Sarahbeth Caplin's Blog, page 38

“Biblical Christianity” has a semantics problem

A friend shared the following article on Facebook: The Scandal of Biblical Illiteracy: It’s Our Problem. I do agree with its main premise that Christians perhaps aren’t doing so well in their efforts to educate their own (I did laugh at the anecdote that apparently some people really think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife). What the writer, Albert Mohler, doesn’t mention is the diverse explanation of the term “biblical Christianity.” This term is taken as a given in many churches, and it’s assumed to be understood and agreed upon by all.

There are plenty of other points I could comment on throughout his piece, but the nondescript use of “biblical Christianity” immediately lost me. If it said “evangelical Christianity” or “Anglican Christianity,” that would be a different story. But history shows there is not and has never been a singular Christianity.

Since evangelicalism is the Christianity of choice in American culture, I’ll assume he’s referring to that one for the purpose of this post.

Yes, it’s problematic that self-proclaimed Christians can’t name all four gospels or half of the Ten Commandments (actually, I should probably brush up on those). However, I think I’m part of the target audience that Mohler desperately wants to reach. I’m one of those millennial Christians surrounded by liberal, progressive ideas like feminism and marriage equality. I’m part of that generation being encouraged to view the Bible as an archaic book with archaic ideas that have no relevance to 21st-century life.

Clearly I can’t speak for all millennials, but I’m confident that many will agree when I say that the biggest thing that confuses us, a critical issue that threatens to lose us, is this abstract idea of “biblical Christianity” being the same across the board. Mohler comes across as extremely naïve to assume that preachers and teachers of Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Methodist, Baptist, and Lutheran traditions will all agree on the same universal principles. And that’s just a handful of denominations – there have been 40,000 of them on record since the first century.

Two thousand years have passed since then, and the burden of proof is on people like Mohler to explain why his specific tradition is the one we should follow. Evangelicalism is still in diapers compared to older sects like Catholicism. Was everybody wrong for the first 1500 years?

I’m not sure if the Mohlers of the world view biblical “sameness” as agreeing on general issues like the sin of homosexuality, premarital sex, and evolution. That’s the problem – he doesn’t explain it! Americans are so biblically ignorant, yet he assumes we understand what “biblical Christianity” is? Or maybe he’s referring to more specific bedrocks like an actual virgin birth and a physical resurrection. But then there’s adult versus infant baptism, the importance of faith versus works for salvation, worship styles, and suddenly people flip out enough to leave their churches and form new ones. This cannot be overlooked.

No wonder millennials are so confused; the faith we are told is the true one has no singular definition. Never in its history of existence has this faith been monolithic. You would think that a perfect God would do something to get everyone back on the same page.

To Mohlers of the world, perhaps the most effective solution to “biblical illiteracy” is being honest about the fact that biblical diversity exists. Own up to the possibility that you may be right about many things, but could still be wrong about plenty. Stop dodging our questions and patting us on the head with platitudes encouraging us to “just pray about it” or “The Bible clearly says…” because clearly, it doesn’t! Why should we be inclined to believe your interpretation over the Catholic church down the street? You have given us no convincing case.

Instead, maybe share with us young, unenlightened people how you came to believe as you do, and assure us that God is more concerned about an honest search for truth than blind acceptance of dogma. It seems you are more concerned about enforcing the latter. You want Americans to recite the Ten Commandments on cue, but honest discussion and the freedom to express doubt is somehow less important. If that’s the case, do not be surprised when more of us grow frustrated enough to leave it all behind.

Filed under: Religion Tagged: Christian culture, Christianity, Controversy, evangelicals

Judaism vs Christianity on biblical inerrancy

I held as many as four part-time jobs at once to make ends meet the year I dropped out of seminary. One of those jobs was a teacher’s aid at Sunday school, and by “aid,” really all I did was pass out paper and crayons, snacks, and pulled grabby kids off each other. The actual teaching part was not my responsibility.

For kids five and under, there’s not a ton of theology to impart beyond reading from a colorful kid’s Bible. After snack time, the kids assembled themselves on the floor while the teacher sat in a chair and held up the book so everyone could admire the pictures. Starting at Genesis and working from there, the teacher prefaced every lesson with, “Now pay attention, boys and girls, because these stories are from the Bible, and every one of them actually happened.”

Perhaps my English degree is to blame for feeling uncomfortable by that assertion. Even in high school I learned the difference between true stories and stories that communicate truths. Though I’m far from a biblical scholar, I think most of the Bible stories fall into the latter category. It’s not a conflict for me to take the truths about God and about humanity from a literary piece while accepting that the story itself may not have happened exactly as it’s written. The exception would be the stories about Jesus, whom even secular historians believe was a real person. If he was truly God in the flesh, then it’s not hard to believe at all that he calmed a storm and rose from the dead.

For some of my atheist friends, the stones of future deconversion were laid when they were taught at a young age that every Bible story was literally true. More often than not, the first stone overturned was the story of creation when presented with evolution facts in science classes. And in many sects, if one part of the Bible is proven untrue, then the whole thing falls apart.

I don’t share that ideology. There are a myriad of genres from Genesis to Revelation, all functioning as puzzle pieces of a larger story.

In my Jewish Study Bible, which I still refer to often in my personal study, there are footnotes that say many rabbinic scholars doubt that this battle took place, that archeological evidence doesn’t support this exodus. But these admissions have not shattered Judaism. If anything, they help it thrive because there is never a shortage of debate and discussion to have about the ancient history of its ancestors.

I would so much rather be a people of the Book than a people of the Facts. Furthermore, it’s worth noting that Judaism, historically speaking, has not needed every word of the texts to be literally true in order to learn from them.

Filed under: Religion Tagged: Christian culture, Christianity, Controversy, creationism, evangelicals, Judaism

Healed, but still living with pain?

I don’t remember how or when my seminary writing group turned into therapy, but it just so happened that four of the six of us had experienced abuse and domestic violence in some form or another. It had happened to us, or to someone we knew and loved. Twice a month we would meet in a conference room to share our work, bare our souls, and shed many tears.

This was about the same time I started seeing a new therapist, since I left my first one in Ohio when I moved to Colorado. Starting over with someone new is always a pain in the ass, among other places, since it involves sharing your entire sob story from start to finish to get them up to speed. But there’s only so much you can fit in an hour-long session, and details I either repressed or forgot about starting bubbling back to the surface. The raw emotions leaked onto my pages, and I wrote a piece on the idea of closure being a myth to share with the group.

It was well received by all of the women except one. Roughly twice my age and never shy of saying exactly what was on her mind, Jean commented, “Why are all of you wallowing in despair instead of choosing hope? What are you saying about Jesus if you don’t think closure is possible?”

I think she confused “closure” and “healing” as being interchangeable. Perhaps we were using the words that way. We looked at each other, unsure of whether to accuse her of missing the point, or maybe that was the point. But I sat with Jean’s response for a long time after the group disbanded, and forced myself to consider the possibility that Jesus, for me, was a nice idea to help me out of troubled times, but ultimately wasn’t practical for long-term damage control. How exactly are you supposed to “place your burdens at the foot of the cross” before someone you have never seen with your own eyes?

It doesn’t take a psychologist to explain that tragedy changes people. Anyone who has suffered a loss knows this. I believe closure is a myth in that you never quite return to your previous normal, but you create a new one. You grow around the loss as skin grafts grow over burnt places and eventually become part of you. That’s normal, expected, and even healthy. What isn’t healthy is burning yourself over and over, forcing the old normal into a serrated slot where it just doesn’t belong.

Writing is, and has been, my altar. Long before I knew what an altar was, or the spiritual significance of offering sacrifices, I was bringing my pain, my anger, and my tears to the page and leaving it there for unseen forces to reconcile. Pouring out honesty from a pen is a form of sacrifice; it’s taking off a cloak when there’s nothing underneath. Writing down prayers, even angry ones, is all part of making a new self, but it doesn’t make the pain disappear.

Too many Christians think an inability to forget pain is the same as dwelling on it, which is sin, which isn’t true.

In Judaism, we remember so we don’t repeat the same cycles. Remembrance is central to healing even if it still hurts. Perhaps Christians should consider that perspective.

Filed under: Religion Tagged: Christian culture, Christianity, depression, evangelicals, grief, Judaism, self-care, Seminary, Writing

Excerpt from ‘Confessions,’ on sale for 99 cents

It’s been a while since I’ve put my first book baby, Confessions of a Prodigal Daughter, on sale. On January 14th and 15th, you can download it to your Kindle for just 99 pennies.

This is the same book that became a one-week Amazon bestseller in personal growth – #1 out of the top 100 (not bragging, just stating a fact!). I’ve been so blown away by the positive feedback I’ve received from this book, from people of all walks of faith, and those without religious faith.

Here’s an excerpt: and if you like what you read, you can purchase it here.

***

In the early stages of conversion, I thought I was exchanging Judaism – a set of rigid, outdated rules and regulations – for a faith that only required the humility of routine repentance. But I quickly found I had another big bone to pick with Christianity as a Jew: evangelism.

Oh, how evangelists bothered me. I resented not being able to walk to class at times without having some visiting preacher (they came frequently to my liberal party school) thrusting a pamphlet in my face, with bright red letters screaming “TURN OR BURN!” The au­dacity of some evangelists I’ve seen over the years just appalled me. And now that I, too, was Christian, evangelism suddenly became my responsibility. I just knew there was a catch somewhere. With Juda­ism, there were kosher laws. With Christianity, evangelism.

I would have rather given up cheeseburgers.

Weekly Cru meetings didn’t turn me into a sign-carrying preacher with a bullhorn on a sidewalk corner. In the staff’s defense, this is what they had to say about it: if you talked about Jesus to bolster your own superiority complex, you were doing it wrong. Evangelism – or as they called it, “sharing your faith”– is supposed to be an act of love. Christians should talk about Jesus the way most people talk about their significant others. I was supposed to gush about Jesus the same way I raved about The Hunger Games and Jane Austen.

Okay, I guess I could get on board with that.

In my experience, evangelism is done best when it is lived, not just preached. The gospel is supposed to transform one’s life in such a way that others can’t help but notice. At the same time, if I’m seen helping an elderly woman cross the street, or donating large sums of money to charity, no one will immediately assume it’s because I have Jesus in my heart.

But even after the gospel was condensed into bite-sized pieces so I could (kinda sorta) understand it, putting the message into action was another chal­lenge. I can’t lie here – I was terrified of rejection, especially from the people my Cru friends thought needed to hear it most: my parents.

The older girls who took me under their wing told me gently, albeit sternly, that I needed to tell my unbelieving parents about Jesus – sooner rather than later. My dad apparently needed to hear it more, being a rebound cancer patient and all. “You just never know when the Lord might call him home, you know,” they would tell me, as casually as “Can you pass the chips?”

I broke out in a cold sweat at the thought of saying to my Jewish parents, “Hey Mom and Dad, do you mind sitting down so I can share the gospel with you?” Yeah, that would go over real well.

I don’t know why I wasn’t furious with those girls for being so insensitive. I guess I really thought they were only trying to help me.

“Just pray that the Holy Spirit will give you cour­age,” they said. “God will protect you!” they said.

Maybe they meant well, but they had no damn clue about reality. What they ended up doing was nearly scaring all the Jesus out of me, because if I wasn’t brave enough to confess my belief before my parents, how would I survive the Tribulation?

Truth be told, I felt more Jewish surrounded by gentiles than I ever did around other Jews.

My friend Bethany was convinced she had a fool­proof method of breaking “the news” to my unsus­pecting parents. “Just tell them that you’re preg­nant,” she advised. “But before they can fall over in shock, that’s when you say ‘Just kidding! I’m not pregnant, I’m just a Christian.’” Ideally, they’d be so relieved that I wasn’t pregnant, believing in Jesus wouldn’t seem so bad.

I wish it were only an out-of-wedlock pregnancy I had to tell them about. That would have made my life much easier.

I started to have this reoccurring dream, clearly foreshadowing my “coming out” to the world as a Christian. In the dream, I was wearing a cross neck­lace I kept tucking under my shirt every time I passed a Jewish friend or family member. Just like Pinocchio’s nose every time he told a lie, the cross grew bigger every time I became self-conscious of it, to a point where I just couldn’t hide it anymore…and eventually everyone saw me for what I really was.

The only problem with that dream (actually, it’s quite a big problem) is that Jesus famously said anyone who denied him in life would be denied access to heaven. As intriguing a figure as he was to me, those words were haunting. They still haunt me to this day, and it baffles me that a religion with teachings as beautiful as redemption – that is, making broken things new again – and being “fearfully and wonderfully made” in God’s image also teaches a doctrine as frightening as eternal torture. Couldn’t God change the whole “system” if he didn’t want any of his children to go there? Or at least make his presence more obvious to skeptics? Is he not powerful enough to do something about that?

Some days my faith feels beautiful, and other times it feels like nonsensical madness. But even in my relationships with other people, there are qualities I love, and others I can’t begin to understand…and possibly never will. I wonder if God is any different, though it’s fascinating to me how that mystery factor draws some people in, and chases others away. “A God that’s small enough to understand isn’t big enough for my worship,” I’ve heard. But at what point is too much mystery a dealbreaker?

Filed under: Religion, Writing & Publishing Tagged: Author Sarahbeth Caplin, Christian culture, Christianity, Confessions of a Prodigal Daughter, evangelicals, Indie Author Life, Judaism, self-publishing, Writing

When luck smells miraculous (maybe)

After I got that nice refund check from CSU and paid for my new brakes, my clutch gave out as I drove 45 miles an hour on my way to church; ten miles over the speed limit, since I was late (I know, irony). I could feel the pedal getting “squishy” (it’s difficult to describe unless you’re familiar with the workings of a stickshift) and my engine roared as I stepped on the gas but didn’t move any faster. I finally came to a stop just as I pulled into the church parking lot. I didn’t make it far enough to park in a proper spot, and ended up awkwardly blocking the center aisle of the lot, but I was much safer there than I would have been on the road. I don’t want to think how this could have played out if the clutch gave out while driving much faster on the highway.

For all the complaining I do about the claim that “God provided for me,” the timing of the check and vehicle malfunction is coincidental for sure. As cynical as I’ve been, it was difficult not to consider the possibility that God was trying to get my attention. Like he was doing everything short of slapping on a billboard, Here I am! I’m real, I care! What more do you want?

Perhaps I’m being a hypocrite for not believing that. These stories of divine intervention would frustrate me less if I had verifiable proof they were divine, right? The person telling the story couldn’t be accused of arrogance if she was actually telling the truth.

Still, I am left with the question of “Why me?” Not that I take issue with miracles happening in my life, but I’m not someone who really needs one, financially speaking anyway. I’m not rich by American standards, but I am compared to the way the majority of the world lives.

The clutch giving out in the church parking lot is a bit harder to explain away, since that could have been a matter of life and death if it happened somewhere else. But then I think of how many people have perished in car accidents. I can’t ever claim “God saved me” without feeling guilty about those who weren’t.

Why can’t I just be happy for people who direct their gratitude to God? Why can’t I just be happy that they’re happy? Maybe a few years from now, when my wounds are not so raw, I will get there. Maybe the time will come when I’ll stop taking comments expressed in pure joy so personally.

As for my own experiences, the best I can offer is maybe it was God, but maybe it wasn’t. I don’t believe in luck, but I believe in chance.

Once again, my best answer is simply “I don’t know.”

Filed under: Religion Tagged: Christian culture, Christianity, evangelicals, First World Problems, grief, prayer, prosperity gospel

What changed my mind about intercessory prayer

This week I found out my car needs new brakes. New brakes – front and rear – cost about $800. I don’t have $800 (well, I do, but I’d have to take it from the Future House fund, and I really didn’t want to do that).

But then I checked the mail, and found a refund check from Colorado State for $9900 – money left over from the loan I took out expecting to have to pay out of state tuition again, before my petition for residency was approved.

Long story short, I was able to buy new brakes. And another bag of prescription cat food for my cat with food allergies. And pay rent.

If I posted this story on Facebook and concluded with “God is so good!” I’m sure it would have easily gained 50 or more “likes.” But I’m not going to do that.

A friend of mine who writes for Patheos shared this photo recently, and it’s haunted me ever since.

I’ve seen the photo before, but the caption from the Bible with it is especially gutting. I have no idea what to say to people as hungry as that child was, as far as God’s provision for their needs. The thing is, even without that check, I could have paid for the brakes out of my savings, and I wouldn’t have had to sacrifice a few meals to make up for it. At worst, Josh and I wouldn’t be able to have Date Night at a nice restaurant (read: Buffalo Wild Wings or Texas Roadhouse) for a while. Well, more likely, we’d have to extend our lease for another few months and Josh would take more shifts at work until we could afford a down payment for a home and still have money left over to eat and stuff.

The point is, of all people with needs, I could have gone without that check. The timing of it is coincidental, yes – but I’m not “needy” in the truest sense of the word. Honestly, I’d feel guilty claiming God’s blessed me for something that is rather trivial in the grand scheme of things.

It’s for this reason that my beliefs about intercessory prayer are changing. When I see God helping people who already have more than most, I get skeptical. The photo of that starving child does not jive with my idea of a loving God, because I can’t reconcile a loving God who favors the privileged (I also don’t believe that self-protective prayers are biblical, but that’s another post). When I think of the verse quoted in the picture, I imagine – though I could be completely wrong – that it refers to the resources on earth that humans need to survive: edible plants and animals, clean water, tools for building shelter and healing diseases. The problem is humans who don’t want to share those things.

I can’t help but agree with the blogger who wrote this:

The minute you broadcast that good fortune as divine blessing…you are convinced at some deep level of God’s special favor.  In proclaiming this good fortune, you are also calling into question the status of everyone else.  When you celebrate even the most amazing occurrences – successfully overcoming cancer, surviving a tornado, or a sudden and unexpected financial windfall – you are suggesting those who are dying of cancer, killed in the tornado or poor and destitute are less favored by God.  Your prayers were answered, but not theirs.

This is exactly how I felt reading posts on Facebook praising God for healing someone’s cancer after my father died. My faith was already struggling, and while the authors of such posts probably think they are being encouraging, they’re not. At least not to me. They mean well, sure – but ultimately these sentiments are just not helpful for people who didn’t get a “yes” to their prayers.

It’s more comforting for me to accept that we live in a fallen world in which shit happens to the just and unjust alike. Sometimes we understand the reasons – bad genes, poor decisions – but often times we don’t. I find greater hope in redeeming tragedies than seeking to prevent them. If I’m ever killed in a tragic, unexpected accident, I hope my organs can go to a child who needs them, so at least the tragedy will mean something to another family. That’s different than saying I had to die so another child could live, but I think God is in the business of redemption. Making beauty out of broken things.

Filed under: Religion Tagged: cancer, Christian culture, Christianity, Controversy, evangelicals, Facebook, First World Problems, grief, prayer, prosperity gospel

Crafting as a form of self care

Elizabeth Esther wrote a great blog post about the importance of “impractical” creative expression. For her, that involved learning to sew Victorian-style dresses, allowing her to indulge her childhood dream of becoming an actress – something she was forbidden to pursue (if I had that kind of sewing talent, I might invent excuses to wear them, like having friends over for high tea or something).

For me, crafting is also a form of self-care. Reading and journaling are great, but every writer faces the difficulty of putting words to certain images or emotions. That’s where art comes in handy, since pictures, they say, are worth a thousand words.

For this reason, I don’t mind when magazines have a ton of advertisements. They come in handy for making collages.

Working with my hands helps me accomplish what my counselor calls “staying present.” I wonder if this is part of the reason that Orthodox Jews pray with tefillin and Catholics pray with rosaries: having something tangible to look at and hold helps keep the focus on the task.

“Staying present” is exactly as it sounds. It’s the opposite of mentally slinking back into the past, where trauma lives. There are times when writing becomes mentally exhausting and emotionally draining. While collages get hung up on my wall or put in the Future House box in a closet, I’ve come up with another way to craft positivity. A craft small enough to take with me anywhere.

But not all of it is inspirational. Some of it is just fun.

I learned how to make jewelry when I worked at the YMCA of the Rockies for a summer a few years ago, and kept teaching myself after the season ended. My husband bought me a bead book for my last birthday, so I’ve been extremely busy since the fall semester ended – so much that I made enough earrings for every woman in my church’s young adult group (about thirty). My fingernails are frayed and the skin on my fingertips is torn up, but I get joy out of making things for other people (heads up if you’re female and know me in real life: you’ll be getting jewelry from me for every birthday and Christmas for at least the next five years).

Eventually I started running out of space for finished projects, even small ones like earrings and necklaces (yes, believe it or not, a woman CAN have too much jewelry). Since we’re hoping to buy a house at the end of this year, I’ve told Josh I can hold off buying more bead stuff for a while. I said I could try to find a less expensive and space-occupying hobby, but I’ve relayed the whole “being present” message to him many times, and he knows that crafting helps with that. Plus I enjoy doing it. Well, that, and I got an order for $80 worth of merchandise on my Etsy shop just before Christmas, so there’s another incentive.

Sometimes, the things that give us joy don’t have to be practical. At some point, mine may no longer be affordable, but luckily I’m not at that point yet.

Filed under: Other stuff Tagged: Christianity, depression, grief, Judaism, self-care

Theme for 2016: be surprised

I learned a long time ago that “resolutions” for the new year are kind of pointless. “Resolution” sounds like “promise,” and breaking a promise invokes all sorts of judgment – mostly from myself. So I have more of a theme for 2016. We’ll see if that works any better (though I briefly considered making “take less selfies with my cats” a resolution…but let’s not get crazy).

My theme is pretty simple: be willing to be surprised.

I was talking with a friend this week that I look to as sort of a mentor. She already wrote a blog post on the idea of “Christian agnosticism” before I thought to bring it up in conversation. I loosely define that expression, oxymoronic as it sounds, as someone who believes in Jesus but doesn’t understand much of anything else pertaining to the Christian faith. I have an unsettling feeling that this is the uneven ground I’ve landed on, and may be camping out here for a while…or maybe I won’t. I want my faith to still grow. I’m willing to be surprised.

I have this dichotomy in my head of Safe Christians and Unsafe Christians. The “safe” Christians are the ones who listen without judgment, and may disagree with me on many levels, but seek to understand. The “unsafe” Christians are the ones who judge, condemn, and berate anyone who believes differently than they do. I’ve formed ideas of who in my church is “unsafe” and it has occurred to me that those judgments could be completely off base. So I’m willing to be surprised.

For the last several months, I’ve been afraid to open my bible, afraid of having anxiety triggered by what I read in there. But, I’m willing to be surprised by the content once again. Surprised, enlightened, who knows…I’ll aim for “surprised,” for now.

As for prayer, that, too has gone by the wayside. I’ve given up on praying for things beyond my control, knowing God has a plan that’s going to happen regardless, so what is the point? At the very least, I need to get back to writing in my prayer journal, even if it’s mostly rants…and be willing to be surprised.

What about you? Is there anything you hope to be “surprised” by this year?

Filed under: Religion Tagged: Christian culture, Christianity, Writing

Top ten most popular posts in 2015

The way I measure “popular” is by interactive discussion threads, not so much number of ‘likes.’ Liking a post is easy to do, but the true value for me is reading comments of people who were moved by what I wrote, even if they disagree with my conclusions. Without further ado…

 

10.‘Fifty Shades’ and pornified rape victims

9. Wil Wheaton: ‘You can’t pay rent with unique platform and reach’

8. When God talks like an abusive boyfriend

7. What Judaism taught me about gay marriage and persecution complexes

6. #SolidarityWithStoya: What the Church can learn from the porn industry about consent

5. When church triggers anxiety

4. “I’m pro-life, but…”

3. Does Jesus really make people “better”?

2. Checking reason at the door: Ken Ham and the fear of contradictory evidence

1. I’m pro-life and I don’t support defunding Planned Parenthood

Filed under: Feminism, Rape Culture, Religion, Writing & Publishing Tagged: Abortion, Answers in Genesis, Christian culture, Christianity, Controversy, depression, evangelicals, Feminism, Fifty Shades of Grey, gay marriage, grief, Judaism, Ken Ham, LGBT, Pornography, rape culture, self-publishing, Spiritual Abuse, Writing

Confessions of a convicted cherry picker

Those are just the cherry on the sundae, as it were. Since we’re talking about cherry picking, after all. You’re carving out maybe 10% of the book to keep as the basis of your beliefs.

Can you share for us perhaps your best reason you, as an obviously rational person and adult, bought into what seems so clearly to me, anyway, to be no different than countless other religious myths? And is that reason based on hard evidence that you’ve investigated and concluded was worthy of accepting as true?

Those are just two responses to my comment on my friend Neil Carter’s blog post, a chapter-by-chapter review of The Reason for God by Timothy Keller. The specific chapter in his most recent review had to do with Keller’s explanation of why we can trust the Bible’s authority, and the issue of how to deal with passages that go against our progressive cultural values. I wrote:

Years ago I met someone at my church who said he was an atheist who wanted to learn more about Christianity. I asked him if he was considering converting, and he said something to the effect of the Bible being too bogged down by rape culture and violence and harmful teachings for him to ever call himself a Christian. Fair enough. But I would say that while issues of evolution vs creationism, subjugation of women, etc, are all deserving of our attention, dwelling on that does take away from the (mostly) universal message of redemption that the gospel teaches. I would say to anyone considering conversion to focus on that, which is what keeps me in the faith, anyway.

Responses like the ones above are just a few objections I hear a lot. And my pithy retort, You want to know why I believe? Well, just read my book! is less than satisfactory. But I didn’t address the issue of “cherry-picking” much at all in that text, so I’ll address it here.

First of all, I think it’s safe to say that all people of faith cherry-pick. I don’t believe anyone who swears they don’t. We all have individual objections or criticisms of certain biblical mandates, and until Christians unanimously decide which ones were meant for a specific 1st-century culture and which are universal, we act as if they don’t exist…until someone outside the faith brings them up.

Maybe this is hypocritical of me, but I don’t think making a conscious choice to focus on Jesus falls under cherry-picking. I would consider it an act of prioritizing, not unlike Jewish people focusing on the story of Exodus over the purity laws of Leviticus. Why? Because the story of the Israelites’ slavery and exile in Egypt is the core of the faith, upon which all denominations are founded on. That is what I like to think connects all people of the Book, regardless of whether they are Orthodox, Reform, or somewhere in between. In the same vein, what Christians believe about Jesus far outweighs the debate about how humans were created, how the lions were kept away from the gazelles on the ark, or whether homosexuality is really a sin. Those issues matter, but are not what I consider “center stage.”

As to my “buying into myths” as a rational adult, that gets trickier. I’m reminded all the time at church that my testimony is mine and can’t be disproved, but to the skeptic, I know it isn’t satisfactory. My story is not one of studying evidence and finding it so compelling I had no choice but to convert. I have to agree with pastor Andy Stanley, who said in a series of sermons on adult conversions, that most adults convert for emotional reasons over factual ones. I know that statement will lose many people, but it’s the truth.

To answer that question of why I“buy into those myths,” I’d have to go back to childhood where I always believed in some form of a higher being, but felt frustrated that the Jewish version wasn’t very accessible – he seemed far away and difficult to grasp, whereas Jesus was a human my friends could talk to and hang out with. I’d have to go back to high school when I met my friend Tricia, whose faith was truly lived, not just spoken about, and made such an impression on me that I had to ask her how she got it. I’d have to go back the dark days of living in an abusive relationship with someone who convinced me over a period of five years that I was worth nothing.

I’d have to recall the message I heard about God redeeming broken things during a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting a friend convinced me to attend with her. And I’d have to explain how that message saved my life on the few occasions I sincerely contemplated suicide: all my childhood heroes (Joan of Arc, Cassie Bernall, Anne Frank, Queen Elizabeth I, Esther of the Bible, to name a few) overcame adversity to become extraordinary, and I wanted that to happen in my own life. The gospel message haunted me for years, to a point where I could no longer ignore it, and gave me hope when life became too difficult to bear without anti-depressants and alcohol (yes, I know, a deadly combination). I see Christianity as a journey of being refined through the “fire” of life’s tragedies, not as a defense mechanism against them, which is how much of America treats it. I see Christianity as an example of radical love and radical forgiveness, which is ridiculous as it is beautiful, but I think the ridiculousness is kind of the point.

Those are the reasons in one giant nutshell. It may not convince most people who hear it, but that’s not why I tell it. I only share it because it changed my life.

(And despite some spoilers, I do hope you still consider reading the book) :D

Filed under: Religion Tagged: Author Sarahbeth Caplin, Campus Crusade for Christ, Christian culture, Christianity, Confessions of a Prodigal Daughter, Controversy, depression, evangelicals, grief, Judaism