A New Lens

I remember first noticing that my feelings about women’s Bible studies had slowly been changing after I’d just finished hosting a different sort of gathering in my home. While having the obligatory post-processing session with my patient husband, I realized I wasn’t working through or, frankly, complaining about what had or hadn’t been said.

It was surprising, as this women’s group was distinctly Christian and replete with Bible verses throughout the helpful and informative material. I wondered why my reaction was refreshingly different, and I felt conflicted.

After all, attending studies had been a North Star of sorts for me, a place of learning and companionship amongst a plethora of moves, cities, and new churches, spanning various ages and stages of my family. It’s not as if I wanted to feel uncomfortable or less safe. But I thought this growing sense of vague uneasiness was decidedly a “me-problem.”

Around that time I had picked up a memoir by Kate Bowler, a history professor who’s also written books about the prosperity gospel and evangelical women. Her life story was often juxtaposed with the reactions she received concerning her ongoing colon cancer while attending various churches for her research.

She wrote, “If you ask people in the prosperity movement how they know their lives are headed in the right direction, they talk a lot about proof. The lame will walk. The blind will see. Bills will be paid.” Developing this, she said, “Sometimes I saw this idea under the banner of family values. It was in the way women boasted about their…* (She continues, but feel free to insert here anything reflecting positively about said family or children).

I stopped reading. Something seemed hugely profound: had I, and the women with whom I’d raised my children, unknowingly subscribed to a subtle version of this? I thought back to eighth grade geometry’s transitive law: if A=B, and B=C, then A=C. Though well intentioned, had we believed that if we teach our children a certain, correct version of behavior, then God is obligated to produce a definitive type of offspring? Godly, Christian mom = godly, Christian children.

I’ve lived long enough to know things can rarely be categorized in neat little boxes.

Of course there were many good things about, and numerous benefits I received from, these groups. And also, maybe, something was partially amiss. Had we unwittingly participated in a low-key form of the happy-family-prosperity-gospel-transitive-law?

This circular thinking inevitably brings it all back to what you have or haven’t done. If someone isn’t acting a prescribed way, then you haven’t prayed the right prayer, offered the correct verse, or said the sure, wise words they needed to hear (sadly, not unlike if you haven’t given “X” amount of money to a particular cause, then God isn’t going to bless you financially). So instead of acknowledging that life is hard and we don’t always have the answers, we fell into the trap of pretending and acted like everything was just fine.

Perhaps we really had placed our worth as mothers in how our children appeared to be doing spiritually. I saw this reflected in the way prayer requests about genuinely disconcerting problems were shared in just the right light. Vulnerability was mostly expressed regarding resolved issues (God’s already taken care of this), so it was a success story. Or, when someone tip-toed into the brackish water of ongoing, complex issues with a child, it was too often met with sewn-up answers and a verse at the ready to fix-it. What if our children’s relationship with God wasn’t just a reflection of our mothering, but rather, a picture of their ongoing story with their Creator?

The performative undertones seemed to hollow me out and left me feeling weary and guilty with my soul aching for more. Maybe there was a different way.

I imagined genuinely coming alongside another while in the midst of our human, messy lives, holding space for the in-between without judgment or a solution. What if we gave ourselves and everyone else permission to be deeply known, expressed how we actually felt, and still affirmed Christ with us, knowing it is His work of re-formation—this deep transforming by a Holy Power—not ours?

This was all rattling around in my brain that evening as I debriefed with my husband. I realized we were learning how to be with ourselves and with others by gaining new lenses.** I don’t remember there being a lot of “shoulds,” right answers, or veiled comparisons about what we were or weren’t doing; instead, it was an evening of exploration, asking questions, and seeing life from different perspectives. And, after everyone left, I noticed no one, surprisingly, had talked about their families.

* Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved), Kate Bowler, p. 20.

**www.thekaleidproject.com

Jeri Wallin splits her time between the western North Carolina mountains, where she and her husband can often be found exploring a new hiking trail, and the Atlanta area near her four adult children. A lover of beauty, creativity, and words, her favorite pastimes include playing with color in her studio and immersing herself in books. In this season of life, besides delighting in her two grandchildren, she’s been thinking about what it means to accompany someone and the much discussed, but rarely practiced idea of lavish grace.