When I was a child I accepted God and Jesus into my heart with childlike faith. I didn’t doubt God much. Sure I had moments of emotional pain when my parents broke up, but I never questioned God’s existence because bad things happened in the world. My Mum would just tell me that the earth was full of sinful nature and bad things happened because there was a Devil and that’s why it was important to have Christian faith so that we could be a light in the darkness.
The first time I think I really questioned God’s love for me though, was when my skin broke out. Back then I was a hormone-ridden teenager, riddled with low self esteem issues, a shy nature and the pressure to look perfect. I couldn’t think of anything worse in the whole wide world than a zit.
Sounds shallow as I think back on it now, but at that tender age, where you were just starting to figure out who you were, and your identity and you started noticing boys – it was a massive deal. I cannot count how many times I burst into tears before school even started, after attempting to hide my skin behind a mask of foundation. Or when I felt so self conscious of everyone’s eyes on me, judging me and scrutinizing my skin in public.
I prayed all the time for God to banish bad skin, I even asked my Mum if Jesus ever had a zit, and she replied ‘Well he was a man, I am sure he endured a lot of the same struggles humans do.’ But it didn’t provide me much solace. I was angry at God. I wished other girls didn’t have perfect hair, and perfect skin. I had a bitterness in my soul from the ages of thirteen to my very early twenties.
It was a long time to battle my insecurity looking back at myself in the mirror. I hated what I saw. I couldn’t see how God could love me either. I knew the bible story of Jesus’s compassion on the leper,so why was it so hard to heal my skin?
Just recently I finished reading a book called ‘Faith Unraveled‘ by Christian author Rachel Held Evans. The book opens to tell the story of her magical childhood growing up in Alabama in a Christian home, going to Sunday school and being awarded for things like, ‘the most correctly quoted scriptures’ and ‘most good deeds done in the week’.
Like myself, we were both brought up in Christian homes, only I was a country girl raised in the Australian bush and having to adjust to a divorce, whereby my Mum decided to raise us as a single parent who wanted us to know God. Whereas Rachel had been raised in a very God fearing part of America, and was the child to a well known theologian who raised her to know the Bible from a very young age and a mum who worked as a Christian substitute teacher.
As the story continues, Rachel loved God too, but she started questioning God’s love for her when she experienced severe eczema that she would violently scratch until her skin tore and bled the sheets she slept in. It seems we both had a similar time of age that we as young adults experienced self image issues and began asking the questions of ‘If God is so good..If God is so mighty…why does he allow us to suffer?’
Hadn’t we been the good Christians at school and church? While our other classmates who didn’t know God, got to enjoy having blemish free healthy skin, we had to endure what we considered punishment. It didn’t seem fair, and that was the statement I seemed to cry out both verbally and from a deep painful pit inside me that started to echo self doubt.
When 9/11 struck, my mum was casually folding laundry in the living room with the news playing horror images of a tower collapsing under an inferno of smoke and fire. I was about nine years of age,and I still remember being scarred seeing images of people running screaming up the road in a haze of smoke. It was a scene so completely detached from my own reality living in a small town near the beach at the time. The duplex we lived in was small and cramped, and only a short walk to the ocean. The picture of serenity, safety, beauty, calm, home. We didn’t have skyscrapers like the ones in New York. I couldn’t really fathom the idea of a plane crashing into a building so high in the sky.
It was like watching a movie. These events never happened in real life. But indeed they had, and it wasnt until a few years later that I learnt about terrorism and hi-jacking of planes. I think that’s when my flying phobia actually developed to tell you the truth.
The thought that someone could do this horrible act against the US people; families, colleagues, friends, mothers, fathers, daughter’s, sons, sisters and brothers was just a very hard concept. This marked the first time I learnt about extremist Muslim faith, and the realisation people were killing others in the name of the God they served.
I just wanted to point out here that I’m not against the Muslim faith. I am against murder. Both do not have to be connected. A lot of Muslims are lovely, just as a lot of Christians, Athiests, Catholics etc are kind people, it’s just the handful portrayed in media that give what they believe a bad reputation. I know as a Christian, I could be labelled a homophobic, bible bashing, goody too shoes from people who have experienced people like this.
This is why I wanted to do a post on this. The labels attached to Christianity, the breaking away from these labels to discover what I actually believe, and then living out those beliefs in a Christ like way.
Asking why my skin broke out, was only the first of many, many questions I asked myself, peers, family, and God himself. I asked why natural disasters occurred. Why diseases and poverty were rife in certain countries. Why young people died tragically.
I asked all the questions on heaven and hell, and questions about different sins, and which sins were worse. A curiosity set a spark in me, but an otherwise fire in Rachel. She had religious zeal, asked a lot more questions, and studied more thoroughly. She was very involved in church, and school, and numerous extra curricular events, making speeches and organising Bible Club studies. She even evangelised to a Mormon family that lived next door to her using scripture in a paper plane she hurled over the fence. I was just a shy girl who didn’t have many friends, and was just thankful I considered God to be one…on the down low.
I think in the beginning of my faith, it acted as a safety blanket, warm and familiar. It was the teaching from my Mum, so I knew anything a parent said should surely be true. I liked the stories of Jonah and the Whale, Moses leading the Hebrews through the parted red seas, David killing Goliath with one stone. I watched Veggie Tales and received my first Bible in grade four, which I covered in those cartoon bubble scripture stickers.
Overall I liked God, he seemed like a cool guy in a white robe that sat on the clouds watching over us smiling. But alas I didn’t ponder the existence of God as much as I hoped for the existence of fantastical creatures like mermaids and fairies. Often day dreaming of catching sight of a fairy frolicking in the garden. One early morning as I lay in bed visiting family friends, I was even convinced I heard the hopping sounds of the Easter bunny.
But as I grew so did my peers around me, and they were no longer children, they developed their own desires, opinions and thoughts, prejudices, values and vices, and they were now at ages where they could choose to cuss, drink, have sex, and explore their fleshy nature.
As I read Rachel’s book, I am convinced she spent a lot of her life defending Christianity openly and proudly. She went to a Christian college after high school too, and took studies in theology, learning how to define and defend a biblical worldview, but also to dismantle opposing worldviews. Her dedication and passion for her Christian beliefs was unwavering for a while and you could put her in the jar of ‘being very Christian’.
She didn’t seem to be swayed by temptations, a quick swig of a beer or a quick swear word ( just to convince your peers that your not a robot). I on the other hand fell into peer pressure. Whether It was just ‘kids being kids, hormones, the need to rebel, the fact half of my family were agnostic or that I wanted to fit in. I wasn’t grounded in my faith, I acknowledged it and I had a private relationship with God, but I wanted to experience life too.
Soon though, after all the apologetic training and critiquing of different worldviews, Rachel soon started critiquing her own beliefs. Finding comparisons between contradictive moral codes in Islam and Christianity. Mocking New Age, yet finding it hard to describe the Trinity without sounding supernatural. Suddenly her views changed when she met people from different faiths and cultures who embodied the fruits of the spirit and yet were not Christian. How did it make sense that they were more tolerate of others, and giving than most Christians she knew? How could she then turn and judge them for being a sinner, and say they were going to Hell?
I too found it confronting and uncomfortable to feel at odds with the homosexuals in my life. My best friend’s brother,who we had grown up with as kids. Was he to go to Hell? I could understand cruel acts of murder that deserved a just punishment, but homosexuality was not a theme in my life. How could I speak on a subject I had never experienced personally?
I work with at least six gay colleagues. All of them joyful, kind, generous souls. I’ve had a terrible cold that recently turned into bronchitis and laryngitis. I nearly lost my voice after a couple of days of croaking through my work day. My colleague,who is in a homosexual relationship, offered me a herbal tea bag ‘to help your throat’ he said while smiling and listing off all the ingredients like mint and lavender.
And I had a moment where I just appreciated the kind human being he was and felt blessed to have him sit next to me at work. I imagine that is how Jesus felt when the prostitute washed his feet with her bottle of perfume.
I used to stay up all night talking online to a French boy when I was sixteen. He was so charistmatic, and bold, and I was enchanted by his vigor, intelligence and culture. He would tell me the moving testimony of how he became a Christian despite his family’s objections. How he dreamed of being a missionary studying in Oklahoma. But one day he caught me off guard and announced he opposed homosexuality, and was repulsed by it. The very idea of it was just this stain on humanity and he abhorred it. Being a fanatic of the band Queen, I reminded him Freddie Mercury died of AIDS because he was gay. ‘Absolutely not, he was married.’ He corrected me. But ignorence had blinded him, and unfortunately my infatuation with him had blinded me too.
I think he was the first Christian guy I had romantic feelings for too, and the first to disappoint me with his moral high ground. I wondered what kind of missionaries were being molded into the character of Jesus after that conversation, and felt embarrassed of my beliefs.
It is a slippery road, on one hand you could choose to love and accept the homosexual community despite it being recorded in the Bible as a sin, yet risk sending them to hell as it is often preached it is your duty to inform them of their sin so they may be saved. On the other hand,you can just not accept them at all, ostracise them and condemn them into conversion. The second option rarely ever works, hate does not produce love, and it is not in my belief that Jesus would behave like this. But the first option is so difficult too as it has strings attached. It is the catch 22 of ‘I love you…But you need to change this part of yourself.’
My close female friend’s brother is getting married to a man in London in September,and I have asked her own opinion on it since she believes in God. “I can’t really comment on it, I love my brother, and if this is who he is and what he needs to be happy. I am happy.” I can’t really argue to that, and lose a valued friend to a subject I am not versed in. Because at the end of the day Jesus called us not to judge but to love. My mission is simple, it is not complicated, but people try to make it that way. The judgement is up to God, and I believe everyone is in the same boat, not one single person is exempt.
Last night I was grieved with some personal situations in my life and I was taking my negative feelings and thoughts as gospel. I shared these with her and she gave me some comforting words, reminding me that we are both lucky we know God and can rest in Him.
“At church recently they talked about the hope of pre destination and sonship that Paul writes about in Ephesians and it just struck a chord with me.
It helped me realise that God planned for me to go through this tormoil in order to bring me closer to him and live out my life using the gifts he’s given me and to not get down when those who don’t know and believe wear me down.
It’s so beautiful and amazing that God loves that hard and brings you on a journey of pain and sorrow only to open up pure joy at the end.
I think we should be grateful for what we have been through and are going through. It only helps us grow as people and as Christians. Which is truly awesome.”
I responded with gratitude that I had a Christian friend who has given me support in life and at work. I told her I had made some heart changes too and reading Faith Unraveled had solidified the transformative work in me, both in weighing up controversial issues and how spirituality plays a role in my life. We both agreed we were on the same path, re-entering church again and seeking out like-minded people.
This difficult yet inspiring transformation Rachel writes about, redefines what it means to be a modern day Christian. It shatters all the religion and the indoctrination, and dividing of other worldviews. Once upon a time she was fearful of asking questions, because it sounded like betrayal, but when she gave herself the freedom to, her skepticism actually drew her back to God instead. It seems absurd God would create minds with the intention of humans having the capacity to develop intelligence, and then not expect us to question things.
I would be painfully sullen if I had to take someones word for it. I like to experiment and colour outside the lines. This is why freewill exists because we are not mundane robotic creations, humans are complex and multi-facited. It is the reason why I can go to night church, then pop open the cork on a wine bottle and settle in to watch Ru-Paul with my housemate. I am not a stereotype, nor a saint. I am someone who occasionally wears birkenstocks (because they are comfortable), and tries to practice love the way Jesus would, but sometimes stumbles along the way.
Feeling enlightened, I sought to research more about this relatable author and was deeply saddened to find she had passed just two months ago in a hospital in Nashville due to complications of brain swelling while she was in a medically induced coma to treat her brain seizures. Only thirty- seven years old with two children, a loving husband and a legacy behind her name. She was finally getting all the answers to her questions in heaven.
Due to my sickness lately I have had a shortness of breath, and it has forced me to rest and to be silent. I don’t usually take the time to sit and to feel my lungs draw in air, and then exhale. It produces a bitter sweet feeling of gratitude to be alive. I can sit in this moment typing up this post, my stomach full and content from dinner, joy in my heart hearing people laughing outside together in the kitchen over a board game. Not asking any questions at present but rather listening. Sometimes we all just need to stop asking questions and listen to what God wants to tell us.
What is he telling you?
* If you would like to order Rachel’s book Faith Unraveled you can go to Amazon and order it as a paperback edition or an ebook.
the anomaly daughter 