Conformity is Next to Godliness

My first roommate after I left college was a good friend and a lovely person.  She still is both of those things, though she lives far away.  But there was one dynamic to our relationship in those early roommate-days that wasn't all that lovely.  We haven't talked about it, but I think she'd shake her head in amusement and chagrin as much as I do now.

You see, she was very skilled, even back then when we were young, in the domestic arts.  She could whip together a dinner for six people without turning a hair.  She could make jams and jellies.  She could sew beautifully-- she eventually made her own wedding dress, and then my bridesmaid dresses.  Her cupboards were organized, her shelves were organized, even her junk drawer was organized.  And when she cleaned the kitchen, it knew it had been cleaned!

And I?  I wasn't a bad cook.  But that's all you could really say about me and the domestic arts.

This wouldn't have been a problem except for the kind of Christianity we were both involved in. We attended the same church, and the church taught that women were designed by God primarily for homemaking.  The Proverbs 31 woman and her superlative skills in food preparation, sewing and the like were the standard to be sought and attained.  I never really could attain it.  My sweet roommate seemed to do it effortlessly.

And this meant that somehow she was a better Christian, a more spiritually mature person, and a better woman, than I was.

Our church never put it this way in so many words, and I'm sure my roommate never consciously told herself as much. I know I never put it into actual words, in my mind or aloud.  But under the surface I think we both knew she was measuring up, and I wasn't.

A similar kind of thing happened to the guy I ended up marrying.  We weren't together at the time, but when he joined the same church and began to "grow in Christ," a certain idea of Christian manhood was held up to him as the standard.  A spiritually mature, godly Christian man was, first of all, an extrovert.  No one said as much, but that was the general idea.  A godly Christian man always prayed confidently and articulately in men's prayer meetings.  A godly Christian man knew how to loudly "take authority over the devil and his works" as a true prayer warrior.  A godly Christian man could go into a park and talk to strangers about Jesus with boldness "like a lion," just as Proverbs 28:1 said.  A godly Christian man was a born leader.

The young man who eventually became my husband was quiet and a little shy.  He met the church's standard easily when it came to reading the Bible privately (though he had a discouraging tendency to come to unapproved conclusions about what he read), but in prayer meetings and "witnessing" he just couldn't measure up.

This is not to say a woman couldn't be a good "prayer warrior," or that a man couldn't be a good cook. But there was always this sense that you had to meet the basic expectations for Christian manhood and womanhood first.  If you did that, then these other traits were an added plus.  If not-- well, they were nice traits of course, but-- well. . . . it just wasn't quite good enough.

There were other, more general things too.  The church was a charismatic one, which meant that outward displays of emotion were encouraged.  We didn't want to be like the "church of the chosen frozen," you know!  I don't think there was anything wrong with our dancing or waving our arms to the music, or with our cheering and applauding as a "praise offering" to God.  The problem was that those who were less comfortable with these outward displays were treated as if they were just not as devoted to Jesus as those to whom these things came naturally.

Personality, you see, was often mistaken for spirituality.

One of the most ludicrous things was how, at nearly every church meeting, we were exhorted from the pulpit to "give God the loudest shout that you've ever given!"  I remember thinking, "but I shouted as loud as I possibly could last time, and the time before.  It's physically impossible for me to shout louder than that!"  This, I might add, was pretty much as far as my rebellious thoughts ever went.  I still obediently shouted as loud as I could-- though I was one of those who felt adoration, and God's presence, far stronger when I was alone in complete silence.

Most of the time (with the exception of the domestic arts) I was pretty good at being what I was expected to be, and doing what I was expected to do.  Naturally easy-going, I usually had no problem going along with whatever the leaders said we should do.  My basic quietness, and the good manners my mother taught me, were generally interpreted as meekness and deference to my spiritual authorities-- even after I stopped believing they were always right.   The fact that at pot-luck dinners I'd rather talk theology with those of the guys who weren't watching sports, than discuss marriage and children in the kitchen with the women, was a bit puzzling to people, I think-- but in general, I was considered a good, godly Christian woman.  But this was really because (with the unfortunate exception of the domestic arts) I happened to have lot of the traits associated with godly womanliness.  It didn't really have much of anything to do with following Jesus.

On the other hand, my roommate-- the one with the super-homemaking powers-- tended to be naturally much more outspoken and even a little loud.  I suspect that just as I felt inferior to her in the domestic arts, she might have felt inferior to me when it came to having a "quiet and gentle spirit" per 1 Peter 3:4.  How was she to know that it wasn't actually my spirit, my "inner self" as the same Bible verse says, but simply my outward personality, that was quieter and gentler than hers was?

Other friends of mine in the church, I remember, sometimes had serious trouble conforming.  Those who couldn't manage it sometimes ended up leaving the church or even being thrown out.  Why was it, I wonder now, that no one seemed to be able to see that those who succeeded at "godliness" were most often those to whom the approved behaviors simply came naturally?

Why does it seem like this is still often the case in many churches today?

I'm not talking about those things which Galatians 5:22-23 calls "the fruit of the Spirit":

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.

It's true that some of these will come easier to some personalities, and others will come easier to other personalities.  But every kind of personality can cultivate these basic virtues, and they won't necessarily look the same in every person.  But what I'm really talking about is when a certain outwardly recognizable stereotype is viewed as "godly" for one whole subset of Christian people (like men or women, or church leaders, or children), or even for all Christians everywhere.  If you fit the stereotype, or can fit yourself into it, you're approved.  If not, you get disapproval and censure.

Under Much Grace, Cynthia Kunsman's informative blog about spiritual abuse, points out that this tendency to seek conformity to a set of unspoken and unwritten expectations can be a spiritually abusive practice:

Manipulative and authoritarian Christian groups manifest this phenomenon all of the time, with great predictability. One of the most significant problems with cultic groups stems from the many different *informal* rules that are held, communicated, and followed by the group, though they often do not directly communicate these rules to new members. . . All groups have standards, expectations, and unspoken rules, [but] cultic groups are riddled with unwritten codes and expectations that are never brought into the light of scrutiny. . . [T]he consequences for failing to comply with [a] standard can range from formal and severe to informal and avoidant.

Every social group has some standards and unspoken rules.  When you meet someone in Western culture, for instance, you shake hands, and to ignore an offered handshake is extremely rude.  But when the standards become restrictive boxes that require everyone in a group to be alike, that's a problem.

Isn't the God who made us, a little more creative than that?  Since God's wisdom displayed through the church according to Ephesians 3:10 is "manifold" (meaning "many and various," in both the English and the Greek texts), shouldn't there be many and various ways to be a good Christian?  And shouldn't it be possible to do so while still being ourselves?

As I remember reading somewhere once (if I could remember where, I'd cite it) individuality in humanity is a feature, not a bug.  Jesus didn't expect Peter to act just like Andrew, or John to act just like Nathaniel.  Or Martha to act just like Mary.

Jesus told Martha that Mary had chosen the better thing-- but He didn't insist that Martha choose it too.  He didn't reject her act of service in making a meal-- He just told her she was getting too worried and bothered about it.

I think if Jesus had come in person to my apartment when I was just out of college, He'd have praised my roommate for her individual way of welcoming Him, and me for mine. Neither of us would have felt like we didn't measure up.

No conformity required.  Just love.

Fitting In (Or Not)

It seems like I've spent most of my life until recently trying to fit in, and worrying about not fitting in. When I was young, like most kids who aren't into sports, fashion or other aspects of mainstream culture, I looked for alternate groups to belong to-- and found them in high school through band and the speech team, and eventually, in the church.

I remember making fun of the jocks and cheerleaders and student leaders, though never to their faces, of course.  But it made us feel better, as members of the less cool groups, to believe that it was actually the popular kids who were inferior in some way to us.  Human nature, really.

I learned, like many of us did, to adapt myself to the groups I was in, to try to fit in better.  I think that's why, when I joined Maranatha Campus Ministries in college, I ended up going right along with the most of the pressures to conform, even as far as participating in ostracizing former members.  In some ways the real me got lost.  Yet I never could bring myself to be actively unkind or cruel to anyone.  Judgmental, yes.  Passive-aggressive, yes.  But not cruel.

Eventually Maranatha Campus Ministries dissolved, and our church (I was married by this time) became Grace Christian Fellowship.  And Grace Christian really did try to improve in the area of extending grace to all people.  But gradually the expectation reasserted itself that everyone in the group was to have the same vision and be working towards the same overarching purpose, which was to start new churches all over the globe.  And somehow, even though we'd been part of the church for so long, my husband and I just never felt part of that calling.  So we talked to the pastor and moved on, amicably enough.

We had made it through the hard times of authoritarian coercion and spiritual abuse, only to leave when the church finally grew willing to let people leave without hurting them for doing it.  We didn't fit in.  No matter how we'd tried, no matter how much we pretended, we never really had.  Probably that's part of why we married one another!

During the next few years, as my second child grew past toddlerhood and I began to have more time to think and figure out who I was now, I worked on redefining my faith.  We found a new church, an Independent Church of Christ which, while it was involved in missions, focused more on the community we actually lived in.  It attracted us chiefly because the pastors were very up-front about allowing disagreement on all sorts of things, as long as you believed that Jesus was the Christ and had died for your sins and risen from the dead.  Since those were the things we knew we still believed, we were happy to become part of this new group.

Somewhere around 2002 I got really interested in the Internet and online communities.  And though this may seem off-topic (it really isn't), I started reading a graphic novel series called Elfquest, written and drawn by Wendy and Richard Pini.  Elfquest is about a group of woodland elves who manifestly don't fit in to the primitive world of humans where they live.  Though they have found ways to adapt to life as they know it, it becomes gradually clear that they aren't from this place-- and they begin to seek out other lost tribes of elves scattered over the planet, and eventually find the interplanetary vessel they originally arrived in and begin to redefine themselves and their lives in light of that knowledge.

This series somehow got right under my skin and resonated with me like few things ever had.  I joined an Elfquest discussion forum (feeling very odd about doing something so fannish and so outside my Christian comfort zone) and began to interact with people all over the world who, except for their love of this series, simply didn't think the way I did!  I wanted to "do unto them as I would have them do unto me," so I opened my mind and heart to listen and truly hear where they were coming from, to connect with them.  But though I became an integral part of the Elfquest online forum, I never really quite fit in there, either. My monogamous sexual ethics and dislike of erotica were usually looked on as "hang-ups," even though I didn't try to impose them on anyone else.

I think now, looking back on it, that this was my first real foray into doing what Christ said and being "in the world, though not of the world."  Ever since I had become a Christian, I had lived in one insular community or another, rarely (outside of work) ever talking to anyone who wasn't an evangelical Christian.  Now I found there was a lot to learn, a lot of good to be gained, from treating non-Christians as real people and not just targets for evangelizing.

Needless to say, this shoved the redefinition of my faith into high gear as I had to confront issues I'd never really looked at before, talking to people who had strong reasons for being pagan or shamanist or atheist.  Interestingly, as I accepted them for who they were, they accepted me for who I was. They even let me "witness" to them sometimes when I did it respectfully, honoring their right to believe differently than I did.  When their challenges to my beliefs got beyond what I could handle and my faith went into a sort of crisis mode, one of them (an agnostic) kindly directed me to a place that could help me:  the Doxa website and forum.

Doxa helped me find my own way to understand Christianity through the new, more open mindset I had learned to embrace.  I started to look at the Bible differently, as more of a narrative and less of a rule book, as I've already shared extensively on this blog.  However, in many important ways I was, and still am, a child of the evangelical Christianity I first knew.  I'm still an evangelical in the way defined by Jim Wallis over at Sojourner's Online Magazine:

I believe in one God, the centrality and Lordship of God's son Jesus Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, the authority of the scriptures, the saving death of the crucified Christ and his bodily resurrection -- not as a metaphor but a historical event. Yep, the whole nine yards.

And yet because I've gradually become more politically liberal and less in line with certain hot-button evangelical ideas like young-earth creation and complementarianism, I don't fit in very well any more with evangelicalism, and I've come to identify myself as a "post-evangelical." Also, because of Maranatha (as I've discussed before), I still tend to shrink back from full involvement in every aspect of my church.  But I have visited more mainstream churches like Lutheran, Methodist and Episcopal, and have found that my lack of enjoyment of liturgy and ritual, and my foundational evangelical mindset, really kept me from fitting in very well in those churches, either.

What it comes down to is that I've had to reconcile myself to the idea that there's pretty much always going to be some way that I don't fit in.  But another thing I've come to understand is that fitting in isn't really what life is all about.

The New Testament talks about Christians being fitted together as "living stones. . . being built into a spiritual house" (1 Peter 2:5).  It says the church is "the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it." 1 Corinthians 12:27.  But at least some of these passages emphasize, not fitting in, not conformity and sameness, but the differences between the individual parts.

Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 1 Corinthians 12:15-20.

For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly. . .
Romans 12:4-6

 If anything, what I've come to seek in my life isn't to fit in, but simply to be accepted, and to accept others.  As Jenny Lind Schmidt said in Psychology Today, it's quite possible to belong even though you don't fit in-- if your community will accept you as having a valid place among them despite your differences.

I'm grateful for my current church for accepting me, for giving me a place to belong even if I don't fit in.  Though I could look for a place where people tend to think more like I do, I place a huge premium on being in a place where people don't have to think alike.

This is why I identify with Samantha at Defeating the Dragons when she talks about why she stays in a church where she doesn't agree with every policy:

In the church I attend, though, even though I’m a heretic by most Protestant standards (between the universalism-ish and the Pelagianism . . .), and even though I’m a pro-choice Democrat, I can talk about that with the people I go to church with, in my small group and in my theology program, and not face any condemnation or judgment for that. And it’s because, right along with racial diversity, the motto “in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity” is taken pretty doggone seriously. There are Quiverful families in this church, and there are single working mothers, and there are politics of all stripes, and we all go to church together– and we’re led by people who have no patience for self-righteousness and judgment.

A body with many parts, all different, each valuing the others.  That's what the 12th chapters of Romans and 1 Corinthians are both talking about.  Using 1 Peter 2:5's metaphor, it turns out Jesus can somehow miraculously build a house where the bricks can be fitted together even though they don't fit in the way identical bricks do.

So I don't worry so much about not fitting in any more.  It's enough just to enjoy the journey with my fellow travelers.

Of all kinds, in all combinations.  That's what this beautiful and varied thing called humanity is all about.