The fossils I find

It’s exactly 70 degrees. The few clouds in the sky are so vaporous that I can hardly call them “clouds” without feeling like a liar.

Tomorrow, I could wake up under fascist rule.

I don’t remember the last time I felt proud to be an American, or if I ever did. The Fourth of July looms—a red, white, and blue splotch on my calendar.

The clueless sky is aggressively optimistic, a perfect picture of toxic positivity reminding us that all will be well in its nonchalant, lounging blueness.

A coup, they are saying. The Supreme Court is performing a coup. And I need to google this word; I plunk “define coup” into my keyboard and enter this strange, liminal space where textbook becomes reality.

Coup, one of France’s many donations to the English language, sounds too gentle for the aggressive act it names: forceful, swift, and illegal control wrested from the hands of a government.

The Supreme Court has [allegedly] seized power illegally. The cosmic irony is not lost on me.

Fragmented voices of ghosts from the past waft into my subconscious with or without permission:

The centre cannot hold— Meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher— First they came for the Socialists— Sit and drink Pennyroyal tea— Rage, rage against the dying of the light— INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER— Certain inalienable rights— Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil— The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed—

I don’t deal in platitudes or meaningless words of false comfort.

If democracy dies in the United States, we will be the most shameful country on the planet.

We will be a failure.

And you, the so-called party of "law and order," have brought us to this edge of destruction. You have ushered us to this crucial moment.

All will not be well. One of the most harmful aspects of modern Evangelical Christianity is its refusal to take responsibility for the world around it, relying on God as a personal handyman.

No, all will not be well. If we are to survive with our freedoms in tact, we must realize how imperative our own choices are. We must watch closely. We must respond swiftly. We must defend democracy.

I don’t know what any of this will look like. I don’t even know what any single one of us can do.

But for me, it starts here. With pen and paper.

"Hey you, don’t help them to bury the light, Don’t give in without a fight."

Intro to the Intro

Welcome to my series of explorations titled “Elephants Fill the Room.” These micro-essays will spotlight facets of ourselves that many people, especially those who grew up in the Church, suppress or conceal. Ironically, my introduction is far longer than my pieces will be.

All are welcome here – if you are a practicing Christian, please know that my attempts to come to grips with cosmic truth are not in a spirit of mockery. I don’t look down my nose at you. I don’t think you are stupid. I’m not trying to trick you. At times I will use the word “you” to address the Church as a whole. While I’m not targeting any individual person, I invite Christians reading to think about the ways they may have contributed to these harmful mindsets.

For these pieces to be truly illuminating, I must be honest about the ways in which the Church has hurt me. There is so much pain. So much struggle. So much…stuck-ness. In times when I’ve found the courage to speak up about this pain, I’ve been met with platitudes like “Well, everyone is human, no need to keep talking about it, it was in the past.” Or worse, a simple “HOW DARE YOU TALK ABOUT THE BRIDE OF CHRIST THAT WAY.” Yes, everyone is human, but there are consistent, traceable, tangible patterns of harmful behavior within the Church that continue unchecked.

Power imbalances abound. Women are silenced and mistreated. Child abuse is quietly normalized. These repeated and continuous cyclical behaviors are not the same as a one-off mistake.

Yes, it was in the past — and our past experiences heavily inform the inner world of our present. Attempting to silence people about their pain only buys extra time for their wounds to fester.

How do we begin the arduous task of working towards resolution together? By truly listening to one another with genuine curiosity and care. We are not enemies. We are siblings.

This is the breaking point. I must speak. In fact, I should have spoken sooner. I apologize in advance for how difficult and harsh this conversation is. I care for you, reader, and I am grateful to you for bearing witness to my pain.

I Contain Multitudes. Who wishes to walk with me?

Many of us end up deconstructing our faith because we feel ostracized within the church. Humans “contain multitudes,” as Walt Whitman famously said—yet, to have a place in the Church, many of us are forced to shove and compress our multitudes into neat, pre-made containers that are the wrong shape and size. It’s not sustainable. Eventually the container cracks. Soon thereafter, it shatters altogether. Alone and confused, we are forced to reckon with our true selves. It’s a mess, and who can help us pick up the pieces? The Church? How can a person confidently trust-fall into a community that never accepted them in the first place?

Deconstruction is a broad term, and we all experience it differently. To me, it means examining my beliefs objectively, with brutal and sometimes painful honesty, to determine whether or not they are true. I am currently confronting the very real possibility that I’ve wasted the majority of my life thus far in vigorous study and lived application of colossal, harmful falsehood. That’s not fun. I am not enjoying this. None of us are going through this with an attitude of “Yay! No God, no rules!”

The reaction I’ve seen from the Church about the uptick in people who are undergoing this process is disappointing to say the least. We are villainized. We are accused of never having been ‘true’ believers (No True Scotsman fallacy, anyone?)

I hope the impasse here has become clear: On one hand, the Church wants us to return and repent (as if honest questioning were ‘sinful’). On the other hand, the Church will not even acknowledge that we left because we were ostracized.

You claim unconditional love. You claim inclusivity. But Church, your “inclusivity” has an asterisk and an astounding amount of sticky red tape.

The devil is not pushing us away from the Church. You, Church, are. This is a harsh truth that cannot and should not be softened.

Meaningless, Meaningless!

If your knee-jerk reaction is to argue with me right now, you are proving my point. My questions are uncomfortable, so people force answers. The most recent example of this is when I shared my internal turmoil over the Ukraine crisis with one of my Christian friends:

I am both Ukrainian and Russian. There is not even one generation of separation between me and those who are living in former Soviet nations. I am first-generation Slavic-American. I am watching two sides of myself destroy each other. The entire world is watching two sides of myself destroy one another. Bombs. Blood. Devastation. The heavy haze of human suffering.

Much like the speaker in Ecclesiastes, I am looking for order, and all I see is the heavy fog of chaos that looms over the world. The YHWH of the Bible is characterized as a God of order. A God who is in control. How could this God of order be in control when the constant state of the world is suffering and chaos? Worse, what kind of God is this? The latter question would earn me some serious heresy points in many American Christian circles. But it is a question frequently asked in the Bible itself.

When I opened up about this to my dear friend, who had the best intentions, she said:

“It’s not God. It’s the devil.”

Well, let’s unpack that.

Occam’s Razor states that the simplest explanation is most frequently the correct one. Which of the following is the simpler explanation?

The world is chaotic because God (who we cannot see) is mysterious and allows the devil (who we also cannot see) to commit cosmic evils for ultimate cosmic good. We cannot understand this but must accept it and move on.

OR

The world is chaotic because there is no God.

These thoughts are physically sickening. They shake me to my core.

HA HA HA! LAUGH AT THE CLOWN AND HIS MAKEUP! [Warning: Hyperlinks to explicit lyrics]

I recently studied the book of Jonah in-depth with my dad. When God spares Nineveh, Jonah says, “I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”

I’ve heard many people in American Christian circles actually, legitimately, laugh at Jonah in this moment of literal s**cidal ideation. “Ha! He’s so dramatic.” Or even, “Wow, what a jerk. He should be happy for the people of Nineveh.” My dad offered a vastly different evaluation of the situation. He had me read the above passage aloud, then asked me, “Which attribute of God is missing in Jonah’s list?”

Justice. God’s justice. Jonah does not call YHWH a just God. God made known to Jonah the destruction Nineveh would inflict on his people. And the same God chose mercy.

I am Jonah. You are laughing at me.

Before you deny this reality that I’ve experienced, know that I’ve spent most of my life in Christian circles. I’ve heard the laughter firsthand. I’ve even participated in it. I’m sorry for laughing.

The Church seems to think that voices like mine are the voice of the serpent: Did God really say? We are not the serpent. We are Solomon coming to grips with a world where justice rarely wins out. This is not an issue of ignorance; rabbinical tradition dictates that Solomon penned Ecclesiastes in his old age. 1 Kings 4:30 states that Solomon’s great mind “surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east, and all the wisdom of Egypt.” If Solomon, in his old age, was still coming to grips with these truths, why is it so shocking that young people are doing the same? Ecclesiastes, like many other books of the Tanakh, is about dwelling in questions—for whatever length of time necessary. This shouldn’t be silenced, and it most certainly shouldn’t be policed. Western Protestant Christianity has become so cerebral that the deeply emotional, human aspect of faith is seen as unimportant or even unholy. In reality, coming to grips with the suffering of the world is deeply holy. Christ showed us this on the cross.

So, what can be done, Church? It’s simple. Put aside judgment. Allow us to dwell in the question. Better yet, dwell in the question with us. Some of us deconstructing are angry. Some are confused. Some are just plain sad. You may find my approach to deconstruction more palatable than others’, but that does not mean it’s more correct. Others should be heard as well, even if they are angry.

People are tired. I’m tired. For too long, we’ve been silenced; told we’re wrong for feeling what we feel. For too long, we have been laughed at by you. For too long, you have tried to evangelize to us in moments that we simply must be heard.

Growing up Slavic, family meals would often be followed by hours upon hours of talking over tea. Slowly picking at desserts. Slowly picking at ideas. These were not surface level conversations; they dug deep for meaning. Sometimes laughter abounded. Every so often, there were tears. Reader, we need not be fearful of the emotional aspects of these topics.