In 2005, as I packed up my things for Harvard Divinity School, I heard a radio interview with James Dobson of Focus on the Family and thought, "these people are my enemies. I am being trained to take them down, and reclaim the title 'Christian' for what it stands for."
A lot of anger there. The anger has been there as long as I remember, taking the form of fiery, often controversial rants that have seemed to define me. While I have had enough reason for anger - from a broken family, to the murder of my grandmother, to a life-threatening disease, to numerous broken relationships and a life I could never seem to manage - the true source of my anger, and the pain behind it, remained hidden until recently.
In 2007, I dropped my Harvard coursework to rush home and care for my Mom who had contracted pancreatic cancer. She died 15 months later, and in the following year my life fell apart. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. Through intensive therapy centered on my ongoing struggles with relationships, sexuality and responsibility, I came to understand a history of sexual abuse in my family, which shaped my understanding of life in ways that have injured my ability to grow and relate as a human being.
I am promised by the bible that God will use all things for good, and I see evidence of that in my sustained, sacrificial devotion to my mother which has echoed out over the years to an extreme sensitivity to and priority on Mother Earth, fueling a dedicated and novel approach to environmentalism, such as the recent project at www.itscool.us. Similarly, the pain and injustice in which I grew up brought Jesus alongside me, and I have felt and known his closeness for decades, even while failing to embrace his healing. Knowing how much I needed it, Jesus stayed by my side, even while I lived blindly in ways that hurt him and others. My pain in relation to Christ has not thus been a questioning of his presence or existence, but an outrage at the ignorance and pain perpetrated by distortions of the gospel committed by most American modelers of Christ. Including myself.
Like most personally familiar with sexual abuse, I have lived with confusion, isolation, and a perpetual procrastination around speaking into the world the gifts and perspective God has given me. I have put off saying what is on my heart to be said, and one way to look at this is the Enemy’s ploy to destroy me early on, laying the seeds of self-destruction that would keep my work for Christ from ever manifesting.
I see now that no education or length of study will perfect my message. Developing my voice around the Climate, Christianity, and the ills in society which distort our appropriation of both will be a conversation, bound to err and offend, made worse only if it fails to start at all. The element of my rants that has been missing in the past – compassion – will now develop along with new awareness of my own injuries. I hope that the outcome can be something of value in this broken world.
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