Part 1 – the long part

I recently sat down with a mentor to talk about being burnt-out-on-being-burnt-out-on religion. I am at a place where I feel like I’ve read everything on the internet about Christian fundamentalism and half the books that have been written in the last decade or so. I’m really, quite frankly, tired of it all, and I want to move on with my life, but the fundies of course insist that moving on is equivalent to losing your faith, and I don’t want that either, so here we are. Maybe more specifically, each time I think I’m past it all, I find myself questioning, why am I doing X – Activity and it’s usually something related to fundamentalism.

I needed to talk to a third party. Someone who doesn’t know me that well, isn’t my age, and who takes ~religion and doctrine~ seriously without also being a fundamentalist. You can always find some anonymous person on Reddit to tell you what you want to hear, but, we are ~social creatures~ and sometimes, you need to talk to a real person. So I did.

The interesting thing about getting out of fundamentalism is that, of course, there is never one problem to solve. Questions about having children are connected to the question of the Dominion Mandate, the question of what-job-should-i-do is connected to what you were taught about gender roles and whether or not whole bodies of human knoweldge have been concocted by liars, and the question of how deeply you engage with things you like to do is connected to whether or not you believe you must continually deny yourself or whether or not you believe God will take something away just because you like it.

To live that way is exhausting and I’m tired of it. It is even more exhausting to make that statement and immediately hear in the chorus of one’s mind “Cry Out to Jesus” by Third Day (which the fundies would criticize as being too “hard rock”) or the age old hymn “Softly and Tenderly” (played by a virtous old lady on a light oak piano). When you say you want to exit the narrative, you’re still stuck in a never ending loop. You cannot exit the hamster wheel of Church Culture.

Sometimes I think about blogging about my experiences with fundamentalist culture, but I don’t know what I or anyone else would get out of it. The few times I’ve emailed such organizations (come on AiG, where’s your global flood RAS model) or written reviews about the books online, I’ve been unable to avoid undertones of sarcasm and anger, despite my best efforts to just critique the ideas (not very Matthew 18 of me, eh). Besides, plenty of people have written or talked extensively about these topics, both in the blogosphere and book reviews and of course written their own formal academic books. I don’t really have anything to add except “lol samesies.” I’ve also read the comments that insist the main perpetrators of these ideas are “really super sweet people” and I know, just like me, they are just out doing a job to make money to live, except they do it by telling other people what to do instead of, idk, sizing pipes or something. Alas, there I go again. The world does not need my anger.

AND, in case anyone is curious, I’m a post-millenialist now.

Part 2 – the short part

Well anyways, the mentor reminded me that within the bounds of God (which I took to be Phillipians 4:8-esque), we are free from the rules of man and can pursue God. God will ask a lot of us, but it will be in the line of Romans 8:28; what you are asked to do will be what makes you more like Christ. That will not look the same for everyone. We are free to become who God made us to be. While the mentor used the word “calling”, he clarified that the word “calling” is a term loaded with Christian-ese, and we aren’t called to one specific path, but rather, to be people like Christ.

The Gospel is simple. We are new creations in Christ and our time on this earth is spent becoming more like Him. That’s really all there is to it. I rest in that, and let the rest go.

I don’t think the ‘problem’ of this stuff constantly coming up in my mind will go away, but I don’t have to dwell on it anymore. (Maybe it will though, God created neuroplasticity, too).

The next time I find myself sitting at my kitchen table at 9-pm, scrolling through the James Webb telescope’s Instagram, smashing a Kirkland brand KIND bar in my face and crying over the beauty of the Universe, I can just…enjoy them…and know the images, and the minds that put together the telescope to get them, reflect the infinite power and care of their Creator. That is really beautiful, really nice, and most importantly, really reassuring.