Today is Tuesday, and I normally never write here on Tuesdays. The prodding to write certainly does not come from meditation, today, but it does come from collision of my imagination with my faith life, and the experience at hand relates to some themes I've explored here in the past. Please take with a grain of salt that which I'm about to say - this is far from the first time things like this have happened, and I'm sure they will happen again. I have had years of experience handling the reactions and have learned to control them well.
On Tuesdays, I have my favorite class: Religion 121, which is Biblical Literature. It's just a survey of the Bible, but it's been so realistic, informative, and scientifically-credible that it has been one of the first faith-related classes I've been in that I've never encountered with any fear. There has always been the possibility that something go wrong in the past - judging that I approached it with a desire to pursue "dangerous faith" while also craving intellectual integrity - and this has historically made me struggle through everything in the Bible, "wrestling" with it, trying to come to terms with it, trying to synchronize texts.
How can God say this if he means that? How can these two totally - no, surely, only seemingly - contradictory ideas come from the same author? How could God possibly say something so ridiculous, so mean, so ... off? So little like God?
It was pretty recently that I was terrified of the Bible. This blog of mine that I wrote just this past September makes that fairly obvious: "I am scared of reading the Bible, but I read it occasionally anyways. I've read pretty much the whole New Testament and large chunks of the Old Testament, but I have no one ask questions, and huge chunks of it does little but remind me of ways people have used the words to justify their exclusion and moral superiority." The thing is, when I said I'd read the Old Testament, I had only done so without the context of the historical narrative of the Hebrew people. Though I had read, I had not understood, and it mostly seemed pretty irrelevant to me. The New Testament was the bread and butter of all the sermons, all the devotions, all the random posters and bookmarks, all the theology, all the random verses we had to memorize for various classes. I had a conflicted relationship with the text, because as much as I felt that my faith was grounded in some things it taught, there were so many ignorant or hurtful things I associated with certain parts of it - or perhaps things that the text itself actually communicates. And what didn't have a negative connotation, I had enough questions that I never had any idea what to think about it and it was always hit or miss whether I could appreciate the reading or not.
Today in Biblical Literature class, we did Paul.
I wasn't expecting this class to be any different from other classes I've had in this course. It was supposed to be another step along the way in reframing the roots of Christianity to me, redeeming religion, continuing this revolutionary reconstructive process. But the thing is, some combination of what I mentioned above and the fact that Christian culture treats Paul like he's the Biblical author of primary authority in speaking the Gospel to us Gentiles makes me feel much more uncomfortable being critical of the text than I normally would.
You must understand that I have struggled constantly for years to apply this text - mostly Galatians, but also Romans, 1/2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians Colossians, and the rest of the epistles - to my faith. This is the Christianity I've had most contact with, and these are words I've heard incessantly in descriptions of God's direct, interventionary connection to humankind. These are the ideas I have been told are dogmatic truth, in the reflection of Paul's and other apocalyptic-era New Testament radicals' firm commitment to moral purification before the apocalyptic purging and judgement. I've put lots of thought into Pauline morality, I've invested so much in it. The unfortunate consequence is that with all this has also come a ton of negative attachment - these texts have been incredibly abused, and it is extremely difficult for me to read them, let alone to hear them talked about.
I've described before the way my history with self-injury factors into the processes of my imagination. But it deeply impacts the way I approach religion as a whole because of the intimacy between religious frustration and the origins of self-injury in my past. My first moments of intentional, masochistic self-injury were during the weekly Lord's Prayer, in Chapel, and in Bible class that year. The way prayer was being used as a legalistic duty or a self-beneficial supernatural vending machine by a bunch of gender-segregated, privileged, sheltered, naïve white girls bothered me incredibly even then, and the inescapability of the environment was incredibly oppressive to me. This frustration, fear, and disgust was released by my biting my thumb while they prayed, sometimes to keep myself from crying. It felt like a fitting expression of my anger, my depression, my claustrophobia.
Throughout the rest of high school, I continued to care about Bible classes - they became even more important to me as my faith grew and changed. I applied myself very deeply and very spiritually and very intelligently, seeking to have integrity in whatever I learned there. My desire to be fully engaged and attentive was almost compulsive at times - I would have my computer out, looking up different translations or etymology dictionaries or Wikipedia articles, just to make sure I was understanding everything with the greatest precision possible. I asked tons of questions and developed a somewhat negative reputation with some peers toward the end because I'd sidetrack the teacher entirely, asking too many questions, questions that others sometimes perceived as idealistic or annoying. I tried to teach myself only to ask questions that would be tactful and interesting to the rest of the class. Personal notes crowded the margins of my notes - countless prayers, occasionally occupying as much paper as my notes.
And when I was in church or youth group, I filled the margins of bulletins with questions and then tore open offering envelopes to continue writing, making sure that I recorded anything with which I took issue. I did the same thing here - I made sure to rephrase my questions as well as I could to keep from provoking long debates with kids in my youth group or agitating anyone with my controversies. I didn't want to create unnecessary distance from them when a functional discussion could yield productive learning on both sides. Regardless of the occasion, my learning was pretty thoroughly integrated into my life, and my life into learning. So with the kinds of existential claims made by traditional Christianity, and with my nearly tireless desire to consider seriously what I was told by teachers, of course I would come to care deeply about the texts behind it all.
Like I said, I didn't go into class today any differently than I've gone into any lecture this year. I had done the reading and was anticipating an interesting lecture. But within a few minutes of class, I began to feel uneasy: where the rest of the class had been so objective, suddenly, I felt as though inquiry had been restricted again. I'm not sure whether or not my professor was communicating differently, in a way that suggested to me that I was being taught lies. I do know that in my experience, Paul's message of salvation has always been applied very literally and out of context. I do know that reading Paul made me intensely uncomfortable, and that hearing that Paul preach the basic Christian message - the forgiveness of sins by the atoning sacrifice of God's Son Jesus Christ - was a trigger for me, and I ended up in a fairly terrible place.
This is where the part starts that's authentic to this blog. My imagination went wild after this trigger. The last thing I wrote of the official notes was that Pauline Christianity focuses on salvation through faith in Christ, and after that it was all lost. I was thinking like my old self - the neurotic near-literalist - rather than with nuanced understanding and historical perspective.
I wrote in the margin of my notes.
Paul's God is not my God.
Paul's God is not my God.
Paul's God is not my God.
Paul's God is not my God.
Although I've recently become quite enthusiastic about reading Samuel and Amos and Ezra and Job in a state of mind that allows me to recognize that people's understandings of God have changed, and that's okay, something about Galatians felt like it had to be objective truth, and that by identifying as Christian, it was mandatory to accept as perfect everything he said. It crept up in a stain - a mindspace visual stain, like one I might describe in my regular posts on this blog. It had a red-yellow tint, but was pale and see-through and I didn't have my eyes closed, as I normally do. This makes it difficult to describe; it wasn't overlaid on my vision, but it existed clearly, and I could feel it encroaching on my ability to see.
It occurred to me to ask, as I normally would, what Paul really meant. We understand so much of his writing through a totally modernistic lens, a culture he predates by seventeen centuries. Certainly he didn't write this way. What was "salvation" to an apocalyptic, early Christian, pre-Destruction of Jerusalem Jewish evangelist? It certainly wasn't the same spiritual salvation from the fiery afterlife pit of punishment and isolation from God Evangelicals sometimes speak of today, nor was it quite the moralistic salvation presence of the resurrected Christ in our everyday, as some more liberal Christians might say. But it wouldn't've been right for me to question the validity of the core Gospel message in front of that class, in front of a group of peers that were almost completely uninterested in any conversation that would come of my question and might even be offended by what I said. No, it's better that, for the first time ever in this class, I force myself to remain quiet.
judgment. silence. be quiet. no questions. NO PASTORS. YOU ARE FREE.
This is where the first sign came: the ache in my palms. I have this strange psychosomatic thing that's been going on for several years where if I feel like I'm violating someone else's space (or need to deny myself in order to keep myself from doing so), my palms begin to ache, and it spreads up my arms and neck and through the rest of my body, until I feel unable to quite move my limbs. I lose coordination and concentration - sometimes I lose the ability to look at anyone, because it hurts my eyes, and my face feels exposed and raw. The professor was just explaining the Gospel - we're saved through grace, sanctified through Christ's redeeming work in us, produce the Fruit of the Spirit. They are not things I completely disbelieve, and I've come to love these ideas through the lens of the Old Testament. But hearing them said in the context of a Christian class, by someone male in authority, to a class of dogmatic students, dragged me back into my old rut, and I lost control of my mind.
nopaulnopaulnopaulnopaulnopaulnopaul
nopaulnopaulstopstopstoepnopaulNOPAULSTOPSTOPNO
The aching spread through my head first this time, before it spread out my arms through my body, and was in the roots of my molars and canines, more on the left than the right. I felt lopsided and physically hypersensitive, and it just got worse with every minute.
paul is God
paul is God
God is dead God is dead
GOD IS DEAD
And then came the images.
It was a full limb - an arm and a leg at once, severed at the joint. It was not a clean cut - it was torn; the bone was shattered where it stuck out at the end of it and in several other places. It was spinning, as if it had been thrown in a place without gravity - falling and falling without end. Startled, I shook myself out of it and tried to remember, tried to recall the reformation of thought I've learned from the Exile.
God is low
God is meek
God is light
God is peace
It was as though I remembered the words but couldn't quite grasp their meaning - as though their definitions had escaped me for a moment. I listened for a moment - I remember flashes of it, snapshots, that are completely disconnected from the rest of the event. Pulling down the map - the story of Paul in jail - Paul's angry with people trying to get Gentiles to be Jews - a piece of chalk on the board, an underline - freedom from the law - it's all a bit of a blur. I couldn't hear him. The words didn't go in. And the shoots of aching pain through my limbs were... interesting.
I am not paul
I don't need to be paul
I am not like Paul,
I am not LIKE PAUL
no more. I am free. I am free from the law. I am free
NO! NOT PAUL! NOT HIS FREEDOM! PAUL DOES NOT SET ME FREE
There was a body without most of the limbs - I'm hardly sure whether male or female. It was evidently fairly beaten up, bruised, bloody. After it had hung in the mindspace for a couple seconds, there was a sudden burst of energy from within it, tearing it into a pattern of ragged, but intricately-connected strips, so that no part was detached, but every part - inside and out - was exposed. Again, shocked, the mindspace zoomed shut on itself and the explosion reversed.
I shook my head, trying to clear my mind, and flipped my open Bible from Galatians to some random piece of the Old Testament, trying to recover the frame-shift understanding of Theology I've discovered of late.
There was a time when I flipped to random portions of the Bible to see if God would speak to me, if he would "reveal himself," but today the randomness had quite a different intention. These texts are unspoiled to me, and have no strange connotations. I have firmly established them as part of a narrative, and not as dogmatic theology, so hardly anything there can really bother me. It's part of a story. Something caught my eye and I started reading - eventually, I arrived at Ecclesiastes.
I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.
I said to myself, "I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge." And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.
For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.
In this text, I did not find a description of my state of mind, though I have felt this way before. I did not hear the "voice of God." I did not hear truth, and I heard nothing false. But I heard an honest description of someone's mind, and they were fully human to me in that moment. In those words, I found solace; but when I lost concentration, I heard the words of evangelism.
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
Paul is dead
The dead are not raised
they are not raised
He was crucified
he was killed
he was DEAD
he is DEAD!
Alternating between attention to class and my strange little coping mechanism, I tried to understand Paul as human, as a voice like the author of Ecclesiastes, as a being just like me, like my professor, just another person. I wasn't able. As little as I believe Paul has special authority, and as much as I have loved and understood this class perfectly on every other occasion, I have been rendered incapable of reading Paul's words or hearing Christian jargon without feeling as though my very understanding of the faith is an insult to the Church.
Be quiet, Marié. Don't speak. Those aren't the right questions. Those are not questions. They are not rational. Faith is a different matter. Sola fide. Sola gratia. Sola scriptura. Sola scriptura. Solo Paulo. You believe what he says. (An arm - my arm, though not the one resting on my desk - is vertically sliced open by an expo knife, exposing tendons and both radius and ulna. My mindspace smiles, and I try to clear it away.) Believe what he says - have faith - and you will inherit the Kingdom of heaven. And you want to "inherit the Kingdom of heaven," because that's the only way between God and you. It's unfathomable to spend your energy on any other thought - be calm. Rest. Give up. (Blood flows like spilled milk in every direction.) Your questions can be answered. They're silly questions. (The exploding body comes back.) You only need clarification. Look around - no one else is confused like you are! - they're all doing fine. (A small flurry of flaking severed limbs.) Don't ask your questions. They don't need to hear your thoughts. You don't even need to hear these thoughts. Be quiet. Give up. Be at peace.
All the fucking irony!
Over and over I have told myself these words. For as much as I talk and as many questions as I really have asked, there have been almost an equal number of times I have forced myself not to, and the only way I was able to was by feeding myself lies about the things that are most important to me. I'm not sure whose fault it is that my mind has constructed these triggers and barriers. I don't think I can blame anyone, even myself, for my dazed clumsiness, dizziness, shortness of breath, and near limp as I walked out of class. (I would've cried, but it felt like I'd forgotten how.) I have done a lot of research and never quite understood why the most intense physical pain I ever feel results from completely mental processes - I've had to write this post in several sessions, and just having worked on it now, I feel it in my left forearm - my right ring finger and pinky - my left ankle - my right eyebrow - my left armpit. But hopefully this open dialogue and the reconstruction of my faith that I am writing for this class will grant me opportunity for sufficient free expression to begin to heal these internal wounds. What can I do but hope and pray? Perhaps one day I will be able to read Paul again.
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