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| Photo of Rachel Held Evans. Image source. |
I said, "She's asking the questions we all wanted to ask but didn't know how."
Before this, I knew how to categorize people. Real Christians, fake Christians, and non-Christians. The real Christians all had to adhere to a certain set of beliefs, because those were the things the bible clearly said. The fake Christians, I could tell because they would say things like "I believe God wants me to be happy" and I knew the correct Christian answers to why that wasn't true, why that was a wishy-washy liberal morally-relativistic feel-good [all of these are bad words, to an evangelical] distortion of Christianity. And non-Christians, well obviously I can identify them because they tell me they believe something else that's not Christianity.
But Rachel I couldn't put into any of these categories. She knew how to talk like an evangelical. She knew the bible. She knew all the correct apologetics answers. But she said things that "real Christians" weren't allowed to say. She questioned the "correct answers." She knew all the reasons that, apparently, God has to send most people to hell, and women have to submit to men, and gay people should just try harder to be straight, but she said "wait, isn't that terrible?" (But she said it in much better words than that.) Because she had a heart. She had compassion. So she studied more, studied the bible, ancient Roman culture, the history of American evangelicals' hermeneutic. She wrote about it on her blog, in a way that was accessible for a broad audience. She reviewed books. She interviewed experts. And she showed us it's just not true that "the bible is clear."
She was the first. She was the first one I ever heard suggest that "the bible is clear" is not true. Before this, I thought that good Christians believe all the correct things the bible clearly says, and bad Christians reject some of those things because they don't trust God enough, or have some shady motives like "putting your emotions above God's word." She was the first to show me there are other ways to be a Christian.
I particularly remember this post she published in 2013: Is abolition "biblical"? It was about the striking similarities between biblical arguments over slavery 150 years ago and over LGBTQ rights now. The pro-slavery side accused abolitionists of abandoning God's word and being carried away by their unreliable emotions... which sounds very familiar to those of us who have argued with Christians about LGBTQ rights.
And her "Ask A..." series, where she would bring in a guest from some specific group (ask an atheist, ask a gay Christian, etc) and they would answer questions. Just allowing someone who's different from me to have the space to explain, in their own words, who they are and what they value... and just listening. That was all new to me. Before, when I was a good evangelical, everything was stereotypes and strawmen. We knew that non-Christians all "have a God-shaped hole in their heart." We knew that Christianity was unique among all religions because those other religions are about how to earn one's way to heaven, but in Christianity Jesus already did the work and we just have to "have a personal relationship" with him. How did I know those things, back when I was a good evangelical? Why, because other Christians told me, of course! Did we ever actually ask a real live non-Christian what they actually believed? Nope! (Or rather, to the extent that we did, it was only so we could better tailor our evangelism efforts. We didn't listen because we cared; we listened because we wanted to convince them to change.)
All I knew about people outside the "real Christian" category was whatever biased, dehumanizing stereotypes the "real Christians" told me. And I never even realized how wrong that was. Rachel was the first person to show me that loving people means actually listening to them.
(And I don't believe in judging who is a "real Christian" or a "fake Christian" anymore.)
In 2012, I was thinking about starting my own blog. Because I wanted to ask questions too, like Rachel. I wanted to be honest about some of the messed-up stories we find in the bible. I wanted the freedom to say I don't agree with the "correct" Christian answers. (But at the same time, I saw how Rachel responded to criticism on her blog, and I thought, "no, I can't start a blog, because I could never be as kind as she is.") Well, as you might have noticed, I DID start a blog, and now here we are.
And I've come so far and changed so much since then. I'd like to thank Rachel for her impact on my life all those years ago. Because she was the first to show me it's okay to not believe all the "correct Christian answers."
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Related:
#BecauseOfRHE (Tweet Roundup)
Link Roundup of Posts Honoring Rachel Held Evans
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