My Urbana 12 Commitment Card

Logo from Urbana 2012. Image source.

Urbana 18 is going to be held December 27-31, so I'd like to talk about my experience with Urbana. Urbana is the huge student missions conference that InterVarsity Christian Fellowship holds every 3 years. It's about missions- about the world, about God calling you to go be a missionary, about embracing different languages and cultures, about the needs of humanity on a global scale, about our radical obedience to a God who wants us to sacrifice everything for the gospel.

ANYWAY here is a rough timeline of what happened to me:

2009: Went to Urbana
2010: Went on a short-term missions trip to China
2012: Went to Urbana
2013: Moved to China, and I've been living here ever since.

Umm. Did I come to China because of Urbana? No? Kind of? Maybe? It's more complicated than that. It wasn't like "while we were in that giant auditorium singing 'I Will Go' I just got this sense like God was telling me, 'Perfect Number, go to China.'" It wasn't like how the Christian leaders at my college encouraged us to sign up for Urbana by name-dropping famous missionaries who apparently "heard the call" at Urbana. It wasn't like that.

(And because it wasn't like that, I spent 2010-2013 living in the US, wanting SO MUCH to be in China, but not even sure if I was "allowed to", because "God didn't 'call' me." But that's a story for another time. Seriously, ask me about that sometime and I will TELL YOU. Or look through my blog posts from 2012.)

I already believed- because I had been taught this in church for my entire life- that God loved the whole world, and that all around the world there are people who desperately need our help, either because they're living in poverty, or because they haven't "heard the gospel." And I believed I should obey God no matter the cost. Urbana just helped me see, in real-life practical terms, what it would mean to live like I really believed those things. (I no longer necessarily think those are good things to believe...)

It wasn't like "I moved to China because at Urbana God told me to move to China." Nope. Not one bit like that. Maybe it was more like "I moved to China because of these things I believed about God and the world, which I had believed my whole life, but Urbana reminded me of them in a way I couldn't shake."

(I've actually been working on a post about "the real reason I came to China" for a while, so stay tuned for that. Maybe in the next few months.)

Anyway. What I really want to talk about in this post is my Urbana 2012 commitment card.

What is a "commitment card", you ask? Well on the last day of a Christian conference, they have all the attendees fill out a "commitment card" where you write down what actions "God is calling you" to take as a result of your experiences at the conference. As it happens, a while ago I found an image online of an Urbana 2012 commitment card, and I posted it on the blog post I wrote about radical Christian missions. Here is the image:

Urbana 2012 commitment card. Image source.

Here is the text, the different "commitments" you can choose from:

I say "yes" to Jesus, who extends God's lavish welcome
1. I am deciding to become a follower of Jesus for the first time.
2. I am deciding to recommit myself to following Jesus.

I commit to extending Jesus' invitation
3. I will invite someone who is not a follower of Jesus to study Luke with me

I commit to join Jesus in his global mission
4. I commit to serve and learn in a global or cross-cultural setting

5. Short-term: less than one year
6. Mid-term: one to two years
7. Long-term: more than two years

So for each of the numbered items, there's a box you can check if you're "committing" to that one. Yep, this is exactly what the commitment card I filled out looked like. I remember I checked off the last one- commit to doing cross-cultural missions long-term, ie more than two years.

All right, that was 2012, that was 6 years ago, how about we revisit that "commitment" and see if I did it or not?

Well to start out with, let's talk about what the word "commitment" means. This is a two-year commitment. Wow. That is a really big deal. I wonder about the other students who checked off that box. I wonder if it was a decision they made at Urbana, or if they had already been planning to move to another country.

In my case, I was already planning to go to China, before I went to Urbana 2012. The commitment card didn't represent me making a decision; it was just me writing down the decision I had already made, the decision that had been on my mind constantly since that short-term mission trip in 2010.

But the way Christians always talked about Urbana and God's "calling", I imagined that typically, these "commitments" were something new, something that had just come up within the few days that people were attending the conference. As if someone showed up at Urbana with no plans at all to do long-term missions, but with their "heart open to God", and during the conference they felt like God was "calling" them to go to such-and-such country that they had never been to before and knew nothing about.

(I even knew Christians who chose not to go to Urbana specifically because they were worried that God was going to "call" them to go be a missionary in some foreign country. Ha, I could write a whole post analyzing what this says about obeying God and not being allowed to make our own choices.)

I have no idea, in reality, how long people thought about it before making "commitments" at Urbana. I don't know what percentage of them counted the cost. But I do know that we were encouraged to "step out in faith" and "trust God" and go ahead and make that commitment even though we didn't yet understand how it would work out in practical terms. After all, if God is telling you to do it, then God will make sure those minor details work out. (Minor details like "I don't speak the language"...) No worries.

It seems to me that an idea which comes to you in an emotionally-charged Christian environment like the Urbana conference can disappear just as fast when you go back to your normal life. If, out of nowhere, "God calls you" and you "commit" to moving overseas for 2 years, but that's something you had never actually thought about before, then how on earth is that actually going to happen? Raw emotion isn't going to get you there. You have to find a job or find a missions organization. You have to fill out visa applications. You have to buy a plane ticket. You have to pack medications and maybe get vaccines, depending on which country you're going to. You have to at least learn how to say numbers, so you can buy stuff, and "where's the bathroom?" But before you do any of that, you have to do A LOT OF RESEARCH to figure out where to even start.

So I wonder, how many students made "commitments" at Urbana to do missions, and then nothing ever came of it.

What about me though? I committed to 2 or more years of cross-cultural missions. And I've been living in China for 5 years now. So, uh, does that "count"?

I mean... Back when I was an evangelical, I believed in the concept of "we are all missionaries, no matter where we are." Basically, even if you're not living in a foreign country, even if you're not in a Christian job like being a pastor, even if you just have a "normal" life (whatever that means...), you should still think of yourself as a missionary. That means that you should work hard to "show God's love" to people and to "share the gospel" with them- that should be a high priority for Christians no matter where we are or what job we have.

And I still believe that. Well, in an ex-evangelical way. I no longer do evangelism- because it's BAD and UNLOVING to assume that I know what complete strangers need (ie, they need to become Christians). But I believe in doing good and loving people even if that's not part of my actual professional job description. Do the right thing, spend time and effort caring about people, etc.

Umm. So. ... Am I a missionary?

LOLOLOLOLOL no. No, I very much DO NOT identify as a missionary.

Do I "serve and learn in a global or cross-cultural setting"? (The actual text of the commitment card.)

I mean, yes... except that I think the "serve" here is actually Christianese for "doing the things that good evangelicals are supposed to do, like evangelism." So if we're using that definition, then no. If any of this is dependent on being a good evangelical, then no, no I have NOT spent 2 years doing that.

Overall, I have no regrets about this. I did good enough. I moved to China. As for that stuff about continuing to buy into that whole ideology about evangelism and missions, nah I don't feel bad about leaving all that behind.

One more thing I want to say about the concept of committing to move to a different country for 2+ years: Actually, that's not really something you can commit to, because there could be unexpected problems that come up and force you to move back to your home country.

When I first came to China and I was teaching English, I had a coworker who was also from the US, let's call her Anna. She had been working in Shanghai as an English teacher for less than 1 year, and then she started having health problems, and she had to move back to the US to get treatment.

I met another American here in Shanghai, let's call her Cathy. She came to China because she got a job as a music teacher here, but then when she got here the school was like "actually you won't be a music teacher, you're going to teach English." Yeah, that happens sometimes- the job they actually want you to do is completely different from the job they said you were going to do.

Cathy, as you might imagine, was NOT HAPPY about this. She spent a few days scrambling around to find a new job- at one point saying to herself, "If I don't find a new job today, I will have to go back to the US." She did find a different teaching job, and she worked there for a few months. But then she had problems with her visa, and China is a giant bureaucracy, and she couldn't get those problems solved so she did end up moving back to the US.

I have another American friend, let's call him Tim, who was studying in Japan in 2011 when there was a huge earthquake that caused a huge tsunami and nuclear power plant meltdowns. It was bad. Wikipedia says 15000 people died. Because of that disaster, Tim ended up leaving Japan and coming back to the US. From what he told me, it sounded like most of the international students he knew in Japan were leaving.

In her book When We Were On Fire (which I blogged about here), Addie Zierman talked about the period of time she and her husband spent in China. For her, it was a very low point in her life. She developed depression because of the culture shock and because of how isolated she felt. For her own mental health, she needed to leave.

And the book Runaway Radical (which I blogged about here) tells about how Jonathan Hollingsworth went to Cameroon as a missionary, because he was so "on fire for God" and bought into all that ideology about sacrificing everything for the sake of the gospel. When he was there, he suffered spiritual abuse from the leaders of the missions organization. The situation got worse and worse, and finally he decided to leave, and they wouldn't even give him his plane ticket or refund any of the money his donors had raised. He was able to get back to the US, eventually.

My point is, sometimes you plan to move to a foreign country and live there for a certain period of time- 1 year, 2 years, whatever- but then circumstances outside of your control force you to leave. So I'm really really uncomfortable about the idea of "making a commitment" about it. Yes, you can make a commitment to try, to put in a reasonable amount of effort in pursuit of that goal, but making a commitment to actually do it... uhhhh... Especially if you've never even traveled there before and you really have no idea what you're committing to. (*cough* like most of the students at Urbana *cough*) When you don't know how hard and painful it is to be an immigrant.

I just hate the idea that someone could spend so much time, effort, money, and emotional energy to move to another country, and then something bad happens and they're more or less forced to move back to their home country- which is a difficult situation just by itself- but then on top of that, they feel the weight of guilt because they broke a commitment they made to God. If it was me, no matter what the problem was that forced me to leave, I would feel like it was my fault, that I should have just tried harder and I could have found a way to stay. Or I would feel like my sin was in making that commitment in the first place- making a "rash vow" like Jephthah, am I right? Like it didn't matter if I'd vowed something that was actually impossible for me to do. It's my fault for not adding fine print to the Urbana commitment card.

(By the way, here is a link to the BEST POST I HAVE EVER READ about the biblical story of Jephthah's daughter. "The story of Jephthah is the story of everyone who decides that vows and codes and rules must be absolute. That way of thinking always ends in death.")

Anyway. I'm revisiting my 2012 Urbana commitment card because it's a big deal to commit to 2 years of cross-cultural missions, and that matters to me. InterVarsity keeps statistics about these commitment cards, as if they really matter and these are real commitments we are making. Look at this link- it says in 2012 at Urbana, 4248 students committed to that last option on the commitment card, 2 or more years of "long-term mission." I was one of them. I want to know what happened to the other 4247. 6 years later, where are they? Did they do their 2 years? Did they quit being evangelical, like me? What did it actually mean, that we made this commitment?

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Readers: If you have experience with making "commitments" at a Christian conference, leave a comment about it! Especially if you went to Urbana.

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Related: 
I Didn't Count the Cost Before I Moved To China
This Is Exactly the Martyr Fairy Tale We Aspired To
InterVarsity just strained out a gnat and swallowed a camel. (I no longer support InterVarsity because of what they did to queer people in 2016.)

On Zebedee's Sons and Counting the Cost

An exhibit at the 2012 Urbana conference. Students write on pieces of paper at stick them to a giant map of the world. Image source.

[content note: ideology about how you are required to give up everything- maybe even your life- for Jesus. mention of a missionary who was murdered.]

Today let's look at Matthew 20:17-28. First, Jesus informs the disciples that he will be mocked, flogged, and crucified, and then rise again. In the second section of this passage, the mother of Zebedee's sons shows up to ask if Jesus can give her two sons places of power on his right and left.

The part I want to focus on is this:

“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?”

“We can,” they answered.

They're just like "we can" as if it's so easy. And so I want to talk about counting the cost.

When Jesus talks about "drink[ing] the cup", he's talking about suffering. Actually, he had JUST TOLD them all that he was going to be betrayed and tortured and killed. But I don't think James and John (the sons of Zebedee) really *get* it. Just like me when I was involved with radical Christian missions ideology, with all its talk of how awesome it is to suffer for God.

Radical Christian missions teaches that Christians should be willing to give up EVERYTHING for Jesus. And the very very best Christians, the most devoted and godly ones, are the ones who go live as missionaries in some poor and dangerous country.

The very very best Christians are martyrs, because they literally gave their lives for Jesus. But even if we're not martyrs, we're called to live every day 100% devoted to God- die to self and take up your cross daily. And, they said, maybe that's actually harder than being a martyr. Because it's not just a one-time thing; it's your whole entire lifestyle.

I went to InterVarsity's Urbana conference in 2009 and 2012. Urbana is ALL ABOUT radical Christian missions. Ten thousand students stood in an arena and sang worship songs about "I will go, I will go, I will go Lord send me" and "take everything I am, I'm clay within your hands." There was folklore passed around about how "Urbana is where so-and-so heard the call from God to be a missionary." We came there knowing that God might call us to give up all our possessions and dreams and plans and move to some unknown country. And we loved God and trusted God so much. We were ready.

Every day of the conference, there were speakers who talked about their experiences and how much they gave up in obedience to God, and how the results were so amazing and totally worth it. And we attended workshops about the more practical things- how to do evangelism in this or that particular setting, how to know where God was calling us to go, etc.

But they never told us to count the cost.

Yes, they did talk about the cost. They talked about "getting out of our comfort zones" and taking risks for God. They talked about how it's hard if you have parents who don't agree with your decision to be a missionary. They told stories of good Christian role models who made huge sacrifices in order to help others. They said that sometimes people have even died in service to God's call.

But all of this was presented as "yes, it's really hard, and you will suffer, but it is SO WORTH it." Because God is with you. Because you're doing something that really matters in the eyes of eternity, not just living your life for your own short-term happiness. Because even though you'll suffer when you're following God's call, it would be even worse if you didn't- God knows what's best for you.

(Related: If somebody "got saved" at one of our campus evangelistic events but then we never saw them at any bible study meetings or anything afterward, we usually concluded that they "didn't understand the cost" of following Jesus. Sometimes we blamed ourselves for only presenting the nice parts of the gospel and not talking about how one needs to lay down their life. Sometimes we blamed the person who was "saved" for not being willing to really follow Jesus.)

Radical Christian missions's talk of "the cost" is NEVER meant to say "you should seriously consider if you're okay with these costs or not- and if you decide you're not, that's perfectly valid." There was no "whoa whoa whoa slow down, let's not do anything that carries a risk of death, because that is an EXTREMELY SERIOUS thing and shouldn't be taken lightly." No. It was always "it's hard, but it's worth it because you're following God." (Imagine my surprise the first time I read a news story about a missions organization that evacuated their employees because of some epidemic or natural disaster. I thought looking at a situation realistically, assessing the danger, and taking practical steps to protect yourself is something missionaries just don't do. If God "called" you to be there, how can you leave just because you're concerned about your own safety?)

I remember one speaker at Urbana who talked about how her husband was murdered while working as a missionary in the Middle East. And she said even though it's very tragic that he lost his life, it would have been even worse if he hadn't obeyed God's call and hadn't become a missionary. He was living according to God's amazing plan for his life, and that's better than any alternative.

And maybe that's true. Maybe the work he was doing truly was so important that it was worth sacrificing his life. Sure, that's certainly possible. But that's a conclusion that should only be reached after a long period of time carefully considering his particular situation and how he/ his widow felt about it, and the results, etc. That's not the kind of statement you should just throw around as if it's axiomatically true, as if OBVIOUSLY for EVERYONE death is better than never becoming a missionary in the first place. And maybe that's not how she meant it- but as a student in that audience, the message I heard was "don't be afraid, don't worry about the cost, you should follow God's call no matter what because even if you die, that's still better than living a sad and boring life where you're just an ordinary American Christian."

We thought in terms of the story of Jonah: God calls him to go preach in Ninevah, he chooses not to, and God sends a whale to swallow him. If God calls you and you say no, your life is going to suck- it will suck even worse than if you had obeyed God and become a missionary, even though that's a really hard life too.

Radical Christian missions never said we should count the cost and make an informed decision and that it's okay to say no if the cost is just too great. (Please note, though, that it's okay to say no if you can spin it into some kind of spiritual reason, like "Missionaries all need a team of ordinary Christians to just stay in the US and support them financially- that's just as important.")

Look at Jesus' teaching in Luke 14 though:

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’

“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples."

Jesus says to count the cost before becoming his disciple. In his examples about building a tower and about the king going to war, he says it's BETTER to NOT attempt some big risky thing if the cost is too great or the chance of success is too low. Could it really be that Jesus thinks it's okay for his audience to choose NOT to give up their possessions and family and follow him?

Because, in my experience in Christian culture, when people talk about "the cost of following Jesus", what they mean is that choosing to obey Jesus even though it's hard and costly is THE RIGHT ANSWER, and if someone decides not to do it because of the cost then they are a BAD AND SELFISH PERSON who is TOO AFRAID and DOESN'T TRUST GOD. 

There was never a free choice. And it's not possible to seriously consider whether the cost is worth it, if you know that you're not allowed to conclude that it's not.

In my experience in the feminist/activist blogosphere, people quite often do advise that we should count the cost. They don't use the term "count the cost"; instead they say things like "not everyone is able to give money to support this, if you're not able that's okay" and "some people have to work really inconvenient hours and so they don't have time to attend this or that activist meeting" or "it's totally fine if you're disabled and you aren't able to come to a protest, just help out in whatever other ways you can" or "it's not your responsibility to educate racists on twitter if you don't have the emotional energy for it." In other words, start by prioritizing yourself and your own health and happiness, and then from there you can make decisions about how much time/money/energy you have to put in to justice work. (There's a limit to this "letting everyone decide what they're personally willing to risk" though- if you have a lot of wealth and privilege but aren't really doing anything to help marginalized people, well you're part of the problem. Still, I don't think anyone's saying that wealthy people are morally obligated to give up EVERYTHING, or that it would be WRONG for them to live comfortable lives. Compare this with radical Christian missions, where the ideal is to give up everything.)

Jesus asks the sons of Zebedee, "Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?" And they said, "We can." It seemed so simple. Even though Jesus had just told them he was going to be killed, it seemed so abstract and faraway. Just like when I adhered to the ideology of radical Christian missions. They talked a big game about how we all need to give up everything for Jesus, like it's this glamorous thing that's hard but always worth it. They never talked about counting the cost. Yes, they talked about the cost- but they never said we should count it.

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There will be a post next week called I Didn't Count the Cost Before I Moved to China.

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This post is part of a series on the gospel of Matthew.

Previous post: The Parable of the Living Wage (Matthew 20:1-16)

Next post: How About We Let Disabled People Tell Us What to Think About Jesus' Healings (Matthew 20:29-34)

Click here to go to the beginning of the series.

The things I've never let myself say about worship

A crowd of people standing up during worship music time. Some of them are raising their hands. Image source.

"It's just you and God."

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My Sunday School teacher asked us, "What is worship? Is it just singing songs? Is it only something we do on Sundays?" And the answer was no, worship isn't music. The correct Sunday-School answer was that worship means doing everything in a way that honors God. It's about your whole life. Living a life fully dedicated to God. Singing songs is part of it, but that's not what worship is.

In my twenty-plus years as an evangelical, every time the "what is worship?" lesson came up, that was the answer. It's not music, it's living your whole life devoted to God.

So then, why did church people use the term "worship" as if it meant "singing church songs"? Why did they say, "So first we'll do worship and then prayer next"?

I believed the Sunday School lessons. I never referred to the singing of songs as "worship"- that's not the kind of thing you say if you believe your entire life is supposed to be constant worship. Instead, I used the term "worship music." (Later, I actually used a concordance and looked up every time the bible uses the word "worship", and guess what, it isn't used as a synonym for "religious songs" and it isn't used as a synonym for "living your entire life devoted to God." So.)

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When I was in college, I dedicated my life totally 100% to God. This was after an experience where I was overwhelmed at seeing God's mercy and goodness, and I was so full of emotion and just wanted to sing and dance and express how much I loved God. For the first time in my life, I looked forward to going to church. (Before, I went to church because of course I go to church, that's what Christians do.)

And so I became that person who sings loud and raises her hands and jumps and dances and all that. I loved it. I felt so free and emotional and close to God. The feelings I had in my heart, about my love for God and how great God is and the amazing things God had done for me- and every week at church, there was an opportunity to shout those feelings out as loud as I could.

I started sitting in the front row so I would have more space to dance around during the worship music time. I wore shoes that could be taken off easily so my feet wouldn't hurt when I knelt down. On more than one occasion, I was at a Christian conference and actually brought a skirt and changed in the bathroom before the worship time, because I wanted to look my best when I was dancing for God but the weather was too cold to wear a skirt the whole day.

I loved it; I loved singing and dancing to express my overflowing joy for God. But at the same time, I also felt a little weird. Maybe a little embarrassed.

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A foundational tenet of the Christianity I was taught was that a lot of people claim to be Christians but they're not really Christians. And going to church doesn't mean you're a Christian- "if you go to McDonald's, does that make you a hamburger?" So I was suspicious of the people I met in church. Were they really really REALLY real Christians, or were they just going along with it because it's their culture?

The sermons on worship said we should get into it with our whole hearts and not hold anything back. So why was I the only one dancing and raising my arms in every song and bowing down on the floor? Was it because other people weren't as godly as I was? Maybe they weren't real Christians.

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I'm a math person. I always liked math classes because every answer is either right or wrong. If I know the right answer, I can prove it's the right answer, and I'm confident I'm right. I didn't like English class because when you write papers, you have to explain this means this because of these reasons, but really isn't it all just a bunch of made-up opinions? What is it based on? What if I say "here's my interpretation of this literature" and everyone is like "haha what, no that's ridiculous, that's obviously not what it meant"? Who's to say who's right and who's wrong? All you have are different people's opinions on what's "ridiculous" and what's "reasonable."

Same thing with art. You can have a piece of art, and some people think it's so deep and meaningful, and some people laugh at it. And I always worried what people thought of my actions during worship time. Maybe they were laughing at me in their heads. Maybe they thought I was weird. I was up front, moving around, waving my arms, dancing, singing loud- I was very noticeable.

I remember one time, I was practicing for this dance performance for a Christian worship night thing- doing a dance I had completely made up myself, with no dance training or anything- I was practicing and showing a friend to see what she thought. And I tried to show her what I'd prepared but I just stopped and laughed at myself because I felt so nervous and weird, doing a performance in front of other people. Like what if dancing is just weird and I should feel embarrassed about the entire thing? It's art, there's no objective measure for whether it's beautiful or ridiculous. And that always bothered me.

But when Christian speakers talked about worship, they said we shouldn't think about what other people are thinking. "It's just you and God," they said. I always heard Christians say that about worship music time- "It's just you and God." And you shouldn't care what other people think.

I always used to close my eyes when I was singing. Then I couldn't see other people, and so I would be able to stop thinking about how they are probably judging me.

Sometimes strangers would come up and give me a compliment about how it's so great that I worship so freely and authentically and with my whole heart. But most people never said anything about it at all. And I worried about that. But I kept telling myself, "It's just you and God, it doesn't matter what people think."

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I discovered that I couldn't move around as much if I wasn't sitting in the front row or on the end of a row. If there were people on both sides of me, I didn't have as much space to work with. I could pretty much just put my arms straight up, but not to the sides.

I knew that it would be bad to wave my arms around too much and make the people on my left and right worried that I was going to hit them in the face. So ... that means I can't just close my eyes and worship freely- it means I have to keep my arms within a certain space and be very aware of the people around me and whether or not I'm close to hitting them. But what about "it's just you and God"? What about "you shouldn't care what other people think"?

This paradox was always a mystery to me. I deeply believed "it's just you and God" but I also felt that it wouldn't be right to let myself move around so much that I risk hitting someone accidentally. But how could those two ideas be reconciled? And the thing about hitting somebody- that was never something that was explicitly taught as "this is a sin." It was more along the lines of, uh, common sense.

The best I could figure was that God loves everybody, so if I'm loving God with my whole heart, then I also have to be nice and considerate to people- that's what God would want. So, I concluded, it's not true that "It's just you and God." Actually, "It's just God." And not hitting someone accidentally is MORE IMPORTANT than freely expressing all my love for God through dance.

It's kind of odd that I spent so much time and mental energy trying to find a justification for "it is bad to be so careless with my arm movements that I accidentally hit someone in the face" but it never occurred to me to see a conflict between the teachings on worship and the teachings on modesty. I was taught that good Christian girls should never move their bodies in a way that could be interpreted as "sexy." So I would wave my arms, shake my head, clap, jump, kneel down, turn around, and step stiffly from side to side. But absolutely no wiggling, twisting, bending, or shaking any part of my torso. That might be "immodest." (Remember, one of the foundational doctrines of modesty culture is that, as a woman, I "just can't understand" what men are going through. So I should avoid these types of movements, just in case some man thinks they are "a stumbling block." Even though I think they probably aren't.)

Why did I never ask the question, "If it's 'just you and God', then how can there be modesty-based restrictions on shaking one's butt in worship?" Maybe because the action of dancing in a "sexy" way (ie anything that risked drawing attention to my torso area rather than limbs) was intrinsically sinful- even if I was alone in my own home, I would be nervous about trying it. Whereas there was nothing inherently wrong with jumping around and waving my arms, it's just an accident of circumstances that somebody's hypothetical face happened to be right there. It was reasonable for me to imagine getting so lost in the emotions of worship that I forget there are people standing right next to me and I have to be careful not to hit them. But how can someone get so lost in worship that they move their body in a way that a good Christian girl should never ever move their body?

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The word I hated the most was "distracting."

My parents' church is way more, uh, tame than the kind of worship environment I experienced with other college students. So when I was home for the summer, I looked even more out of place, in that sanctuary of people who just stood still, or maybe occasionally slightly raised one hand. And my mom had a problem with what I did. And she had a problem with how I cheered and yelled at the part in the song about the resurrection. (You know, the cornerstone of our faith, the coolest thing that's ever happened.) She always used the word "distracting" and so now I get kind of triggered when anyone uses the word "distracting" to describe something happening at church. Apparently I was being "distracting" and it was bothering other people, they can't concentrate on worshiping God, so I just need to cut it out.

My parents said I was singing too loud, I was "screeching." I thought they should consider themselves lucky that I wasn't singing a completely different song than everyone else. Because the song the worship band was doing wasn't one of the ones I felt a deep emotional resonance with, and ya know, "it's just you and God, you shouldn't worry what other people think"- I briefly considered just singing my favorite worship song while everybody else was singing the song the worship band was doing. I never did that though, fortunately. But maybe it was because I felt I wasn't brave enough. Maybe if I was truly worshiping God with my whole heart, I would be open to doing something as bizarre and disruptive as singing an entirely different song than the rest of the church.

But I wondered, what if they were right, and I was "distracting" and I shouldn't "worship" like that? What if it's not true that "it's just you and God"? What if God wants me to care about not bothering other people?

I read Romans 14, about "not causing anyone to stumble." It meant that even though we have the freedom to do something, sometimes it's better not to do it because it might tempt some weaker person to sin. (The entire basis of "modesty.") So maybe I shouldn't worship like that if it's going to bother people?

I read 2 Samuel 6, where "Wearing a linen ephod, David was dancing before the Lord with all his might", and Michal gave him a hard time about it, but the bible sides with David, who says "I will become even more undignified than this." (Inspiring this worship song, which I was a huge fan of back then.) So screw anyone who has a problem with the way I worship, right?

I wished I had someone I could talk to. But would anybody else understand? Nobody else was dancing around like I was during the worship music. Maybe they don't love God as much as I do. Maybe they are those fake Christians I keep hearing about. What if they are silently judging me for how weird I am when I worship? No, I can't ask their opinion on whether it's okay to worship like this.

The closest I came to having an actual conversation about this was with my friend Kiara, who was talking about moving and expressing oneself during worship time. She held her hands up at about the level of her shoulders and said "God hasn't been this good to me," then raised her arms up, YMCA-style and said, "He's been THIS good to me." I liked that and I wanted to believe her, but at the same time, I couldn't find a logical argument that explained why certain beliefs about God would necessarily map to certain body movements. How I wished I could say that God is so good and therefore I MUST respond by worshiping in this specific way- but I couldn't.

Kiara is black, and I went to her black church one time and I loved it. From what I've seen, people in black churches get really into the singing and dancing and expressing emotions through worship music. I actually joined a student gospel choir in college, where the majority of the choir was black, just because I wanted to shout really loud about how I felt about God, and a gospel choir is the place you can do that. I had a great time. (Note, however, that in the context of being in a gospel choir, I did NOT believe "it's just you and God" because our goal was putting on a good performance. Which is a completely different thing than just being a congregation member during worship time. ... Wait a minute- how did I never notice the huge contradiction between the teaching that "worship isn't about music, it's your whole life" and "when you worship, all that matters is you and God, don't think about other people"?)

I guess I didn't really know about the concept of culture back then. It was easy for me to assume that people who moved more and looked more emotional during worship time loved God more. Easy to think that people in my parents' (very white) church weren't real Christians because they stood still while singing about God. But now I get what culture is because I moved to China. Culture is the reason that a belief about God might map to a particular body movement- and in a different culture, maybe that exact same belief doesn't inspire people to move in that particular way, and that doesn't mean their faith is any less genuine and heartfelt. In China I don't just barge in and do things the way I think they should go and "don't care what anyone else thinks." Maybe I no longer believe there's any situation where you should "not care what anyone else thinks." Maybe worship was never supposed to be "just you and God" at all.

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It always bothered me when the lyrics of a worship song said something along the lines of "I am doing this specific physical action right now" and yet we weren't actually doing it. A few examples:

• "But when the world has seen the light, they will dance with joy like we're dancing now."
• "I see a near revival stirring as we pray and seek, we're on our knees, we're on our knees."
• "So I'll stand, with arms high and heart abandoned, in awe of the one who gave it all."

If you sing that you're doing something, and you're able-bodied and could easily do the thing, but yet you're not doing it... then what about the part of the song where you sing about how much you love God- are you actually doing that or not? If you can't even be bothered to do some simple gesture, then what about the hard task of living your whole life devoted to God?

If I sing that I'm kneeling but I'm actually not kneeling because like, I don't want to do that in front of other people, they will all look at me and think I'm weird... does that mean I'm not really worshiping? Does that mean I'm not really devoted to God, because my actions are influenced by what other people will think?

If we sing "we're dancing now" but we're not dancing, then that means we don't really mean that part. And to be honest, I always felt like Christians didn't really mean all that stuff we said in church. In Sunday School they taught us that God can do anything and cares about all the details of our lives- so why did I feel awkward suggesting to another Christian that we pray when we were setting up for an event and couldn't figure out how to turn the projector on? Why did I feel weird saying things like "I belong to God" out loud anywhere other than church?

Church people said "a lot of Christians don't actually have a Christian worldview"- which means they say they believe certain Christian beliefs but mostly they just live their lives like they believe the normal things that mainstream society believes- they haven't worked through all the logical implications of their Christian beliefs and how those things should apply to all these other aspects of their lives. And after I dedicated my life fully to God, I tried to eliminate that gap between the way I lived and the things I claimed to believe. (See: #ChristianAltFacts)

And now I write hundreds of blog posts about how much that messed up my life.

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I can't tell you how many times I debated in my head when I wanted to raise my hands, or bow down, or whatever, but I was hesitating. The foundational assumption in all those debates was "if the only reason to not do this is because I would feel weird having other people see, then that's not a valid reason." Like I always have to analyze my motives, and if I discover I'm partially motivated by some "sinful" reason then that means I'm being bad. Now THAT'S "distracting."

One of my friends, let's call him Bob, had a different problem during worship. He once told me about how he felt like he shouldn't raise his hands if he wasn't feeling emotionally compelled to raise his hands. Like it would be "fake" if he did it without having the "I love God so much, I simply must raise my hands, I can't help it" feeling. He said that he was learning it's okay to do it even without the "correct" emotions, and that was helpful for him.

Yeah, because the idea of just going along and singing the songs without "really meaning it" was preached against strongly in the churches I attended. They taught that if you're singing but you're a little distracted, thinking about the things you have to do tomorrow or whatever, that's not okay and it means you are being bad and your singing doesn't really "count" as worship.

It's awful for our mental health, all these rules about which emotions we're allowed or not allowed to have. I know many ex-evangelicals have moved to more liturgical, less "emotional" churches and ended up much healthier there. Because the whole service is more or less scripted out, so congregation members can just kind of follow along, read the words they're supposed to read, and that's good enough. You don't have to constantly interrogate your own emotions and feel guilty over not having the "correct" feelings or not "really meaning it." Just make a choice to show up for church, if that's all you're able to do. And that's good enough.

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I went to InterVarsity's Urbana conference, where we worshiped in a stadium with thousands of students. I always tried to get a seat in the rows of chairs set up at ground level, rather than in the bleachers. Specifically, I wanted to be in the front row of a section or at the end of a row, because then I would have a lot of space to move and dance during the worship time.

One time, during the worship music at Urbana, I saw a group of students coming down from the bleachers so they could dance in the more open space at the ground level. But a staff member stopped them at the bottom of the stairs and said they have to go back to their seats.

I don't think I'll ever forget that. Because of all the Christian talks I had heard- many of them from actual InterVarsity staff- about how we should worship freely and not care what anyone else thinks, and all that matters is expressing your love for God. Then how could a Christian staff member stop people from coming downstairs where they could dance and worship?

I know it's about crowd control. Urbana had over ten thousand students, and when you have a group that big, you have to have very very strict rules in order to keep everything running smoothly. It was obvious that a lot of thought had been put into crowd control at Urbana- I was RIDICULOUSLY IMPRESSED by how they would block certain hallways at certain times of the day so that they didn't end up with chaos as waves of people tried to get past each other in different directions. Seriously, like every conference I've been to EXCEPT FOR URBANA has some kind of badly-planned area where people wait in line and there's a bottleneck and it wastes everybody's time. My mind was BLOWN at not seeing any of that inefficiency at Urbana. Seriously. It was amazing.

So probably everybody has to stay in the general area of their seats during worship time because otherwise you might end up with a huge crowd that gets out of control, and then when worship time is done you have to wait for them all to go back to their seats before doing the next thing and it takes FOREVER, or some kind of reason like that.

So all that talk about "it's just you and God, you shouldn't care what other people think" was a lie? More like "it's just you and God unless you're in an arena with over ten thousand people- then better not stray too far from your chosen seat."

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I never really realized how personal the lyrics of worship songs are, and how unnatural it is to express those things in public. I never thought about it, but I felt it, and I wasn't able to put those feelings into words. We sing about love, about our hearts, about our desires- these aren't things people typically discuss in public where strangers can overhear.

Maybe that's why other people didn't seem as "into it" as I was. Not because they didn't really love God, but because they didn't necessarily want to proclaim their deepest feelings about God in front of a bunch of acquaintances. And maybe that's totally okay.

In a post from 2015, Modern Worship Music is Foreplay, Or Why I Hate Going to Church, Dianna Anderson writes,

Rather, [my objection is to] the lack of restraint that these songs exhibit and the almost total lack of theological depth. Jesus is the “lover of our souls,” “drawing us closer and closer.” We talk in sexual terms about our relationship with Christ without stopping to consider what these terms mean. The music is not only sexual in nature but nearly meaningless in its theology. What do we mean when we’re saying that Jesus is the “lover of [our] soul”? How does Jesus act as a lover? Is that a road we really want to go down?

Rarely do these songs come with explication and commentary, despite being a central part of the approach to God that is a religious service. Modern worship music seems to exist solely to invoke an emotional experience, to prepare us emotionally and spiritually for the sermon and the service. It is, functionally, the foreplay of the modern evangelical service.

We call it centering ourselves on God, bringing us into the moment, but what it does functionally is create a veneer of intimate experience in the midst of a congregation that’s barely on a first name basis with each other. It’s all too often an emotional high without the attendant support needed for emotional vulnerability.

In my own experience, after years of this kind of structure to worship, I found myself unable to function well in traditional, emotionally driven worship places. There’s a time and place for communal worship, but it seems that modern Protestant, charismatic worship gives us all the emotional (and often vaguely sexual) release with none of the support and follow up it requires. As soon as I stepped away from that environment and examined it truthfully, I realized that the spiritual highs I reached in communal worship were emotionally manufactured through repetitive, vapid, theologically empty music. I never really connected with my community in the way church is supposed to.

And I think this is exactly the reason that the whole congregation stares straight ahead at the screen with the lyrics. They don't want to make eye contact with anyone else while they say the words "I'm desperate for you." This is why I wanted to jump and dance for God but on some level I didn't want anyone to notice. This is why so many talks were given about "it's just you and God, you shouldn't care what other people think"- because it's completely natural to be unwilling to express such deep emotion where other people can see.

How did I never realize that was the reason?

If only I hadn't grown up in an environment which equated emotional vulnerability and oversharing with godliness. If only someone had said "It's good and healthy to have boundaries- to have personal things which you don't go around telling everybody. Not because those things are bad or sinful, but because they're personal and you have the right to have a private life."

They all saw me kneeling on the ground, crying, dancing, singing with deep emotion about how I am giving my whole heart to God. And then they decided I'm not a real Christian because I no longer believe the "correct" evangelical teachings about hell or the bible or sex or whatever. It hurts even more, because church was the place I expressed my deepest feelings where everybody could see, and now I don't feel safe going to any church at all.

I still love God. But I don't want church people to see. I don't trust them.

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I was never able to understand my own emotions when I "felt weird" for worshiping so expressively. The only narrative available was "some Christians don't worship with their whole heart because they're worried about what other people will think, and that's bad, it means they care more about people's judgment than about loving God." I'm dancing for God, so any doubt about it must be from the devil or from my sinful nature, which doesn't want me to obey God wholeheartedly like this. Therefore I must completely ignore those doubts.

I raised my hands and yelled and danced, and I wasn't allowed to have feelings about the fact that a whole bunch of people at church could see me.

In church, Christians sing worship songs in large groups- but we're supposed to pretend that we don't. We're supposed to act like it doesn't matter if other people see us or not, and that if we have any emotions about that, then those emotions are bad, because we shouldn't care what people think. We all stay in our space and don't make eye contact while we publicly verbalize the deepest thoughts of our hearts.

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Related: The things I've never let myself say about evangelism

Runaway Radical: Radical Christian Missions

A crowd of students raising their arms in worship at Urbana 2012. Image source.

Let's continue talking about Runaway Radical: A Young Man's Reckless Journey to Save the World, a book I totally recommend to anyone who has experience with the radical Christian missions movement. "The radical Christian missions movement" is the term I've decided to use, because I'm not aware of any explicit label for this movement, but it very much is a movement with its own distinct ideology, and we have to call it something. (I was never aware of a label for it because it was presented to me as "this is what real Christians are supposed to do"- to give it a unique name would imply that it's not the same thing as just plain old Christianity. Related: I was raised evangelical but nobody really told me explicitly "we are evangelical." No, it was always "this is what real Christians believe.")

The radical Christian missions movement is what you get when people who believe in "biblical inerrancy" actually read the bible and take it as seriously as "biblical inerrancy" proponents say we should take it. The bible is FULL of verses about helping the poor, FULL of verses blasting the rich for oppressing people, and Jesus preached some pretty scary extreme stuff like "turn the other cheek" and "whoever wants to save their life will lose it" and "anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me" and "whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me" and "give to everyone who asks."

It all adds up to an ideology that goes like this: If you are really devoted to Jesus, then you have to give up more and more and more. You have to give up everything you possibly can. The bible commands us to help people, and as long as there exist people in the world without reliable food and water, and you aren't doing as much as you possibly can to help them, you are sinning. It's selfish to have savings accounts, it's selfish to buy nice things for yourself- no, you should donate all that money and just trust God. That's what faith is- taking these big risks, the world says you're "crazy", but then God comes through and the result is amazing.

I went to InterVarsity's Urbana conference in 2009 and 2012, and radical Christian missions ideology was preached CONSTANTLY. From beginning to end, the whole entire Urbana conference is radical Christian missions. It's all about the horrifying reality of humanitarian crises that exist in the world, and how Christians need to DO SOMETHING about it, how YOU need to do something, how God is sending YOU, give everything up and go save the world.

At the end of Urbana, everyone is given a "commitment card" to fill out. I've managed to find a photo online of the card from the 2012 conference:

Urbana 2012 commitment card. Image source.

The card in the above image has a bunch of boxes you can check, to indicate which things you're "committing to." There are 3 categories: getting saved, evangelism, and cross-cultural missions. And throughout the conference it's made clear that the very best thing you can commit to is long-term cross-cultural missions. Be a missionary. Yes, when it's time to fill out the cards, I'm sure the speaker on stage will say something about "not everyone is called to cross-cultural missions, don't feel pressured to check off that box if God's not calling you" but come on. The whole entire conference is "look how much these non-white people in foreign countries are suffering, God cares about them, so YOU need to do something about it" and "look at this person who is a really really amazing Christian because they heard God's call and moved to another country."

And though I'd say this ideology is better than the "all that matters is heaven and hell, just get people saved and don't care about physical needs" that's also common among church people, it's still not a healthy belief at all. It's driven by guilt. The point is to sacrifice so much that you're constantly in a state of crisis and you have to "depend on God"- because some people in this world don't have clean water, so what makes you think you deserve to feel secure about getting all your needs met?

So much guilt. I was at Urbana 2009, when, at the beginning of his talk, Shane Claiborne took a bag of rice and said, "In this bag of rice, there's about 24,000 little grains of rice, almost equivalent to the number of lives that are lost every day from poverty and suffering." And then, while the whole stadium watched, he poured out the entire bag. Later some of us students were talking about it, and someone asked what the point of that was. "Was he just trying to make us feel guilty?" (There was also discussion about "why do they keep talking about global poverty and how we have to give things up, but there's a massive light show and fog machines every day during the worship time- couldn't that money have been donated instead?" [This is exactly what Judas said- make of that what you will.] And "we all spent hundreds of dollars to come to this conference- why are they asking us to give more for this offering they're collecting?")

Even though the church where I grew up wasn't part of the radical Christian missions movement, they taught "always put others first" which is essentially the same thing- the radical Christian missions movement just takes "always put others first" to its logical conclusion, which is "if anybody, anywhere, is in such poverty that they can't even get their basic needs met, then it's wrong for me to have anything good." The church also taught me that my mental health didn't matter, which is a key component in radical Christian missions. It relies on people NOT thinking "a belief system that puts this much guilt on people is so so SO bad for mental health, and our mental health matters."

And churches and missions organizations often use these kinds of guilt-driven tactics to get people to donate money. How many times have I seen an advertisement with a photo of THE MOST starving African child they could find, accompanied with some line about how you could help them "for less than the price of a cup of coffee per day"? The message is clear: There are people who live in such bad conditions, you can't even imagine, but you have a comfortable life and you should feel bad about it. To get rid of that guilt, please donate some money to our mission organization. Right? Radical Christian missions just takes that to its logical conclusion.

That's why none of it was shocking to me, when I read in "Runaway Radical" how Jonathan gave away his bedroom furniture and slept on the floor, how he made a commitment to always give all the cash in his wallet to any homeless person who asked, how he criticized his family for spending money on a vacation, how upset he became when his car was in an accident and he had to use the money he was saving for a missions trip to pay for car repairs instead. It's totally consistent with the radical Christian missions ideology that I was explicitly taught at Urbana and less-explicitly taught in the evangelical church. I've never met anyone who actually followed it to the extent Jonathan did, but that's because he's a way better Christian than the rest of us, according to that belief system. Not because he "misunderstood" or anything like that.

And here's another thing we have to talk about: the phrase "we have so much in this country." I often heard this as the reason we should give away money to help people on the other side of the world- because "we have so much in this country." It's fascinating how many faulty assumptions are packed into this one simple phrase. First of all, it dismisses all the Americans who live in poverty. Clearly it's their own fault because they're lazy and bad at managing money, and also they have TVs so don't feel bad for them, it's not like they're *really* in poverty. Next, it assumes that the way we live in the US is so incredibly different then those stereotype people in Africa or Asia. We have so much, we can easily donate to help them, but they don't and they can't. And finally, I seem to have subconsciously bought into this "we have so much in this country" reasoning, such that when I moved to China I actually found myself thinking "I'm off the hook now, I already gave up the American lifestyle and moved to China, so I don't have to do any more charity giving." I could sense there was something wrong with that line of thinking, but it was really hard to figure out what exactly the problem was.

Another idea mentioned in "Runaway Radical" was "getting God's attention." Jonathan talks about how he felt like he needed to do more and more radical things, put himself in even more risky situations, to show God he was really devoted and get God to respond by doing miracles. I totally get this. This is EXACTLY what radical Christian missions teaches. Just "step out in faith." Be "crazy for Jesus." Jump in before you know what you're even doing, and trust God to take care of you. That's what real faith is, they said. On page 161 of "Runaway Radical," the writers point out that this is how satan tempted Jesus in Matthew 4:

But who else was told to put himself in harm's way and let God do the rest? Wasn't Jesus offered the same temptation by Satan in the wilderness? "Throw yourself down from the highest point of the temple," Satan challenged. "If you are who you say you are, God won't let you fall" (Matthew 4:5-6, paraphrased). It was an opportunity for Jesus to prove his special proximity to God, a chance to demonstrate a show-stopping act of faith.

But manufactured hardship is always for show. Radicals forsake big houses and nice cars for mud huts and orphans. But to wear sacrifice as a badge is to trade material status symbols for spiritual ones. It is baptizing attention-seeking behavior, confusing "making an impact" with "making a scene."

The same kind of exhibitionism Jesus refused to take part in is now the very thing radicals think Jesus expects of them. As the contest escalates, the question becomes, How much trouble can I land myself in? How can I get myself thrown in jail like the apostles? How can I get myself killed like the martyrs?

They're not exaggerating. This is what radical Christian missions teaches: Do wild, reckless things because of "faith"- that's what it means to really be a disciple of Jesus.

In the book, Amy and Jonathan explain why this ideology is a form of legalism. And their antidote is grace- believe that God loves you unconditionally, you don't have to earn it by saving the world, and you should just focus on "loving the person in front of you." Personally, I think their answer is good in terms of the "getting God's approval" aspect of radical Christian missions, but it doesn't address the "there is so much suffering in the world and you should be doing more to help" aspect. Next week I will talk about how feminism gave me a much healthier way to look at that component.

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Posts about Runaway Radical:

The Stories You Can't Tell In Church
Radical Christian Missions
What Feminism Taught Me About Saving the World

My Racist Personal Relationship with God

Michelle Higgins speaks at Urbana. Source: Five ways you can back InterVarsity after #BlackLivesMatter stance.

I highly recommend reading these posts by the Slacktivist (Fred Clark): InterVarsity takes a firehose to Pentecost in a rush to quench the spirit and Toddlers on a treadmill: Why evangelicals can’t even take baby steps toward justice. It's about InterVarsity's statement explaining why they "addressed" #BlackLivesMatter at Urbana 15, their massive missions conference for college students.

"Addressed" isn't really the right word though. Listen to Michelle Higgins's talk here. She says- very clearly- that the evangelical church in America worships a false god of white supremacy and must repent, and she calls on us to support #BlackLivesMatter.

Clark says this about InterVarsity's statement after the fact: "Every paragraph, every line, every sentence, every word was written based on the assumption that the reader is a white Christian." He's absolutely right. Though it never says so explicitly, IV's statement was written to address the question, "But how can a Christian organization support #BlackLivesMatter? I thought it was just some extreme liberal group." (And in this culture, "liberal" means "evil.")

It's a statement addressed to white American evangelicals, bewildered at the idea that Christianity could have anything to do with race. The statement stresses IV's evangelical credentials ("Scripture and the gospel are non-negotiables for us") and invites the reader to believe that support for #BlackLivesMatter is compatible with Christianity.

As Clark says, "That doesn’t mean they’ll be allowed to say “Do justice.” But — provided the anti-gay and anti-abortion stuff remains in good order — they may be allowed to suggest that doing justice is one possible optional extra that some Christians might optionally be permitted to consider as a hobby, just so long as they get their homework done first and it doesn’t otherwise interfere with their support for TAOTS [The Authority Of The Scriptures] or their opposition to gay baby-killing."

So here's the question: Why is it that white Christians would be confused about the possibility of a connection between #BlackLivesMatter- or any issues about race, really- and Christianity?

Because the white evangelical church does not teach that being a Christian is about "doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God." Nope. It's about "having a personal relationship with God."

And I believe there is great danger in the concept of closeness with God. I don't see any way you can believe that you know God intimately without also believing God shares your opinions and prejudices. Without believing "God agrees with me."

Because, here's a black woman preaching about the idol of white supremacy. And the white evangelical thinks to themself, "well, I get up early every morning and spend half an hour reading the bible and listening to God, and God has never said a word to me about white supremacy. This speaker says it's a sin I need to face and repent of, but, if it was so important, why hasn't God mentioned it?"

Or, here's an example from my life. Right now I'm disappointed with IV for backing down from their endorsement of #BlackLivesMatter, but in general, I really admire the work IV does in the area of race and racial reconciliation. That's one of the most valuable things I got out of my experience with IV in college. But I remember the first time I went to an IV meeting and the topic was race- and I was surprised. I had never heard anyone in church talk about race before. The speaker showed us Ephesians 2:14-16, and talked about how, through Jesus, Jews and Gentiles were reconciled. And how racial reconciliation is right there at the core of the gospel. And I was like, how on earth have I never noticed this before?

I went back to my dorm room and I wondered about my own racist biases. I thought about how I kind of thought black people were a little scary, and I was pretty sure it was just a feeling and I had never treated any black people badly because of it, but I wondered if maybe I should pray that God would help me not to have racist thoughts like that. But I didn't want to. I thought, "I'm not really racist, just a little bit uncomfortable, and God completely knows and understands me- God understands that I'm not really racist."

The whole "personal relationship with God" thing provided a way out of admitting my sin of racism. Because if all that matters is me and God, well, then it's all right. God understands how I feel a little scared of black people. Fortunately I then realized, black people are totally God's children too, equal to me, and God must be really upset with me for thinking those kinds of things about people made in God's image.

Again, another example about my time in IV: Every year, a leadership selection team was put together to choose the student leaders for the next year. I remember one year, I heard a black student in IV was unhappy that very few people of color had been chosen for leadership. But I didn't take her concerns seriously at all, because I knew that the leadership selection team had prayed about it a lot, so the choices they made were the ones God wanted.

Because when you pray about something a lot, and you "feel peace" about it, as Christians always say you should, then how can you be open to hearing valuable feedback about the mistakes you made in that decision?

And if you believe God speaks to you and guides you every day, but God has never said anything about how you benefit from centuries of white supremacy and you need to repent... well then, it must not matter to God, huh? Must not be true.

And if you ask all your friends to pray about your job interview, and then you credit God with getting you the job, then how can you acknowledge the reality of employment discrimination- that people with black-sounding names are significantly less likely to get called for job interviews? You believe God helped you get the job as part of his perfect plan- that God controlled every part of the process and blessed you with a new job. If you believe that, you can't believe in systemic racism, can you?

Overall, white evangelicalism's obsession with "having a personal relationship with God" is a convenient way to ignore our sinful complicity in society-wide injustice. It's all about your own relationship with God. Everyone is equal spiritually- and that's all that matters. Sin is bad because it breaks your own personal relationship with God. Maybe your sin hurts people too, but that's not really the point. Completely absent is the idea that the sins of the privileged disproportionately affect those in marginalized groups.

And then somebody comes along and says, American culture trains white people to have subconscious racial biases. It's not white people's fault, but they have the responsibility to fight back against the casual racism and to challenge their own prejudices. And when a white evangelical hears this for the first time, it doesn't sound anything like what they've been taught about sin. "No, that's not what sin is. How can it be a sin if it's not my fault? How can it be a sin if I've never felt guilty about it? How can it be a sin if I've never noticed it causing damage to my personal relationship with God?"

In that context, of course it would be baffling that InterVarsity would take a stand in support of #BlackLivesMatter. Of course Christians would be confused about the connection between racial justice in this world- right here, right now- and the gospel.

And so of course, InterVarsity published a statement defending the idea that it is possible to be a Christian and support #BlackLivesMatter. When you don't challenge the assumption that a "personal relationship with God" is the most important thing, all you can ever do is defensively, nervously make a case that it's possible to be a Christian and do justice.

About My Phobia

"Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint;
    preserve my life from dread of the enemy."
    Psalm 64:1 (ESV)

That word, "dread," stuck out to me. The writer of this psalm isn't exactly asking for God to protect him from being attacked- he's going farther than that, asking God to free him from fear. Because even if you're not in danger, if you feel like you are, that really takes a toll.

That particular word from this passage is translated different ways: threat, dread, fear, terror.

Image source.

And fear is something that's had a huge role in my life lately. Specifically, a phobia.

Wikipedia defines "phobia" as "a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object or situation in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational. In the event the phobia cannot be avoided entirely, the sufferer will endure the situation or object with marked distress and significant interference in social or occupational activities."

I am afraid of a certain thing, which I shall refer to as the "object of my phobia." Not going to say what it really is, because like Wikipedia says, the fear is "disproportional" and "irrational." You'd laugh at me, and this whole blog post would seem like a joke, just some silly thing I'm making a big deal out of for no reason. Instead, good writing is something the reader can relate to, feel the emotion of the writer. So just imagine there is a thing called an "object of my phobia" and it's really scary.

It started last year, when I had a kind of traumatic experience with an object-of-my-phobia. When it happened, I was alone, with no one to understand or help me. And I really believe there is a connection between my phobia and a fear of being alone. Maybe my mind has latched onto this thing as a symbol of the more abstract fear of being alone. I don't know. There's some connection.

Last year I was at college. I lived alone and I was happy and independent and could take care of myself. But then this happened, and I was afraid whenever I was alone, afraid that I might encounter the object of my phobia. Like, paranoid, looking around defensively. Good thing I was pretty much done with college. Then I moved back in with my parents, partly because I didn't have a job yet, partly because of health issues related to my stomach, and partly because I didn't want to be alone and I have this phobia.

In December I went to Urbana, a huge missions conference hosted by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Which was pretty awesome, especially since I really want to move to China, and Urbana is all about missions and God's love for the world and cultural diversity and all that.

But I felt stuck. How can I move to China? My parents' house was the only place I felt safe, certain there was no object-of-my-phobia there. What if I go to China and see one? And it's not like I can get a job in the US either- what if I have to live by myself, and I see one?

But a year earlier, I was in China, and I made the decision that no matter what, I would be moving to China after I graduated. I didn't know I was going to have stomach problems and end up having surgery, which would delay graduation. And I didn't know this phobia would develop, leaving me scared to go anywhere.

I wondered what was wrong with me. "I'm supposed to be in China," I thought. "Why is it taking so long?"

So, Urbana. I went to the prayer room one day and one of the staff members prayed with me. I told her about my phobia, and she asked me to imagine that situation which was traumatic and caused this phobia. She said Jesus is always with us, so he must be SOMEWHERE in that memory. So she told me to pray and ask Jesus to show me where he was.

I went over it in my head, trying to figure out where Jesus was. I thought of some ways that it could have been worse- but no, that can't be the answer to "where Jesus was." I hate when people pretend that "it's not as bad as it could have been" is somehow an answer to why God allows suffering. That just doesn't make sense. I want a God who's more on top of things.

The woman praying with me asked if I had discovered where Jesus was in that memory. I asked her to clarify the question- is he supposed to be in a specific place? Is he supposed to be doing something? What does it mean, "where is Jesus"? Like what am I even looking for?

And she told me it's okay if I don't know where he is- she didn't want me to make something up. (And you know me- I'm not going to just make something up. When God is bad, I tell it like it is.) She said I should keep praying about it, and also go to a counselor for some help with the fear.

So then a day or so later, I came back to the prayer room, and somebody else prayed with me about it. Same deal, asking Jesus where he was that time I was so scared. Still nothing.

And later that week, I found my answer. I found Jesus.

Suddenly, I had this realization- he was there with me, feeling the fear, at the same intensity I felt it. Jesus is a human- he came to this earth and lived among us and suffered and felt emotions. He knows how I feel, and he feels it too. The fear, the panic, the I-need-to-run-and-never-come-back. Jesus, God became flesh, and he understands. And perhaps that's the most important reason for the incarnation.

He was with me.

Wow. So, I was pretty excited about that.

Image source.

But that was at Urbana, a really "spiritual" atmosphere. What I felt was real... but how does it fit in with my everyday life? I still have this phobia. I still didn't know how in the world I would go to China.

And back at home, I thought about one of the speakers at Urbana, who talked about facing fears as we follow God. I wanted to do that. I mean, logically, it doesn't make sense to just live with my parents forever because of the distant possibility that maybe I might encounter this scary thing, which actually can't hurt me so it's really not that bad. It doesn't make sense to be so afraid that I can't even live my life.

So... does that mean if I'm really serious about going to China, I should just "get over it"? And that I'm already a failure for being stuck in this, for not just "getting over it"?

I wondered if I should think of my phobia as a "health problem." Last year when my stomach hurt all the time and I couldn't do any work and had to come home from college and eventually I had surgery, that wasn't something I could just "get over." That was a health problem, and I really NEEDED to have surgery.

It delayed my graduation and my move to China, but there was nothing I could do about it. I NEEDED to get medical treatment. I COULD NOT do the work I needed to do at college. And maybe my phobia is similar?

But a phobia has to do with thoughts and feelings. It's in my head. And I have control over my thoughts and feelings, right? Unlike my stomach problems. Why can't I just get over this?

What is the nature of the mind/body connection? I used to think they were totally separate, but they're not. The counselor I've been going to emphasizes this a lot. How I need to take deep breaths and try to relax in a stressful situation, because my brain needs oxygen in order to think clearly and make good decisions. How when I panic and my body has a fight-or-flight response, more blood goes to muscles instead of the brain, which makes it harder to think clearly.

It's complicated and I don't get it. But, also on the subject of the mind/body connection, I'll have you know I'm now taking drugs for depression/anxiety, which has REALLY helped with my depression (I won't get into that in this post...) and maybe also with the phobia, maybe. It confuses me how I can swallow these drugs and they affect my mind and the way I feel. And in the past I totally didn't believe in that stuff- I believed people should just pray and "get over it."

So do I have control over my thoughts and feelings, or not? Is it all just chemicals? I don't get it. But thank God for the depression drugs!

Anyway... at this point, I'm doing WAY better than I was a few months ago. I don't really think about the phobia that much, and I'm not as afraid. That's because I haven't seen an object-of-my-phobia since last year. Gradually I've gotten to feel safer- but I wonder if that feeling of safety is based on the assumption that I won't encounter an object-of-my-phobia... and I'll go right back to square 1 if I ever do.

I don't know. I know I have to practice relaxing more. And getting desensitized. And changing my thoughts, slowing trying to believe that this thing can't hurt me. I'll be okay, I guess. And I am moving to China.

All this to say that like the psalmist, I also want to be protected from fear. Because I've seen how fear can control my life, regardless of whether there's any real danger. No one should have to live like that.

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This post is part of a link-up on the topic of Psalm 64. To read other people's posts, click here: Deep: A reflection on Psalm 64.