Finding Home in Exile - Part 2

For a running start, see Part 1.

In the conservative evangelicalism of my youth, knowing ourselves to be in exile was encouragement to stand firm in our counter- (or sub-) cultural commitments and values, especially when we found them to be in conflict with "The World."  While in college, my reflections on the relationship between faith and culture were greatly expanded and nuanced by my encounter with the paradigms of H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture, but my experience as a person of faith has not become any less an experience of exile.

Left:  Summer Youth Mission Team c. 2001   Right:  The congregation where I was raised c. ~Present
Church communities and people from whom I now feel in exile in a variety of ways.

Already committed to Christ and his way, I fell in love with the Church in college: with church history, with Presbyterians, with the beautiful way God has woven us into communities, orchestrated our gifts, and called us to participate in the divine work in the world.  I've seen the glorious vision of what the Church could be, what it has been in some ways at some moments, and what it's called to be and become -- and it's absolutely stunning!  My heart sings, my bones ache, and my soul comes alive to pursue achieving that reality.

But because I love the Church so much, because I know what it can and should be, sometimes I hate the Church with a fierce passion as well.  I hate the way it reduces the life-giving freedom of Christ to life-constricting rules and oversimplified dogma.  I hate the way we silence questions and exploration because they threaten our easy answers and comfortable customs.  I hate the way we co-opt the language and image of Christ's values to hide and serve our own -- for example, through activities we name "outreach," "mission," and "evangelism," we simply seek to recruit new members to boost our ego-sustaining statistics and fund our budgets.  I hate the way we believe being "nice" is the ultimate Christian virtue, so we avoid disagreement and conflict like the plague, squashing it down and ignoring it until it squeezes out in nasty passive-aggressiveness or full-out vicious warfare.  I hate it!

Finding Home in Exile - Part 1

"Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:  Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. ... seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."  ~ Jeremiah 29: 4-7

For many of us, the concept of exile resonates deep in our bones.  It captures all the various experiences of feeling off-kilter with the world around us, of being rooted in place in the midst of a bustling crowd or trying to move in a world frozen in place.  It strings together those sometimes half-noticed moments when our perspective seems out of joint with those of the people around us and we begin to wonder if we're a little crazy or if we're really living in the same world as everyone else.  It affirms the sense of trying to translate something untranslatable and living alone in a place where no one else speaks the native language of our heart.  It bears the feeling of being banished from home and the impossibility of returning, of abandonment, rejection, and non-belonging.  The concept of exile gives all these experiences meaning, and weaves them into a coherent narrative with a name and vocabulary.