“It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.
…You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.” –Galatians 5:1,4
Surely, I can’t be the only one. Tell us all when you discovered you’d been living the “Christian life” by law instead of by grace, and tell us how our star-flinging-yet-gentle-handed Yahweh set you free.
Posted by Katherine Gunn on May 7, 2008 at 12:12 am
This passage started hitting me between the eyes about 18 months ago or so. After I walked away from my church (15 months ago) – with the dire warnings that I was going to be putting myself in a dangerous place by getting out from under the “pastoral covering” (I don’t want THAT pastor to have anything to do with covering me, thank you very much!), blah blah blah, this was one of the passages that kept me from losing my mind.
The past year has been a slow but steady journey toward understanding what freedom really is. It’s funny, around 2 years ago, I began (along with my best friend) to pray for freedom. I didn’t know where I was bound – I just knew that what I was living wasn’t freedom. It has been (sometimes still is) a journey through much tears, soul searching, fear, ostracizing, anger, walking back through and seeing where the abuses took place – both in the church growing up and in the ‘good Christian’ home.
Right now, I am on the brink of stepping over a precipice into the unknown. The only thing I have to rely on is God – His Love – Mercy – Grace. But I will continue stepping out of darkness and bondage into freedom. It is the most wonderful thing to realize that you are not bound by someone else’s set of do’s and don’t’s to get into heaven. I never could measure up, anyway. I was caught up in ‘drinking the koo-laide,’ as my friend and I call it. Well on my way to being a total self-righteous- pain-in-the-a**.
So, organized church leaves me cold – well no, more than that – unsettled, feeling like I have been around something slimy. I know that sounds harsh and it is not meant to be aimed at the people as individuals, but there is something about the jargon and the order-of-things and the songs and the doctrine-over-gospel and the sense that everyone is under some sort of blinding spell that I can’t stomach well anymore. So, I am not going to church these days – although, oddly enough, I have been thinking about going to (not joining) a few catholic masses. I don’t know. We’ll see where the path leads. But the path is now one He has made, not one a church has laid out…
Posted by Katherine Gunn on May 7, 2008 at 12:33 am
BTW, something else I have learned this past year. Jesus said that the we would know the truth and the truth would make us free. (John 8:32) In my church upbringing, this was spiritualized to mean (and ONLY mean) knowing Jesus and the Bible. I am not saying that knowing Jesus doesn’t set us free. There is no freedom without knowing Him. But…
I have found that these words of Jesus apply to EVERYTHING in life. If we know the truth of a thing we are free in that area. It applies to the way the church is run – knowing the truth brings freedom. It applies to family history – knowing the truth makes freedom (particularly if you were raised in a family where abuses took place and things were not talked about). Anyway, it doesn’t just apply to know Jesus or even the Bible. It applies to everything about which we would seek knowledge.
Also, there is a difference between having information and knowing the truth of it. Many people have the Bible and have read it, but do not know the truth of it. Hmm…
Posted by Anette on May 7, 2008 at 12:56 am
Wow, I want to reply on Katherine’s post, and to your question.
No, certainly, you are not the only one, and worst of it is having to go back to grace again and again. Everytime falling into the stupidity of trying to live by law, or trying to deserve His Love!!!
We’ve found the most amazing freedom in Christ also after leaving organised church, and yes, I also find it now upsetting to even listen to someone preaching over the radio or whatever. The jargon, order and doctrine stuff also annoy me, I much prefer community with friends, talking about Jesus and His grace in real live. I still however, love our friends who prefer the big “church” habit.
I must admit, that our friends who does attend “church” do not really understand what we are doing, or how we can live from a perspective where right and wrong are both irrelevant as it is both borne from the tree of knowledge. Our explanation that we are living from the Tree of Life, in the Love and Grace of Jesus, does’nt satisfy their need for rules. They seem to think that we are now going to live immoraly and who knows what else!!! Even 1 Cor 13’s description of love seem to be foreign to them. How can we say we accept our friends that are living together and not married, or gay friends, how can love just accept everything, cover everything!?
We still want to touch their lives and show them that God’s love is full grace and mercy and our sins, as horrible and big as everybody else’s, are totally forgiven and nothing we do can make Him love us more or less than He already does. It is such a priviledge and pleasure to raise my children to love and accept everybody, not because of their beautifull, sinless lives, but because Jesus love them.
On that point, why does my 10 and 8 year old girls understand love, grace, freedom and “church” better than most grown-ups I know?
Posted by Katherine Gunn on May 7, 2008 at 2:09 am
Hmm… In reading Anette’s comment, I was reminded of the end of Romans 8…
“So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.” Romans 8:31-39 (The Message)
This says so much in response to all the rules…
Posted by E on May 7, 2008 at 5:08 am
A week ago last Sunday a friend of a friend prayed for me and somewhat prophesied over me as well. “Freedom” was a significant part of what he had to say. In fact, he told me that when I went home, I should open the doors of the house and tell everything that was not of God to leave, and then invite everything that is of God to come in. After doing this I was to stand in front of the house and write the word “FREEDOM” in the air with my finger over the entrance to our house. So I did.
Nothing has changed as of yet, but maybe something is in the wind.
Posted by Barb on May 7, 2008 at 7:21 am
Molly, Galatians has been my favorite book since leaving our group here exactly a year ago tomorrow. The long story of our being set free into Fathers freedom is on my blog. The short version is that I set out to prove my husband wrong. He had finally had enough when they began insisting of having titles of Apostle and Prophet said before thier names. Instead I found that although I believed and preached grace, I practically lived under law. I took old testament concepts, brought them over into the new covenant, slapped new terms on them and called it grace. It has been an amazing journey to see those elements fall off one by one as I have progressed through this year. I was born and raised in the fundamental camp. I thought I was set free from it when I joined the charasmatic one. I just found I traded one set of laws for another. I’m glad to be free. Thanks for you blog.
Posted by sue on May 7, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Word of warning ..I attended a Catholic mass with the intention of proving to my sons and myself that they are idol worshiping non christians and ….I’m now Catholic..since 2004….blush…and I’ve had to eat my words so often I shouldn’t be hungry till 2011!! HA!! I think before I left my old denomination I was uncomfortable around people who thought Harry Potter books were demonic, praise and worship music was all powerful and our pastor had the answers. I knew he was wrong on a few points..and THEN I got internet !! Found blogs!! Life and my faith have not been the same!!!
Posted by Angela on May 7, 2008 at 5:32 pm
This verse is a great comfort to me. I consider myself a “recovering fundamentalist.” I have had to turn my back on many things I was raised believing, and at the same time been surprised at how much of it really was me. There was no big bang, no church scandal, no personal crisis. Maybe that’s why I don’t have to go to one extreme or the other to prove anything any more, to myself or anyone else. (In fact, I still attend a Baptist church, albeit one that my former church would never associate with.) I smile at the shocked look on the faces of my former “church family” when they see me at the store wearing blue jeans (something akin to walking around nude, in their opinon) and I smile because I still love to argue politics. I smile at people who can’t believe I still don’t own a TV, and I smile at those who think I’m a heathen because I go to a movie theater. I smile because I am finally happy in my own skin, and I can wear jeans or a jumper without caring either way. I am “studying to show myself approved unto God” and I don’t care about who else “approves” of me. I tried for many years to live up to the legalistic standards I was raised in, and it was never good enough. I tried chucking it all, and felt empty and alone. Now, I have people on both sides mad at me!! My Fundie friends and family will never get used to me in blue jeans, and my left-wing liberal friends and family can’t believe I still like my King James Bible the best and listen to Rush Limbaugh. I love them both, but I just mentally pat them on the head and do exactly what the Lord and I have agreed is perfectly all right. In short, so many throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater when they awaken from the legalist fog. They are so afraid of being sucked back into it that they forget to step back and embrace who they truly are… and who God intended them to be all along!
Posted by molleth on May 8, 2008 at 12:03 am
I really resonate with what you shared, Angela, in that I feel like recently (meaning the last half year), I feel like I am becoming more and more comfortable with *me.* Who I am, as distinct from whoever people in certain groups (right, left, near, far, upside down or rightside up) are. I don’t seem to actually fit anywhere, and yet the more and more I comprehend (begin to comprehend) just how truly secure I am in the hand of God, the more and more I learn to not need to find security in fitting in to anyone’s particular mold.
Sue,
Too funny! I’ve not attended a mass at all, because I’m afraid of what might happen! LOL…
Barb,
I love how you said, “traded in one set of laws for another.” I so did that very same thing (three times, sigh). This last time I have taken a good long time doing the messy and painful business of deconstructing, in order to get down to the root of things. I just wasn’t up for going ’round the spinning wheel one more time. I wanted to get OFF. In pulling everything down, piece by piece, I really saw into things that I’d never been aware of before. In all, despite the fact that it was the most painful thing I”ve ever experienced, I am so glad that the grace of God enabled me to take a good hard look into things that my wimply self would have rather avoided altogether. In that strange way of a surgeon’s sharp knife is, it was healing.
E, very interesting. Hm!
Katherine, really good stuff. Thanks for sharing! I totally agree with you on how truth does set us free (though it’s often more comfortable to ignore it–ha!). I love the version of Romans 8 that you quoted, too.
Annette,
Learning to *not* rely on condemnation in order to shame people into “proper” behavior is sure a big move away from the traditional religous world, and yet, sadly, that condemnation and shaming behaviour is what we in the evang/fundie hood engage in regularly (we don’t know how not too—it’s what we are trained to do, usually from childhood).
My mom was just commenting on that very thing (after reading The Shack and a few similar books), on how she ran into a cousin who lives a lesbian lifestyle and how FREEING she said it was to just love her instead of having this monkey on her back telling her that, in order to be a good follower of Christ, she had to make sure her cousin knew that she disapproved of her lesbian lifestyle.
I knew *exactly* what she was talking about, because I’ve had such similar experiences and epiphanies. But WHY had my mom, for example, a deep and fervent Believer since birth, very schooled in theology and a woman who’s got most of the Bible memorized and who has served others selflessly ever since I can remember her, been trained to think that way in the first place?????
Because it’s embedded into our conservative Christian subculture: this idea that shaming and condemnation are our good and holy *tools* to win (some groups of) people to Christ—-that it’s not safe to love some people (or that loving some people requires shaming them until they perform well enough to earn a nicer form of love). Urgh. It’s just all so..wacked. And it’s so nice to discover that this isn’t actually the way we are supposed to be…that we’ve really warped a lot of our concepts of God up… The holy Spirit-birthed gift of Grace is so much bigger and more powerful than I ever realized. I’m such a baby in it. It is SO GOOD.
Posted by Katherine Gunn on May 8, 2008 at 12:23 am
Yeah. Grace. Learning to just relax and trust Papa. To enter into His rest stop trying to do it ourselves and rest in what He has done.
Wow – the condemnation and shame factor. I think it is the same thing that went on with the Pharisees – the idea that ‘we have the WHOLE truth and if you aren’t doing it OUR way, you’re doing it WRONG.’ Then you have to ‘fess up and tow the line or be condemned and shamed all over again. Of course, it was a double standard, anyway. No one ever lived up to those standards, they just pretended to, with plastic smiles, saying, ‘Fine, fine, everything’s fine,’ while their world was spinning out of control. BLEAH!
Whew! I think I still have some feelings associated with that issue.
Kudos to your mom for reaching that place.
For someone who grows up in this kind of theology and is then abused on top of it, there is no way to win – no way to ‘be good enough.’ They become conditioned to assume, any time they feel like something doesn’t feel right, it must be them – it has always been them. It is tough to come to the place of grace from there. Thank God He doesn’t abandon His kids in that place.
Posted by E (aka Jacob) on May 8, 2008 at 3:08 am
So, Molls, what did you think of THE SHACK?
Posted by Angela on May 8, 2008 at 5:41 am
One thing our pastor points out (I love our new pastor, by the way) is that TRUTH alone can actually do a lot of damamge if it is being wielded in the wrong way. (Causing shame, condemnation, etc.) Yes, what someone is doing may be wrong, and you may have a handful of verses (i.e. “truth”) backing you up, but swinging this truth around like a child who has found a warrior’s sword is going to do more harm than good. John 1:17 says, “For the law was given by Moses, but GRACE AND TRUTH came by Jesus Christ.” (And yes, the CAPS were me yelling, not the Bible.) Separate the two, and you get yourself in trouble.
Posted by madame on May 8, 2008 at 6:01 am
I was brought up with brethren style legalism. Think a small home church, everyone sitting around in a circle, no pulpit, women were duct taped into silence (well… nearly!), the ever present rod (or wooden spoon, at home!), we have to do x, y and z because the Bible says so, etc….
I went to a Bible school where we had to be up and sitting in front of our Bibles by 6 am. Memorizing verses was not to be done during quiet time. Starting a relationship during the first 18 months of school was tabu (everyone was policing everyone). Lights had to be out by 12. Girls were not allowed in the boy’s dorm. Boys were not allowed in the girl’s dorm. If one went in to change a light bulb or something, he had to shout “unclean” (this WAS hilarious…)
Girls (and women) had to wear skirts whenever we were up on stage during conferences and recitals. No alcohol or smoking on campus, women didn’t preach, etc…
Well, I fell in love with my now husband and started spending a lot of time with him. We were burnt by the rule and I ended up leaving after my first summer because I couldn’t keep telling myself that what we had was not a relationship, but I also knew that I didn’t agree with that sort of rule.
After getting married, we sort of “embraced” Word of Faith doctrine. Another set of rules.
Tithing became a law. Not saying anything negative, another law. I actually feared saying something negative and it happening! Talk about superstition… I felt like a second class Christian because I don’t speak in tongues.
Then we came back to Germany, to the law of the great patriarch (my FIL). A law that is very oppressive of everyone. I have shaken that one off me and don’t take anything to heart any more.
I think the great change in thinking, from rules-Christianity to grace-Christianity, began when we started going to a small African church, with a woman pastor. I had to confront my aversion to women teaching in church. Now I’m looking deeper into what it really means to be set free, what the yokes of slavery are, and what we are set free for.
I was a Bible student under the law. I condemned the people around me. I was a missionary and pastor’s wife under the law. I condemned the people around me.
Now I’m an elder’s wife, pulling back and not wanting to be put forward until I can really show love and grace.
It takes grace to give in to cultures we don’t understand. Maybe that’s why we are in an African church.
It takes grace to forgive people who put shackles on you with their laws. Maybe that’s why we are so close to the in-laws.
I don’t know exactly what God has up his sleeve with this time, but I want to let him do it.
Posted by mtash on May 8, 2008 at 10:16 am
Madame, I was also brought up in the brethren system. For a while, i thought that it was not religious because it was not organized church but eventually it dawned on me that we were lovers of “doctrines” not lovers of Christ.
Posted by Linnet on May 8, 2008 at 12:23 pm
…we can live from a perspective where right and wrong are both irrelevant as it is both borne from the tree of knowledge. Our explanation that we are living from the Tree of Life, in the Love and Grace of Jesus, does’nt satisfy their need for rules.
Amen there! This has just been taught at our church, I posted about it recently. It’s better to be one that to be right; our desire to be right was what made us reach out for that fruit. It’s what causes all the infighting between denominations and Christians.
Posted by Beatrice on May 8, 2008 at 4:43 pm
some of a poem by T.S.Eliot that reminds me of what you said, Molly -
“The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part,
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art,
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.”
Let’s see, how has God set me free?
He set me free to wear pants and anything tighter than a sack, ect, and more than that, things that made me look pretty. In doing so He set me free to care about what modesty really is.
He set me free to stop ignoring and squelching the doubts and questions that beset me, about all manner of things from Calvinism to women’s roles and so much else.
He set me free to just enjoy and learn from my fellow believers, while feeling able to disagree with any one of them when I need to.
He set me free to enjoy Christian rock music.
(Nope, drums and blare ain’t demonic.)
He set me free to be able to disagree with my parents, while continuing to honor them.
He set me free to just feel awful sometimes, whether from terror or depression or hurt or whatever, and kept on telling me that my faith was very strong and it wasn’t dying and He was proud of me.
He set me free to stop thinking of Him as always angry and condemning, and wtith this I began to care more about Him and how He felt after I’d sinned and hurt Him. (Not what was going to happen to me.)
Again, He set me free to ask questions.
He set me free from so much that would take too long to tell about, or would be too personal.
He set me free to love.
(This is such an awesome conversation, peoples.)
Posted by Katherine Gunn on May 8, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Beatrice~
Thank you for this comment. A reminder of what He is doing in me. I haven’t quite crossed from seeing Him as angry & condemning yet (it is shifting, though) – learning to trust after a lifetime of having to live on alert is harder than I would like… but He is teaching me that he is not like the people I have known . . . and I am learning that I can trust Him. In that blossoms the freedom to just relax….
Posted by madame on May 9, 2008 at 3:40 am
Beatrice and Katherine Gunn’s last comment,
Thanks you. Enormous thank you! That just says so much about what I’m going through right now.
Posted by Beatrice on May 9, 2008 at 7:06 am
(hugs Katherine and Madame)
Posted by Atlantic on May 9, 2008 at 11:20 am
Um.
(Long pause).
There are a couple of things I want to say, but I feel like I’d be stomping on tender and vulnerable wheat while trying to get at the chaff…
For now, you know how that Eliot passage goes on?
Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
Posted by Atlantic on May 9, 2008 at 11:23 am
I meant tares, not chaff.
Posted by Beatrice on May 9, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Hi, Atlantic, yeah, I knew how that passage goes on. There’s even more that goes in the same rhyme scheme. The best I can see it, that whole passage gets across the theme that we humans are seriously, mortally sick and we’ve got to die to live, and Christ has to help us do that by dying in His death. Something like that. So what was it you were wanting to say?
Posted by Atlantic on May 9, 2008 at 3:13 pm
First, I must say that I’m absolutely appalled at the levels of authoritarianism described or implied here and at some of the links, and I really sympathise with those getting out from under that.
However, I did see a couple of things in the comments that worry me, and start me thinking thoughts about Satan making sins in pairs…..
“must admit, that our friends who does attend “church” do not really understand what we are doing, or how we can live from a perspective where right and wrong are both irrelevant”
I have to add myself to the people who don’t understand how a Christian can do that. Teenage Nietscheans and middle-aged NeoPagans, yes. (Well, sort of – they’re kidding themselves, but I understand how their position flows from their general principles.) I don’t understand a Christian taking this position. Particularly when this is followed a few sentences later with,
“They seem to think that we are now going to live immoraly and who knows what else!!!”
If a person is consciously rejecting right and wrong, it’s a logical inference. Morality all about the distinction between right and wrong.
The quote from Romans 8….is a very dynamic translation. Dynamic is fine, but then there’s “Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture”. I don’t see anything like that italicised bit in those verses Romans 8 at all. This is literally adding words to Scripture, and on a disputed point of theology, which is worse. Our worst sins, if unrepented, are precisely what drives a wedge between Christ and us.
I hope that this is a manner of speaking which I am misinterpreting, because at face value, these sort of things sound extremely antinomian.
Posted by Angela on May 9, 2008 at 4:12 pm
Atlantic- I agree. I have seen many times where people are awakened from the fogs of authoritarianism and/or legalism, and have a backlash response by latching onto anything that appears the be the opposite of what they are trying to escape. Unfortunately, then you are just trading one set of problems for another one. There have to be some absolutes in life, and just because the absolutes you held (or some of them, at least, ) turn out to be very, very wrong, doesn’t necessarily mean everything pertaining to them was wrong. There’s a saying about babies and bathwater!
Posted by Katherine Gunn on May 9, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Atlantic~
Hmm… I think the context is the thing. In the passage in Romans, the ‘worst sins listed in Scripture’ part is not talking about sins we commit. If you look at various translations, it is talking about sins committed against us – the worst ones, i.e., killing us out of hatred for God. The whole passage is about things done to us to try and separate us from God, not things done by us. It is not talking about unrepented sin on our part.
Posted by Beatrice on May 10, 2008 at 6:10 am
I saw that comment about not living by right and wrong, and it did worry me a little bit, but I wasn’t sure if I would have anything good to say if there really was a problem there. Surely the desire to always “have it right” or be all together is wrong and useless. But if by wrong and right one means wrong and right in the absolute terms, there is a problem.
Can I just say that I think both bondage to rules and the Law, abuse from authorities, legalism, ect, AND living amorally are both horrible because they are not living by Love? I don’t see those two things as the opposite ends of a pendulum and Love is the golden mean between them, I see them both as parasites that attack the flower.
Posted by molleth on May 10, 2008 at 8:46 am
I am on the same page. I think we are to be ruled by the Law of Love (which is to love Him with everything, and to love others with His love). Galatians says we are to walk in the Spirit, not the Law *or* the flesh.
But Angela, Atlantic and others who may have the same concerns, I think it’s okay to give people space to question. When people are leaving authoritarian type paradigms, they often don’t know what parts are baby and what parts are bathwater. I know that I didn’t (and some would, ahem, say that I still don’t).
We have to be able to be patient and give them the space they need to ask questions (that might scare us). People have to follow Jesus because they found Him, not because someone else rammed “the truth” down their throat, you know, or brainwashed them into “belief”… (I’m not saying you were saying that—just trying to explain where I’m coming from). In other words, I really appreciate that you expressed your concerns with gentleness. Thanks.
Posted by Atlantic on May 13, 2008 at 7:42 am
Yes, I see what you mean about the baby and the bathwater, Molly.
Katherine, I see how it could be read that way, although it still appears to be a definite addition – and easily misunderstood.
Beatrice, I don’t think the problem is desiring to always have it right, or to be all together is wrong. After all, that’s the desire to be perfect, like Jesus and our Father in Heaven. Any flaw, I think, comes from wanting that without also acknowledging that we will never be perfect in this life. That can turn into a really toxic form of pride and narcissism, when people have this image of themselves that they protect at all costs, including sacrificing other people.
Posted by Carol on May 21, 2008 at 4:11 am
Re: the verses you posted
That concept is what brought me back to blogging. I bought a new domain to show what I believe. Freedom in Christ is amazing.
I am so excited that you share the same joy.
Carol
http://parentingfreedom.com
P.S. I added you to my blogroll.
Posted by Love explained « Windblown Hope on May 23, 2008 at 1:07 am
[...] by abmo on May 23, 2008 About two weeks ago Molly had a post called “Standing in His Grace”. My wife responded to the post and this is part of what she [...]