I already wrote two posts on tolerance here and here. But I think more needs to said. As a daughter of fundamentalism, my heart is heavy because there is only so much crap I can take. I can only handle so much, “This is right. This is wrong. And if you do wrong, I’ll hold you accountable.“ I can only take so much. In a way I almost prefer people to cut me off than hold me up by their own standards. In a way intolerance that excludes someone is more pretty than intolerance that spits at them in the face.
On a homeschool forum someone today corrected a girl who used the word “hell” in her post. He told her she needed to edit her post. He told her Christians don’t use that word. He corrected her and by so doing called her ungodly, right in front of her peers.
His judgemental attitude reminded me of a time last year when I shared a photo on facebook that had the word “bullsh##” in the picture. A friend promptly emailed me, “I blocked the photo from my newsfeed. I hope you did not mind.” I had never personally used any language in my status messages, but because the photo used the word, I was reprimanded.
Mind, he had asked? I really don’t care whether people see my stories in their feeds, nor do I mind if they have their own convictions, but I did mind that he felt the need to tell me that I had fallen short of God’s his standards. I cared that he thought I had fallen from the Christian standard so much so that he needed to tell me about it. It hurt. It really hurt. I wish I had stuck up for myself, but I clamped up in the corner instead. This general attitude is one of the (admittedly several) reasons I burned out of facebook. I could never be true to myself because I had to live in fear of what if…what if I say the wrong things.
Sadly facebook is only the surface of the culture that tries to be my conscience. Evangelicalism is not exempt, for they try to force people to have accountability partners. In of itself, I’m not against an accountability partner, but in evangelicalism, it’s rarely a two-way street, nor is it a safe haven. I never had a shoulder to cry upon, or someone hugging me when I failed. Instead I had a judgemental conscience down my throat who tried to correct me every time he or she saw me failing to measure up. This occurred while I attended a Reformed Baptist church throughout my college days. I intentionally did not want a partner, so instead I got a hawk who watched my every step. I ended up going to the pastor over it, asking him to make the hawk stop it.
As a child accountability partners came in the form of mom and dad and other adults in our homeschool group. Once I had a driver’s license, if a homeschool mom saw me at the bookstore talking to “strangers” (my dad knew about it and was okay with it), my mom would promptly receive a call. A few years ago I ended up blocking my mom’s friends from my facebook just so they would quit reporting to her my wall activity (and those readers who were my facebook friend in those days would know how much imagination these moms had to use to find something wrong with my page).
And so this is one of the greatest problems in Christianity: it’s a culture that draws hard lines in the sand and refuses to erase them. It’s a culture that cannot understand that some people do not have the same standards, nor should they. It’s a culture that cannot imagine that in fact, our heritage and culture play more into our perspectives of ethics than any book itself.
This is not the totality of Christianity, but this is the Christianity I know. In fact, Christianity that does not define or give rise to hard fast lines feels distant and uncomfortable. Without standards and a box, I struggle in existence itself. With an edge defining my life, I feel thrown into space and time, thrown between being and non-being, and regressing back to non-being.
I think this is the parodox of my life right now. On the one hand evangelicalism is cold and frustrating. On the other hand progressive Christianity feels meaningless. Progressive Christianity feels like a social club where everyone says, “God loves everyone,” and I keep waiting for someone to turn around and stab me in the back. I keep waiting…because that’s the religion I know. The biggest reason I am happiest when I’m not in a church service is because I no longer have an edge defining my life, nor a religion without an edge.
[For my posts on when progressive Christianity makes me tremble, I created this page. I will have more coming out.]
Anyone else felt any of this?