I once had a friend in college. I considered her a mentor. She would hang out with us college freshman even though she could have hung out with cool people in their late 20’s like herself. She and I once went on a walk. I talked to her about spending time with men. If I refused to have relationships at all with men, even as a single woman, that would be be half the human population I’m refusing to share my life with. Is that love?

I asked because I felt guilty about spending time with a certain man in my life, and I couldn’t decide whether or not this relationship was “okay,” and why or why not. But it ran so much deeper than that.

My mentor friend often would spend time with younger women to talk to them about God. I appreciate her intentionality in my life more than I could say.

I once had a friend in college. He was in my psychology class. He was the first friend I ever had who smoked. He and I once went on a walk. He told me he was never really accepting of his own body. I told him I was a perfectionist. I invited him to some Christian things, but he would never come. I didn’t take it personally. We hung out at the mall instead.

I once met a guy at a bar. This was last weekend, actually. He used to be in YoungLife, but now he doubts a lot of things about God. I told him, that was good, you can’t have faith unless you question things. Not really. You ask questions and get the answers. So you’re confident. And when you’re in a position where you lack judgment or are confused, you can’t deny God is real, and you can’t make excuses to justify something you know is wrong. That’s when you need faith.

This guy thinks humans are amazing. We agreed: Christians don’t often give people enough credit. We’re always labeling them sinners, “broken,” and the like. Yes, we have a sin nature somewhere in that heart of ours. But we’re so much more! We were made in the image of God, with creativity. We were made with the ability to love, with amazing DNA and enzymes and stuff, different Myers-Briggs personalities. And intelligence… Why don’t we use it? Why don’t we use our minds to ask questions and to strengthen our faith?

We talked for two hours.
Two weeks ago, would I have seen myself talking to a guy one-on-one at a bar? No.
Was it “okay?”
Was it “right” or “wrong?”
Does it matter?

Was it loving? I think it was. Isn’t that what matters?

I once had a long week at work. It was this week, actually. I invited a guy to come watch me drum. He came, and we invited another guy to come eat pancakes with us late at night. They were both Christian, but we didn’t talk about God much. They helped me feel human again. i needed that.

I once ate pancakes with a friend in college until 4 in the morning. I’d like to think the time I spent with him meant something.

Would we have been the better if it had never happened? If I had not shared my heart with him? If I had not loved and lost?

Is God as nit-picky and moralistic as I am?
Probably not.

I do know he invented pancakes. And that I am thankful. (1 Timothy 4?)

I grew up being friends with guys. I liked being the only girl sometimes. But I didn’t think much of my gender as it related to how I was supposed to interact with different people. Theennnn I went to a campus ministry and learned about biblical femininity and masculinity, how we’re different. Gender roles in relationships. Specific needs and temptations and burning core identity questions each gender longed to answer. That was great, and so much of it I tested and found to be true.

But one night I went to a Friday night meeting and they showed a video on how guys and girls can’t be friends, mainly because guys can’t be friends with girls. I was disillusioned. Was I expecting too much of men to have awesome friendships with them and expect them to actually be satisfied with that? I figured God just made guys that way, that they just never want to be your friend, they always wanted to be something “more” (as if romantic relationships are guaranteed to be more life-giving and rewarding than close friendships), and that’s just how it was, and somehow that was good. So here’s how I reacted. I stopped hanging out with guys, until I started working with them. At a church. And then at a secular job. And then I still “guarded my heart,” in other words, refusing to be there for them when they needed me, and refusing to hear from them what I needed to hear.

But they loved me anyway.

Who would I be without them?
Guilty. Guilty if I loved them, guilty if I didn’t.

My experiences tell me you can’t put rules on things. At least most things.
My experience with the church sometimes tells me you’re supposed to put rules on everything, or else you might sin or something.
But what’s true? Who’s to say? And yet, no matter who says 2 + 2 = 4, there is a right answer to certain things in life.

Yes, there are things at stake when you cultivate unhealthy relationships, or intimacy in the wrong context. You can ruin families. You can get raped. You can forget God. I’ve known all of these to happen in the lives of dear friends.

But from such disillusionment you can assume the only alternative to these things is putting your heart in a safe little coffin so no one can touch it.

Or an ice castle.

So go chill in your ice castle. People will be safe from you, but what if, maybe, they need you?

And what if, maybe, you need them?

I’m not sure which is worse, hiding your heart and not letting anyone know you, or giving yourself away in a harmful, desperate, confused kind of way. But I’m willing to bet there’s a better way.

We make schemas of how life is like. When you’re 2, all four-legged animals are puppies. Then you learn about cats. then you realize, there are far more four-legged animals than just dogs and cats.

But there is such a thing as a lion.

Most of my frustration of late comes from this: There are too many false dichotomies.

You’re either legalistic, OR you’re licentious.
You’re either a solid Christian who knows everything about the Bible AND life in general, OR you’re the people who need “reaching” and don’t know anything about life or the Bible.
You’re either in full-time ministry, OR you’re the kind of person who brings  monetary value to the religious non-profit arena.
You can have business wisdom, creativity, and skill, OR you can trust God.
You can either live in a Christian bubble and be actually strong in your faith, OR you can have deep relationships with people who don’t live in bubbles.

The thing is… the Bible supports neither of these extremes. In fact, many extremes we find in the Bible, aren’t extremes. A lot of the black-and-white things… are not black and white. Peter and Luke both left stuff behind to follow Jesus. But did you know Peter and Luke both had families to take care of? What they gave up most was themselves. Did you know God sometimes asked people to kill people in wars? His command was to not murder. Did you know God commanded a guy to marry a prostitute? Would your marriage counselor have approved of that? Of course, there are some non-negotiables. But they’re more in the reason  (our relationship with God matters more than anything; life is a precious thing and belongs to God to bring Him glory; marriage is a representation of our relationship with God).

I didn’t mean to confuse you by that last paragraph. But in a way, maybe I did want to shake things up. But I did it for a reason.

Bottom line is, if the rules we make aren’t ultimately bringing our hearts closer to God, they’re not cutting it.
And if the way we’re trying to live free isn’t ultimately bringing out hearts closer to God, that freedom was won in vain.

I honestly haven’t been reading my bible much lately. But every time I do open it lately, it amazes me, in a way that, like, I want more, but I also feel like I’m missing out at the same time. I just opened to Hebrews 10 today, which says, the law of right and wrong has no power to make us perfect.

Only one thing can do that, and it’s not anything I did, or can do, or can give up for Lent, or even that I can read daily with coffee in the morning.

A tiny Canadian I found on Twitter says being good to get into Heaven is like “volunteering to look good on university transcripts.”

I think she understands grace more than a lot of “solid Christians” do.

But who will tell her that?

You know what bugs me? So many of us don’t really even know who God is, or what is really true. This sets us up for bad decisions and a sucky life. Not just sin. But things that will destroy our lives and our relationships. I don’t think that’s fair. Who will tell them? (As if there were a “them.” We all need to hear something. We all need to grasp something in this whirlwind of life before we drift under. If there’s anything that isn’t natural, it’s survival. Nothing natural does it in the end…)

I can get totally addicted to something, and just love it, because it makes me happy. (Like work. Ah, the rush of being successful and having a job I love and skipping dinner to make my company a better place!) And I do get addicted to things. But at least I know if I love it more than God, it’s gonna betray me. Always does. At least I know. Who will tell me, if I don’t know — and who will show me — that the solution is NOT simply to “Do more of what makes you happy?”

Because that hasn’t worked to save the world yet, has it.

How can I learn from people who are different from me unless I get to know them?
How can I expect people to come to my stuff and read my books if I don’t come to their stuff and read their books?
If I have the truth, why should I be afraid to investigate it and compare it (not just contrast it) with different propositions?

Community tends to form around not having it together. Community tends to form around feeling betrayed, misunderstood, underestimated, or whatever. I get that.

Pride tends to form around having some answer most people don’t. Whether it’s a Mensa group, a gnostic heretical group, or a preppy Christian group. I get that. It feels good to win a prize nobody else did. Doesn’t mean you earned it, ya dork.

What if we could form the community you find when you’re on sinking sand together…  but while actually still standing on solid ground?

Is it possible to walk with smokers and drinkers and mentors and bloggers… with a doctrinal confidence that acts as a filter?

Sound doctrine and taking a risk for love (love as in wanting someone else’s good). I think both are just about equally important in the Bible. According to God. 1 Timothy 4:16, Titus 1:9.

What if we could form a community around something amazing and that offers real, universal hope? What if we could volunteer, or put our faith in a higher power, even, without this idea that doing so makes a weirdo like me somehow superior to the rest of humanity?

What if, I could actually really find out true things about the world, defend them against things that are false… and not see myself as better than everybody because of it? What if I shared my findings with others, just as they shared theirs with mine?

What does it look like to walk with someone who’s on a different leg of the journey… without walking in circles? Or leaving the truth behind.

Sometimes, words don’t suffice. Actually, they never do.

“Dear children,
let us not love
with words or speech
but
with actions
AND
in truth.”

1 John 3:18

What does that look like?

Sometimes, you just have to walk it out.