Why I am No Longer Fundamental, Part 4

For my last part in this series I want to explain exactly what my beliefs are. I've been getting a lot of accusations of “Easy Christianity” and “relative truth,” etc. So since in my most recent post I laid out the basics of my observations of Fundamental Christianity, I’m going to now explain how I've learned to be a Christian without the Fundamentalism.

First, I’m going to tell you what my faith is not. This is not easy. How can it be? With the Christian circles I grew up in, and those with whom I am still in contact, many of them who are still devoutly Fundamental, what is so easy about declaring myself to not be Fundamental anymore? It never goes over very well. This is not Easy Christianity. This is also not what many of you have called “sloppy grace.”

For those of you who weren't raised with this kind of church vocabulary, let me explain what these accusations mean. “Easy Christianity” and “sloppy grace” refers to people who are Christian but who still sort of live as though they weren't. Other people see them as sinning freely without fear of consequences because they know that they will be forgiven.

This is not what I am doing, nor what I am advocating.

I have also not backslidden. I have not turned my back on God. I am not living a hedonistic life. I still have a relationship with God, and all my beliefs necessary to salvation (little Nazarene trivia for you there) are still wholly intact. In fact, my relationship with God is better now than it ever has been. I believe that this is due to the fact that I am no longer in constant fear of messing up. I am no longer obsessing about living up to everyone else’s standards, nor am I interested in keeping up appearances.

I no longer feel guilty every minute of every day for no reason at all (something I lived with for YEARS as a fundamentalist). This is the most freeing feeling I've ever had.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let me tell you how I do live out my faith these days.

Today, I leave room for more grace (and again, I don’t mean that in an “I can do whatever I want” way). What it means is that I no longer think I have all the answers. Not from the Bible, not from theology, not from anywhere. I know that there are fundamental truths in the Bible. I know that there are all sorts of things that we can’t and shouldn't compromise on. I just don’t think that that’s the whole Bible, and that there are many gray areas in there, and that we shouldn't battle to the death over those gray areas here on earth. Rather, let’s extend a little more grace to everyone on these areas. Hold to your own convictions and beliefs, but don’t guilt others into doing the same, especially not people who aren't Christian.

Speaking of which…

STOP EXPECTING NON-CHRISTIANS TO ACT LIKE CHRISTIANS

STOP HOLDING NON-CHRISTIANS TO YOUR STANDARDS

There are very few things in this life that aggravate me more than when I see Christians judging and condemning non-Christians for living and acting like non-Christians. Friends, this accomplishes little more than making Christians look hateful, and that’s not what we’re called to do. Jesus said that the world will know us by our love, right? So let’s try a little more of that. I don’t think ministry and missions ever work out very well while using that tactic.

Think rather of Paul when he was in Athens (Acts 17). The story goes that he went there and saw that the city was FULL of idols. I don’t pretend to know exactly what this means. I believe Athens was a pretty big city, so I’m guessing there were quite a few of these idols. He was upset when he saw all these idols so he of course began preaching, and soon enough he had people asking him what on earth he was talking about. However, rather than give them an itemized list of all the ways they were sinning, he complimented them on how religious they were. Then he remarked upon one idol he had seen that read “To an Unknown God.” He used that as an inroad to teaching them the good news of the gospel, and the people were hooked (obviously not all, some of them “sneered” and walked away) and asked to talk to him again.

This, I believe, is an amazing example of how to speak with non-believers. How to build relationships. You can’t build a relationship with anyone by first tearing them down, telling them everything they believe is wrong, and giving them an itemized list of why they’re going to hell. Just doesn't make for a good introduction. And I don’t believe that any ministry is effective without first having a good relationship.

Friends, Fundamentalism is fast pushing away everyone it is purporting to love and reach out to. There have been hundreds of blogs and articles written about why people are leaving the church in droves, and I believe that this is one of the main reasons why. The hatred and divisiveness that naturally comes from this kind of extreme, unyielding mentality was bound to catch up to the church eventually.

This is why I am not a Fundamentalist anymore. And this is why I feel it necessary to use my experience and do what I can to heal that divide. There is a better way.

Why I am No Longer Fundamental, Part 2

It’s easy to blame other people for the problems in our lives. The most uncomfortable feeling in the world is seeing the ruins of your life and knowing that everything that is wrong is a direct result of your own actions. Sometimes the only thing that can ease that discomfort is casting about for someone else to blame: society, friends, family, your parents…the list is quite literally endless.

That’s not what I’m here to do. I was shaped by the culture I grew up in. The atmosphere in my church. Parents who loved me and wanted to protect me, who wanted what was best for me. All of these circumstances just happened to correlate with the massive fundamentalist movement that happened to be taking place in American Christianity during my formative years.

It’s this movement that directly influenced the most pivotal moments of my adult life.

But it was in no way responsible.

I do blame the fundamentalist movement for a lot of what I see wrong with Christianity in the world, and for the way the world relates to Christianity. I have seen far too many broken hearts to not hurt for those who have been hurt by this movement, both in and out of Christianity, and in and out of the Church in general.

Mine is one of those stories.

However, rather than blame, I overcame.

I got married at the ripe age of 19. I was young. I was naïve. I was marrying a man who had a sex addiction, who was, and would without a doubt continue to be, unfaithful to me at any given opportunity.

I divorced him after four years and untold counts of infidelity. The exact details of the marriage are not important right now. I may save those for another time. That is not this story. My story is about what happened to me after I left this man.

I left my ex-husband on Good Friday in 2010. I was lead singer on the praise team, he was the drummer, my brother played the bass, my brother’s best friend (who also happened to be the associate pastor at the teeny tiny small church mentioned in the previous blog) was a guitarist, my mother was the youth pastor, and the list of connections in that church are, too this day, endless.

My immediate family, along with a small handful of other people at that church, were the only ones who stood by me in the months that followed. I was, in a roundabout way, dismissed from the praise team. Efforts were made by the pastor to coerce me to reconcile with my husband. I left the church almost immediately, initially with the intention of returning. However, due to my treatment any time I have returned to that church, I have not regularly attended that church since then. I was, for all intents and purposes, ostracized.

I was 23 years old, and had considered that church to be my second home from the time I was 13. This was the church that was immediately responsible for my spiritual upbringing.

…my fundamentalist upbringing.

And there lies the root of the problem.

Looking back now, all of those memories seem so bizarre. At that time, I was hurt but sadly not surprised at the reaction of the church. I was in so much pain from what my husband had done to me, and feeling abandoned by the church seemed inevitable.  However, being abandoned by the church was so much more painful, and the betrayal was so much deeper, that to this very day I am still recovering.

But…I don’t blame a single person there anymore.

Rather, this movement. This fundamentalist idea that somehow we have a God-Given right, and maybe even duty, to sit in judgment on people whose circumstances we will never fully understand, these are the things I blame. And these are the mentalities that I used to buy into!

Because you see, I used to sit in judgment on people. I used to preach at friends that I knew were struggling with homosexuality. I used to parrot to them all the catchphrases and scriptures that I had memorized for such an occasion. I am thankful that those amazing people still consider me a friend today. To those people: you know who you are. And I am so very, truly sorry.

And then I was on the receiving end of different catchphrases and scriptures, those reserved for those poor, ignorant, unfaithful souls contemplating the “sin of divorce.”

A shift began in me at that time, one that is still taking place today. My heart was broken, but my eyes were opened by this experience. That is the story that I will tell in the next two weeks, the fruition of my story of why I am no longer a fundamentalist.

Why I am No Longer Fundamental, Part 1

I feel like I should explain Non-Fundamentalism, and how I got here. I've posted some things on my Facebook and talked to some people before who had the wrong idea of what I meant when I talked about my issues with Fundamentalism. It’s a long story, one which will take some time to tell, and so today I will simply tell the first part.

To start off, I feel like I should give a (hopefully) abbreviated version of my spiritual history, what I used to believe, and why I changed my views, practices, and beliefs to become the charming, Formerly Fundamental person that I am today.

I grew up in the Nazarene Church, the daughter of a woman who became a Christian around the time that I was born, and a man who though upright, moral, and Christian, was neither as devout as my mother nor an active part of our church lives. My mother, however, was very active, and had my older brother and I in church from my earliest memories. The three of us were heavily active in every program the Nazarene church had to offer. This included Bible Quizzing, Caravans, children’s church, and eventually youth group, which my mother lead when we were older.

All of this also spilled over into our personal lives. We listened to every Focus on the Family radio show that ever came on, Joyce Meyers, End Times Radio, and Christian Music. I was surrounded by Christian literature, as well. The Left Behind series, Chronicles of Narnia, and when I was older every Christian romance novel that came my way. My favorites were the ones about the Amish. I was also very restricted in what I was allowed to watch or read. The list is endless, and it’s hard for me to even remember all of it.

When I was 12 my family moved to Bible Belt Southeast Missouri and became a part of a small Nazarene Church in an extremely rural area. When I say that everyone knew everyone and was always in everyone else’s business, you cannot begin to imagine how far that statement can extend. When I say that messages I heard preached and taught were the most Evangelical and Fundamental messages I've heard in my life, there’s no way to convey what kind of impact those messages have on someone that young.

Through all of this, I developed a mentality of extreme exclusionism. I knew the Bible backwards and forwards. I knew the fundamental dogma better than I knew my Bible. I knew that homosexuality was evil, one sip of alcohol could lead to addiction and depravity, and that my female body was an instrument of evil, and that I must always keep everything covered up in order to not lead my Christian brothers into sin. I knew that the Earth was only 6000 years old, and that the Six Day Creation was a fact. I knew that sex sins were tricky and that even kissing could lead straight to sex without a person ever realizing how they got there. I made the True Love Waits commitment when I was about 10 or 11 and my favorite piece of jewelry was my purity ring. I knew that the Bible was literal even if you couldn't understand how, and that it was also entirely infallible. I could spout off Nazarene Doctrine without blinking an eye. As a Nazarene, I also believed that not only could you never ever sin after becoming Sanctified, but that this was every Christian’s highest calling in life.

I also knew that this was the only way to be a “Real” Christian.

If I met anyone, Christian or not, whose beliefs could not be checked off of the same checklist that I used, I immediately tried to convince them of how wrong they were, and turn them to my personal way of thinking.

This was the state of my life right up until I was around 23 years old, when the man who had been my husband for four years cheated on me, and I left him. Things didn't go so well for me after that, and from that point on, everything in my life would change little by little. 

Next week I will explain more on what beliefs changed, how much, and why. I have not thrown away all the beliefs I was raised with, though I also have not retained all  them. Some of them I now simply live out differently. I'm not sure how many parts this series will have, but I do hope that in some small way I will be able to reach some people on both sides of the fence and maybe help bring those who are Fundamental and those to are not into a better understanding of one another.