Statement of (The Upside Down World’s) Fundamentalist Faith: There is great disagreement within the church regarding whether the bible should be taken literally and if so, which parts must be taken literally. Unfortunately, this ongoing disagreement has often kept us from paying enough to those verses which we can all agree ought to be taken literally. So, although there is freedom in Christ which allows … Continue reading Let’s All Be Fundamentalists!
A while ago, I finally realized that I needed to take Jesus’ teachings much more literally. He said, “don’t judge” and I said, “I’m not judging, but clearly some things are wrong. It’s not judging to say that.” He said, “love, pray for and serve your enemies” and I heard, “love the sinner, hate the sin.” He said, “do not resist the evil man” and I signed petitions against groups and politicians in order to protect Jesus’ values. Jesus said, “so do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?'” and I wonder if we should make plans to attend the financial planning series the church is holding on Thursday nights. Jesus said, “the first shall be last and the last shall be first” and I work really hard to be at least in the top quintile in everything I do. See the problem here?
So, haltingly and stumblingly and often failingly, I have tried to unlearn the ways we do things here in the world and adopt the Kingdom way of doing things. What I have learned in the process is that what we see as “standing up for Jesus” or “hate the sin, love the sinner” is really a form of faithlessness. We don’t trust God enough to be able to work things out according to the ways that Jesus told us to do them. We fight and opine and advocate because we are convinced that without our help, God won’t get his way. We think that all that talk about not judging and not resisting and not worrying are good – so far as they go. But there are important issues at play here. If we don’t stand up and fight, we could lose! We could be eating cat food in retirement. “God doesn’t get what it’s like down here” is what I’ve sometimes told myself. Only that’s ridiculous – God made “down here.” He came down here and suffered the worst we could throw at him. And God wins. Always, everywhere. Period. Amen. The reality is that every time I judge or fight or worry or try to keep my position, I’m throwing my lot in with the losing side. Really. Think about that and then think about our culture wars and you can start to see why “the church” has failed so miserably in fighting them. And even more alarmingly, how breathtakingly faithless we are. Continue reading “Our Faithless Culture Wars”
Several years ago, I had an odd experience while in prayer. I don’t remember what I was praying about, and I’m afraid my explanation won’t do it justice, but the essence of it was God showing me what he loves about me. This wasn’t a generic “love of God washed over me” experience. Rather it was quite specific; God was showing me the particulars of how I am “fearfully and wonderfully made”. These were things about me that are precious to him and that he has purposed into me. Not only would I not be me without those things, but God would not be able to use me according to his purposes if I did not possess them. But here’s the rub: all of those things God showed me have caused me a great deal of difficulty and pain. I had often wished I could change or even be rid those things altogether. Or at least have them be less-so. And as he showed me these things, it was the gap between God’s love for how he has made me and how I felt about it that really struck me.
At the time that this happened, I had a spiritual advisor who I met with monthly. When I shared this experience with her she murmured, “the touch which reveals desolation.” Yes. That it was. (I forgot to ask her where the phrase was from and have never been able to find its source. If anyone knows, please do share!) You would think that having God show me these things as what he most loves and finds precious about me would have changed how I felt as well, but it’s never quite that simple. (My infuriating complexity would be one of those things God pointed to, of course. “You have hidden these things from the wise and learned” indeed.) Instead, what that touch did was say, “this is my view of you. I want you to learn to view yourself the same way as well.” Continue reading “Loving Yourself, Loving Your Neighbor”
The room looks and smells not too different from the library in the middle school I attended while growing up. Walls lined with books. A floor covered with short, blue looped carpet. Encouraging posters dominated by animals reading books are pasted to any wall without shelves. Florescent lights buzz overhead. The room smells like books do when the humidity from hot Chicago summers seeps into their pages and yellows them. Missing are any of the trappings one finds in school libraries these days. No computers or technology of any sort. A typical, old school library; except this one isn’t in any school building. It’s on the lower level of a juvenile prison. Continue reading “When a Clown Loves You”
Let me share a few things about myself which may not be immediately clear just from reading my blog: I became a mother at age 21. Last year I took my first commercial flight since I was 3. I have never been outside of the USA. I have done almost no traveling outside of the Midwest. I was planning to be a high school English … Continue reading Just a housewife
One of the frustrations of writing my poor, little blog is that sometimes I write something that I think could be really important to people and because of my tiny reach into the blogosphere, it passes by mostly unnoticed. A couple of weeks ago I wrote an essay on what I called New Fundamentalism which was one of those posts. See, over the years I … Continue reading Check this out!
One of the modern criticisms of Christianity is that God seems different in the Old Testament than in the New. In the Old Testament, God is wrathful, commits genocide, is angry, etc, etc. Then in the New Testament he shows up and says, “love!” I have long held that it was the people who changed, not God. Maybe people were more civilized by the time … Continue reading An Argument In Support of an Angry God
I have 2 copies of a New-York Times Bestselling book on “love languages”. Which is odd because I really don’t like the book. Since it’s a major bestseller, I guess that makes me odd. The reason I don’t like the book: it spends all its pages convincing you and teaching you to learn the love language your partner speaks. Yet the book says nothing that … Continue reading Lookin’ for Love
I, Rebecca Trotter, hereby declare that the time has come for a new form of Christian fundamentalism. It is my belief that this new fundamentalism is needed in order to preserve what is most sacred and true to Christianity against assaults from without and within the Christian church. Although there is freedom in Christ which allows for a variety of ideas and understandings to be … Continue reading A New Fundamentalism
God is love. So when we love, we are actually bringing God’s spirit into the physical world through ourselves. We become the nexus where the physical and the divine meet and communicate. That means each of us has the potential to be a portal between worlds. So never think that any loving action, thought or intention is unimportant. No matter how small, these are the things which … Continue reading A Cool Thought
The Upside Down World 