Lent: give me strength for round 5

Lent is upon us. Some of you are probably still recovering from Mardi Gras, which I completely forgot to celebrate this year. We did make it to our church's Ash Wednesday service tonight. Every year during Lent I think more than usual about religious themes, which I know is not of interest to some of you, so I'll put "Lent" in the title when that's the case. The posts won't be specifically about Lent. Or at least I don't think they will be, I've only got two planned at the moment. And just 40 days to go.

Awhile ago I decided--as I periodically do--that I should make yet another effort to come to terms with the evangelicalism of my youth, this time by reading books by evangelicals. So I looked through the Christian bestseller lists and the awards lists and picked out eight or ten books that looked promising. Most of them I pitched right back into the Salvo box after a few chapters, but I made it all the way through a few of them.

I left Evangelicalism behind thirty years ago, so I am not new to the effort to define my beliefs by comparing them to my past. I've had decades now of figuring out what I believe and how it differs from the way I was raised.

For the most part, I am pretty unconflicted about this. I have no desire at all to be an Evangelical again. There are so many things that bother me about Evangelicals these days it's hard to know where to start: the intertwining of faith and politics; the lack of questioning of consumerism and materialist values; the willingness to reduce the New Testament message of love, joy, peace and mercy to a couple of harangues on maintaining 1950s middle class morality. As a friend of mine said a couple of weeks ago, we've come to the point where people see the church as "exterminators of sin" instead of "dispensers of grace," and I think Evangelicalism is the primary culprit in that.

But that's not to say that all Evangelicals are like that. There are still things I can learn from them, and learn I did from a few of these authors. But over the past couple of days I've realized that my reading had an unintended and unwelcome side effect: it re-awakened a voice in my head I thought I was done with. It's the voice that just-below-the-level-of-consciousness tells me over and over again that I can't trust myself, I can't trust my experience, my ideas aren't worth anything, and it's a little ridiculous to think that my opinions are valid compared with the weight of all those other opinions out there, isn't it?

It's a voice I learned at least in part from being raised Evangelical. It's clear to me that not all Evangelicals have this voice, but I am naturally a person who asks questions, and the answers to my questions were often that's not how it is or accept our beautiful system of belief and stop asking questions. Or simply: you're wrong. I learned very early to keep my questions to myself and not rock the boat.

I hate rocking the boat anyway. That's why I post my opinions here in this little blog that only about 30 people read, and I make very little effort to increase my readership. Because even though I love to ask questions and to consider what I think and believe, I also hate to cause problems. I like peace. I like it when people get along. I enjoy listening to a lively discussion, but if it turns into an argument, I head for the door. I hate conflict. I am a wuss.

So anyway, for a minute--ok, maybe for the past month or so--that reawakened voice in my head caused me to forget that I do trust myself. I do value my own experience and my own opinions. (ha, and suddenly I'm remembering the post from last week that was also about learning to trust myself. This seems to be a theme.) My opinions may not be orthodox, and I may not be able to write down a logical defense that will convince anybody else, but that's OK. That's not the point.

When I finally realized what was going on, it was like a load of bricks falling off my back. Oh, yeah, I remember now. I'm OK. I can let go of that bit of legacy thinking that insidiously tries to tell me that I have to rely on an authority to tell me what to do and think. And THANK GOD for that. Literally.