The Antiquated Modern
Not long ago, we were having dinner with friends (yes, you really should check out their blog because they are gourmet cooks and make ridiculous food), reminiscing/commiserating about some of our experiences growing up in the church. We were asking each other if - in light of poking fun at some of the traditions of our background - we would change anything about the religious aspects of our childhood. I responded that I would’ve changed what was talked about. I know there are issues on which my parents don’t agree with the general evangelical consensus. But what’s more than that - I know that whether they agree or disagree they have reasons for their beliefs.
I didn’t come away from my upbringing with a strong sense of the research, wrestling, and decisions behind beliefs espoused in my churches, schools and at home. There are exceptions, but in general I came away with a series of strong implications of things I should believe. Don’t get me wrong - I was encouraged to question things and my parents have been very supportive and open to discussing my faith journey but it’s something I’ve initiated as an adult.
As I thought about it, I realized I never heard any philosophical discussions between my parents - about faith, religion, politics, science or much of anything theoretical. I knew it couldn’t be that these things didn’t interest them or because they weren’t educated: my mom was a teacher with a background in speech and hearing and my dad is a USAFA grad with an astronautical engineering masters from MIT. They’re likely far more logical by training than I will ever be! Yet Ryan and I pick apart philosophies almost non-stop. We run the gamut on everything from eschatologies to gender and class constraints to economics to cloning to growing babies in pods.
As the answer to my friends’ question implied, I resented this lack of open discussion a bit. I didn’t understand, if there were issues that cropped up, why, in my various spheres of home, school, church, these issues wouldn’t be discussed or explained. Then I read A New Kind of Christianity by, yep, Brian McLaren. Â Among lots of other amazing things that I’m still digesting, he talks about the series of interpretations of the Christian faith that have grown out of eachother. He goes through what he would consider each shift in thinking that the church has experienced as it’s struggled to remain relevant. What he defines as each stage is less important for my purpose here than what I learned about my childhood, my parents and the stage they belong to.
Their phase of faith and the phase I was raised in via my churches and schools is unused to asking questions; it’s not concerned with breaking everything down; with discussing a topic ad nauseum only to come at it from a different angle; they see things as uncomplicated and perhaps more systematic. This is my Dad to a “t,” I can hear him saying: “It’s pretty simple Alexis, it’s just not that big a deal so I don’t see the need to ruffle a bunch of feathers.”
What I see now is that perhaps the things I look back on and would’ve like to discuss didn’t even appear to be issues in the sphere of my upbringing. They weren’t leaving me out of the loop or trying to pull the wool over my eyes. It’s likely they didn’t even think of it in that way. Their phase was more of a black-and-white phase, where as the phase I emerged into has mostly shades of grey and very few, if any, instances of black and white.
And I have to remind myself of how Brian McLaren described it - one phase needs the other. The majority may (and likely will) eventually move into the phase that allows it to stay relevant. But that space only exists because it had somewhere to come from. For those of us on the edge of this emerging phase, it can be painful and frustrating to exist in the in-between. Not everyone will make the journey with us, but that doesn’t mean they’re in the wrong or have to be left completely behind. In my quest to discard my religion and find my faith, that’s something I need to be reminded of.
June 09 2010 10:53 am | family and parents and religion