I'm a Christian? pt. 1
for Craig, who was never afraid of questions
The event at Asbury is not something I need to comment on except to say it’s plunged me into reflection about my own Christian university experience and thoughts about why I still identify as Christian.
I attended a small conservative Christian liberal arts college in the Midwest.1
This university had a high price tag and even higher standards for what they considered “good Christian character.” Rules included, but were not limited to, length of men’s hair and women’s skirts, weekly scheduled time for opposite gender visits to the other’s dorm, and required chapel attendance - you get the idea.
During my time at this university there was a faculty member whose Philosophy and Theology classes had a reputation for provoking a “crisis of faith” in students. His reputation for shaking things up was not wholly undeserved I mean, he told his students they could call him by his first name(!). Beyond his aversion to hierarchy, he assigned readings that pushed students to the edge of everything they’d been taught only to discover the edge was actually a tiny piece of the whole of existence they’d never known was there. You’d know you’d found his students if you saw a group of 19-20 year olds looking like children who just learned the truth about Santa. His intentionally slow opening prayers and equally thoughtful lectures sparked curiosity and wonder (and maybe an existential crisis or two).
I took my first class with Craig (the name he told us to call him) in the Fall of my Junior year. I was equally terrified and intrigued. Intro to Philosophy caused me to remember how dangerous asking questions and pulling at threads really was2. Craig was extremely patient with us and I knew he was a person I could test all my questions on (and I did, regularly). I trusted that he would always tell the truth - even if the truth was that he didn’t know.
An important detail to add here is that the summer between my Sophomore and Junior years I was an intern at a non-profit in an under-resourced neighborhood in Denver, Colorado. My unraveling began in a food bank where a woman I was there to serve (in all my white-savior glory) said to me, “what about you, missy? you need prayers too.” I knew she was right and I knew that place was the best-worst thing that ever happened to me. I returned to the high-gloss finish of my Christian university disillusioned and often disgusted by how far I felt their mission really was from the Jesus I encountered in a food bank in Colorado.
In one Systematic Theology class Craig read a passage from Soren Kierkegaard’s ‘Practice in Christianity’ where he recounted telling a child about Jesus for the first time. When Kierkegaard described Jesus as “the most loving man who ever lived,” I cried. I cried because I believed it to be true and because so much of my experience in Christianity was not loving.
Taking classes with Craig did not cause me to abandon my faith. In fact, I don’t know a single person who walked away from Christianity because they took Systematic Theology. But I know so many people who’ve abandoned Christianity because of how unloving their experience with Christians has been.
I’m very careful not to say someone is or is not a Christian- because I don’t think that’s my place to judge. What I will say is this: folks who don’t want anyone to ask questions or think through their beliefs are operating from a place of fear and control.
And that is the very opposite of Love.
Typing that sentence made me giggle because it perfectly illustrates the problem with the English language and the labels we’ve used and reused to construct ideas to the point they don’t really mean anything.
It has always been my nature to ask questions, but I learned very early that my questions were not welcome in the church and I did my best to be a good little girl and silence them.