this un-payable debt because forgiveness always costs someone something.

But notice, it’s not just that the king pays the debt.

Because the king can’t forgive the servant without in some way tossing the ledger book aside once and for all.

Because there’s nothing this servant can ever do to bring his relationship with the king back in the black.

So when the king forgives the servant, the king also sacrifices the ledger.

Keeping tally of what’s been earned and what’s still owed goes by the wayside for good.

The whole system of settling accounts, of keeping score, of positive and negative, of + and -, of red and black, of credits and debits, of giving and receiving exactly what is owed- the king DIES to that way of life.

He gets rid of the ledger, so that a servant can have new life.

But notice.

After the king gets rid of his ledger, who’s still got one? 

     Who’s still keeping score? Who’s still keeping track of what people owe him? Who’s still recording what he’s earned? Who’s still tallying what he deserves from others but still hasn’t gotten?

     You see, the king throws his ledger away. Gone for good.

     But the servant clings to his ledger. 

     And he takes his ledger with him, willingly, all the way to hell. 

     In other words, Jesus says, if you insist on treating other people by the book then God will give you exactly what you want. And treat you by the book. 

‘Why can’t I just wipe the ledger clean and move on? Why does forgiving him make me feel like a victim all over again?’ the woman at WF asked me.

I sipped the last of my coffee.

And I said: ‘That’s kinda the way it’s supposed to feel.’ 

I could tell from her face she didn’t follow.

So I tried to explain:

‘The way we forgive is just a small-scale version of how God forgives. There’s no way to reconciliation that doesn’t first go through pain and suffering. Jesus is the pattern. Forgiveness means you bear the cost instead of making the other person pay what they owe you.’

‘That’s a sucky answer’ she said.

‘Sure it sucks’ I said. ‘It sucked for Jesus too, remember.’ 

‘Do you talk like this in church?’ she asked. ‘No, never.’ 

‘Look, the debt your husband owes you is real, but forgiveness means you absorb that debt. And, yes, it’s painful and, sure, it’s hard, but that’s the only way to resurrection.’ 

‘Like I said,’ she said, ‘it’d be a lot better if I could just wipe the ledger clean and move on.’ 

     ‘Yeah, but if you wipe that part of it clean it won’t be long before some other part of it shows red. It’s not about wiping the ledger clean. It’s about getting rid of the ledger altogether.’ 

 

Pay Attention:

No more pretending. That woman at Whole Foods, and that servant in the story, they’re not the only ones clinging to their ledger.

Let’s not kid ourselves.

Some of you carry around a ledger filled with lists of names:

Names of people who’ve hurt you.

Names of people who’ve taken something from you.

Names of people who’ve wronged you.

People who’ve cheated you or cheated on you.

Who’ve lied to you or who’ve lied about you.

People who refuse to listen to you, or to understand you, or to accept you.

People who’ve betrayed you, who’ve rubbed you the wrong the way, or who’ve just let you down one too many times.

And in many of your ledgers, you have a whole other list of names, people that no matter what they do, there’s nothing they can do to change their name from the red to the black in your book.

Some of you cling to ledgers filled with balance sheets, keeping score of exactly how much you’ve done for the people in your life compared to how little they’ve done for you.

Some of you cling to marriage ledgers, tallying the precise daily cash flow of what each person brings to the marriage, which person is costing the marriage more and which person is sacrificing more, working more, contributing more. To the marriage.

And some of you cling to ledgers that look more like a list of accomplishments:

How much you’ve done for others.

How much you’ve given to your church.

How much you attend worship.

All the reasons why you think, assume, God should love you.

While others of you can’t let of go.

Can’t let go of ledgers that list all the sinful things you’ve ever done. All the things you’re ashamed of. All the things you wish you could change about yourself. All the things you wish you could take back.

Ledgers filled with all the reasons why you’re secretly convinced God can never love you.

This sanctuary should not be a place where we lie: there are as many ledgers in this room as there are people.

And, hell, I have my own.

But Jesus wants us to know that we’ve got to put them down. 

     To get rid of them. Toss them aside. Die to that whole way of living. 

     Because clinging to this (the ledger) makes an idol out of that (the cross). Because if you’re still holding on to this, that’s just a symbol from a story that happened once upon a time to someone else. 

I mean, let’s be honest. Some of you have gone to church your whole lives and you’re no different than you were before. The grace of the King has not made you a grace-filled person.

And it’s because you’re still holding on to this.

     When it comes to you, you want the King to throw the book away. But when it comes to everyone else in your life, you insist on going by the book.

But clinging to this, going through your life going by the book, needing to keep score, needing to tally and balance the accounts, it makes that (the cross) an idol. 

      It makes it nothing more than an object- because you’re worshipping the object and not its meaning and power. 

Because the good news of the cross is that you’re more sinful than you’ll ever admit but you’re more loved than you could ever imagine.

The good news of the cross is that there is nothing, nothing, nothing, you can do to earn God’s love.

And there’s nothing you can do to lose it.

God doesn’t keep score. God doesn’t go by the book.

Because the King has tossed his ledger in the trash.

And despite the cost, he’s paid every debt. Every debt. And that includes, by the way, the debts that everyone in your life owe to you.

     So put the ledger down. Put it down. Get rid of it. Die to it.

And instead tit-for-tat, instead of quid pro quo, instead 1 for 1, you do this and I’ll do that, eye for an eye, try 70 x 7.

Show mercy.

Every time.

Just as the King has shown mercy to you.

 

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Top Ten Things I’ve Learned about Marriage: #9

Jason Micheli —  February 21, 2013 — 2 Comments

Myth_of_You_Complete_Me

Last week, I transferred my blog WP.com to a self-hosted site. The process has had a few glitches. Today a bunch of old posts got resent to different subscribers. Sorry for that…problem solved. And now with no further ado. 

 

I’ve been married nearly a dozen years. I’ve performed I don’t know how many weddings, presided over even more pre-marital counseling sessions and refereed an equal amount of relationships as they were coming to an end. So I’m not Dr Phil but I’ve learned a thing or two. Or ten.

#9: No One Marries Their Soul Mate

In fact, you never even marry the right person.

When teaching about Heaven, I frequently stress the point that ‘soul’ is a concept foreign to scripture. As far as Judaism and Christianity are concerned, you don’t have something called a ‘soul.’

It therefore follows that you don’t have someone called a ‘soulmate’ out there either.

I know we all like to go weak-kneed thinking (a la Jerry McGuire) that there’s a specific, special person out there meant just for us who will ‘complete us’ and that, if we only find them-and they us, we will have married our perfect match.

Happily ever after.

Like two puzzle pieces being fit together.

But here’s the problem:

Puzzle pieces don’t change. Everything else about puzzle pieces, save that missing space, remains the same.

People, especially married people, do change.

If you had asked me twelve years ago if Ali was my soul mate, if she was the perfect person for me, I would have told you without pause: ‘Damn straight.’

But here’s what I’ve learned from my own marriage and from watching others’ marriages. Here’s the point and beauty of marriage: marriage is a means of grace; like the eucharist, it’s one of the means by which we grow and become more perfect creatures.

We don’t pick our perfect match because we ourselves are not perfect the day when we say ‘I do.’

Such perfection is only possible through a life lived with our spouse.

We never marry the right or perfect person, we never start out with our ‘soulmate’ because marriage doesn’t allow us to stay the same person we were when we started out. Sometimes for good and sometimes for ill, a life lived and shared together makes us different people.

Marriage isn’t two puzzle pieces coming together.

It’s more like two rough diamonds being polished and perfected over a lifetime.

You don’t marry the perfect person for you.

Your marriage creates the perfect person for you.

You don’t begin your marriage with your soul mate.

God willing, you end up with someone who is your soul mate.

If you had asked me twelve years ago if Ali was perfect for me, I would’ve said yes.

But I was wrong.

I was wrong because back then I couldn’t have anticipated how my life with Ali was going to transform me in unexpected ways. She’s made me a better person. Thus, she’s more perfect for me now than she ever could have been then.

Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian whose own memoir testifies to both the redemption and the pain marriage can bring, puts these same thoughts this way:

We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person. just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary challenge is…learning to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.

 

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The Church VS The Hall of Fame

Jason Micheli —  February 17, 2013 — Leave a comment

counterfeit-gods-timothy-kellerWe’re beginning our Lenten sermon series this weekend on Counterfeit Gods. It’s a series on idolatry and, by extension, justification. Two topics that have me thinking about this article I read about Peter Rose getting erased Marty McFly-like from Topps Baseball Cards.

There are some things people will never agree on: Stones vs Beatles, Cool Bed Pillow vs Warm Bed Pillow and whether spending a month with Jar-Jar Binks would be worse than a month suffering with the Clap.

Add to this list of imponderables the question of whether or not Pete Rose (and I suppose all the rest from the Steroid Era) should be in the Hall of Fame. Being from Ohio originally, I know full well this question has its impassioned advocates on both sides. The arguments, both pro and con, however almost always revolve exclusively around baseball. The integrity of the game. In the case of steroids, there’s the point about the ‘purity’ (a revealing word) of a sport to which statistics are everything. And then there’s the very real concern that the cheaters’ records minimized the accomplishments that were won the hard way- as far as we know.

I don’t really care one way or the other about Pete Rose et al.

What interests me is how differently the Hall of Fame treats former players

when compared to how the Church treats its saints.

St Augustine was wantonly promiscuous and all but abandoned his loved ones- save his mommy- when he converted to Christianity and became a priest.

John Wesley was a terrible husband.

Jean Calvin had a man burnt at the stake.

Paul stood by and watched a man get stoned. And said nothing.

Mother Theresa had long periods of doubt and despair in her lifetime. Pope Benedict was a Hitler Youth.

And, of course, let’s not forget the 12 Disciples, one of whom betrayed Jesus for money and 11 of whom betrayed him just to save their own skin.

What’s remarkable when compared alongside the Hall of Fame is how the Church has never shied away from the sullied, silly or shadow sides of its saints.

Even the most honored saints are still sinners, and they can be because it’s not their saintliness that justifies their inclusion in God’s Church. It’s God. Only an institution that participates in the Gospel story and thus knows our justification comes not from our own accomplishments but from Christ’s gracious love can openly acknowledge both the warts and the wisdom of its people.

The Hall of Fame, on the other hand, participates in a much different story. The American story. Whereas the Church doesn’t need to blush that Peter denied Christ or that Augustine couldn’t keep it in his cloak, baseball (and America) often feel the need to pretend our heroes are without flaw. Because, after all, in America one’s accomplishments really are what we think justifies us.

Back to Pete Rose, Barry Bonds and the rest. I get the baseball arguments for their exclusion. But on Gospel grounds, I say let them in, rap sheet and all. Celebrate the positive. Don’t hide from the dark side of their stories.

A Hall of Fame that pretends the greatest hitter of all time (Pete Rose) and the greatest player of all time (Barry Bonds) never existed is a little like a Church that pretends Peter and Judas and Augustine (and, let’s be honest, you and me) never existed.

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Your Worth Isn’t Determined By___________________.

Jason Micheli —  February 15, 2013 — Leave a comment

counterfeit-gods-timothy-kellerThis weekend we begin our Lenten sermon series, Counterfeit Gods. We’ll be talking all through Lent about the idols in our lives. No, idols aren’t inanimate totems (aka: Golden Calfs) that we stupidly think are divinities. Idolatry is as real (maybe more?) as it was in the ancient world.

An idol is anything in our life to which we place ultimate value, anything in life from which we derive our chief happiness and meaning, anything in life on which we depend for our life’s meaning and purpose.

Based on that definition alone, you can see that, chances are, you’re not off the hook.

What’s more, idolatry is hardly something other, unbelieving people do. Christians are just as guilty as anyone else of turning their money, family, children, love, spouse, career, or political party into an ultimate value, giving it the place that should be reserved for God alone- a mistake which frequently ends up corroding our money, family, children, love, spouse, career or politics.

Another thing should be on the list of idols for Christians: religion. 

Too often Christians (me: guilty) worship their religious categories instead of God.

Too often Christians derive their sense of worth and identity not from God but from our moral purity.

But, as Sarah Bessey points out in the post I discovered below, if nothing can separate us from God because of Jesus Christ then it’s also true that nothing can justify us before God but Jesus Christ.

Here’s her thoughts.

I was nineteen years old and crazy in love with Jesus when that preacher told an auditorium I was “damaged goods” because of my sexual past. He was making every effort to encourage this crowd of young adults to “stay pure for marriage.” He was passionate, yes, well-intentioned, and he was a good speaker, very convincing indeed.

And he stood up there and shamed me, over and over and over again.

Oh, he didn’t call me up to the front and name me. But he stood up there and talked about me with such disgust, like I couldn’t be in that real-life crowd of young people worshipping in that church. I felt spotlighted and singled out amongst the holy, surely my red face announced my guilt to every one.

He passed around a cup of water and asked us all to spit into it. Some boys horked and honked their worst into that cup while everyone laughed. Then he held up that cup of cloudy saliva from the crowd and asked, “Who wants to drink this?!”

And every one in the crowd made barfing noises, no way, gross!

“This is what you are like if you have sex before marriage,” he said seriously, “you are asking your future husband or wife to drink this cup.”

Over the years the messages melded together into the common refrain: “Sarah, your virginity was a gift and you gave it away. You threw away your virtue for a moment of pleasure. You have twisted God’s ideal of sex and love and marriage. You will never be free of your former partners, the boys of your past will haunt your marriage like soul-ties. Your virginity belonged to your future husband. You stole from him. If – if! – you ever get married, you’ll have tremendous baggage to overcome in your marriage, you’ve ruined everything. No one honourable or godly wants to marry you. You are damaged goods, Sarah.”

If true love waits, I heard, then I have been disqualified from true love.

In the face of our sexually-dysfunctional culture, the Church longs to stand as an outpost of God’s ways of love and marriage, purity and wholeness.

And yet we twist that until we treat someone like me – and, according to this research, 80% of you are like me –  as if our value and worth was tied up in our virginity.

We, the majority non-virgins in the myopic purity conversations,  feel like the dirty little secret, the not-as-goods, the easily judged example.  In this clouded swirl of shame, our sexual choices are the barometer of our righteousness and worth. We can’t let any one know, so we keep it quiet, lest any one discover we were not virgins on some mythic wedding night. We don’t want to be the object of disgust or pity or gossip or judgement. And in the silence, our shame – and the lies of the enemy – grow.

 

And so here, now, I’ll stand up and say it, the way I wish someone had said it to me fifteen years ago when I was sitting in that packed auditorium with my heart racing, wrists aching, eyes stinging, drowning and silenced by the imposition of shame masquerading as ashes of repentance:

“So, you had sex before you were married.

It’s okay.

Really. It’s okay.

There is no shame in Christ’s love. Let him without sin cast the first stone. You are more than your virginity – or lack thereof – and more than your sexual past.

Your marriage is not doomed because you said yes to the boys you loved as a young woman. Your husband won’t hold it against you, he’s not that weak and ego-driven, choose a man marked by grace.

It’s likely you would make different choices, if you knew then what you know now, but, darling, don’t make it more than it is, and don’t make it less than it is. Let it be true, and don’t let anyone silence you or the redeeming work of Christ in your life out of shame.

Now, in Christ, you’re clear, like Canadian mountain water, rushing and alive, quenching and bracing, in your wholeness.

Virginity isn’t a guarantee of healthy sexuality or marriage. You don’t have to consign your sexuality to the box marked “Wrong.” Your very normal and healthy desires aren’t a switch to be flipped. Morality tales and false identities aren’t the stuff of a real marriage. Purity isn’t judged by outward appearances and technicalities. The sheep and the goats are not divided on the basis of their virginity. (Besides, this focus is weird and over-realized, it’s the flip side of the culture’s coin which values women only for their sexuality. It’s also damaging, not only for you, but for the virgins in the room, too. Really, there’s a lot of baggage from this whole purity movement heading out into the world.)

For I am convinced, right along with the Apostle Paul, that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any other power, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.* Not even “neither virginity nor promiscuity” and all points between can separate you from this love. You are loved – without condition – beyond your wildest dreams already.

I would say: Sarah, your worth isn’t determined by your virginity. What a lie.

No matter what that preacher said that day, no matter how many purity balls are thrown with sparkling upper-middle-class extravagance, no matter the purity rings and the purity pledges, no matter the judgemental Gospel-negating rhetoric used with the best of intentions, no matter the “how close is too close?” serious conversations of boundary-marking young Christians, no matter the circumstances of your story, you are not disqualified from life or from joy or from marriage or from your calling or from a healthy and wonderful lifetime of sex because you had – and, heaven forbid, enjoyed – sex before you were married.

Darling, young one burning with shame and hiding in the silence, listen now: Don’t believe that lie. You never were, you never will be, damaged goods.”

 

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Finding Jesus By Leaving The Church

Jason Micheli —  February 10, 2013 — 1 Comment

0*d2f2HygwLJiosgbZMost of you are probably familiar with Fred Phelp’s Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas. Even if the name doesn’t ring a bell, the image of angry ‘Christians’ picketing funerals with signs reading ‘God hates fags’ will most certainly ring a bell. In fact, I’d wager that the evangelism dollars spent by all of Christendom over the last 10-15 years have been a waste when compared to the ubiquity of Phelp’s hate-mongering. To a huge proportion of the unchurched public, Phelp’s message and methods are Christianity.

Even though they’re not.

My first encounter with Westboro Baptist Church came when I was in seminary and Phelp’s crew was in town to picket a local Episcopal Church. Their level of anger seemed almost alien. I mean, no one’s that angry, all the time, right? Only self-righteousness could provoke such contempt.

So I was surprised to discover this story floating under the radar. Fred Phelp’s two granddaughter, Meghan and Grace Phelps, have left Westboro Baptist Church.

They’ve left the church. They’ve left the church’s teachings, They’ve left the endless schedule of protests and pickets, which they’d participated in since childhood. They’ve left their hometown. And their family.

What happened?

According to Meghan, she finally discovered how wrong her family and church had been by listening to a rabbi talk about Jesus.

It’s a great story. No, it’s a hopeful one that has the potential to be great.

This story a warning that not every church and not everything in church is holy, and it’s a reminder that God’s grace can and does come to the most unsavory of characters.

Just after 11 last Sunday morning at Old First Reformed Church in Brooklyn, the Rev. Dr. Daniel Meeter is starting the Sunday service as he always does. He runs through the opening salutation and the collect for the day, and then he welcomes everyone to church as he always does, introducing Old First “as a community of Jesus in Park Slope where we welcome people of every race, ethnicity and orientation to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.”

The congregation—some eighty strong on this sunny but cold February morning—is the usual mix of Park Slope churchgoing types: a smattering of journalists, a few artists, a handful of old ladies, some rambunctious children. But in the back row of the tin-ceilinged, wood-floored hall, there’s a visitor. It is Megan Phelps-Roper’s first time not only at Old First but also at any church not called Westboro Baptist. Yes, that Westboro Baptist, the Topeka, Kansas, congregation that has become famous (or infamous, depending on your viewpoint) for its strident views on sin (and the abundance of it in modern America), salvation (and the prospective lack of it), and sexuality (we’re bad, in far more colorful terms).

For nearly all of her twenty-seven years, Megan believed it: believed what her grandfather Fred Phelps preached from the pulpit; believed what her dad Brent and her mom Shirley taught during the family’s daily Bible studies; believed (mostly) what it said on those signs that have made Westboro disproportionately influential in American life—“God hates fags”; “God hates your idols”; “God hates America.”

Megan was the one who pioneered the use of social media at Westboro, becoming the first in her family to go on Twitter. Effervescent and effusive, she gave hundreds of interviews, charming journalists from all over the world. Organized and proactive, she, for a time, even had responsibility for keeping track of the congregation’s protest schedule. She was such a Westboro fixture that the Kansas City Star touted her—improbably, as it turns out, because a woman could never have such a role at the church—as a future leader of the congregation.

Then, in November, she left.

I first met Megan in the summer of 2011, when I went to Topeka to spend a few days with the Westboro folks for my book project. During that visit, we talked about faith, we talked about church, we talked about marriage (and Megan’s feeling that, given the prospects, it would require no small amount of divine intervention in her case), and we talked about Harry Potter (for the record, she’s a fan). She seemed so sure in her beliefs, that I could not have imagined that some fifteen months later, we’d be having a conversation in which she tearfully told me that she was no longer with her family or with the church.

Mostly, the tears have subsided—“in public, anyway,” she says one afternoon, as we sit in a Tribeca café. “I still cry a lot.” Forget what you know of the church. Just imagine what it is like to walk away from everything you have ever known. Consider how traumatic it would be to know that your family is never supposed to speak to you again. Think of how hard it would be to have a fortress of faith built around you, and to have to dismantle it yourself, brick by brick, examining each one and deciding whether there’s something worth keeping or whether it’s not as solid as you thought it was.

As we talk, Megan repeatedly emphasizes how much she loves those she has left behind. “I don’t want to hurt them,” she says. “I don’t want to hurt them.”

Her departure has hurt them already—she knew it would—yet there was no way she could stay. “My doubts started with a conversation I had with David Abitbol,” she says. Megan met David, an Israeli web developer who’s part of the team behind the blog Jewlicious, on Twitter. “I would ask him questions about Judaism, and he would ask me questions about church doctrine. One day, he asked a specific question about one of our signs—‘Death Penalty for Fags’—and I was arguing for the church’s position, that it was a Levitical punishment and as completely appropriate now as it was then. He said, ‘But Jesus said’—and I thought it was funny he was quoting Jesus—‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ And then he connected it to another member of the church who had done something that, according to the Old Testament, was also punishable by death. I realized that if the death penalty was instituted for any sin, you completely cut off the opportunity to repent. And that’s what Jesus was talking about.”

To some, this story might seem simple—even overly so. But we all have moments of epiphany, when things that are plate-glass clear to others but opaque to us suddenly become apparent. This was, for Megan, one of those moments, and this window led to another and another and another. Over the subsequent weeks and months, “I tried to put it aside. I decided I wasn’t going to hold that sign, ‘Death Penalty for Fags.’” (She had, for the most part, preferred the gentler, much less offensive “Mourn for Your Sins” or “God Hates Your Idols” anyway.)

What “seemed like a small thing at the time,” she says, snowballed. She started to question another Westboro sign, “Fags can’t repent.” “It seemed misleading and dishonest. Anybody can repent if God gives them repentance, according to the church. But this one thing—it gives the impression that homosexuality is an unforgivable sin,” she says. “It didn’t make sense. It seemed a wrong message for us to be sending. It’s like saying, ‘You’re doomed! Bye!’ and gives no hope for salvation.”

She kept trying to conquer the doubts. Westboro teaches that one cannot trust his or her feelings. They’re unreliable. Human nature “is inherently sinful and inherently completely sinful,” Megan explains. “All that’s trustworthy is the Bible. And if you have a feeling or a thought that’s against the church’s interpretations of the Bible, then it’s a feeling or a thought against God himself.”

This, of course, assumes that the church’s teachings and God’s feelings are one and the same. And this, of course, assumes that the church’s interpretation of the Bible is infallible, that this much-debated document handed down over the centuries has, in 2013, been processed and understood correctly only by a small band of believers in Topeka. “Now?” Megan says. “That sounds crazy to me.”

In December, she went to a public library in Lawrence, Kansas. She was looking through books on philosophy and religion, and it struck her that people had devoted their entire lives to studying these questions of how to live and what is right and wrong. “The idea that only WBC hadthe right answer seemed crazy,” she says. “It just seemed impossible.”

The act of leaving Westboro is as weird as the church itself. Sometimes it’s described as a shunning process, but that’s not entirely apt. It is, in the eyes of the remaining members, a sort of death, but it’s a gentle one, because the carcass isn’t just dumped or ignored. One church member, who has lost two of his kids to the outside world, told me that he still loved them and that he set them up as best they could with what they’d need to start their new lives—some money, some household goods, even a car.

Megan didn’t leave alone; her sister Grace decided to go with her. They stayed just one night in Topeka. Then, after returning to their family home to retrieve some things they’d not packed the night before—“it was so weird and horrible to ring the doorbell,” Megan says—they left town.

They decided to disappear for a while, and found rooms in a house in a tiny Midwestern town. They needed space—to think, to read, to imagine what had previously been unimaginable. Their lives had largely been scripted, and “now that we’re writing our own script, everything seems a lot more tenuous,” Megan says. “We needed to think about what we believe. We need to figure out what we want to do next. I never imagined leaving, ever, so I never thought about doing anything different. I have no idea what kind of work I want to do, or where to live. How do people decide these things?”

Once a constant Tweeter, she hasn’t posted anything online since October. “I don’t know what I believe, so I don’t know what to say,” she explains. “I haven’t been ready to talk about any of this.” She’s only doing so now, and briefly, because, she says, “I was so proactive before and vocal about the church. My name means something now to others that it doesn’t mean to me. I want people to know that it’s not now how it was.”

But how is it going to be? She’s still not sure. They’ve been trying new things; one of their housemates made sushi one night, the first time Megan tasted raw fish (“yum!”). They read a lot—“I liked ‘The Sun Also Rises.’ There was a quote that was perfect for where we were: ‘Wonderful how one loses track of the days up here in the mountains.’ And you know what else I loved about it? I could be completely mistaken about what the book means, but where the book began and where it ended was the same. It makes your problems seem like small things. It gives you perspective—well, it gave me perspective, that my problems in the grand scheme of things are not as horrible or monstrous as they seem.” They talk to each other for hours each day, about religion, about God, about the Bible, about the future, about how to treat people, about “what’s right and what’s wrong—capital R and capital W.”

Click here to read the rest.

 

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