Reconstruction, at least the start

I'm sure I'm not alone in that the past two or so years have been challenging in many ways. I think it has been a particularly challenging time to be a professing Christian while watching so many other (white, evangelical) Christians be willing to either turn a blind eye to what is going on or openly embrace the hateful rhetoric of the MAGA crowd. It is painful. 

Pain such as that (among other life experiences that kind of kick your feet out from under you) can also cause a whole lot of questioning on a faith level. We left one church for multiple reasons, not the least of which was the tacit and outright racism our children experienced. It was not an easy decision. In some ways it still isn't. So when you combine all that together, it makes one think. A lot. About what one really believes, how everything all fits together, what difference it all makes. How does one reconstruct one's faith when you come to the realization that perhaps the conservative end of the spectrum is not what it purported to be? I'll be open and say I was struggling. I absolutely did not want to give up Jesus, but there was so much prior belief and teaching in there that it was difficult to tease it all apart.

As a result, I reached out to a friend from our Evanston days who does spiritual direction, and I'll be meeting with him for a while. Just the act of making the phone call and having the initial discussion was helpful. Having someone tell me I was neither crazy nor apostate was relieving. Plus, he gave me a suggested reading list... which is my love language, you know. 

For the past week I have been plowing through books at a tremendous rate. This bit struck me from my reading today.

"Maybe my purpose on earth isn't to be the thought police first and love others after all their ideas line up as they should. Maybe my first order of business is to risk my own sense of certainty about God and love others where and how they are no matter how they do on my theology exam.

It's much easier acting on the need to be right than letting go of that need and risking what we hold dear and loving others without expecting anything back or thinking we are scoring points with God. Love happens whether we feel it or not. Love is an action, a selfless act, something we do for others without thinking of ourselves or how it will make us look. Loving others is the most self-emptying, self-denying, thing we can do, because true love has the other person on the top shelf." from The Sin of Certainty by Peter Enns (pp147-8)

I actually read the entire book this afternoon. R. had a seizure around lunch time, so needed to sit next to me much of the afternoon and co-regulate. If you have been feeling the same sorts of feelings, I highly recommend it.