Is it ever ok NOT to be open to stretching yourself outside your comfort zone?

One of the groups I’m involved with has been doing a study on compassion. Last night we talked about how journeying with someone else in their life and struggles goes leaps and bounds toward growing our compassion and helping us identify with situations we might not understand.

This experience has been so crucial in my spiritual and personal formation. I am not an inherently compassionate person and my environment growing up didn’t help; I lived in a relatively narrow-minded bubble where I was rarely if ever confronted with people who looked, thought, or acted differently from me. I was raised with a very black-and-white worldview and it was so easy for me to adhere to this perception of the world because I was hardly ever confronted with people who thought differently.

Then I got out into the big, wide world. I don’t know if it’s because the transition happened gradually (from a Christian high school to a Christian college; from living on campus, to living in an apartment with classmates), or because of my personality, but I fortunately handled what could’ve been extreme culture shock pretty well. In other words I never had a period of rebellion; I never acted out (aside from writing this blog for the past six years …).

As I began to grow up more, to grow out of my bubble, I began to push the boundaries of what I’d been told were black-and-white issues. I’ve written a lot about that here already, and it’s what I intend to do professionally for the rest of my life, so I don’t need to go all the way down the rabbit hole. Except to say that challenging - and in many cases stepping outside of - the boundaries with which I grew up has shown me that no, the world isn’t black and white. That maybe it’s important to spend time with people who are different than you who you - gasp - disagree with. That yes, compassion grows out of these types of interactions.

I cannot overemphasize how important I think this is, especially for kids with an upbringing similar to mine. I know that it can be so easy to stay inside that safe, comfortable bubble but I believe the most important and deepest growth we can experience happens outside the bubble.

But is there a limit?

I’m not sure it’s narrow-minded to want to stay away from people who harm others, or even themselves, for example. Should I want to identify with and grow compassion toward a child molester or a drug dealer? I’m not saying these people shouldn’t be shown compassion; if I truly believe one of the core tenants of my faith I must admit that love and compassion are for everyone. But do I have to learn this on a practical level, or is it enough to believe it in theory?

I’ve believed “God is love” in theory since I was like five. But I still have a hard time making that belief manifest itself in compassion, especially when I’m judging something from a distance. So how messy do I have to get? I return to my initial question:

Is it ever ok NOT to be open to stretching yourself outside your comfort zone?

I’ve written before about how one of the biggest things I learned from my parents via osmosis was that it was normal (even expected) to love your life’s work. So I don’t have a lot more to say on this subject, except to relate this adorable exchange we had on the phone last week. My dad - ever the pragmatist - was asking me if I knew what I wanted to do after grad school. (Though to their credit - and in spite of footing the bill for my undergrad education - my parents have never once conveyed an ounce of skepticism or displeasure with how I’ve chosen to pursue my life’s work. Which has, at times, been unconventional to say the least.)

Dad: Do you have any idea about what you want to do after seminary?

Me: No, not really yet. Right now, just going to school is the goal. Maybe pursue my Ph.D?

Dad: Really?

Me: Yah, maybe. Maybe become a professor. I don’t know - I just know that this is what I love and what I want to do with my life in some capacity. So I can do what I love.

Dad: I understand. I’ve always done what I love.

Mom: I’ve always done what I love. My prayer for my kids has always just been that they’d find what they loved to do, and honor God with it.

See? Adorable.

Ryan and I were out for drinks the other night, eavesdropping on a table of women behind us; they were mostly gossiping and complaining. Ryan said that he frequently hears women talking amongst themselves about these types of things (he eavesdrops a lot, I guess?) and asked me what I talk about with my girl friends. I told him that of course it’s important to have a space in friendships when you can vent and share honesty, but that my communication style with my close friends tends to be like it is with him: more about ideas than things.

I love engaging on an idealogical level, so I suppose I seek that out. I have good theological / philosophical / political / theoretical discussions with all my close friends - I like to think in any good relationship you do more than provide a sympathetic shoulder; you shape and inform eachothers’ worldview. You learn from eachother, grow together, challenge one another, and hold eachother accountable to live your best lives.

I know I’d get bored - both in my friendships and in my relationship with Ryan - if we only communicated on a “daily goings on” sort of level; because life is about so much more than the day-to-day. Or it should be. But maybe it isn’t if that’s all you talk about. Maybe it’s self-reinforcing.

Which started me wondering - my parents have been married for 32 years and I’ve never heard them talk about ideas. While I don’t understand how they can consistently come up with new things to talk about, they do, and it seems to work just fine for them. It’s not that I don’t think they’re intellectual - my mom was a teacher and my dad is a literal rocket scientist. And it’s not that they don’t think about ideas - when I start down a theoretical rabbit hole with them, they engage with me and have clearly formed opinions on many topics. It’s more that they don’t seem to carry on these types of discussions with eachother.

So maybe it’s a generational thing, maybe my generation is more prone to question what we’re told, to want to dig deeper, to disccover things like truth and success for ourselves. Maybe it’s about being a post-modern generation: not seeking black-and-white answers and instead living with a fluidity of meaning as opposed to our parents’ more black-and-white approach. Maybe it’s about Gen X-ers seeking a different type of community than modernity’s more individualistic approach. Or maybe it’s just personality - since I know people who are older and love to pontificate; while I also know people my age who just don’t enjoy engaging philosophically.

Maybe there’s a personal propensity one way or another but I do think it’s important to know how to process theoretical ideas, and engage them when necessary; that’s just part of being a well-rounded person who tries to get the most out of life. But I suppose to what extent you engage depends on who you surround yourself with. I’ve always been a writer so I’ve always been extremely introspective and analytical. But I don’t know that I would place such a priority on the discussion of ideas if it weren’t for Ryan’s influence in my life over the last 11 years.

And sometimes it gets a little extreme. We so love dreaming and planning and discussing the things we’re passionate about that it can make daily life seem like a bit of a grind. The benefit here is that it’s helped us eradicate some nit-picky type things that just don’t matter (or, I should say, it helpS us … it’s an ongoing process!); but the flip side is that sometimes you have to slog through the daily things in pursuit of your grander ideas. And when you’re only focused on lofty goals and ambitions, this slog can seem almost unbearable.

In the midst of the pursuit of our passions we struggle a lot with feeling bored; with feeling like we’re not challenging ourselves as much as we should be; that we’re not fitting enough into this one precious life that we get.

I know that I emphasize ideas over things, but I don’t want to miss the place where things become part of what’s important about my pursuit of an idea.

This time last election cycle I was already knee deep in campaign season - campaigning, fundraising, going to fundraisers, chipping in my two cents on this blog and elsewhere, and embroiling myself in policy discussions. Ryan even wrote a lengthy, well-supported post on why he was voting for Obama which create quite a bit of fallout. A political coming out of the closet if you will.

This time around I decided to stick my head in the sand.

I should be clear on exactly what I’m avoiding - I would still consider myself relatively well-informed on political issues.  I still think its vital to be open-minded and challenge yourself by listening to and dialoguing with different viewpoints. But I’m ignoring te rhetoric, the spin, the fanfare. And I’m certainly ignoring incendiary social media interaction which - at this point four years ago - I was addicted to.

Here’s why: people are mean - they attack you personally and engage in all kinds of logical fallacies. They’re uninformed. They don’t change. They don’t really want to have a reasonable dialogue. People are single issue voters and irrationally so. People ignore the evidence. They refuse to separate church and state. They make assumptions about who you are based on one or two things they know about you.

These are all things I learned last election cycle - back when I wanted to believe the best about people. When I was politically idealistic and thought that if only people had enough information, more education, reasonable dialog, they could be trusted to make a wise decision. And I’m certainly not saying I have the market cornered on wisdom or that my optimism was shattered because people didn’t agree with me.

I guess you could say the experience made me cynical about the average person’s ability to be reasonable and informed. So instead of inciting my cynicism further I’ve decided to just pull out of these interactions altogether.

Overall, I had an amazing upbringing - there were a few painful years during adolescence when I attempted a muted form of rebellion but other than that things went swimmingly. I wanted for nothing without being spoiled; learned the value of hard work; had two parents who loved us and each other; was afforded a plethora of opportunity - from international travel to private K-college education. In short - the Cleavers would be proud.

But I do have one big beef with how I was raised.

When it comes to religion I ended up with certain assumptions built into my belief system. I’m not sure how they got there; I was never (that I know of) overtly taught “you can’t be a Christian and be gay” or “Mormons are going to hell,” or a variety of other things I later realized existed within my faith practice. Somehow they made their way in - I suspect it was simply part of the fabric of the culture in which I was raised; I’ve since had conversations with my peers who had similar experiences.

I had my first wake up call when I was a Junior in college. I like to think that I’ve kept my mind and practice open enough to make room for a continual stream of wake up calls throughout the intervening years. I’ve documented many of these pieces of my journey on this blog; I get no greater joy than from the arenas of theology and philosophy: discussing, dissecting, writing about, reading about, driving my friends crazy with.

Through these pursuits, my faith, theology, and belief system have of course drastically changed and evolved. This hasn’t been a huge problem for me because I’ve always been a non-denominational evangelical - I was never constrained by the doctrinal teachings of one church, bishop, or pope. (Though I suppose I was constrained in a different way, as mentioned above.)

Still, there are tenants of orthodox faith that are widely accepted as necessary components of Christianity. I’m not even talking about the “assumptions” from my childhood but rather things confirmed by creeds, doctrines long held as crucial to the acceptance into the church. The very fact that I believe it might be ok to challenge these creeds and doctrines as time evolves might be enough to put me in the “heresy” camp.

I know some of the beliefs I hold are heretical to orthodox Christianity; I’ve known that for a long time. But I had never considered what that meant for me as I self-identified as Christian.

Does it matter what we call ourselves? Probably not. It doesn’t really matter if people move me from the “Christian” column to the “heretic” column. It probably doesn’t really matter what I call or don’t call myself as long as I am continue moving toward the Truth.

Still, I can’t help but think that Brian McLaren (who I credit with ringing the bell that sounded my first wake-up call) was on to something when he wrote the book “A Generous Orthodoxy.” Perhaps - even though those of us stepping outside the bounds of traditional orthodoxy can surely create our own faith community - it’s best to open the gates wide and reevaluate some of our assumptions and doctrines about what it means to be a Christian.