Tag: religion

religion

Hell Week – Back to the Beginning

Allow me to take you back to the halcyon days of the early aughts. Wikipedia was new. Destiny’s Child was still together. The first Lord of the Rings movie was coming out. And I was re-reading the Old Testament. I think a lot of people have had the experience of re-reading something like the bible and realizing that you didn’t absorb any of it the first time through. This was exactly what was happening to me. As I read the bible again, I was a bit overwhelmed by a lot of the mucky stuff in it. The guy who sacrificed his daughter to fulfill a pledge. Lot offering his virgin daughters to a mob. Samson killing everyone and cutting off their foreskins. The cannibalism. The commands to kill men, women, children, babes-in-arms.

I think it was after reading the story of Jael who put a spike through the head of a man in her tent that I put the book down and asked God that timeless question: “WTF?” And I actually got an answer: “I work it all out.” I remember praying about it and when I was told that God works it all out, it carried with it a sense of totality. Everything gets worked out. Everything. And I was still thinking, “WTFudge?” I felt like a shark with a beach ball – I just couldn’t grab hold of the idea. It was too much.

Part of the problem was that at the time I was a pretty standard Evangelical. Which means that I was inordinately concerned with who is saved and who is going to hell. Continue reading “Hell Week – Back to the Beginning”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter12 Comments
blog stuff, Bloggy Linky Goodness, culture, current events, religion

Bloggy Linky Goodness

Well, it’s been a slow week around here as you might have noticed. Next week will be different, but you’ll have to head down to the bottom of this week’s Bloggy Linky Goodness to find out more about that. In other news, I shaved my legs and pits for the first time in months. Most exciting thing to happen around here in a while, I tell ya!

But I do have some good writing/reading for this week’s Bloggy Linky Goodness to share with y’all:

Radical Practice Needs Deep Roots in Doctrine I love synchronicity – great minds think alike and all that. This beautiful post by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove at The Everyday Awakening explaining the gospel, suffering, atonement theology and more reads like if you took my own posts on suffering, the church and the sacrificial death of Jesus and put them into one post with much more skill and clarity than I have. Really great stuff. Continue reading “Bloggy Linky Goodness”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
Bloggy Linky Goodness

Bloggy Linky Goodness

OK, OK, you got me – I skipped Bloggy Linky Goodness last week. I’m sure there was a perfectly good reason. Which I’d tell you if it was actually important. Or if I had enough brain power left to try to remember what it was. But it’s back! Hooray!

Before I get started, allow me to share one of the weird things I’ve been thinking about. First, the number 40. Remember how it rained for 40 days and 40 nights for Noah? And how the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years. And Jesus retreated to the desert for 40 days before starting his ministry. And it takes 40 days to gestate a human baby. Coincidence? I think not.

Now on to Bloggy Linky Goodness: Continue reading “Bloggy Linky Goodness”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter2 Comments
prayer, religion

Holy Spirit Raining Down and Welling Up

Have I ever told you about the time that I stopped listening to Christian music, threw away my Christian t-shirts (“Color Outside the Lines –  Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind – Romans 12:2” was my fave) and took down anything from my living space with a bible verse on it? Believe it or not, I did it so I encounter God again. For years after my first encounter with God, I would have experiences in prayer or worship or even just through some unexpected event that I experienced as the Holy Spirit raining down on me. Like heaven was washing over me. It’s not an uncommon experience – in fact there’s a well known worship song called just that: Holy Spirit Rain Down. It’s a wonderful experience but one day it started going away. First God’s voice – that still, small voice that will sometimes come to us – just went silent. I would still have that experience of the Spirit through worship and sometimes through prayer, but in time that became more and more muted. Finally, it just seemed to be gone. I remember at one point telling my husband that I felt like I was wandering through a dark forest and God was there – somewhere above me – watching. He knew the way out but I was lost and he wasn’t helping me find my way. This was the first dark night. As John of the Christ explains it is the dark night of the senses. But I didn’t know much of anything about that then.

As the voice and presence of God became fainter and farther from me, I think that without even realizing it, I started adding things into my world that would remind me of God. Maybe make me feel some sort of connection or even just warm-fuzzies. I never went overboard, but as time passed I listened to more and more Christian music, read more Christian books, bought a few of the aforementioned T-Shirts, put bible verses on the bathroom mirror and on my screen saver. I became more stereotypically and outwardly Christian as if by surrounding myself by reminders would trigger that connection with God again. It may have even looked from the outside like I was growing in my faith – and I was, in a way. But from my vantage point, I was just grasping at straws and trying to will God to show himself to me again. Continue reading “Holy Spirit Raining Down and Welling Up”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter3 Comments
culture, current events

“High Priests of Caesar’s Court”

I came across a post by Greg Boyd today which I think makes a great follow-up to my post earlier this week – Our Faithless Culture Wars – that I hope you will go read. The choice excerpts for me:

We sadly assume our highest calling is to be the high priests of Caesar’s court, telling it how God allegedly wants it to spend its money.

Of course, being the high priests of Caesar’s court means you’ve got to get into the messy complexity of this court. How do we know that fighting for money to go to recreational facilities is the right thing to do? Maybe fighting for more funding for schools, or housing for the poor, or for more and better public transportation is a better fight. And what about the unlivable low minimum wage, or the lack of adequate shelters for the homeless, or the increasing number of people who lack basic health coverage, or the inadequate presence of police in dangerous neighborhoods? As the high priests of Caesar’s court, we have to make these tough decisions — and there’s only so much money to go around.

Not only this, but every action creates a reaction, and as Caesar’s wiser and more caring counselors we have to be experts about all of these things. For example, it certainly feels wise and righteous to insist on higher wages for workers. But are we sure this won’t force many small business owners to fire workers, thereby harming the poor more than helping them? And it certainly feels wise and righteous to insist U.S. troops pull out of Iraq right now. But are we sure this won’t result in a greater bloodbath than there already is over there? And it certainly feels wise and righteous to insist on preserving a pool for inner city kids, but what if the money for this has to be taken from classrooms, requiring that some teachers be let go, resulting in a poorer education for these kids? Is a pool more important than education?

It’s all very complex and ambiguous, but once we position ourselves as Caesar’s high priests, we have no choice but to wade through it all. Continue reading ““High Priests of Caesar’s Court””

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter5 Comments
culture, current events, life, religion

It’s the Prime Directive

Yesterday, I saw a blog post by an atheist asking, “If I had the power to save everyone at the theater that was just shot up because I was all-powerful and all-knowing, and I didn’t do it, wouldn’t I be evil?” The old theodicy question – how do we explain a world of evil if God is all loving? It’s a legitimate question. And one that we have a hard time answering well. So, I was thinking about that atheists’ question last night while laying in bed. And then because I was drifting off to sleep and thoughts become more slippery and less reality tethered as you drift off, my mind wandered to ants. You see, my daughter Sophia had spent some time last night watching an ant colony in the rocks in front of the house. She tried to convince me to let her bring out some sugar for them – probably so she could watch ants carrying sugar crystals. I told her the ants didn’t need any help from us – they do just fine on our own. Partway to sleep, I thought about ants preparing to go off to war against another ant colony while Sophia was watching. What if she could step in to stop it? Would she? Should she? And my mind slipped back to that question – “If I had the power to save everyone at the theater because I was all-powerful and all-knowing, and I didn’t do it, wouldn’t I be evil?” Would Sophia be evil if she didn’t step in to stop an ant war? And just then the words “it’s the prime directive” popped into my head. Which woke me right up.

“Honey, what exactly is the prime directive again?” I asked my husband whose dream is to have us wear our federation uniforms on a replica of the deck of the USS Enterprise cum entertainment room.

“You can’t interfere with the internal affairs of any civilization in any way, for any reason.”

“And if they are getting ready to destroy themselves or do something really awful?”

“They have a right to their own stupidity,” he answered, “grmpzzzzzzz . . . ” (I think he’s kind of used to me asking strange, random questions when he’s half asleep by now.)

I lay back down thinking that I should go to that post and leave the comment, “it’s the prime directive, dear.”

Now, to be clear, I’m no deist. I don’t think that God created us and is just sitting back watching from a nice, heavenly vantage point. The bible and the existence of Jesus and many of our own lives all point to the reality that God is intensely interested in and invested in us. Like Captain Kirk, God has violated the prime directive many times. However, I have been thinking for a while that our understanding of God’s relationship with us is almost certainly skewed and needs adjusting. Continue reading “It’s the Prime Directive”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter33 Comments
religion

The Feel Good Church vs The Church of Blessed Suffering

Do you realize that we are supposed to feel good about ourselves? God declared creation good and upped it to “very good” once man and woman were in place. After all that got messed up at the fall, he then sent his Son to live, die and rise again so that we could be redeemed – be very good – again. Our desire to feel good about ourselves comes from a deep, God-created place and should not be mocked or belittled.

The problem is that it’s not easy to get to a place of feeling good about ourselves. There are all sorts of counterfeits available out in the world. There always are. But like all counterfeits, they wear out, break, chafe, leave a nasty rash behind. For example, it’s pretty well known that many criminals have much higher self-esteem than the rest of us. And we all know someone who loves themselves to pieces even though their own mother doesn’t want to be around them. It’s just not as simple as telling yourself how wonderful you are over and over until you believe it. Any decent person doesn’t just want to think that they are wonderful – they want to BE wonderful. What the world does get right and the church too often gets wrong is that it’s hard to get to that place while thinking of yourself as a worthless piece of filth.

Continue reading “The Feel Good Church vs The Church of Blessed Suffering”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter4 Comments
culture, current events, politics, religion

Our Faithless Culture Wars

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”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter15 Comments
prayer, religion

Reaching Spiritual Home

Sometimes I hit a blog post where I know what I want to say and why, but it turns out to be much harder than I anticipated to actually write. Sometimes this means I need to let it go. Other times the only thing to do is to just start writing and see what happens. This post is an example of the latter.

I wrote the other day that I had arrived at my spiritual home. My long journey is done. A new chapter has begun. And by the next day I was wondering what on earth I was thinking coming right out and saying something like that. Normally I take days and even weeks to think things through, but I just spouted that one out without even allowing a decent waiting period to see if I would feel the same way in the morning. So, did I feel the same way in the morning? Um, hmmmm . . . can I get back to you on that?

Here’s what I can tell you: the spirit of judgment that I have lived under as long as I can remember is finally gone. Just gone and for the first time I feel safe. But more about that later. First I suppose I should try to explain what happened. Continue reading “Reaching Spiritual Home”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter1 Comment
life, prayer, religion

Dispatches From the Desert

I woke up from a nap the other day feeling more normal than I have in years. I was afraid to get up. But children call and if I don’t make dinner, people will starve. And they’ll wait until bedtime to tell me that they were too stupid to feed themselves. So i got up. What was missing, I realized later was the sense of hope and dread that has been my constant companion for quite some time. See, everyday, sometimes all day if I’m not careful, I’m waiting for something good to happen. Like a game changing something good to happen. A turning the corner something. Life has been so miserable for so long that all I or anyone I know can think is, “something’s gotta give soon.” But nothing ever does. I try things that fail. My husband waits for months on end for a promised raise. My kids swear they’re doing school work that never gets done. A spiritual deluge to bring peace back to my poor, starving heart would do the trick. I’m really not that hard to please. Day after day, I wait for something good that never comes. It’s an awful way to live life. The only thing worse, I suppose, would be giving up hope altogether. Continue reading “Dispatches From the Desert”

Unknown's avatarRebecca Trotter7 Comments