I recently finished a beautiful book by Rachel Held Evans called Searching for Sunday. She uses Sunday as a metaphor for Christianity, the Christian church, and the Kingdom of God that Jesus talked about. Rachel described her own experiences of inheriting an evangelical faith through her family and being an enthusiastic proponent of this faith in her early years. Then she grew into a phase of doubts and questions, left the church, and then spent years searching for ways to reintegrate church into her life as she grew older. Unfortunately, she is no longer alive to share her insights and wisdom with us.
She doesn’t use the language of integral psychology, but I find it helpful to reflect on her journey using that framework. She describes the struggle of working through her traditional, pre-rational/amber stage and some of the shame-based teachings and attitudes she grew up with. She grew into the orange/rational stage of deconstruction, and then into a more pluralistic, post-modern/green stage. Finally, she wrestled with the teal/integral perspective, attempting to find ways to transcend and yet integrate the core truths of each phase of her process, and reconcile her desire to engage with church in new ways.
Open Table
Some of the things Rachel struggled with regarding the church were shame-based issues of exclusion, patriarchy and power, and the systems that created and maintained them. One specific issue that bothered Rachel was the treatment, exclusion and condemnation of the LGBTQ community. She describes the experiences of a lesbian friend who helped broaden her perspective. This friend did not grow up in church and was not very religious. However, she felt drawn to visit church one day and she was invited to take communion. “Then something outrageous and terrifying happened, she said, ‘Jesus happened to me.’” This encounter opened a new relationship with God and the church, and this friend became an advocate for the open table where people are welcome to participate in communion regardless of religious background or status. She noted it is Christ’s table anyway, and in the words of Jesus in Luke 14:13, “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.”
As Rachel’s faith evolved, she began to see that many of the values and systems in her church experiences were not what Jesus lived and taught about the Kingdom of God. Jesus talked about a kingdom where the first shall be last and the last shall be first, where the poor and the sick are welcomed in, where the peacemakers and the merciful find a home, where humility and self-sacrifice reign. This kingdom is not defined by geographic boundaries, political parties, and no single language or culture. It advances not through power and might, but through acts of love and joy and peace, missions of mercy and kindness and humility.
Intimate Relationship
Despite her disappointments and doubts, Rachel, as many of us can relate to, still felt deep longing for intimacy with God. “What each of us longs for the most is to be both fully known and fully loved. And it is miraculous to think God feels the same way about us. God, too, wants to be fully known and fully loved”. This describes a relationship in which we are totally vulnerable and absolutely cherished and we are called to cherish God in response.
As I think about this it seems natural in some ways and yet foreign and hard to believe. We are taught that God loves us without condition, but also that we are unworthy and must meet certain conditions of faith to avoid being condemned. What does this say about the nature of God? Is God really interested in a relationship with us, especially an intimate relationship? Are we separated from God or is God, as some believe, the one true source and ground of being in all that exists with no separation? Our doubts and feelings of shame act as barriers to intimacy.
Rachel reminds us in her writings that God works to remove barriers and obstacles to love and intimacy. Both the old and new testaments in the Bible tell stories of God showing up and inviting us into relationship. The story of Jesus, especially, says God was willing to become human like us, live among us and show us what Divine love looks like. Jesus experienced the best of being human and also the worst of humanity. Rather than backing down, conforming, and selling out to the demands of the church and the culture of his time, he chose to be a martyr for the cause of love, without limits. This is an ultimate love story.
Once you deconstruct and let go of the belief in original sin and God’s need to punish with Hell, then the traditional explanations and purpose of the crucifixion no longer make sense. If instead this is a love story, it suggests that the purpose of Jesus submitting to torture and death on the cross was not to save us from Hell but to draw us into intimate relationship with God. All barriers and excuses are overcome. This is an awesome mystery, as all great love stories are.
Working through our shame and our conditioning and embracing mystery in a new way is a journey. Developmental maturity involves separating and detaching from our family system’s conditioning, learning to think independently, to define and trust oneself, and become our own person. Healthy and mature people can then choose to reintegrate into their family system as an adult or choose not to if they decide it is too painful and destructive. This same process of development applies to religion, church, and faith as well. From an integral perspective, we can embrace mystery, embrace science and evolution, embrace our humanness, and know the Divine is within it all, bigger than the observable, the source of all.
The purpose of church and the sacraments, Rachel concludes, is to give the world a glimpse of the kingdom, to point in its direction. “And even still, the kingdom remains a mystery just beyond our grasp. It is here and not yet, present and still to come… All we have are imperfect people in an imperfect world doing their best to produce outward signs of inward grace and stumbling all along the way. All we have is this church – this lousy, screwed up, glorious church – which, by God’s grace, is enough.” And I would add, so are we.
Therapy Tip
“You are a person. And you’re allowed to shift.
You’re allowed to outgrow what once felt right.
You’re allowed to walk away from things you thought you’d always want.
You’re allowed to change your beliefs, your priorities, your path – even if it confuses people.
You don’t owe your past self a lifetime of staying stuck.
You don’t owe old decisions your present peace.
You are allowed to update your truth.
To say: ‘that was me then, and this is me now.’”
The Stillness: Finding Peace in the Pause, by Charlie J. Williams