Lord, Have Mercy

I'm not trying to be self-righteous. Christ have mercy. I'm trying to be real. I've nearly written this post about twenty times over in the past year and not done it because I was afraid of what my spiritual community would think. Because I was afraid of telling my spiritual community that I walk with God by being thoughtful about how I live and what I consume, because the suffering and filth in the world that grieve her grieve me. Well, I'm done. This isn't going to be as eloquent or reasoned as I'd like, but I need to say these things. (Yes, I just called God "her." Lord, have mercy.)

I voted for President Obama. I think free public healthcare cannot come to us swiftly enough. I am a pacifist. I don't shop at Walmart and I buy my food from local sources, or fairly traded food from foreign sources. I buy only used clothing. I use only cloth napkins. I try to eat only organic vegetables and humanely raised meat. I compost. I do my best to be the same person no matter where I am. I'm trying so hard to learn not to force myself into uncomfortable situations. I practice yoga. I resist "christian" subculture. I enjoy an egalitarian marriage. I love my friends ferociously and unconditionally and without condemnation, regardless of how they choose to live their lives. Some of my most beloved friends don't believe what I believe. And I can't say it with enough force: I love them. So much it hurts.

And I consider each of these things, and many more, to be sacred acts, worshipful acts, deliberate pursuits of the holy order. I live the way I live because I love the God who made this place and I care about the people he put here; all of them. I love God and I care about what she made. I care about the animals that wallow in a lake of their own feces, eating garbage for 18 months, only to end up in the meat case at Walmart. I care about the earth that is being raped by Monsanto and Cargill. God made them, and so they are sacred. I care about the people who cannot have chemotherapy because they've been laid off from their jobs, the children who live in fear of their homes being blown up by American bombs, the people who get paid nothing to make junk for Walmart, and the impoverished, hopeless Mexican migrant workers who pick the poison-encrusted strawberries that are sold at Walmart, a small percentage of whom are regularly sold out to immigration by the company that employs them, so that immigration will turn a blind eye to the whole damned, dirty business. It's a damned, dirty business, what goes on outside the holy order of things. But the church, I think, needs to start walking home a different way. It's realized eschatology. It's the kingdom of God at hand. It's light of the world, salt of the earth. It's loving the Lord my God with my heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving my neighbor as myself.

And speaking of loving myself: have you ever noticed what violent language we use to describe our relationship with God? We say that he wants to make us uncomfortable, to use us. We say he wants us to beat our bodies and make them our slaves. We say that he controls us. We say he has authority. We say it's okay if he destroys our lives. We call ourselves depraved, wretches, worms, evildoers, filthy.

Do you know how this sounds to a physically-psychologically-sexually abused person? Do you know what internalizing all this violence has done to my walk with God?? I'll tell you something: God does not want to make me uncomfortable. She does not want to exploit me. She does not want me to harm myself, to enslave my good, beautiful body. He doesn't want to control me. He doesn't crack down on me. She won't destroy my life. He sees me as holy and good. She is gentle, quiet, kind, compassionate. I am a precious human being; not a wretch. You too.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting at a table with some fellow Christians. One of them is an x-ray tech in an urgent care facility. He started talking about what a drag it is when the cops bring someone in cuffed. He told a story about a man who was cuffed to the bed. No one knew what he had done to "deserve" being cuffed to the bed. He was so freaked out that he tried to escape. So the cops tackled him and, in the process of restraining him, broke his finger. The x-ray tech at the table chuckled a bit and told us how the nurses decided to set the man's finger without any anesthetic, because "you try to escape, and you deserve what you get." The other Christians at the table chuckled too and issued a collective "right on! That'll teach him!" I was stunned. I cried out a somewhat-frantic "That's a human being in pain that you're laughing at!" The response was something to the effect of "Who cares? He's a criminal." I kid you not: I nearly lost my dinner. I spent a half hour in the bathroom, sobbing, after that encounter, grieving for the man whose pain my Christian brothers and sisters found so amusing, and grieving for the millions of people like him, and grieving for the suffering earth under our feet that God called "good," but his children don't even think of it. I wasn't alone though, because I know that God was weeping with me.

This past Sunday morning, two people made fun of my yoga practice, which is becoming one of the most important things in my life, and one bossed me rather coldly about the white board in the coffee room. All three of these people are leaders in my church in some capacity, and people look up to them. I was already raw when I got to church; I can't tell you how discouraging it all was.

It hurts me to be lectured about private faith and doctrine and evangelism by people who don't care who made their jeans or what is the social and environmental cost of the Mountain Dew in their hand or that they're laughing at something that is unspeakably dear and tender in your soul, and if you plead with them to think about it, they shrug or make fun of you. It hurts me that I've lost friends because I voted for Obama because he genuinely cares about giving more people access to a basically dignified existence, and I think God is pretty down with that. It hurts me that, twice in my life, very dear friends haven't told me that they are gay because my affiliation with conservative Christianity represented certain rejection to them. (Susan, Aaron, if you're out there: I love you. I miss you so much. I won't reject you. Please come back.) It hurts me that some of the people I love most in the world want nothing to do with God because Christians have wounded them so deeply. It hurts me that I was, at one time, so convinced that evangelism was so much more important to God than love and mercy that I evangelized my former best friend right out of my life. (Katie, if you're out there: I love you. I miss you so much. I won't reject you again. Please come back.) It hurts me that the same thing happened to my current best friend.

Please hear me: Jesus isn't like this. Jesus, man. He loves everybody, baggage and brokenness and all. I believe that he made this place, that he breathes it into being eternally, and that the way of life he asks us to live is a way of life worth living. And if he were on earth today, he'd probably have nothing to do with Glenn Beck, other than to offer him love and ask him to shut up. Probably the same with Focus on the Family. If you want to know about Jesus, ask me, because, man, Jesus is really something. Also, please hear me again: I know some off-with-your-socks phenomenally beautiful people who follow Christ. People who love people. People who bring you tea and hold you when you're hurting, people who let you use their bath tub when they're on vacation, people who drive you across the state five or six times a year for four years, people who pay your bills when you're broke, people who ask how your day was and then listen to your answer, people who pray and pray and pray. But friends, I'm just so down, feeling like so few people share my values, feeling like I can't be me and be loved that way, progressive politics and amillennialism and feminism and all. God. I need to be me and be loved, so badly. We all need it, man. We all do.

Lord, have mercy. That's all I'm asking. Christ, have mercy.