The Injury of the Mythic Holiday Season

I was re-watching a holiday favorite White Christmas, which ends with that iconic scene where the open air backdrop shows snow falling on trees, and the main cast is in the foreground, decked out in red satin and white fuzzy trim, surrounded by Christmas trees and small children.

And then it struck me in a way that it has never before, that every single thing in that scene is entirely phony, and these types of depictions are crazy making for society b/c we end up with these mythic images in our heads and try so hard to achieve them, but it’s impossible.

That scene isn’t real. The open air backdrop itself is fake. It’s a movie set.

That everyone looked so happy and harmonious isn’t real. Bing Crosby, who seems so lovable in that movie, was in real life verbally abusive and not pleasant to be around. Vera-Ellen looks like she had an eating disorder. She was too thin. I cringed at how tiny her waist was. It’s amazing that she could dance like that and not pass out from malnutrition.

So if you consider how this movie, and all the countless other holiday movies, plus Norman Rockwell illustrations, have had decades to reinforce these images in our brain, this explains this huge gap between reality and myth. And this gap fuels disappointment and potentially depression — I know how holidays should look and feel, and my holidays rarely feel that way, so there must be something wrong with me if I’m missing out on what everyone else is experiencing. That’s why some churches hold “Blue Christmas” services to minister to people who feel out of sorts during the holidays.

So I find it hard to accept my current reality for what it is, and stop yearning for the myth. And of course, I am feeding this disappointment with my annual rituals of watching all these holiday movies!

I’m aspiring for my life to reflect an image that is false. And I’ll keep expending resources fruitlessly to try to attain that image, but always fall short. This is the trick of advertising. We aren’t trained to be content with what we have, who we are, how we look. This detracts from our ability to appreciate and enjoy the present moment.

This is entirely opposite of Jesus Christ, who brought Good News that God is with us, and that God Himself is going to fill the gap between us and salvation.

Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope- the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

O Holy Night

Being “Cool” Is Overrated

I’m realizing more and more how much I’ve always wanted to be ‘cool’ and how it’s generally eluded me. It’s from this feeling of being rejected as a child, not being popular. And I notice how it’s dictated so many of my actions and choices over the past few decades.

First, I want to dissect what I have interpreted “cool” to mean. I’m guessing it’s uncool to even ponder this question. Cool people are probably so cool that this doesn’t even cross their minds, right?

Somehow I think cool partially means wearing an awesome pair of sunglasses. At least that’s what the Snoopy persona Joe Cool seems to indicate. I love Snoopy, so if being cool just meant emulating Snoopy, that would be fine with me. The sunglasses do seem to be a key part of the cool facade for human beings too. I remember wearing my Esprit sunglasses during freshman orientation/rush week — a future frosh friend saw me and thought, she’s cool (or at least she’s trying to be cool), b/c of the sunglasses and also b/c I was glaring at the annoying freshman girl who appointed herself to take charge of our freshman orientation group in absence of our assigned facilitator. So the stinkeye also added to the coolness. So I think cool equates to being mean and edgy while wearing sunglasses. I also have a feeling cool people also aren’t supposed to like Joe Cool, whereas I’d happily wear a Joe Cool T-shirt.

So I think this is where I struggle with being cool. If it goes beyond just wearing sunglasses and a red knit turtleneck sweater, and involves being mean at someone else’s expense, that is not kind. It strikes me that you can’t be consistently kind at the same time as being cool. You always hear about kids who are “popular but nice” — which indicates that most popular people are not nice — but usually what this means is these kids will condescend to say hello to and acknowledge the existence of kids who aren’t popular. But these popular-but-nice people are never actually friends in public with the unpopular kids.

My friend’s kid got a very low score on a test, and by way of explanation said, “Well I got the highest score of all the popular kids.” Yes, this girl is super cool, and the troubling undertone of her comment is, “I got the highest score of all the people who matter.” It’s a dehumanizing way to view the world. I discussed how disturbed I was by this kid’s comment to a mutual friend, who then looked at me and said in a condescending tone, “well, clearly you are oversensitive and bitter b/c you were rejected by cool people in high school,” implying that he was popular in high school. In my experience, usually people who are proud that they were cool decades after the fact, typically means they’re super insecure and probably weren’t actually popular.

I start to wonder how many of my actions are dictated by this need to be cool, and maybe I’d just be happier if I stopped trying. How many of my clothing purchases are motivated by what other people will think, versus what I like? How much of what I like is being informed by what I think others will like and admire? How many times have I made snarky comments b/c I wanted to make other people laugh? And of course, snark usually comes at the expense of someone else. It seems like that’s the essence of cool — it’s exclusionary of others, it implicitly puts other people down who aren’t willing to yield to its unspoken norms.

Being cool doesn’t seem to be strongly associated with being principled. If anything, people who want to maintain their ‘cool’ status usually have to succumb to peer pressure (or be trendsetters in an edgy way that will be acceptable), so that others will continue to like them. While people aspire to emulate others who are cool, these cool people usually aren’t thought of as having exemplary character. Prophets were never cool — these outspoken people were so unpopular that people would want to throw them off of a cliff.

On the show 30 Rock, the main character Liz Lemon has never been cool except for one week in her entire life when she somehow scored a larger dorm room in college. Kids partied there until they realized after a week that she was not cool. Then she reverted to being the disciplinarian “RA Liz.” I think that I just need to embrace my inner resident advisor. RAs get to rain on the parades of cool people. Cool people probably don’t even watch this show b/c it would only resonate with the people who have been rejected by others. For us, Liz is a lovably uncool curmudgeon, voicing all the insecurities we’re so busy trying to hide: “Hey nerds! Who’s got two thumbs, speaks limited French, and has only cried once today? This moi!”

I want to be done with trying to be cool; it takes too much energy and money. I’d rather be explicitly uncool b/c the least cool thing is someone who is a wannabe cool person. And let’s face it, everyone who is ‘cool’ is usually a wannabe.

Church and Trauma Part 3: “Healing” Prayer

I’m on a roll!

I know loads of people who haven’t had this number of traumatic incidents with the church, so it could be tempting to wonder if there’s just simply something ‘wrong’ with me — do I attract this treatment? The answer is, yes, I do attract it! Usually people tend to attack people who they perceive as weaker. No one likes to admit it, but a lot of people, especially if they were ever the subject of bullying or abuse, enjoy the power they feel when they victimize someone else. I have tended to be open about my areas of weakness, so my vulnerability makes me an easy target. Unfortunately my nature is to be an open book.

What I’m learning as I mature is to be a little more guarded and careful about who I share with, but also to speak up when someone is bullying me. The worst is looking back on different interactions and wishing I had said something to stand up for myself.

However, what happens when churches actually create spaces where we’re encouraged to be vulnerable? And in those contexts, we then open up, and then we’re attacked for exposing our weakness. Imagine being in an operating room where the surgeon opens you up, and then just slices through your organs. You just bleed out and die on the table.

One ‘operating room’ space that some churches have created is prayer ministry. In theory, you can share your struggles with a designated prayer minister. It’s supposed to be held in confidence. They’re supposed to listen empathically and pray for your concerns. This type of ministry can attract deeply empathic people who want to minister to others, BUT it also attracts self-righteous, smug people who think they have a direct line to God. I have been so blessed by the former, but the wounds from the latter make it not worth going to any more prayer ministries. That latter group has made me feel judged, condemned, difficult, and too needy. They’ve given me unsolicited advice — even though prayer ministry shouldn’t generally included advice giving, they just can’t resist. They’ve given false prophecy and therefore false hope. In a couple of instances, where I had been assigned to pray with someone monthly, they were so frustrated that their prayers weren’t producing the results they expected, that they just ‘dropped’ me and I never heard from them again. I understand wanting to bow out of a commitment but the mature thing to do is inform the person, not ghost them.

It’s just sad that prayer is supposed to be such a place of comfort, where we acknowledge our own need and vulnerability, and God’s sovereignty in being able to supply our needs. But it can be twisted to deplete us instead.

Church and Trauma Part 2: Ten Years of Silence

I attended a church for several years with this super charismatic pastor, in both senses of the word. People were so enamoured by him and his wife, saying that if either of them made a claim, it had to be true because they both ‘heard’ so clearly from God. As you might imagine, there was a lot of spiritual manipulation as a result of this pedestal. I’d say the church was cult-ish, if not an actual cult, but I did look at a list of distinguishing characteristics of cults, and it did meet a good deal of them. (For example, when I left the church, everyone stopped inviting me to their informal social gatherings; I was basically dead to them. Also, older single men were able to be predatory without constraint. One guy dated multiple women aged 20+ years younger than he. If I could paste a barf emoji here, I would.)

What was so troubling was that it wasn’t immediately obvious to visitors that this church had this dark side. And after attending for several years, I realized it, but even then I wasn’t totally convinced until I met someone who had left the same church after attending and being super involved for 14 years.

When I left, I kept silent about my reasons to the few friends I maintained who still attended the church. I knew that they wouldn’t believe me and I’d be that crazy lone voice that got written off. I just recently found out that after decades, the true nature of this pastor and his wife became apparent to many people, not everyone, but definitely a critical mass such that I could not be gaslit. After ten years of silence, I was finally able to share my story with my friends. I didn’t rejoice in the wrong that this couple did to all their congregants and staff, but I was glad that their actions came to light and it seemed like there was some level of justice. And it was a relief to be able to be open about what happened to me.

Quite a bit happened to me. I discovered some blatant dishonesty and manipulation by the leadership, including manipulation of the meaning of Scripture (all other pastors and seminarians whom I have consulted with completely disagree with this church’s interpretation of the particular Bible verses/concepts in question). I witnessed how the pastor and his wife played favorites with people — going out of their way to get to know such favorites, and then going out of their way to hide from people they deemed unworthy. At different times, I have fallen into one camp or the other. When I first joined the church, they were thrilled that I was there b/c I was in full-time campus ministry and also did a lot of work in inner-city ministry. They rolled out the red carpet. Then I left the church for a couple of years, but then returned to this church and the pastor didn’t speak to me for almost two years. The silent treatment was clearly passive aggressive punishment for ‘betraying’ the church. I felt I deserved it. I was clearly operating out of a place of shame.

After a very long time, finally it somehow clicked in my mind that God would have welcomed me back with open arms. The prodigal son story in Luke took on new relevance:

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

Luke 15:20b

The prodigal son didn’t ‘deserve’ a warm welcome, given how he had cursed his father when he left. But the great love of the father prevailed. This is the gospel. And this is how I wanted to be treated, not feeling as though I had to beg for the pastor’s good graces.

It takes such a long time to heal all these wounds.

Church and Trauma

I appreciate Dr. Curt Thompson’s Being Known podcast series. Episode S4E9 on “Trauma and the Church” is one of my favorites. He talks about how the church is intended to be a place where broken people can find healing, but like a hospital, people can actually can acquire the spiritual/emotional equivalent of a hospital-borne infection. And in parallel with people dying from sepsis acquired in a hospital, sometimes the acquired illness is even worse than the wounds that they originally brought into the church. He talks about how hospitals have committees to review cases of these infections, so that they can improve their protocols to prevent future infections. I wish churches would do the same, but I find it hard to believe that pastors and congregants would be humble enough to admit and own that their behavior and advice had hurt others.

I reflect back on all my years attending church and interacting with other Christians, and I am taken aback by the level of manipulation and emotional abuse that I have endured. And that I have probably unwittingly inflicted on others. One insidious thing about evangelicals is that they have a smug sense that they have a corner on the Truth and therefore speak in really condescending ways to people who have other points of view. Evangelicals often think they have all the answers and cease to listen to people’s stories. There is little room for nuance or questions. I was taken aback by this ministry I heard about that said they welcomed everyone’s questions about faith and that they could provide answers. If anything, that indicates to me how little they know.

I’ve endured so many traumas in churches that I can no longer attend any church at all. These aren’t psychologically safe places. There certainly are thoughtful, empathic people in many churches, but there’s also an abundance of Christians who can’t seem to listen or handle nuance. I don’t have the tolerance to weed through those Christians to find the few who are empathic. I don’t have the patience to engage the ‘one-dimensional’ Christians to show them compassion. I know that I used to be like them, but I’m not in a place where I have enough compassion to try to engage. Maybe one day I can love them. I know why we want to be ‘one-dimensional’ and feel as though we have all the answers. There’s something so reassuring about that. I’ve written past blog posts about the solace and control we find in formulas and pat answers.

So now I feel as though I need to work through all the slights, large and small, I’ve endured through the Church, and part of that process is documenting them.

Today, the first trauma I’d like to recount is being told that I had no right to take communion. This woman, who was a well-respected small group leader at the church, said she had been observing me from afar and could tell that I was really angry at God. She felt that I should not be allowed communion. [In retrospect, how awful that she deduced all of this from afar. We had hardly ever spoken, and she wasn’t even curious as to why I was angry at God. It didn’t even seem as though she cared about my well being because she certainly didn’t offer any kind of support.] Chastened, I then went to talk to my pastor to ask him whether I should stop serving communion. I didn’t feel that I was in the “right” place spiritually [whatever that means] to serve this sacrament to others (all members of this church were on a rotating roster to serve). He was incredibly gracious to me and said that communion wasn’t about being good enough. He reassured me that I should continue to serve it. I went back to the woman and told her. She said, “Well, I think that he wants you to serve it but not actually take it yourself. If you serve it to others, you can observe the attitude with which they take it and they can serve as models to you.” I then brought this up to the pastor’s wife, and she said to ignore these comments and continue to both take/serve communion.

My older self looks back at this situation and just wants to kick this judgmental, self-righteous woman in the ass. I wish I had stood up for myself. I wish I had not even talked to her. She had no right to speak into my life without knowing my story. Her comments were more an indictment of her own character, than mine.

I know the Christlike answer here is that I should get to a point where I can look at her compassionately, forgive her, turn the other cheek, and think, “how sad that she is in this twisted place where she judges people silently and abuses them emotionally.” I’m just not there yet.

From Judgment to Empathy: Abraham and Sarah

I had a mentor who kept drilling into my mind that Abraham and Sarah were impatient and disobedient in waiting on God’s promise for a son. She claimed that we can do things that can either expedite God’s promises (e.g., be obedient and submissive, learn what God wants to teach us as quickly as possible) or slow them down (e.g., try to take things into our own hands). Abraham and Sarah tried to take things into their own hands by having her maid Hagar bear Abraham a son, Ishmael. Of course, we know what a sh*tshow that turned into. But did those actions delay God from sending them Isaac?

Anyhow, this mentor would warn me, “don’t do anything to produce [symbolic] Ishmaels in your life.” And I always was puzzled as to why the book of Hebrews listed Abraham as a hero of faith.

So for a long time, I looked down on Abraham and Sarah, seeing their story as a stern warning.

And then, similar to them, I received a promise from God. It hasn’t come to pass yet, and it has almost been a decade. I don’t find myself questioning the promise itself, but whether I somehow missed it. Did God answer and did I not notice? Did I do something to cause God not to fulfill His promise? Am I supposed to do something to help bring about its fulfillment?

Maybe these are some of the questions that Abraham and Sarah asked, as the years went by and there was no son. Maybe they didn’t actually doubt God’s promise, but began to doubt how it would be fulfilled. It’s so easy for us to judge them for being impatient when it just takes a few minutes to read their account, but more than two decades went by before God fulfilled His word to them. Waiting is hard.

Maybe the real takeaway of their story is that God fulfilled His promise and showed them grace regardless of whether they waited obediently. It’s not about what Abraham and Sarah did, but what God did. That’s the crux of the gospel.

The Hard Road of Pursuing Justice

Years ago, several of us attempted to pull together an anthology of personal essays written by Asian American Christians who were involved in justice work. It was challenging to find 15-20 people who were willing to participate because, at that time, justice was not a prominent issue in mainstream Asian American Christian evangelical culture. On top of that, this group was a mix of folks working on justice issues in an international developing world context vs. domestically, which I’d argue are quite different.

Thinking about where most of these folks and other friends are now, I’d lump them into several categories:

• Still engaged in the work on the ground and able to witness God’s grace, but have experienced and recovered from significant burnout. And also may struggle with financial security and have little to no retirement savings.
• Engaged in justice work from a protective distance
• Engaged in the work, but super jaded and disenchanted with God. Perhaps would no longer ascribe to faith.
• No longer engaged in justice work

Or some combination of the above.

Basically, justice work is not for the faint of heart, and yet we’re all called to pursue justice. So how do we pursue justice without crashing and burning?

I’d say I’m engaged in justice work at a distance, preferring to support others who are on the front lines. They are the brave souls. When I was younger, I was more idealistic and willing to sacrifice a lot more, but now I yearn for more comfort and stability. Also, it was overwhelming seeing the amount of need out there and not feeling equipped to address it. Furthermore, even in acknowledging my own limitations to meet the need, it becomes increasingly a struggle to see God’s hand at work. Over time, idealism shifts into cynicism. The reality is, God may or may not act, but miracles are rare, so don’t expect Him to appear. We live in scarcity apart from the moments God gives us a taste of His abundance.

So the question comes down to, if our efforts won’t really make that much of a difference in the ‘fight’ for justice, and yet the price seems so high for such small change, why pursue justice?

We Are Not Enough on Our Own

This is the biggest lie out there — that on our own, we’re enough. It comes from self-help and a highly individualistic Western culture.

Christianity says that all of our value comes from God. That means that none of our value comes from ourselves. Which means, we are only complete with God — and we only know we’re complete when we can somehow embrace this transcendent truth.

Now here’s the problem:

We’re human and finite. It is hard for what is anchored on Earth to grasp what is in Heaven. We may be blessed with glimpses and moments, but in my experience, they are fleeting.

So what happens when we cannot grasp that our value is from God? We start naturally attaching our worth to other things more tangible: marriage, family, friendships, community, money, power, status, career, vocation, avocation, skills, gifts, talents, etc.

But then we go to church and we’re told that it’s BAD to attach our value to these earthly things and that we need to attach our worth to God.

Do you see how we’re caught between a rock and a hard place?

So we feel guilty for finding our value in what Earth offers, but most of us realistically can’t sense our value in God. So then this brings us to a place where in practice, we are not allowed to find our value in anything at all. And then this meshes well with the idea that by ourselves, we are enough. And then we beat ourselves up for constantly finding value in other things, constantly desiring other things.

I feel shame in all the areas where I lack — and then I feel ashamed of that shame, and that I’m not allowed to feel it. But actually, there is something true and human in that shame attached to the lack — it’s rooted in the desire for someone to lift me out of the mire. And that someone is supposed to be God, the King and Creator of the Universe. Imagine if I showed up at my college reunion with the King of the Universe on my arm! That seems to be a worthwhile desire.

Can we come to accept that our desires are framed by this fallen world that doesn’t allow us to perceive God’s love as we should? I’m not saying that all desires are good and all desires should be fulfilled, but I am saying that all desires are tainted in some way and cannot be 100% pure. And that trying to shame that desire or forcefully bend it or break it is not productive.

And hopefully one day, we can come to a place where we realize our desires are not too strong, but too weak, as CS Lewis writes about in his famed essay, “The Weight of Glory”:

“The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”

The Fellowship of Discomfort

I attended my church’s online Blue Christmas service. The Blue Xmas concept is great — holidays are really hard for a lot of people (all that forced merriment and cheer, and reality not meeting up with the hype — I personally love the Xmas dinner scene in the movie Sleepless in Seattle, with all the lit candles and the large, festive holiday centerpiece on the dinner table. But I’ve never had a Xmas dinner like that in my life!)

So I’m thankful a few churches host Blue Christmas services as a safe space for people to grieve.

So it was a meaningful place for people bonded by sadness and disappointment to come together.

However, the person who facilitated the service felt obligated to end it on a ‘happy note’, which felt a bit forced. She talked about how light always eventually breaks through darkness, almost as if it were imminent, if you could just hang on one day longer.

She didn’t, however, mention that sometimes the light doesn’t break through until Heaven, and there are sadly wounds we may carry till we die.

The American church is a victim of American triumphalism, which always necessitates a happy ending.

For many people in America, especially if they are middle / upper class, things normally pan out, more or less.

But no one likes to talk about all the times when things do not pan out.

And that is where there is deep loneliness and isolation. That’s when we feel as though we’re not allowed to end on a somber, discordant, unresolved note. It makes others feel uncomfortable and not want to be around us because we’re “Debbie downers.”

I, however, seek the “fellowship of discomfort” — people who will journey with each other in the discomfort of the uncertainty of life and our faith– that we have no idea whether God will heal our wounds in this life, although we know He can. And knowing He can (but doesn’t) often creates questions, anger, frustration, sorrow. Where is the remnant of people of faith who want to sit in that space with me?

When Sense Making Makes No Sense

We are creatures who like to fashion stories. I think our brains are wired to create narrative as a way to feel in control our situations. If we can build a story arc, then presumably there will be a predictable resolution to that story line, and it helps us make sense of what is happening to us.

I think this is illustrated by the Heider Simmel experiment in 1944. Subjects watched an animated short depicting some geometric shapes moving around the screen, and then came up with very elaborate stories about the shapes, when in reality, the animation was not developed with any plot.

Evangelical culture also encourages us to find story and meaning in our lives. The message of “God has a wonderful plan for you” can sometimes give people great angst in trying to figure out what that plan is. Also, Christian counselors like Dan Allender have established their clinical practices based on helping people discern story lines in their lives and promote the idea that we co-author our own stories with God. Allender’s book To Be Told: Know Your Story, Shape Your Future was very popular at one time, with a companion workbook and workshops to help people discern their stories.

I’ve been burned so many times by trying to infer a ‘story’ in my life that I just want to roll my eyes at all of this crap. I think finding story retrospectively is fine, but this cannot be used to predict future outcomes.

I’m embarrassed to say that there are so many different contexts when I’ve told myself, “God must be allowing these things to happen to me, so that XYZ will result and that will be the grand culmination of all these events.” And the result that I ‘write’ is never the actual result. Usually the result is highly disappointing and anticlimactic. But I’m not the only person who is guilty of this — almost everyone around me also dreams up stories about their own lives and the lives of those around them including mine. When I’m downcast, someone will inevitably say, “well, you never know, maybe you’ll XYZ [the thought equivalent of winning the lottery].” And, of course, that will cheer me up a little and raise my hope, and then of course, they’re wrong, and my hope is dashed.

So I’d rather not go down this well-worn path of story telling. I’d prefer to stick to the facts, not the dreams, and stop deluding myself and others with false hopes of story resolutions that never come to pass. If I’m being fanciful, I want it to be so exaggerated that simply no one could take it seriously and we’d know that it’s more of amusement and an exercise in imagination than anything (e.g., there’s an improv game called “What could be better?” where each participant builds on the previous person’s statement, making the outcome better and better with each turn).

If I do look for story, I do it retrospectively, but not in a way that is trying to predict the future or read God’s mind. There’s a part of storytelling that verges on superstition. Even when only sticking to a retrospective analysis, there are many conclusions and conjectures we cannot draw if we stick to the facts. Barring supernatural confirmation, I have no proof one way or the other that God intended a particular outcome, a specific lesson to be learned, a prayer to be answered.

It’s hard to stop this habit of storytelling because once we stop trying to make sense of the world, it is highly disorienting and unsettling. However, perhaps the crux of faith is that we are supposed to trust in the ultimate Story that has already been resolved, and somehow find solace and comfort in that, while being in this world that often seems to make no sense.

The posture I seek is plain openness – neither imagining the best or the worst outcome, and being open to what will come.