Discovering a renewed sense of awe and wonder about God:
|
"If I have any message to preach it is the mercy and compassion of God, upon each person and upon the stars..." |
CR: You’ve described the message of salvation you experienced growing up and even found yourself sharing with friends as “cold (and) sterile..." What elements made it cold and sterile? What message of salvation do you find yourself experiencing and sharing with friends these days?
AA: I don’t know if it’s how it was preached or how I absorbed it (or both), but I just remember feeling pressure to “win souls”, and so I sort of evangelized as a matter of obligation. I didn’t actually want to talk to my friends about heaven and hell, but I felt like I had to, so I did. I presented it transactionally, which is how I understood it for myself. “Pray this, think this, accept this, escape hell and get heaven.”
Today my ideas of salvation are much more holistic—that if God is healing the woundedness of creation, that involves not only people but the earth and the galaxies as well. If I have any message to preach, it is the mercy and compassion of God, upon each person and upon the stars and the farthest reaches of the universe. I set my heart on God being in the business of healing and re-making. To me, that is the core of the gospel message.
CR: Growing up, you were part of a church where doubt and skepticism were frowned upon. Yet during your recent deconstruction of faith, as the lyrics in your new song “Evergreen” state, it has been doubt that has led you to a renewed sense of wonder. You've shared that openness in your approach to reading scripture, including the Genesis 1 account, has given you a renewed sense of awe and wonder about God. Can you elaborate on this?
AA: Releasing how I used the opinions and perceptions of other people as a gauge of my belonging has been the only way forward into true spiritual freedom. I feel like I spent most of my younger life suppressing doubt because I knew or believed other people would no longer perceive me as being one of the group, and I have just had to let that go, because it was messing with my mental health (I will share more about that later) and inhibiting me from the inevitable process of letting the wildfires of doubt purge my heart’s forest of the chaff and debris of fundamentalism. There has been much more peace in my heart since I stopped waiting for everyone around me to say I was “in” in order for me to believe God loved me. I had this idea that in order to belong to God and to the Church I had to believe perfectly first, and that just isn’t true.
Abandoning Biblical literalism truly doesn’t mean “taking nothing the Bible says literally.” Biblical literalism is an overly simplistic and under-reverent way of reading the text, because it doesn’t take anything into account except the words on the page, which have been translated and re-translated. Reading the Scripture with more of an awareness about the types of literature it contains, the context and intent of the authors, and what I now see as a more traditional lens (Biblical literalism isn’t strictly traditional, it’s more of a modern phenomenon) has created space for me to have a healthier relationship not only with the Bible but also with my own questions. As a child I remember wondering “Did God really order the Israelites to commit genocide?” and then as a young adult that question severely hampered my faith, because I was still reading those words literally. I now know there are a variety of ways people have dealt with those texts throughout history, and that I do not “have to” believe that God ordered the murder of women and children. I can truly wrestle with the texts. “Accept” or “abandon” are not the only two options.
AA: I don’t know if it’s how it was preached or how I absorbed it (or both), but I just remember feeling pressure to “win souls”, and so I sort of evangelized as a matter of obligation. I didn’t actually want to talk to my friends about heaven and hell, but I felt like I had to, so I did. I presented it transactionally, which is how I understood it for myself. “Pray this, think this, accept this, escape hell and get heaven.”
Today my ideas of salvation are much more holistic—that if God is healing the woundedness of creation, that involves not only people but the earth and the galaxies as well. If I have any message to preach, it is the mercy and compassion of God, upon each person and upon the stars and the farthest reaches of the universe. I set my heart on God being in the business of healing and re-making. To me, that is the core of the gospel message.
CR: Growing up, you were part of a church where doubt and skepticism were frowned upon. Yet during your recent deconstruction of faith, as the lyrics in your new song “Evergreen” state, it has been doubt that has led you to a renewed sense of wonder. You've shared that openness in your approach to reading scripture, including the Genesis 1 account, has given you a renewed sense of awe and wonder about God. Can you elaborate on this?
AA: Releasing how I used the opinions and perceptions of other people as a gauge of my belonging has been the only way forward into true spiritual freedom. I feel like I spent most of my younger life suppressing doubt because I knew or believed other people would no longer perceive me as being one of the group, and I have just had to let that go, because it was messing with my mental health (I will share more about that later) and inhibiting me from the inevitable process of letting the wildfires of doubt purge my heart’s forest of the chaff and debris of fundamentalism. There has been much more peace in my heart since I stopped waiting for everyone around me to say I was “in” in order for me to believe God loved me. I had this idea that in order to belong to God and to the Church I had to believe perfectly first, and that just isn’t true.
Abandoning Biblical literalism truly doesn’t mean “taking nothing the Bible says literally.” Biblical literalism is an overly simplistic and under-reverent way of reading the text, because it doesn’t take anything into account except the words on the page, which have been translated and re-translated. Reading the Scripture with more of an awareness about the types of literature it contains, the context and intent of the authors, and what I now see as a more traditional lens (Biblical literalism isn’t strictly traditional, it’s more of a modern phenomenon) has created space for me to have a healthier relationship not only with the Bible but also with my own questions. As a child I remember wondering “Did God really order the Israelites to commit genocide?” and then as a young adult that question severely hampered my faith, because I was still reading those words literally. I now know there are a variety of ways people have dealt with those texts throughout history, and that I do not “have to” believe that God ordered the murder of women and children. I can truly wrestle with the texts. “Accept” or “abandon” are not the only two options.
CR: Earlier this year you released a new album (Evergreen) after taking a hiatus from music to deal with a very physical manifestation of the trauma you internalized and suppressed from your upbringing. How have your views of God changed from judge to deliverer, and what is it like to discover who God is and really was all along?
AA: Firstly, I’ll always be discovering who God is. That’s the number one lesson I have learned in all of this! My ideas of God are continually being shattered and remade—it was Lewis who said, I believe, that God is the great shatterer of the religious images we create. In A Grief Observed, he says, “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of his presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.”
So my views are in some sense always evolving as my narratives and images are shattered and remade. I feel like “deconstruction” in the way it happened in my life is the result of my inability to allow this process to happen in its natural rhythm—it’s like all the shattering was building up behind a dam, and when the dam broke, it ripped everything out from under me. Day by day, a little bit of shattering and re-making is actually helpful and healthy. If we could begin by passing this attitude on in how we preach the faith, I wonder if perhaps we’d save our children some serious anxiety in their young adult years.
Ultimately, I think it is "a severe mercy" (the title of a wonderful book by a friend of Lewis’, Sheldon Van Auken) when God or life (or both) shatter our ideas of God. It is painful but necessary, and I am grateful that because that has happened and is happening in my life, I am more merciful, more compassionate, more curious, and more open to love.
An example of Audrey Assad's music can be found here
AA: Firstly, I’ll always be discovering who God is. That’s the number one lesson I have learned in all of this! My ideas of God are continually being shattered and remade—it was Lewis who said, I believe, that God is the great shatterer of the religious images we create. In A Grief Observed, he says, “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of his presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.”
So my views are in some sense always evolving as my narratives and images are shattered and remade. I feel like “deconstruction” in the way it happened in my life is the result of my inability to allow this process to happen in its natural rhythm—it’s like all the shattering was building up behind a dam, and when the dam broke, it ripped everything out from under me. Day by day, a little bit of shattering and re-making is actually helpful and healthy. If we could begin by passing this attitude on in how we preach the faith, I wonder if perhaps we’d save our children some serious anxiety in their young adult years.
Ultimately, I think it is "a severe mercy" (the title of a wonderful book by a friend of Lewis’, Sheldon Van Auken) when God or life (or both) shatter our ideas of God. It is painful but necessary, and I am grateful that because that has happened and is happening in my life, I am more merciful, more compassionate, more curious, and more open to love.
An example of Audrey Assad's music can be found here
Audrey Nicole Assad is an American singer-songwriter and
contemporary Christian music artist. Her debut album, The House You're Building, was named Christian Album of 2010 on Amazon.com and the Christian Breakthrough Album of the Year on iTunes. She worked and toured with other artists such as Chris Tomlin, Tenth Avenue North, Matt Maher
and Jars of Clay. Her most recent album,
Evergreen, was released in 2018.
Ciara Reyes is a scientist, singer-songwriter and freelance writer, who joined the God & Nature staff in June 2017 as Managing Editor. She has a Ph.D. in Cellular & Molecular Biology from the University of Michigan.
.
contemporary Christian music artist. Her debut album, The House You're Building, was named Christian Album of 2010 on Amazon.com and the Christian Breakthrough Album of the Year on iTunes. She worked and toured with other artists such as Chris Tomlin, Tenth Avenue North, Matt Maher
and Jars of Clay. Her most recent album,
Evergreen, was released in 2018.
Ciara Reyes is a scientist, singer-songwriter and freelance writer, who joined the God & Nature staff in June 2017 as Managing Editor. She has a Ph.D. in Cellular & Molecular Biology from the University of Michigan.
.