My story - pt. 6, Being shaped

The final installment of my spiritual pilgrimage... the break between this post and last is a bit rough, so you may want to re-read the the end of the last just for the flow of thought! Feel free to comment on this post, or in response to the whole story. - Jamie

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The message in Deuteronomy 6, “I am One God,” is more than a call to the Israelites live and believe differently than the cultures around them. Through these words God is saying, “I created it all. I rule over everything and when you live My way, you find wholeness. I Am in field, I Am in Water, I Am in Joy, I Am in pain – there is no where that I cannot be found.”

Jesus echoed this sentiment with every fiber of his life. As Emmanuel, “God with us,” he entered our sufferings, our poverty and our experience, showing us a God who is present in all aspects of humanity; a God who can be understood and experienced in things like taxes, harvests, weeds and soils.

Christ’s message of salvation is not small, only covering the person who will keep the commandments, toe the line and keep up with the do’s and don’ts. Jesus called men friends who were doubters, backstabbers and hotheads. His message came to prostitutes and tax collectors, to the sick and the poor – people living in column two if you will.

Seeing Jesus for who he is, and who he was, led me to a transformational realization: In living a two-column faith I had created a fence, and Jesus was standing on the other side, knocking, asking to come in.

My experience with cancer, and the resulting questions, doubts and pain, became formative for me. In a sense, it was the reuniting of the “crystal” of my spirituality. The end result of my treatment was more than the removal of cancer; it was the removal of the fence I had placed around my life separating me from the work of God in the world and in my own heart. This apparent tragedy transformed into blessing and gave me the ability to declare God, Lord of the good, the bad and the ugly.

My fight with this fearsome illness led me into very deep and difficult questions about God, His goodness, justice, love and mercy; questions about pain and suffering, life and life hereafter. These questions were cavernous and without immediate satisfactory answers. The space that I had set aside for my faith was unable to hold such large and copious questions. At times my belief was squeezed out and doubt was all that was left.

Undergoing this self-inquisition, I felt that the questions I was asking were completely inappropriate, and yet I could not help but ask them. Now, rather than taboo, I understand my questions to be the reordering of my faith, the desegregation of the sacred and secular and the true beginning of my pilgrimage

Thankfully, my journey through the questions has not been a road I’ve traveled alone. I have met many fellow travelers along the way, most of whom no one will ever hear of. Others I have met through their writings, and through their books they have become friends, fellow pilgrims and mentors in my journey.

The works of Brian McLaren and Donald Miller have introduced me to a new world of faith beyond dogma and rules, a world where God is present in doubt and in pain – places where most American Christians fear to tread.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Shusaku Endo and a former tax collector named Matthew, have helped me rediscover the authentic Jesus of Nazareth.

Eugene Peterson and Henri Nouwen have helped me to re-imagine who and what a pastor really is. And, Sara Miles and Shane Claiborne have helped me to imagine a church that is active and alive in the margins of society.

Each author has encouraged me to expand my mind, my faith and my perspective on God’s action in our world. They have caused me to believe in God, the church, even in myself “with all kinds of doubts” (Madeline L’Engel.)

Through these men and women I have learned that the calling to holiness has very little to do with behavior. Behavior, I now understand, is the result of inward realities; a response to what God is doing in and through the believer. We believers in Christ are called to a daily living that is distinct and set apart, flowing out of faith, hope and love, but which is not out of touch. Holy living begins in the heart and can never be separated from the context of the world in which it’s lived out. We are called to be in the world but not of it.

God is always taking old things and making them new, and He is making something new of me. My struggle through questions, doubts and pain has been key parts of this recreation, leading me to become a man who is able to find, and serve, God in a pub as well as in the Church.

However, the journey is not over. Old sections of fence still stand in the deep country of my soul; fractures in my spirituality still exist, waiting to be stumbled upon as part of the lifelong process of self-examination and self-discovery. The embrace of the two intimate strangers is still tentative, even after 12 years of movement toward one another.

And, this journey has been, and always will be, irrevocably tied to my work in the church, which is itself undergoing deep and painful change. I am caught in a middle place, between emerging church and established church – sort of like the painful place a butterfly must be when between caterpillar and winged beauty.

And in this pain lies my call: To be an agent of reconciliation between the world and the church by helping believers cross “the fence,” going into the edges of the society, to “the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8), to the place where Jesus is weaving himself into the hearts, lives and stories of all humanity.

How has God used others to shape your life? What is the single most important book (outside scripture) that you have ever read? Where is your life lived in relation to the "real world" - the world outside the church?