Compiling my Instagram Lenten reflections under a loose theme every week in this Saturday evening note - if you’d rather read them as they’re published, I’m on Instagram at LauraJeanTruman
On Questioning God, And If That Was Eve’s Sin
“Did God 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 say?”
In the first week of Lent, the lectionary starts off with the serpent coming to ask Eve to question God. I was so scared of the phrase “did God really say?” for so long. Every time I reexamined an old theology, I was scared I was actually asking “did God really say” - Satan’s question!
This year, though, I thought about sweet, chaotic Peter’s vision in Acts 10 where God changes all the rules. God says yes, I did say that before, but now - “see! I am doing a new thing!”
I want to avoid sin by only doing old things that were true before. I want to avoid sin by avoiding ambiguity. But God is not a tradition. Following the living Christ is active, not passive. Following Jesus means not just knowing the old paths, but being willing to see a new thing and say yes to it - like Peter with his vision, like Mary, when Gabriel appeared with new absurdities.
Sometimes sin is going a new way - but sometimes sin is being trapped in an old way, too.
I was taught that asking “did God really say” is the problem - Eve, who questioned God instead of accepting God’s answer! But this is an odd “moral of the story,” because Scripture is filled with holy God wrestlers. From the Hebrew Bible, where a whole nation gets named “Wrestles With God,” to the Syrophoenician woman who wrestled so hard with Jesus that He 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥, we are invited back and back and back again to a God who loves a good argument.
Eve didn’t wrestle too much with God. Eve didn’t wrestle 𝘦𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 with God. She wanted a next step without God involved at all. She took an easy answer without the wrestling, and answers without wrestling are answers without blessings.
We can be so tempted by easy answers. Some of us are more tempted by easy answers that are old - tradition! - and some of us are more tempted by shiny new easy answers - the inbreaking of the Spirit! And *both* take discernment in community, using love as the final theological yardstick, to know where God is in them.
God invites us to come and wrestle, to ask again and again, because the blessing is in the Presence, and when we wrestle, we are with God.
On Trans Kids, and Redefining Theological Words Like “Sin” Into Meaninglessness
I am so angry and ashamed that Christians are again leading attacks on queer people & trans kids. Bills are passing forcing trans kids to detransiton; preventing medically proven life saving healthcare; proposing that trans kids be removed from supportive families. Transitioning reduces suicidal ideation in trans kids up to 73%, and Christians are fighting it because of fear based transphobia, rooted in cultural ideas about gender that aren’t found in Scripture at all.
There is no argument or theological debate here. These laws are evil. They cause death and harm. Any Christianity that supports these laws has lost its way entirely. It is decoupled from “following Jesus” and from love.
And Scripture’s whole witness from the prophets to Jesus to Paul say that if we don’t have love, we are nothing; if we don’t have love, we gain nothing; that loving God & our neighbor is the whole law.
What really troubles me, then, is how we skirt around the word “love” and redefine it into meaninglessness to avoid changing our theology. “Love” is redefined into something that doesn’t look anything LIKE love! “God’s love” is now full of things we’d call violent or harmful if encountered elsewhere. Even though research shows that transitioning saves lives, some Christians decided it is “love” to prevent gender affirming care and let kids die. How does the word “love” have any meaning now?
“Sin” is also redefined, decoupled from harmful consequences or evil. Transitioning is “sin,” even though it leads to joy, peace, goodness - the flourishing the fruits of the Spirit point us to. If something we’ve assumed is sin 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘪𝘯, our Scriptural interpretation has gone astray.
To borrow the Wesleyan quadrilateral, God gives us Scripture, Tradition, Reason, & Experience. When we use some to deny the others, like using our (fallible!) understanding of Scripture and Tradition to deny Reason (science) and Experience (stories of trans Christians), we unloose words from their meanings. We gaslight ourselves & our neighbor.
Jesus have mercy. Protect Your vulnerable beloved. Help us protect them. May we not be silent. Amen.
A Prayer For Beginning to Repent.
God, sin can feel so overwhelming. We don’t always know the next step towards repentance and repair.
We’re overwhelmed by our own private sins of pettiness and pride and greed; by our complicity in the world’s sins we don’t know how to untangle ourselves from, and our apathy at even looking at them; by all the big waves of evil in the world we don’t know how to resist; and by our own sadness and anger at sin that’s been done to us that we’re scared we’ll never be able to forgive, and angry we might never have justice for.
It is so much, God. We feel so small sometimes.
Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us.
You see our aching souls and our empty hands.
Jesus, give us the courage to bring this wrestling to You.
We have been wrestling with sin alone and in secret, scared we’ll get in trouble if You really knew the ugliness or fear we’ve got in us.
Oh Jesus, You already know. You already know, and already call us Beloved.
You invite us to say it out loud anyway, because the only person we’re hiding from is ourself. You invite us to say it all out loud, to hear that even when we say it out loud - we’re still here, we’re still loved, we’re still safe - and that here, finally, in this honestly, good work can start.
You invite us to say it all out loud so we can take the next step, which is not as scary as it feels when our soul is all clogged up with unspokenness.
“I don’t know how,” or “I don’t think I have time right now,” or “I absolutely will never forgive them,” or “I don’t want to stop doing that because I like it” or “I just don’t want to because it will hurt.”
These prayers are so honest, and so holy.
God, hold us gently while we try to say them for the first time.
Tell us it’s safe to come. Tell us that it’s OK to wrestle. Tell us we won’t get in trouble for saying the thing that’s really on our heart, the thing that’s keeping us from You, the thing we’re holding on to so tightly.
Tell us it is better on the other side, that there’s no way out but through, and that the spacious place on the other side of honesty is so good, and so sacred, and so free.
Amen.
Thanks for all of this. But especially for the prayer.