Weapons of Mass Deception?

This week I'm sharing a series of stories and reflections from my time spent studying abroad in Central America. These are excerpts from my memoir in progress; stories that have shaped me, shattered my pretenses and preset beliefs, and sculpted the way I live and love and encounter God today. I hope in some small way, you can relate and be challenged to reflect more deeply on the experiences that have influenced you and your faith. Check out Monday's, Tuesday's, and Wednesday's posts to catch up. 

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Weapons of Mass Deception? 

I scribbled down my Biblical reflection, bracing my journal and pen as we puttered along a narrow highway in Cuba halfway through my semester abroad. Throughout the semester, we were required to complete Biblical Reflection assignments, where we were given a verse or chapter of the Bible to reflect on in light of what we were learning about Jesus’ life and God’s overall concern for the poor. By then, the Bible made me especially uncomfortable—I saw it as a collection of words used to convince, cajole, compel, and condemn. 

I’d already scrawled out half the reflection against the rocking bus seat, and I hadn’t even opened my Bible yet.  I knew what I was going to find and I knew what my program wanted to hear: Jesus condemns the empire-supporting Pharisees and embraces the poor.   We got bonus points if we made the connection between the hypocritical Pharisees and our own friends and families who claimed to follow Jesus but refused to sell everything they owned and live with the poor. 

Up until then, I had never doubted the validity or divine inspiration of the Bible, but after examining Biblical passages through so many different lenses, I’d come to the conclusion that anyone could make the Bible say whatever she wanted.  I found that feminists ignore Paul’s call for womanly submission in Timothy.  Poor people cling to Jesus’ revolutionary declaration bringing good news to the poor.   Rich Christians spiritualize hunger and thirst, focusing instead on the souls that need to be won while overlooking the physical and economic needs that need to be met. 

I could make the Bible say whatever I wanted, too, or whatever my program wanted.  The Bible was no longer Absolute Truth, but a tool.  A political tool.  An emotional tool.  A justification tool. 

At best, a tool; at worst, a weapon. 

I share this story to illuminate where I am today, six years later.

Today I still find myself resisting the Bible and anyone who claims their actions are justified because “the Bible says so.” I still find myself asking questions. Analyzing and dissecting my beliefs. I still bristle at “God has blessed America” language and I still thoughtfully reflect on my own role in perpetuating political and economic systems that favor the few, the wealthy, and the powerful.

Instead of a weapon, what if the Bible was used as a starting point? Rachel Held Evans says the Bible should be a conversation starter, not a conversation ender. I like that.

In a devotional I read this morning adapted from Richard Rohr’s, A Teaching on Wondrous Encounters, I discovered an even more satisfactory way to frame the Bible:

“How can we look at the Biblical text in a manner that will convert us or change us? I am going to define the Bible in a new way for some of you. The Bible is an honest conversation with humanity about where power really is. All spiritual texts, including the Bible, are books whose primary focus lies outside of themselves, in the Holy Mystery. The Bible is to illuminate your human experience through struggling with it. It is not a substitute for human experience. It is an invitation into the struggle itself—you are supposed to be bothered by some of the texts. Human beings come to consciousness by struggle, and most especially struggle with God and sacred texts. We largely remain unconscious if we avoid all conflicts, dilemmas, paradoxes, inconsistencies, or contradictions.”

“The Bible is an honest conversation with humanity about where power really is.”

I really like that.

I don’t want to be unconscious. I don’t want to parrot rules and right phrases. I don’t want to substitute words for my own experience. As I said yesterday, I want to be more than words. I want my faith to be more than a hollow shell or a list of moral behaviors.

I want to struggle. I want to live. I want to change. I want to experience the living God. And I’m beginning to see that, maybe, just maybe, the Bible might be a good invitation into the struggle itself.

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Have you ever felt like the Bible has been used against you as a weapon? What did you do? What do you think of the idea of the Bible as an “honest conversation with humanity about where power really is?” How do you keep from only focusing on the verses that appeal to you while throwing out all the rest?

The Rupture Behind the Reason

“The rupture of our religious surfaces can be extremely valuable.” Frederick Ruf, Bewildered Travel: The Sacred Quest for Confusion.

In my spiritual writing class we’ve been discussing the religious value of rupture, fracture, misfortune, suffering. Of forced disorientation to stimulate growth, learning, and an awareness of a new more real reality.

Of breaking through the surface to something deeper, something dangerous, something delicious.

In Mary Oliver’s poem, “Acid” wonderfully recounted in Bewildered Travel, she comes across an image “that she simply cannot assimilate—something, in fact, that burns instead of dazzles.”

She describes this something, this rupture, as a “bead of acid” that she carries with her for all of her days, forever changed.

Below is my bead of acid, my religious rupture, my reason for being who I am today.

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February 2006, Managua, Nicaragua

Plastic smoldered and filled the air in a hazy smokescreen that seared my eyes and bit at my nostrils in the city dump of Managua, Nicaragua. Skeletal cows munched on the aluminum cans that children searched all day for in the city dump. This was their home, their school, their playground. Our yellow school bus heaved and rattled into the dump. We pressed our faces against the hot window panes, peering out into the ocean of refuse. When we realized where we were, our faces dropped, eyes averted and laughing silenced. One man lifted his dark, gnarled hand to brush the sweat from his furrowed brow. Our bus grinded to a halt and the door creaked open. Trevor, one of our program facilitators poked his head out and yelled something to the man in broken Spanish.

Did he mind speaking to us for a minute? Did he mind sharing his story with us?

The man carefully stepped over the debris, clambering his way to the open bus door. He moved through the sea of trash like an experienced sailor. Like he’d long since lost his land legs. We wore fresh skirts and smoothed slacks. The old man glanced down at his modest t-shirt, sweat stained and torn. We wanted to know what his life was like. How was he surviving? What did he think about God? Parched and at a loss for words, the man swallowed a few times, his tongue wetting his chapped lips, gums, and the few teeth he had. Then he told us the only thing he knew.

“Dios ha bendecido a mi familia.” “God has blessed my family,” he said. “God is good. Before this garbage dump we were on the streets, and that was worse. God has provided, and God is good.”

Trevor thanked him for sharing and handed him a cold, dripping water bottle. He greedily grabbed the fresh water, and the condensation formed tiny rivulets in the deep, cracked creases of his craggy palms—living water in a thirsty, barren land, fresh water in a sulfuric sea. God is good.

Blessed? The last time I checked, my definition of blessed did not include the privilege of sorting through trash and watching your children inhale toxic fumes on a daily basis. I thought being blessed meant you were an American, lived a life of privilege, and received a college education.

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This is why I have spent the last four years working for a non-profit organization (seriously check them out) that empowers rural families to restore their land, raise their incomes, and learn to thrive BEFORE they end up desperate, at a city dump. Why I still struggle with the word blessed. Why I’m still working through what it means to see God at work in this unjust world.

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The next day we visited a Catholic church that was beautifully decorated with colorful murals portraying the Stations of the Cross. The images were vibrant and tantalizing, unlike any religious paintings I’d ever seen. But the biggest difference was Jesus. Their Jesus wasn’t white. Their Jesus didn’t look just like me—he looked just like they did, with dark skin, calloused hands, and the numbness of poverty in his eyes. I got the feeling that their Jesus wasn’t too concerned with whether or not I had a “ring by spring” or six pack abs. I got the feeling that their Jesus didn’t try to spiritualize their poverty or look the other way. Their Jesus was oppressed, an outcast forgotten and scorned by society, just like them.

I could no longer live like God was the God of the rich, the white, the educated, and the fashionable. I could no longer live like God sympathized with my struggle to feel successful, beautiful, and well-liked more than he sympathized with the struggles, hopes, and dreams of the poor.

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“The rupture of our religious surfaces can be extremely valuable.”

Yes, but it hurts like hell.

T.S. Tuesday: The Lost and Found Pile of My Faith

“There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again.” T.S. Eliot, East Coker*

God answers prayer. Sometimes I forget this. Sometimes I lose this. Sometimes I find this. Then I lose it again. Daily I fight to recover what has been lost.

Today, this post, is a fight to recover and reaffirm my childlike faith.

As Ann Voskamp said in the chapter in One Thousand Gifts that I just read, “I confess, even after all that I’ve seen and tasted and touched, I do scoff.”

After I, Aly Lewis, have seen and tasted and touched and felt that the Lord is good, I still scoff. I scoff at my cheesiness in writing “childlike faith,” I scoff at this blog and my prayers seeking answers, I scoff at my lists of gifts and my love letters to myself.

But I have seen and tasted and touched and felt that the Lord is good. And I will not let my scoffing get the best of me. Instead I will keep writing, keep praying, and keep saying, 'Thank you, Love, for being good.'

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*I promise I will one day venture out of the Four Quartets, but as long as I keep rediscovering nuggets of wisdom within these four pieces, Four Quartets it is. Please show your discontent by sending me wonderfully aged, used copies of additional T.S. Eliot compilations. Otherwise, I will take your silence as consent.