When the World Doesn’t Fit Neatly Inside the Lines of Our Faith

At thirty-three years old, I feel like I’m “unlearning” as much as I’m learning.

It’s no secret that I live and breathe in the gray- I’m repelled by answers that leave no margin for questions, exceptions, or error. Social media overwhelms me with its sea of unyielding opinions that cut off breathing room for grace, curiosity or humility.

But even as I recoil against inflexible structure, I also crave its safety in my core. I just wish that I could live without any tension between the structures I’ve known and the world I experience.

I was wired to believe that the world should fit neatly within the lines of my faith- but the more I understand of the world, the more I’ve had to cut and paste it into different shapes so it still fits in my lines. If I can’t change the shape of the world- I wonder if the lines of my faith are drawn wrong?

So I try listening to people who seem to have expanded their lines.

I’m currently reading “Untamed” where Glennon Doyle shares her journey to being untethered from the religion, cultural rules and “training” of her upbringing. She talks about how she listens to God, which for her is an “inner Knowing”; yet my heart nods to hers, because I feel Him very similarly to how she describes.

Glennon speaks of finally being free- free to embrace who she really is- liberated to create a beautiful life- unfettered from the manmade lines that limited her and told her who to be.

Wide eyed, I see a liberation in her story that seems to mock the restraint I’ve grown up with as a pastor’s daughter.

Maybe my jealousy is justified.

I want that ability to cut myself free from all that is untrue- from the conflicting voices that have lingered in my ears for years- from any man-made rules in the church or version of Christianity that I’ve known that is holding me back, and holding others in the Kingdom back too.

Because yes, sometimes I look at the church and the faith rules I’ve grown up with and I see a cage.

I read Glennon and her no-holds-barred acceptance of everyone, and it makes me ache a bit, like I’m missing out. I believe God is love and wants me to openly embrace others but I get cues that maybe I’m not allowed to. I’m sickened by the “hate the sin, love the sinner” mantra because to me it feels like code for “love unconditionally…under one condition…”

But I don’t see conditions on God’s love for us. Are His lines really as narrow as we’ve been told?

My head aches from watching people who stand on opposite sides of the political and denominational and theological lines tossing out verses from the very same Bible to back up their stance. Some little piece of hope in the church dies inside me every time.

Maybe that church song unintentionally got it right when it said: “I stand ALONE on the Word of God”: why does it seem we each stand alone on a different interpretation of the Word?

So I want it to be easy. I want God to have painted truth in such simple, bold strokes that regardless of our age, race, nationality, gender or upbringing we’d all look at the same verses and instinctively know. I’ve wanted to shake Paul so many times to just get his stinkin’ story straight. I’ve desperately wished I could have Jesus speak to ME on the road to Emmaus…except maybe while I was recording Him live so everyone could be on the same page.

It drives me crazy that people who love the same Jesus can’t agree on little things like which holidays are OK to celebrate, much less which Political candidate to vote for. I don’t think I have all the right answers- I just want there to be a “right” that is so obvious that there’s no one to stare back at me from across the line.

I don’t want there to be tension between what I believe and what someone believes in a different neighborhood or state or hemisphere of the earth. More and more, this is something that troubles me.

I told my husband that I’m apprehensive that I could be wrong about things I believe- and I’m simultaneously nervous to be right. (Enter the mind of the rebel-rule follower. It’s mayhem in here.)

So Glennon offers this loophole, where everyone seems to be right. She insists there is freedom in each of us living true to our inner “Knowing” which helps us imagine and create a more beautiful life and world. She says we keep dying to our last self and rebirthing into the new version as we live.

In many ways, she moves me in a positive direction, reminding me that my whole life I must be willing to molt and shed beliefs and values that don’t really look like God.

But despite the conflict-free-everyone-wins theology that she offers (that I thought I really wanted), deep in my gut I feel sick because this freedom tastes like sugar, spun and stretched into cotton candy- lovely but without substance. That freedom melts away when someone else’s inner knowing leads them to a imagine a beautiful life that is destructive for others. (If we are all flawed, I must leave room for that possibility.)

Floating on the open ocean in a sea of “all-truths-are-right” sounds like freedom, until a storm comes and the waves of crisis or disagreement are swelling, and I suddenly realize I have nowhere solid to put my foot.

I think I still need SOME lines.

One reason I started homeschooling my kids in the middle of August (in New England where everyone else is starting in September) is that my kids NEED lines too- they need structure. They crave it even while they rebel against it.

And that is what I see in my life- maybe in yours too? We’ve tasted enough tainted and false rules to know that not all of them are good for us. And even Jesus would agree. (How many times does he say, “You have heard that it was said…but I tell you… ?)

There are well-intended laws we’ve twisted into cumbersome burdens, and some that we’ve misunderstood altogether. There are parts of church or religious structure that are human tradition disguised as godliness. I’ve misplaced my ability to love fully or live fully because of those rules.

So I want to let them ALL go…but I can’t.

Welcome to cognitive dissonance: the place where the rules and beliefs I’ve known conflict with the reality I’m experiencing. We’ve been taught to avoid those tense places and squeeze all our dilemmas in a neat verse-shaped box. Stuffing those fears only exacerbates the tension.

Sally, a wise friend of mine, once offered me an alternative to avoidance: “When you experience cognitive dissonance, you need to write down a few truths that you can retreat to.” She said I need to know my core, unshakeable beliefs so that when I don’t know the answer and I’m afraid of the unknown, I can fall quietly back to my foundation without having to abandon faith or God or truth….even IN the uncertainty of the gray.

But retreating isn’t avoiding- she said my solid lines of truth give me something to hold onto while I explore the gray areas with God.

So when I don’t know what to do with world suffering, or disagreements in the church, or what God says about women and men leading, or issues of morality or… ______________________ (your major conflict with God)… my core truths form a spacious place for me to rest in that’s big enough to comfortably hold all the unknowns as well.

So I started my fledgling core list.

I’ve found God is my baseline constant and structure. I sometimes rebel against the idea that He holds all the cards and truth and goodness, because I can’t quite figure it all out myself or control Him. But I guess that’s why He’s the foundation for me- whatever I’m standing on sure as hell better have a better handle on truth and hope and love than I do. (Or I don’t trust it at all.)

In the questioning and the wrestling, I’m more and more desperate for Him because He doesn’t require a perfect answer. To know Him is infuriating at times, but He’s the one thing I’m most certain of, because I’ve tested his love all my life and found Him faithful. He’s the closest friend I have.

Still- I’m more eager now to hold what I believe in the fire and let God burn what isn’t of Him. And that hurts, and it is lonely and it requires me to lean harder into the tension instead of running from it. And it also means that some things that look like freedom will actually suffocate me- and I have to trust that God may have answers that I don’t want to hear.

But I know that when I get weary of the divides, and the unknowns and my inability to sort human rules from God’s at times…He is there in person to fall back on. In fact maybe…maybe He longs to keep me in the tension as long as He can, so I stop trusting my ability to follow mere lines and rules, and learn to listen more closely to His heartbeat.

What about you? What are some of your biggest questions for God? Where are you “cognitive dissonance” moments that make you wrestle with what you believe? Do you tend to avoid those questions? Do you believe it’s OK to lay them all out with God? I challenge you to give Him your very biggest dilemmas and doubts and let Him speak.