Re-envisioning Engagement (Part 2)

Continued from Part 1.

In addition to understanding engagement as a dynamic state of being increasingly “almost married” (notably, lodged between two other dynamic states), I think we would benefit from changing at least two other elements of our view of engagement.

First, I want to contest the common view that the purpose of engagement is to plan a wedding. I think a wedding at its best is a celebration of a good thing in community. However, it seems that both the time and money required to have a wedding–or at least one that that competes with the contents of bridal magazines or our childhood fantasies–delay most marriages.

I find it telling that in a different time and culture engagement and marriage were often done quite differently. My grandparents married in the early 50s, when they were in their 20s. Mimi and Granddad met in June and started a relationship nearly immediately. They soon started talking about marriage, declared their plans more officially in December, and were married in a pastor’s home in February, with only my granddad’s family attending. (Hers lived in Chicago at the time and couldn’t make a trip to Kentucky.

While many people at the time had weddings, they did not. And according to my grandmother, this was not at all uncommon. I suppose we don’t know when most people today would get married without so much hoopla, but I find it telling that a year-long engagement is “standard” primarily because of the time needed to plan a wedding (just Google “engagement length” and check out the forums where women are comparing timelines) and that some people even opt to wait multiple years to marry to gather sufficient funds for the ceremony of their dreams.

When I asked Mimi if she thinks the rising popularity of cohabitation has contributed significantly to the lengthening of engagement, she replies with a hearty yes. People had shorter engagements and simpler ceremonies in the past, she believes, because it was culturally unacceptable to move in together or have sex without a marriage license.

I think it’s legitimate to have opinions about what you want your wedding to be like, and I don’t think it’s bad to spend time and money on some of the elements that are more important to you. However, I find it unfortunate that we put such a focus on weddings that few people feel they can get married without one of sufficient granduer. This not only creates a culture of weddings which marginalizes the have-nots (something we as Christians should avoid), but also encourages people to wait longer to get married for questionable reasons. Is a fancier ceremony really worth delaying your marriage for several more months? For some, perhaps, it is–and it’s not my place to judge them–but I feel shorter engagements would be better for many couples.

Weddings are a cultural practice, so they will undoubtedly be influenced by our cultures. We feel societal pressure to do our weddings in certain ways, and it’s not an evil thing to take part in this part of culture by following many of these norms. But we don’t need to follow every cultural convention, especially as we, as Christians, seek to do life in a way that aligns with kingdom values. And since these values include things such as chastity, commitment, generosity, and giving up status, I see a lot of pros with creating a culture of simpler, sooner weddings.

In my opinion, if you’re committed to each other and want to be married, it makes sense to go ahead and be married–and I believe we as Christians should do a better job supporting that.

Re-envisioning Engagement (Part 1)

I will eventually get better at blogging again–I promise!

I’ve never been good at being normal, so it’s probably not a surprise that I’m not a typical bride. What feminist could be? What you may not have realized is that I’m so atypical, I actually hate being engaged. And I appear to be the first woman ever to feel this way. A few Google searches have found very few results with “engagement” and “frustrating,” “hate,” or “sucks” in the same sentence, save a few complaints about military engagement in various locales.

As a teenager I frequently picked out my own birthday presents, which I don’t think is a rarity in and of itself; however, I also frequently talked my mom into letting me receive certain gifts early for one reason or another. Given my history, I openly admit, part of my disdain for engagement is a simple lack of patience. However, I also, over the past several months, have been reflecting on the significance of marriage and how it “ought to be done,” and I think some genuine criticisms can be made of how engagement/marriage work in our society, especially when viewed from a Christian perspective.

First, I would like to point out that engagement is a fairly invisible state outside of the marketplace. While temporary, everyone that is married was once engaged, yet you’d hardly even know it. Engagement seems to be nothing but a special subset of dating, tacked on at the end of the courtship process, and certainly distinct from marriage itself. Perhaps this distinction is less sharp outside of religious circles that ban cohabitation, but within evangelical Christianity, there is a clear divide. For example, churches often feature various activities for married couples, but only a few churches make certain their language is inclusive toward other committed couples. While I could write an additional post or two about the consequences this has on our evangelistic efforts (if a non-Christian couple that lives together isn’t welcome in a couple’s small group, too, what does that say about your church’s hospitality?), I want to focus here on the fact that this excludes Christians who are seriously dating or engaged who may very well be “closer” to marriage than not. And would it be such a bad thing for these couples to also be included in couples’ activities? Biblically, older men and women are instructed to mentor the younger, and many churches still emphasize the value of relationships between older and younger married couples, specifically. I argue that it would be valuable to let those relationships begin developing between couples that are married (be it for a year or for forty) and those that are still on their way, rather than waiting until vows are officially said.

In fact, it seems that Christians that heavily emphasize waiting until marriage to have sex have a tendency to heavily dichotomize engagement and marriage. The online magazine Boundless, written for college students and singles in their 20s puts it as such: “OK, congratulations, you’re engaged. What do you do now? There is really only one concept to keep in mind when it comes to engagement, and it’s quite easy. It’s simple and it should guide you in every decision, thought and act until you are standing before God, the people and the pastor on the big day. Ready? You are not married yet. Now, depending on logistical or other circumstances, cultural backgrounds, length of relationship, things other Christians might have told you, there’s another way to put this: Ready? You are not married yet. Remember that if you get nothing else out of this column.”

I acknowledge this is true, and I’m not arguing to charge Christian sexual ethics. But I do think that this demonstrates the oddity of how we talk about engagement and marriage. We insist that marriage is a good thing and bad-mouth those who are unwilling to formally commit themselves; however, when two people are ready for that commitment, we expect a long waiting period, during which–rather than helping them make mental, emotional, and practical transitions towards marriage–we will emphasize, verbally and non-verbally, that they are not at all married, no matter how married they feel or how married they want to be. To me, rather than putting a not in italics it would be much more useful for us to consider engagement a time of being increasingly almost married.

In this way, I believe, engagement becomes a legitimate state between dating and marriage, rather than simply the end of dating. Engagement is seen as a true between state that begins on the dating end of the spectrum, but quickly moves closer to marriage. Besides these questionable ways of talking about engagement, I think it’s notable that there seem to be many more books about dating or deciding to become engaged or marriage itself than there are books about the engagement process. While relatively short, it is engagement is quite common, making it odd that there is such a silence. To me it sometimes feels the only people in-tune with the existence of engaged people are wedding vendors–and this seems unfortunate. Shouldn’t we as a society, and especially we who are Christians, “see” engaged people and address them at that many diverse places they are at?

… to be continued…

Why Infant Baptism is More Than It Seems

Today I had the first discussion of baptism that I’ve engaged in since reading Paul Jewett’s book, Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace, and it has inspired a sudden blog post. The summer quarter has been crazy, but I do hope to get back into regular blogging.

I thought I’d share just a brief snippet I’ve learned over the past couple months through this book, as well as my Medieval and Reformation Church History class:

Growing up I never realized that infant baptism was about more than infant baptism. It’s not just about whether or not you believe babies can have faith or whether or not you think that matters. It’s not just about dunking and sprinkling and confession and commitment and community. It’s actually all about the separation of church and state.

Before I met my fiance Jeremiah I had never heard of Zwingli, but Zwingli is now in fact my favorite Reformer. Zwingli, for those of you that don’t know, lived in Switzerland pre-Calvin and is essentially his predecessor by a couple decades. He began a Reformation there which originated independently of Luther’s (as far as we can tell), while Calvin was late enough to be influenced by both. Besides his weird freak-out over church organs (“They’re not in the Bible, so we should get rid of them”!), Zwingli was a pretty awesome guy who did a good job questioning the status quo–unlike Luther, who wanted to revise a few important doctrines but was too conservative to advocate for any major overhauls. Luther changed what he needed, but Zwingli more systematically analyzed what needed to change. He looked beyond ideas like “justification by faith” and moving into things like the Eucharist, church polity, and even the decorations of church buildings.

But there was one thing Zwingli couldn’t change. He couldn’t get rid of infant baptism. He actually briefly considered the issue… but ultimately, it just wouldn’t work. Why? Because we couldn’t have citizens. The church was so tied up with the state that there was no way to make life without infant baptism make any sense. Baptism was how a baby was officially made part of a community, part of the nation.

When the Anabaptists took things to the next level, insisting that believer baptism was the only biblical form, it wasn’t just a theological issue. It was also a political issue, a church/state issue. The Anabaptists insisted the church should be entirely separate from the state, anyway. In fact, they sometimes fancied themselves the only “real” Christians, since they were the only ones who understood the real New Testament Christians had to endure persecution. The Anabaptists varied widely in the degree of their radicalism (with some wanting to take over hearts by force, with others aligning themselves with pacifism), but basically all agreed on these two things: the church was never meant to be combined with the state (as it was under Constantine) and baptism was always meant to come after a profession of faith by an individual able to make such a decision for themselves.

I hate the alliance of Christianity with power, so the Anabaptists have definitely won extra sympathy from me for the church/state issue. It surprises me that we so rarely hear about this side of the issue in churches today. It makes sense, though, that infant baptism would set up a society in which everyone assumes lots of people are Christian and large portions of them don’t have any meaningful faith. It seems that to a large extent, that’s still where we are today, unfortunately.

Outgrowing Our Ignorance

Last week my boyfriend Jeremiah (who a few days later became my fiance!) posted a couple of articles to his new biblioblog on Luke-Acts about the recent upload of the Codex Sinaiticus to to the Internet (see his posts here and here), with the purpose of pointing out the way this happening has been exploited by those that wish to discredit the Bible, namely Bart Ehrman.

Bart Ehrman is actually a large part of why I first thought my future husband arrogant and ultra-conservative: we met at a Christmas party and ended up talking about my college New Testament professor for some time, Jeremiah attacking his character and my leaping to his defense.

My own story with Ehrman is complex, filled with doubts and questions, hopes and prayers, and a journey to seminary in California. Ehrman has caused many tears, many good discussions, and much thanksgiving in my circle, and I quickly laud him as an excellent teacher in many respects.

But I must admit that when it comes to Ehrman’s attitude toward the media, Jeremiah seems to be largely correct: Ehrman (and some others, to be sure) will talk to reporters and build up a sensationalist story, much as he does in his popular level books. Because religion reporters know nothing about religion, they believe whatever the “experts” tell them, even if the experts don’t represent a story fairly. In the case of the Codex Sinaiticus, the textual variants mentioned in the articles are nothing new or exciting to the scholarly world. Furthermore, the discipline of textual criticism helps us determine with near certainty the majority of the questionable wordings of our texts. But Ehrman didn’t tell that to CNN or the BBC, at least not as they have portrayed it.

Up to this point I have mostly just reiterated what Jeremiah has said on his blog, but I wanted to take things a step further by making a broad sweeping statement:

I think one of the greatest tragedies of the American church is the past century’s apathy toward social injustice at home and around the world, while we have become the richest country in the world, a land that supposedly stands for liberty.

The other great tragedy of the American church, I think, is our lack of a healthy corporate intellectual life. If regular Christians knew just a tiny bit more about the Bible, they wouldn’t freak out when they read these articles, and when their friends read the same articles, they would have answers and resources to point them to. Beyond this immediate application, there are simply so many ways in which a new commitment to academics–and even just thoughtfulness–would make a difference. If we were a bit more thoughtful, I hope to goodness we wouldn’t still sell Test-A-Mints in our bookstores or buy books from the Left Behind Series or Joel Osteen. If we were a bit more studious and reflective, maybe we’d be a bit more clear on the gospel and a bit more loose with cussing and alcohol. If we were just a teeny bit smarter, perhaps we’d offer at least one Sunday school class for married couples that’s more interesting than simply talking about their parenting strategies…

One of the reasons I’m really excited about seminary is the prospect of teaching regular people–be they small children, teenagers, or adults–someday in Sunday school and other community settings. I’m so excited that I will have the power to ameliorate, if only a little, a situation that has bothered me since at least high school, before I understood the problem in any meaningful way. It’s inspiring to think that I could play a small role in helping smart high schoolers that are bored or cynical become intrigued by Christianity again, that I might help average adults understand the context of the Bible in ways that excite and challenge them with new possibilities, that I might get to teach kids about a Jesus that’s a least a bit closer to the original than the average Bible storybook.

Not everyone will be a nerd like me (though I’m hoping Jer and I can at least get our kids to join the club!), but I think there’s a real chance for all of us that care about having a thoughtful faith to make a difference in our fields of interest and in our families, churches, and communities. Even if I don’t inspire people to become Bible geeks, I feel certain there is something to be gained.

I long for the day when thinking is prized among all Christians.

But in the meantime, I highly recommend the book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll. I read it when I was 17 or 18, and it blew me away, made me angry, and gave me hope.

10 reasons why the quarter system is a fail

10) As soon as you start to get to know your classmates, it’s off to a new class.
9) Instead of spending 1-1.5 hr in class 2-3 times a week, you sometimes get to spend 3-4 hr straight. It’s not even like flying cross-country when you have the chance of buying alcohol while you sit for 240 minutes.
8) You have an assignment due in every class, every week.
7) Professors don’t have time to assign real work–so they make you write 3-pg book reviews like junior high.
6) According to a reputable source, Joel Green (who surely knows everything) says the quarter system is more expensive for the school to run.
5) At semester-system Duke MDivs take 24 classes total. Here MDiv students take 36. Their MTS degree is 16 courses, while ours is 24. And I believe (based on semesters at UNC, at least), that 40 hr of class time is the norm, regardless of the system… Meaning we take 480 hr for every 320 hr Duke students take…
4) We have to go to school in the summers–and our summer classes are all intensives lasting 5, 2, or possibly even only 1 wk.
3) We have to agony of watching out friends on the semester or trimester systems finish their exams… and we’re just starting another quarter.
2) We have to pay for all those additional credit hourswhile receiving the same amount of Stafford loan money from the government that semester people do.
1) We have only two one week breaks between Christmas break and September. How do we survive??

Mourning and Rejoicing

My life is not perfect. And my figuring out what my relationship with God now looks like has been somewhat delayed by 5+ weeks of illness, finally abated over the weekend. But as I finished The Lost Letters of Pergamum tonight, it sort of felt things were continuing to come full circle (in addition to the ways they already have, I mean).

I flipped through my old journal since I finished another one last night. The one just previous went from December ‘07 to November ‘08–largely because my less-than-optimal spiritual state seriously hindered my journaling much of the year. I took particular interest in the months of February and March when a lot of my more intense questions about Scripture and early Christianity came up, the pain heightened by the pressure I felt to make a decision about InterVarsity staff. As I went back, it was meaningful to reflect on the way in which really, despite my confusion, I always wanted to worship Jesus. That desire has felt different at different points over the last year and been expressed in various ways, often stifled more than I wanted. But it was there. And in the past five months, especially, it’s been slowly re-emerging and growing into a more mature form.

For some reason Pergamum took me back to all these things. It was another small bit of my journey, I think, but at this point things are much calmer. I’m not frantically looking for proof or all the world’s knowledge about Jesus; it was just fun to take a trip back in time and hang out with some of his followers, to imagine what the earliest Christian gatherings were like, and to feel invigorated by their dedication to the same gospel that captivates us still today.

Then I decided to flip forward into the summer section of the journal—which really ends with only 30 or so pages left in the book, in which I made my brief notes about my first fall at Fuller. As I told Jeremiah my story from the past year or so a few months ago before we started dating, I realized the extent to which my issues with God last year weren’t just compounded by the completely crazy stuff going on in my family but really revolved around them. While the other stuff was difficult, I would have been fine, and it would have been a much different story, I think, if I didn’t have all kinds of other shit going down. Instead, I had some of the most painful stuff I’ve ever faced, both fresh and lifelong wounds in my face on a daily basis. The pages of June, July, and August, especially, testify to this pain.

I am amazed how much time along with love and joy have healed those wounds. Sure, they still affect me, but they’ve at least scabbed over, and I think they’ll continue to heal in time. I feel like I’m actually discussing real things in therapy for the first time in a very long time, since so much of the past couple years—originally meant to deal with old stuff—was just damage control.

All of this is a little personal to be putting on my public blog, but I wanted to allow you to share in my joy, even as I remember my pain from less than a year ago, especially as other friends, like Amanda, seem to have gone on a similarly-paced journey this past year. Recently she decided she didn’t want to be angry with God anymore, something I decided a few months ago, myself. It’s a good feeling, even if things are not instantly as simple as might be nice. Rebuilding relationships takes time. But I feel good about where I’m at.

To contrast, I wanted to share a rewriting of the song “Blessed Be Your Name” that I made up in my head during the first InterVarsity meeting at UNC last fall. I attended the first and last meetings of the semester when I was in town, and it was incredibly difficult to be there during worship, hearing things I wanted to be true but honestly felt were bull at the time. Now this song of lament is both a recognition of the depth of the trouble God and I have gone through in the last year and a hymn of praise that things don’t always feel so awful—that somehow trust can be rebuilt even when clear answers to pain aren’t found.

Wondrous YHWH God
I feel like you’ve turned your back on me
When the gospel’s all I want to see
all I feel is pain

And loving Jesus God
I think you’d be quite a splendid king
But you don’t seem to rule everything
All I feel is pain

Some days I think that you’re real close and
I want to praise
Then the darkness closes in and
I have to say

I don’t get your ways
Are you Lord?
I don’t get your ways
I don’t get your ways
Are you Lord?
Where the hell are you today?
–9/22/08

Already… not yet

I lay awake last night, my whole body aching. Not aching terribly, just enough to keep me from sleeping an extra half hour. “This is like the kingdom of God,” I thought about The Mono, as Jeremiah and I have been (not-so-)affectionately referring to it.

How is mono related to the kingdom of God? Mono is the kingdom’s foil.

I’ve decided The Mono is the most annoying illness ever. Like a common cold, mono is caused by virus (Epstein-Barr, to be specific) for which there is no cure. Essentially, you have to wait it out. That was annoying when it was a 10-day cold. It is even more annoying when it’s mono, I’m discovering. You don’t feel like complete shit every moment of every day–but you feel bad off and on in an unpredictable fashion. For example, today I felt drowsy and took a long nap. When I got up, I felt exhausted and had a fever. The nap was utterly useless. It feels like whatever I do, The Mono (that trickster!) will win.

But I know that ultimately, my body has already won. Mono doesn’t last forever. Bodies beat viruses of this sort, eventually. And sometimes, at least in the case of a cold, out bodies technically beat the virus even before the symptoms fully resolve. While I’m not certain mono works that way, and while I know that Epstein-Barr bastard is still reigning in my body at the present, I can’t help but feel frustrated that I know the outcome… I just have to wait to actually beat this thing.

How similarly I feel about the kingdom of God. I can accept things as they are some days, but I frequently wonder why, why, why we have to wait for an “already” King to have visible dominion over everything. Why do we run against this “not yet” issue when it comes to evil being defeated? Why aren’t sick people healed? Why do parents screw up? Why do we battle our pride, lust, and anxieties on a daily basis? When does it end?

One of the most interesting things with mono is that it can come back during the first year after your initial exposure. I think that’s very much like evil. Yes, Jesus beat evil in his death and resurrection, but it still hangs around for a while. It creeps back into the picture. Perhaps things are being made new, but there is still an old nature and an old order to content with. I don’t understand why it works this way, and I wish it weren’t so. And I can’t wait for The Mono to die.

(I must admit that this metaphor breaks down in that mono actually stays in your body forever and reactivates at random allowing you to pass it on again, though not bringing back symptoms. I think Jesus did a better job beating brokenness than that. BUT the point of this wasn’t to introduce a flawless metaphor, but to allow you into the crazy world of my-head-as-I’m-falling-asleep. ;o)

The Sun Also Rises

It’s been so long since I’ve blogged that I honestly don’t even know what to blog about… When I’m blogging regularly I think of things all the time–to many to actually blog on–but it seems much harder when you haven’t said anything in a while. Makes it seem like you have to come up with something profound…

Amanda has requested a post. But I lack profound thoughts. Great.

So instead I will offer the lyrics to a song, “The Sun Also Rises” by a band Jeremiah likes, Brave Saint Saturn. I admit I am slightly embarrassed to like a song by a “Christian” band, but for some reason I find this chorus very catchy, and I think it also describes a hope lots of us ache to do an even better job believing in and enjoying. I was listening to it on YouTube tonight, so I thought it was an appropriate artifact from my life for a contentless post. ;o)

With all the hope that I could beg or borrow
I can’t wait, can’t wait for tomorrow

I believe the sun also rises
Drying our tears, bringing the blue skies of day
I believe the sun also rises
Lighting our paths, driving the darkness away

Psalm 126

In my last post, I spoke of relating to some of the questions of Israel as it returned from Exile. I also, however, can relate to joy over an eventual complete restoration of Jerusalem. I think I’m more “restored” not than a couple years ago, and I am trying to trust that God will continue the work he begun a long time ago.

Here’s a Psalm that spoke to these hopes today:

When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, *
then were we like those who dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter, *
and our tongue with shouts of joy.
Then they said among the nations, *
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
The LORD has done great things for us, *
and we are glad indeed.
Restore our fortunes, O LORD, *
like the watercourses of the Negev.
Those who sowed with tears *
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, *
will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.

Where is God and what does that mean for me, for us?

I really cannot believe how long it’s been since I posted on here…  It’s the end of the quarter, and I’ve been ridiculously busy enjoying my first two weeks dating Jeremiah Bailey (fb / blog) and stressing over finals papers, projects, and, of course, exams, which are going on currently.  Next week I’m looking forward to some time to 1) sleep, 2) clean my apartment, and 3) read for fun.  I literally have like a dozen partially begun books that I’d love to make progress in—I am normally good at reading a couple things at a time and finishing them before moving on, so this feels awful.  If I can finish at least a couple of them over the break, I will be happy.  Among them are things about the liturgical calendar, culture, tithing, apostasy, Romans, Jesus, and divorce, and I will try to review at least some of them in brief form on here.  (I know you eagerly await such posts.)

For now, a quick few thoughts from my Hebrew Prophets class (with which I am completely finished as of 1 pm yesterday!):

One of the themes of the post-exilic prophets, which I hadn’t ever studied with such particular attention to their being post-exilic, is that of God’s presence.  After Cyrus sends the Jews home from Babylon to rebuild the temple, there are lots of questions about where God is and where he has been.

The people thought he was present in Jerusalem, and especially present in the temple, prior to the exile.  But then God let Jerusalem be destoyed—what’s up with that?  Prophets like Jeremiah talked about their needing to pray for the welfare of their colonizer Babylon, and the people tried to trust that God actually had a plan and was there with them in exile.  Then they get sent home exile and now prophets like Haggai are telling them that actually God will be with them when they build the temple and that their slacking off and diverting temple-building funds to their house-building projects is the reason for the weak economy… and the people are thinking to themselves, “Wtf?  Why do we need the temple so bad?  We had God with us in Babylon when Jerusalem was far away and the temple itself was destroyed anyway.  Why is Haggai making such a big deal out of this?  Where is God anyway?  And what does it mean for God to be ‘with’ us if it doesn’t guarantee God’s blessing?”

I can relate a lot to the post-exilic Jewish community in their questions about God’s presence.  It’s been a significant quarter for me spiritually, and I still have a lot of questions to be answered.  These kinds of questions have helped to play with my own thoughts and tease them out a bit, but real answers, heck, I don’t know that I’ll ever have them.

This week last year I was making a final decision about InterVarsity staff, and I decided I couldn’t feel right doing it knowing that I had some significant questions from Bart Ehrman’s New Testament class, especially given that I really didn’t know how big my questions were or how quickly they could be addressed.  And the last thing I wanted was to be on staff, discipling students, and then suddenly I realize that wait, my questions are actually really, really huge and keep me from doing my ministry or feeling honest with donors.

It wasn’t until a couple weeks ago when I was retelling my spiritual journey from that past year that I realized how much pressure this staff decision put on me and how much it probably actually intensified my doubts and fears with Ehrman.  What could have been merely an intellectually stimulating and challenging experience became one that required instantaneous answers and security.  That was tough for little college senior me to handle.  It’d be tough for anyone to handle.  I knew that decision would change my entire life, at least for the next couple years.

Then last summer, to put it bluntly, lots of shit went down.  My parents’ divorce became official but it seemed to take forever for money to get settled.  There were a few lies and a lot of inconsideration that poisoned what I’d thought was a possibly-developing-at-last relationship with my dad.  And there was massive instability regarding my decision to come to seminary.  It was where I felt led 100%, but my dad wasn’t willing to commit to support me financially until the very last minute–literally less than a month before I moved to California.  It was extremely difficult to feel like he just didn’t care, not only based on his lack of enthusiasm about supporting my education (at seminary with the purpose of bolstering my own faith, no less–you’d think that would seem relevant to a Christian parent!) but based on his handling of finances in the divorce, generally.  He seemed to pit my mom and I against each other, making us out to be two greedy golddiggers after his physician’s salary when there simply wasn’t enough to go around… even though I’d seen the numbers crunched and knew that we could all be ok.  The hurt reached a new level after I moved out here and found out through my brother than my dad had a new girlfriend already that he’d intentionally not told me about—and then a month later when I found out she’d already been living with him for a month, along with her 11-year-old daughter.

Suffice it to say, it’s been a hellish year.  And somewhere along there it became very difficult to interact with God because of all this hurt, coupled with my questions.  To wrap things up way too quickly, I’ll say that things between me and God have been improving very slowly since things hit their lowest point in October or so and things have been improving more significantly since I have started pursuing reconciliation with God more intentionally.  That’s not to say things are perfect, but they’re much, much better.

Now a question I have, though, both academically and personally, is what is the presence of God?  How do we sense it?  Is it something we’re supposed to feel or only believe in?  Haggai says God’s presence guarantees not only blessing but judgment, depending on our obedience, which seems fair.  But our experiences don’t even always give with that more deuteronomistic view of things, which can be irritating enough in and of itself (since we don’t usually like God when he’s angry).

Perhaps most importantly, I ask, if we often feel God is with us when things are going well, what do we do with the fact that we know God is with us during the bad times as well?  Are our earlier perceptions of God’s presence merely our own happiness?  Since God’s presence and our happiness aren’t the same thing, how do we understand either of them more properly?  Especially, if we experience God’s presence largely through a community that supports us and teaches us and allows us to care for them, too, how do we experience God’s presence when that kind of community doesn’t seem available?  And does this mean that when we feel God’s working in and around us through community, we shouldn’t take that as any more than our enjoying people?  I think that’s one of the biggest mysteries to me as an extrovert.  In what ways do I understand God’s love through other people vs. apart from them?  I feel like either extreme can get you into trouble…  so it’s an interesting question for me.

I should go write some stuff for school or go to sleep… but there’s some of the stuff I’ve been pondering the last few weeks…  ;o)