A Faith That Creates Laughter

Browsing the shelves at a second hand bookstore, I ran across a book in a happy yellow dust jacket.  The color and the snappy title caught my interest.  I would recommend it for anyone who wants to explore life, faith and the balancing of the two with a fresh tone. "Does This Church Make Me Look Fat?" by Rhoda Janzen is an honest, witty, and thought provoking look at what it means to be human and a person of faith.

As a woman raised in the Mennonite church she explores and contrasts church in  various traditions: Episcopal to Pentecostal.  The lens of her conservative background, her liberal arts education (she is a PhD who teaches literature), and her natural inclination to see things through a glass twisted enough to be a fun house mirror all unite to create a fun and meaningful read.  It is a spiritual book but it is not a religious book.  There is too much honesty in it for the later and too much willingness to accept that people are less than perfect even if they are trying to live a Christian life.  For Janzen, however, that is okay.  She has seen her own fun house reflection and come to terms with herself as the unique and gifted person she is and can become.

What truly attracted me to the book was the willingness to aim at sacred cows, to examine this thing we call church and Christian life and take a pea shooter to it as needed, and finally, to say I am who I am, the person God must have intended me to be, and so there!  Having begun my own life in one faith group and then later in life migrated into another faith group, I understood many of the observations of the experiences.  In such situations you meet wonderful people, but see things about them with a different eye and the choice is to ignore, minimize, patronize, or recognize the messages and lessons they provide.

This ability, and willingness, to laugh at who we are is refreshing because Christians can be so boring, so deadpan, and so serious.  We apply a heavy varnish of sacred holiness to so much of life and live in fear that we are not somber minded enough.  We live from extreme to extreme.  In the middle space is the ability to laugh at ourselves, accept the foibles, and tolerate the humanity we see in the mirror everyday.  This, in turn, allows us to accept those same things in others around us.

The grim faced, everything is a sin or provides a slippery slide to one, mentality is one that attracts no one to a life of faith.  The pious inability to laugh at our own human weakness as weaknesses and move on is not one that Jesus would recognize.  The illogical and wrong headed thinking that says we will not do X, W, Z but turn around and do L,M.O should be recognized as the human nature it demonstrates. 

We are illogical, inconsistent, demanding, hypocritical, hypercritical, superior, fearful, fearmongering, and hopeless at times.  All people are and the fact we claim a relationship with  God should not make us more so but should make us humbly aware of those faults and grace filled enough to make allowances and help one another to be better - in love. 

The title question is a good one.  Does this church (my faith, my life) make me look fat (complacent, self-satisfied, inactive).  I say we all start focusing on finding the laughter in life and in our faith.  Yes, there are deadly serious aspects to life but moping and be melancholy do not help the situation and actually show a decided lack of faith.  

If your God is not big enough to laugh and cause you to laugh at life - maybe you need to reexamine the nature of your God, your faith and yourself.

Spiritual Gluttony

I happened across the 14th century classic, The Dark Night of the Soul, an a section called 'spiritual gluttony' caught my eye.   Gluttony, one of those seven deadly sins, is well known as eating to obsessive excess.  So how, I wondered, could there be spiritual gluttony?

Too much of anything is a path to problems.  When we lose balance we are prone to errors and consumption of things which are bad for us. 

Spiritual gluttony hordes experience.  The self-indulgent praise and worship of many churches comes to mind. The exclusionary decor or elitist attitudes of others also springs to mind.  In error, some pull up their chair to the feast of God's presence and begin to focus on how it makes them feel, what it does for them, and what they get out of it.   Purpose and meaning can become confused, and as Saint John of the Cross wrote so wisely, "These persons think that their own satisfaction and pleasure are the satisfaction and service of God."

Spiritual gluttony robs the body of Christ.  The self-centered focus on personal experience takes away from the communal, sharing, building of the whole aspect of Christian life.  How many times are we urged to pray for one another, take up one another's burdens, and share with one another? Spiritual gluttony was the sin of Corinth, an expression of an 'every man for himself and I don't care about you' spirit that is anti-Christ.  It is the spirit which says let others starve, grow cold, be lost or suffer - I have mine and that is all that matters!

Spiritual gluttony leads to weakness.  Just as consumption of too much food leads to a comprised physical body, spiritual overindulgence leads to a weakened spirit.  Self-denial and sacrifice, so well known to Biblical prophets and Christ, are foreign terms of alien meaning.  The sacrifice of prayer is set aside unless it is prayer about our own needs and wants.  " These persons who are thus inclined to such pleasures have another very great imperfection, which is that they are very weak and remiss in journeying upon the hard road of the Cross; for the soul that is given to sweetness naturally has its face set against all self-denial, which is devoid of sweetness ."

In reading these words, written to another religious time with its own unique customs and practices, I was struck by how unchanging basic concepts are. We often explain away problems as being reflective of our culture, our time, or a stage of life.   Spiritual truth is spiritual truth and as such remains unchanged by cultural passing modes.

Spiritual people, then and now, in their ignorance and enthusiasm, can focus in on only the sweet blessed presence of God and like children over indulge to the exclusion of other spiritual disciplines designed to help grow a balanced and healthy Christian life. The sacrifice of service, the commitment of prayer for others, the work to become a worthy worker in whatever field, and the suffering of life.

The Pain in Healing

I remember as a child some hurt that as it began to heal began also to hurt and worry me with constant irritation.   My mother repeated sage advice: “You know it's healing when it begins to (itch, bother use, twitch, sting).”

So, as I recently broke my ankle and had some wonderful people pray for its speedy healing, I found myself remembering those wise words.  Especially, when the fracture occasionally stung just a bit.

Then I found myself wondering why in the process of healing is there pain?  In the natural and normal process this “pain” is considered just that and has been for centuries.

There are some who would claim a promised immediate and total free-from-pain type of healing as the result of some perceived blessing of God to those who enough faith. Yet, it is clear, some pain is not supposed to be masked or made invisible.

Pain has a purpose in life to remind us of several important truths.

1)          Pain is everywhere. We are not alone. We share and can empathize with others because we know pain. Let those suffering in accordance with God's will entrust themselves to a faithful Creator, while continuing to do good. (1 Peter 4:19)

2)          Pain is a reminder to us that we have frailties and are not super human. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory for ever and ever. (2 Timothy 4:18) My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9a)

3)          Pain is a reminder that we cannot have things our way all the time but we can know a God who will bring comfort. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:12a,13)

So often we ask for signs for assurances as big as a battleship in the sky!  Yet, often the sign is in the small things, the tiny things, like a twinge in a wound knitting itself whole or a sting in a bone weaving itself together.

“For everything there is a time” says the Bible and sometimes it is simply time to sit, think, and experience the miracle of the healing forces God gifted each of His creation with and as those forces work there will be pain, discomfort, and frustration.  These all can be used to work in you the processing, the refining, and the spiritual development that can make us stronger in our faith.

Only if we let it and only if we embrace and understand in the healing there is sometimes pain.