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This article is part of an ongoing series called “Young Adult Voices.” This series gives young adults who are either in congregations or searching for a congregation a voice to express their cares and frustrations about the Church. Because many of these young adults are trying to find places of welcome in Washington area ELCA congregations, most of the articles are anonymous.
Author: Kirstin McCarthy
My father was once a Catholic priest. We are not Catholic. He attends Zen Buddhist retreats in Providence, Massachusetts and New York. He walks with Tich Nhat Hanh. We are not Buddhist. We say Hebrew prayers over Thanksgiving dinner. We are not Jewish. I went to a Quaker high school and for four years attended Quaker meeting weekly. I am not Quaker, though I do consider myself a seeker, perhaps in a different sense.
As I have wandered through life, my early faith community was a Lutheran church in my hometown. I have been touched and shaped deeply by this community. My mother (who was a member of the Swedish Covenant Church) and my father (who continued to practice as a Catholic after he left the priesthood) both dropped their religious affiliations in search of a faith community close to home when I was born. What they found was a young, vibrant and welcoming church called Emmanuel Lutheran. It was a source of invaluable strength for me during my youth.
Faith for me has been, more than anything, the community that I find at church. Church community members support one another, share some common ground, and some differences, and most importantly, they carry each other in times of need. I think “carrying each other” is particularly important to me.
My mother died when I was 10 of a disease called ALS- Lou Gherig’s disease. The congregation at Emmanuel played an invaluable role in supporting my family during my mom’s illness. Visitors made it possible for her never to leave our home for a hospital. In her longest days, our pastor and other members of the community were in our home around the clock. This is a community that I know has seen me at my worst. And they love me still. I can’t tell you how much they carried me.
I struggle with this faith as well. While I believe unalterably in the goodness of the community I’ve found there, I am often troubled by the aspects of Christianity I can’t understand. I find that I sing hymns always, but I do not speak the creeds.
I don’t know what I believe about Jesus, or God, or disciples, or the Bible. God is wrathful and God has unconditional love. How can it be both? Why has that God of unconditional love, who provided such support for my family in our time of need, forsaken our gay friends, who want to be married in this same community? Where is God’s unconditional love for them? In the bible God protected Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from the fires. Why didn’t he protect my mother from the pain and suffering of her illness? Moses “parted” a sea. How exactly did he do that? While I recognize the understanding that these stories are mythic metaphors rather than scientific realities, sometimes I fail to find, or disagree with their representative meaning. A big question for me has always been, why in the world did Jesus have to die for our sins? I’m baffled by how that solved anything.
For me, these questions are vital. I believe there must be more there than what meets the eye, because the “halleluiah moments” I have known in my life have been so awesome. And, I don’t ultimately question why disease stole my mother from me because those life events have made me exactly who I am. I believe strongly that there is a powerful life force that I want to know more intimately. The reminder, every Sunday morning, that I should keep pushing to understand that, and that others too want to understand it too, is vital.
With each question that I ask myself about God, Christianity and organized religion in general, I find I uncover a deeper understanding of myself, and ultimately, my faith. A quote from the letters of Rainer Maria Rilke embodies what faith and spirituality are to me.
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart
And try to love the questions themselves…
Don’t search for the answers,
Which could not be given to you now,
Because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything,
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
You will gradually, without even noticing it,
Live your way into the answer.
~Rainer Maria Rilke
For me, the crux is not at all living my way, “into the answer”, but to, “live the questions now.” Living those questions, and pushing myself to explore them deeply, and in community with others, is a wildly exciting notion to me.
