Lie #19 – There’s No Other Way

from Helena Sorenson Aman:

Lie #19: “There’s no other way.”

First of all, says who?

Second, in working through this series, I’ve been brought back repeatedly to certain themes: the challenge of parsing stated v. unspoken reality, an appalling concept of God and an even worse concept of humanity, and a discreet worship of authoritarianism. The further I go, the more I shudder at “the complexity of the unraveling we face within ourselves.” At the same time, though, I feel energized by the realization that we CAN disentangle what’s real from what isn’t, that the work can begin within us.

Knowing what we now know about the brain and developmental psychology, I find it hard to believe children could come out of fundamentalism unscathed. Our earliest understanding of ourselves was that we were totally depraved. Our earliest picture of God was an angry, all-powerful tyrant who watched our every move and dangled us by a thin thread of “love” over the reality of eternal conscious torment. Some of us received a playbook for the end of the world before we had the chance to feel safe in the world, to discover its wonders and fall in love with it. (Is that why we’d rather escape it than fight for it?)

I wonder if individually and collectively we are trapped in a trauma response–locked down, trembling and terrified. Maybe there’s a little child within us who needs to be comforted, who needs to know that God is present in her fear and that there is a way out of it. That on the other side is rest, joy, and the freedom to imagine new ways of being and being together.

I’m not concerned about the institution. If it burns to the ground, we will all still be here, and God will be with us, unruffled. I feel hopeful because we have an opportunity to reimagine our faith. Isn’t that wonderful? As Laura Jean Truman says, “New ways can be a refuge, too…after leaving the old home, it’s not just tents in the desert forever.”

We can think bigger. We can think smaller. We can think differently. We can think, “It doesn’t have to be this way.” Because, thank God, it doesn’t.