#Rethink - April 2021

#Rethink - April 2021

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Hello April! This month we are pondering faith deconstruction, questioning Biblical womanhood, and exploring the connection between stress and burnout.

Can We Deconstruct without Deconverting?

It's becoming a regular thing to learn that well-known Christians (singers, authors, artists, etc.) no longer believe. It breaks my heart and I've written about it more than once. It doesn't have to be this way.

Discovering other voices who are speaking similar messages to mine is always fun. I was excited to find @drcamden on Instagram and read this quote from her. "We can deconstruct our beliefs without deconverting. We can question our beliefs and explore the gray areas. And we can come out with a richer, deeper, and truer faith." While Dr. Camden Morgante and I probably don't agree on everything, we definitely both believe that it is possible to take apart some of the Christian traditions we once believed while still holding onto the cores of  the faith. 

As with many things in our current culture, it often appears that there are only two sides to Christianity: the blissfully ignorant Christian bubble side and the cynical ex-evangelical progressive side. But that's not really true. I am discovering more and more people who are trying to walk this Awkward Middle Way of grace and truth. People who are attempting to hold onto an orthodox faith while picking through the rubble of their broken Christianese experience. It's a tricky thing. And we begin with questions.

• What is holding us back from beginning the process?

• How do we discover truth when it is entwined with lies?

• What does it look like to give ourselves grace on our journey?

Deconstruction without deconverting takes time and it's not easy. But I truly believe that it's worth it.

"I knew the truth, and still I stayed silent at my church. I stayed silent because I was afraid of my husband losing his job. I was afraid of losing our friends. I was afraid of losing our ministry."
Beth Allison Barr

I recently came across this article which is actually an excerpt from Beth Allison Barr's new book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood, coming out in April. Although she was a professor of history at a Christian college and regularly taught classes on women's history within the church, Beth also attended a church where women were not allowed to teach a male over the age of thirteen. 

As a historian, Beth Allison Barr knew that women did indeed serve in leadership positions within the early church. She knew that the apostle Paul's teachings on women are often misunderstood and misused within modern Christianity, and yet she stayed silent. Until she didn't.

This article is incredibly intriguing to me since I've already been rethinking my beliefs about Biblical womanhood and the role of women within the church for a while. Beth's background within conservative Evangelical Christianity makes hearing her perspective all the more exciting to me. I've preordered the book and can't wait to be able to share it with you in May. Here is a final quote from the article.
 

"People believe that women were banned from leadership in the early church just as they are banned from leadership in the modern church. The church teaches what it believes to be true."

Stress and Depression

I lead a college girls small group every Tuesday night during the school year as part of my church's larger young-adult ministry. For the past two weeks Dr. Robert Lehman has been speaking to us about the connection between anxiety and depression. This last week I was scribbling notes as fast as I could. I love the way the Bible (when read in context) lines up with studies of humanity.

Dr. Lehman reminded us that whatever controls our thinking also controls our feelings because we create our own emotions through our habitual thoughts. He went on to tell us that stress and burnout (or anxiety and depression) follow a cycle. If you experience a couple of days of high stress/anxiety they will be followed by a couple days of burnout/depression. The older we get the longer the recovery period is so a couple days of high stress may be followed by a couple of weeks of burnout. Finally, Dr. Lehman told us that anxiety isn't an emotion. And it's not actually emotion that creates depression but the intensity of an emotion. 

I was stunned. Dr. Lehman was not talking about chemical depression or chronic depression, just the cycles that we face on a normal day to day basis. I have totally experienced this cycle in both positive and negative ways. I've had great times of spiritual intensity followed by seasons of burnout. I've been through stressful situations that left me depressed. Knowing the cycles allows us to care for ourselves well during the burnout phase. When we feel the burnout, it allows us to look back and see if we have been experiencing high intensity emotions. Self-awareness is a beautiful thing and I'm looking forward to our final session next week.

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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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