#Rethink - August 2020
#Rethink - August 2020
Hello August! This month we are pondering rejection, contemplating friendship, and exploring the Enneagram.
What if it is God's grace that allows people to reject Him?
I talked with someone the other day who has spent their entire life actively rejecting God. Now they are in their sixties. Having recently retired, they feel a strange loss of identity. They are terrified of COVID-19 as they face the reality of death. You can hear the fear and uncertainty in their voice. I cried afterward. And found myself writing about it the next morning.
“You make Yourself so accessible and so obvious. And people choose to reject You, and You let them. And You let them. That’s the part of grace that just shocks me.
It’s like people have to choose rejection -- because if they don’t, You find them.
What if that’s true? What if even though we are lost without You and even though we are Your enemies, what if it takes conscious effort to reject and ignore You? What if without that effort of rejection we would be found? At least found enough...whatever that means. You know."
Some Christianese people spend a lot of time focused on God's wrath and our separation from Him. But what if:
The Real God is closer than we even realize?
He is more willing to be found than we acknowledge?
Our rejection is the only thing keeping Him away?
"Without people to love and be loved by, I don’t imagine faith is very sustainable." ~ Wesley Hill
Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian is properly challenging my view of friendship and I'm glad. Wes's original book Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality was just as thought provoking. I enjoy reading books from a perspective so vastly different from my own. I love being pushed to look at life in a new way.
Wes takes his readers on an intellectual journey through the history of our modern veiw of friendship while at the same time vulnerably sharing his own questions and heartbreaks. He brings awareness to the loneliness that singles often feel in a church system that seems obsessed with marriage and family. Even though I'm not the target audience, I find myself empathizing with a longing for deep connection and belonging.
And I find myself wondering — how could the church do this differently? What would it look like if we literally become spiritual siblings with our brothers and sisters in Christ? Maybe it's not about trying to balance so many shallow relationships but instead diving deeply into a few? I'm convicted and there are some things I definitely want to work on...
The Enneagram — I realize that I am pretty late to this party...
But I'm so excited about what I've been learning about myself that I just had to share. My foray into the Enneagram began last fall thanks to the girls' college group that I mentor. I took a test and determined that I was a 2: the Caregiver. I was thrilled. It seemed like a lovely personality type. However, subsequent tests and conversations revealed that I was not a 2, but rather a 4 — a personality type that I initially despised. You can read about all that fun stuff in this blog post.
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Learning to understand what it means to be a 4 has been such a gift. It makes me make sense to myself. Haha! But seriously, for instance:
Oh, that's why I reacted like that, I wasn't feeling significant.
Wow, my emotions have always been really strong and important.
I've definitely felt misunderstood and different most of my life;Â I'm sure that contributed to my core lie of being unlikeable.
The pressure to "build a platform" really frustrates me because I struggle to balance my desire for significance with a passion for authenticity.
It’s honestly just really nice to know that I'm not crazy and that there are other people like me in the world. 😆
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One of the things I appreciate about the Enneagram is the way it provides a path forward. Rather than just stick you in a box like many personality tests, the Enneagram explains how each number type responds in stress and what it looks like to operate in health. I'm definitely not an expert, but I've loved the growth I've found through this tool. I'm linking two of my favorite resources below.
This is the test that I took that revealed my 4 personality. I love the resources the website also provides about wings, relationships, and more.
The That Sounds Fun podcast with Annie F Downs has done two EnneaSummer series on all nine Enneagram types -- one in 2019 and one in 2020. I'm still working my way through but they are fantastic!
Thanks for taking a moment to #Rethink some of our religious traditions and beliefs. I know that it can be scary to deconstruct and reconstruct our faith, but finding the Real Jesus is absolutely worth it. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions, or comments.
If you know someone who would love to #rethink, please share!
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