Who is my neighbor?

So the past several months have been very hard on many of us - they have forced us to really examine what we believe and worse than that, they have opened our eyes to what those around us believe. Yep...this is another one of those posts. Vaguely political but actually mostly it is for my fellow Christian friends and family. It is not intended as a judgment but it is what I have been thinking about and I feel like I need to share.

Fair warning, it might make some of you angry. Many of you will not agree...and though for the life of me I cannot figure out why or how...that is okay. A lot of people these days are saying things like 'let's just stop talking about it and all get along again'. Ha. As if you could. I know I cannot anyway. I have been forced to realize that some people I have always thought to be very like minded are actually very...different than me. But that is actually in a way what this post is about. Because the thing is that even if this makes you angry and/or you disagree with me, I will still love you. You will have to decide if you still love me or not, but I am saying now - before it even begins. I will still love you. I just need to share what has been weighing on my heart.

So one thing that I think everyone generally agrees on is that Christianity is based on Christ (you can sort of see it even in the name...). So one of the things I generally always thought was true, even before I went to school to study the Bible (and oh  yeah I slipped that in there so you know I am not just spouting hot air. I have actually studied this stuff...I have TWO degrees in theology just as an aside if that makes any difference) but even before that I always held to the idea that we believe that Jesus changed things. So the easy way to say that is that the OT is no longer really valid b/c he made things new.

Now the academic in me insists I write a short paragraph explaining that it IS much more complicated than that. There is MUCH to be learned from the Old Testament. I love the Old Testament. In fact I preferred classes on the OT in school so please do not take my comment above too literally. I am merely saying that we do not follow the prescriptions of the OT and do things such as sacrifice animals (or people) to have relationship with God. The story of the entire Bible tells us that God saw humanity was growing away from Him and so he became part of them (Jesus) to show them how to have relationship with Him.

Okay that was a very quick/messy theology lesson right? Not my point but I am saying that I THINK everyone pretty much agrees to this narrative. I don't mean by that if you take it apart word by word I said it right, I mean it is the basic story of God/Jesus that we as Christians accept.

So the reason I started there is to say that I HATE when people use particular parts of the Bible to support whatever argument they are making. While I do wholeheartedly believe the Bible is our story of our relationship with God, I do not believe we can or should simply take verses and use them to our advantage. For example it says in one place women can not talk in the church, however we think that is antiquated so we just ignore that one; but in other places it says homosexuality is a sin and since many Christians are uncomfortable with that one, we cling to it. For me...that is not what the Bible is for. It cannot, and should not, be read in that manner. One of the reasons I can say that is....because as I stated above - Jesus changed everything.

So though I am going to now use some Bible verses to back myself up, they are all words of Jesus. The foundation of the church. Granted they are words that were recorded by men so they might be incorrect but generally speaking they are accepted to be the ACTUAL words of God.

Jesus was asked what is THE MOST IMPORTANT commandment. He answered:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind

AND THEN HE CONTINUED....
The second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself

So...the two most important things about being a Christian are loving God with your ENTIRE self and then loving your neighbor the same way that you love your...self. Wow.

Okay well just to be SUPER clear Jesus then also told us who our neighbor is. We all know the story - yep it's the good Samaritan.
So the story is a man was left on the side of the road, robbed and beaten - half dead. The people who should have stopped, didn't. The people who everything thought would take care of him, didn't. But the man who was TOTALLY different from him - he stopped. He took care of him. He spent his own money on him, he took him with him, he spent MORE money to be sure he would be cared for in the future, and he came back to check on him. Now the incredible parts of this story don't come through unless you do some study but I am sure we have all heard the sermons and know the history. Samaritans and Jews did not deal with one another. They did not trust one another, they definitely did not help one another. In fact the reason they hated one another was because of their religions. Jewish people considered Samaritans pagans, they were everything that they were taught not to be. They were completely OTHER than them.
Yet Jesus says, THAT man was his neighbor.

I am baffled....when faced with this story - that we love to tell in Sunday School and in church - how we can be at such a place of discord within the Christian church right now. JESUS Himself says that THE MOST important thing we can do is to love God AND to love our neighbor, who is particularly the other.

Do you know who your "others" are? Or as Jesus would call them...your neighbors?

They are people of a different skin color
They are people of a different economic class
They are people of a different sexual preference
They are people from a different country
They are people who believe a different religion
They are people who disagree with you politically
(they might be me after you read this...remember I still love you!)

Your neighbor is not fellow American white Christians. Of course you love them. Your neighbor is not the people that make you feel safe in your homes. Of course it is easy to accept them. Jesus didn't say anything about the Samaritan feeling safe. That Jew could have woken up and spit on him. That is basically how Jews treated Samaritans, but he didn't care...he helped him anyway.

How can we say we are loving God with our whole heart, soul and mind if we are not even following his second command?

How can we even pretend to say we are loving our neighbor if we are not fighting for refugees who are fleeing from homes where they are in danger of being killed every moment?

How can we claim to love our transgender neighbor if we do not even support their right to go to the bathroom in a safe and comfortable way? (and before you start talking about your rights please see my comments above about the rights/safety of the Samaritan. Jesus does not mention them even once).

It makes my heart heavy to think that Jesus Christ came to earth to make it AS CLEAR AS POSSIBLE to us how to treat one another. He gave us explicit instructions and still we are not doing everything in our power to love our neighbors.

If I am not loving EVERY single neighbor that comes into knowledge of reality in the way that Christ told me to then I cannot think that I am loving Him with my whole heart, soul and mind.

Just food for thought.

Faithful Doubting

So something I struggle with a lot is my faith. Sometimes I think I just don't have any at all any more. I think my problem is that I am, at heart, a hopeless romantic. Not that this has anything to do with romance. Except, maybe it does. It has do with the idea of all or nothing for me. It is about idealism. I am a idealistic person. This is totally weird because I am also a realist. I understand I cannot actually be both, and yet...Well you can understand why I struggle so much I guess.

Currently I am really heartbroken about these "illegal" children that want to come into America. I spent the weekend at my parent's home which means I watched the news all weekend. I don't watch the news normally. This because I am an idealist and when I watch the news I often become very angry and/or depressed about our world. I kid you not. It really is a problem for me. I get really moody and you don't want to be around me after I have seen too much news. I often yell at news reporters during the news and I never like it. So, mostly I just avoid it. I find I hear about most things through social media and/or interacting with people. I then ask people I trust 'so what is going on with so-and-so' to get more details when I feel like it is something I should know about. Most people consider this a stick your head in the sand method of living but I have found it is better for my emotional sanity, and that of those who have to survive around me.

So what does any of this have to do with my faith or idealism? I am getting there...kind of. So here is the thing. If I believe in God...

************Side story I have to tell - I was having a conversation like this with two of my best friends recently and Karissa and I were arguing theology and ethics and who knows what else, as we love to do, and Jen was listening from the back seat, as she is prone to do, and I said what I just said above "If we believe in God" and she injected from the back calmly but firmly and with total assurance as she knows all three of us well enough to have this assurance, "and we do". Wow. What an important thing to have coming from behind your theological pondering. A quiet reminder that even when we doubt and question...we do in fact believe. So mom...it's okay to start breathing. I do remember, and thank God I am surrounded by those who remind me, "and we do."****************

So...if I believe in God (and I do) I have realized the problem I have with believing in God is that He is unbelievable! I mean He became FULLY human and then performed miracles...wait I thought he was fully human? and he was still GOD too? And what about the Old Testament...it doesn't all make sense. I am a realist for goodness sake. But wait...no I am not. Am I? See...it is so confusing! God does NOT make sense. But Christianity, and everyone else, keeps telling me I have to live in a world that makes sense and I don't really deal with that very well. They keep saying things like but we live in THIS world.

So in this world, there are all these kids who want to come to America and we don't know what to do with them. We don't know how to take care of them and quite frankly...they aren't our problem right? I mean I get that, I understand it. But....

The thing is, I can't stop thinking about this story in the Bible about when Jesus was teaching and all these people came to see what He had to offer and there were SO many of them. I mean way too many. And they were getting hungry and it was late and really there was nothing the disciples could do. I mean realistically they could not take care of these people. Right? So Jesus just finds out what they DO have, he blesses it, he shares it with everyone...and somehow there is enough for not only them, not only everyone that is there...but there are freaking LEFTOVERS people. (obviously I am just paraphrasing here). There is food for EVEN MORE PEOPLE.

Now understand me. I am a realist. If you ask me if I believe the stories in the Bible are "true"....I will probably say no. I will probably tell you they are all meant to teach us things.I will probably tell you that they are cultural stories from a particular time and particular people that are not really meant to be taken literally by us today.

But...if I am going to believe in God (and I...want...to) I am not sure that is good enough for me. I am not sure I can stand to watch children standing behind a fence not being fed and believe that a story about God who can feed them is "not really" real. If God is not really big enough to really feed those children, then maybe He is not really big enough. And the thing is...I AM an idealist. I think that as hard as it is to believe, and as true as it is that I do NOT know how to tell you it will work, I do think He is big enough.

If we send those people away, we are NOT believing in Christ. We are NOT being Christians. We are being realists. I do not think you can be a realist and be really believing in God. He is way too Big for that. I know it sounds silly. I know it sounds impossible. I know it is not simple. I just know my heart breaks for those children, and for their families. And for those of us on this side who call ourselves Christians and then doubt our faith so much that we won't even share the little bit of bread and fish we have.

Day 17: Favorite spiritual book

It struck me when I sat down today that this day could be interpreted in a lot of different ways. I would choose one book if I interpreted this to mean theological book for example, and a very different one if I thought about devotional book, and still another if I looked toward my christian ministry books. Most people did not get two degrees in religion/theology so it might not seem to be as big a field of choice for everyone. I did, however, so I gave a lot of thought to what I wanted this challenge to be about, and I have decided to share my personal favorite book about someone else's spiritual journey

Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner


I saw this on a friend's goodreads page and was intrigued by it. One of my personal reading goals is to read at least 12 non-fiction books per year (so one a month) so I thought this would be a good place to start. I LOVED this book! It is the memoir of a girl who had a Jewish father and Southern Baptist mother, but who was raised with virtually no religion in her life at all. She chose to become an orthodox Jew, and was very committed to it, constantly observing Sabbath rituals and even studying Jewish law. However, she was always drawn toward Christianity as well and says that she literally found Jesus. So, despite the fact that she loved her Orthodox Jewish faith she converted to Christianity. In the book she walks through all of those decisions and how she attempts to reconcile both sides of herself.


I do not share her background of either religious ambiguity as a child, or of the Jewish faith. Yet I found so much in her story that relates to my own story of struggling with my spirituality and what I chose to seek and what holds the most meaning for me as a Christian. She is also a very unconventional thinker and approaches every part of her life (and faith) with a passion and veracity which appeals very much to my own personality and nature.

In reading about her journey to understand and seek spirituality in her life I found great inspiration and hope. God is a big deal, and we do not totally understand Him, ever. Seeking to understand, though, even when it goes against what we thought we did understand before, is the kind of Christianity, the kind of theology, the kind of devotion, the kind of spirituality, that I can embrace whole-heartedly.