Photo by divemasterking2000

It took me at least twenty-eight years to realize that faith should involve ongoing change. And another year to get around to changing.

Can you relate to any of that? I sure can. It’s from a book I recently finished reading, Picking Dandelions: A Search for Eden Among Life’s Weeds, by Sarah Cunningham (she also wrote Dear Church: Letters from a Disillusioned Generation).

Although my own childhood faith experience differed from Cunningham’s—she grew up as a pastor’s kid, in a more conservative church—the book really got me thinking about some of my earliest perceptions of church and God, and what I imagined he really wanted from me.

For instance, I always thought there was a right way to live—a right way to be a Christian—and my goal was to figure it out as quickly as I could. Once I had it figured out, I would be golden. Sitting pretty. Ready to ace every test, like a math wiz who has fully grasped all the formulas and only has to plug in the numbers.

This idea, of course, has some flaws. For one, it assumes that we should all be striving to ultimately live the same way. Not only would that make for an incredibly boring world, but it seems pretty clear that God didn’t create the world to work that way.

Another problem with my childhood aspirations is that they didn’t allow room for ongoing change—my concept assumed that you reach that singular ideal and then freeze. All it takes is another look at the world to know God didn’t have that in mind, either. It’s not like a tree grows until it is perfectly shaped and proportioned, and then stays that way until one day it drops dead. And it’s not like our greatest philosophers and theologians fully grasp the meaning of “all this,” write it all in one perfect book, and then that’s the pinnacle of their careers.

It seems pretty clear that we’re in the midst of an ongoing process of change, from birth to death. And it’s not a straight path that takes you from wrong to right, either. It’s a meandering path, with multiple “right” routes.

From transformation to re-transformation

Cunningham addresses change in a compelling, personal way in my favorite chapter of her struggling-with-faith memoir—what I would call her “Conversion (again)” chapter. “After decades of living as a converted person, I am badly in need of further converting.”

Whether or not you’re a fan of the word “conversion” (I’m not, particularly), this is a realization I know well. The moment I think I have arrived—processed my mistakes, admitted my faults, learned the ultimate life lesson, offered myself as completely pliable to God—I suddenly am able to see how far I have to go.

As Cunningham wrestles with the state of her lifelong faith, she starts thinking about stagnancy and change, launching into a discussion with God (on her porch, I might add—I have to approve of anyone who loves porches).

A person shouldn’t really claim to be connected to you if they stay the same year after year after year. Should they?

She continues musing, in her wry way: “…somehow, many of us—and I’m not necessarily saying me—have been willing to accept this same lack of change in the spiritual realm,” and bemoans people who treat others poorly yet proudly wear the “faith” label—“Like faith is just some sort of social label that is in no way linked to transformation.”

Transformation. That’s a word I can get behind. (I’ll have to think more about my issues with “conversion,” and write a post on that later.)

Time to abandon the museum

As I continue to reflect on all of this transformation, I’m going to carry this metaphor around with me for a while:

My faith, I knew, often just sat there, unused in the container of my body…. I began to think of myself as a museum. A terrible, obsolete and tiresome museum that was nothing more than a stiff, shellacked collection of Sunday school prizes and witnessing bracelets from the 1980s.

I know that over the past five or so years I’ve been doing some major spring cleaning in my faith museum. My dumpster is filling up with all sorts of dusty, worn-out ideas. But I still have a long way to go.

And there’s always that other danger, too—the danger that I’ll become so sure of my new way of seeing things that I’ll proudly construct a new museum collection…which will soon be useless. I think it’s time to get rid of that old building, all together. What do you think?