Post L’Abri Update
April 16th, 2006
Boiling Point
Three months ago Jen and I found ourselves standing at a crossroads. Having been nearly four years in what we thought was going to be a lifelong career, both of us felt strongly that we needed to leave Campus Crusade and the field of full-time Christian work entirely.
From this vantage point, looking back to last November when we started thinking along these lines, the proverbial writing was on the wall. I was finding myself regularly dealing with cynicism towards Crusade. In fact the best part of my week was the weekend when I could take a break from ministry and do things I enjoyed. And the thing I dreaded most about my work was the part most distinctly Campus Crusade: evangelism. I felt like a square peg trying to be pushed through a round hole.
Each of us was wrestling with our own questions and doubts about our Christian faith. Jen has described herself as feeling like the brand of Christianity she was trying to live out was just too narrow. She felt stifled by a daily pressure to share the Christian message verbally with others and to constantly be examining her own “growth” as a Christian. I was wrestling with doubt about the truthfullness of the Christian message in a world with many world-views, a struggle I’d been having since college. Also I felt like the last thing I wanted to do was “share my faith.” I think it would have been more accurate to call it “sharing my doubts,” because when I was in conversations with people on campus about faith and the Christian message, I felt like I was trying to convince myself just as much as the “non-christian” I was talking to.
Just What We Needed
It’s difficult to convey just how big a sigh of relief we breathed when we left Campus Crusade. It was like a pressing weight had been lifted. A friend recommended this place called L’Abri. Having never heard of it ourselves, we checked out the website, and immediately saw that this place was for us. It described itself as a place where people take genuine questions seriously and where they believe that the truth of Christianity affirms life and speaks to all of human life and thought.
The environment at L’Abri was true to it’s word. We found welcoming people who having heard of our reason for coming were so excited to have us. And as we shared our stories with other students we found that struggles were par for the course here, a welcome change from our environment back in Berkeley where we felt more like problem children.
We soon settled into the daily schedule of work and study punctuated by mealtimes and morning and afternoon tea. I chose to work in the morning and study in the afternoon when I was more alert. Work consisted of supplying wood for the stoves to heat the house, doing laundry in the basement, prepping for meals and doing dishes afterward. My personal favorite, and the job I volunteered for whenever possible was laundry. I relished the alone time in the basement because I could listen to audiobooks on my iPod. In fact, L’Abri laundry got me through the first two books in CS Lewis’ Space Trilogy.
Doubt and Unbelief
My studies focused on struggles with doubts about the truth of my Christian faith. I met weekly with my mentor, a worker named Dick, who encouraged me to ask my questions in their most obnoxious form rather than in the polite way I tend to verbalize them in. He recommended a lecture called “Troubles with God: Questions, Doubt, Unbelief.” I learned that the word doubt comes from the Greek word for “two”: literally it means being in two minds. This is contrasted with unbelief, in which someone has already decided something is not true. This was quite affirming to hear because I found myself identifying more with doubt than with unbelief. In my experience as a Christian I felt like I was bouncing back and forth between belief and unbelief, and it gave me comfort to hear that most of the main figures in the Bible did so as well.
Another important conclusion I came to has to do with my doubt that the Christian message is the only true way of seeing the world. I mean, how can I believe that millions of other people in the world are wrong? I was slowly beginning to believe in the possiblity that it couldn’t be true that Christianity was the only truth, but that within every religion was a true path to God. I don’t know if I would have verbalized it this way, but it was there none the less. Dick had me listen to some lectures on the subject, and it turns out this many roads-one God analogy has been around for a long time. One of the older illustrations goes like this:
Several blind men have encountered an elephant. One man finds it’s leg and proclaims he’s found a tree. Another man touches the trunk and thinks he’s found a snake. Still another man discovers the tail and says he’s found a rope. The point is that each man in his own mind thinks he has a “true” understanding of what he is observing. But though each has his own version of “truth,” in the greater picture they are all encountering the same elephant. This analogy is used to describe the relationship of all religions to each other. They each have their own “truth” but in reality are all describing different parts of the same “God.”
This way of seeing the world has an air of humility because it claims that all religions are true. But below the surface it is rather high-minded to believe this. Who is the one who is descibing the scene of the blind men and the elephant? It is someone who is clearly not blind of course. The observer is the only one who can see things as they really are, while the blind men each grope in darkness. I realized rather quickly that I can’t hold onto that belief, because it would actaully be more unlikely that I had arrived at this correct picture of the world while millions today and down through history have been misguided in their own seperate religions.
Dick challeneged me to affirm the differences between other beliefs such as Islam or Buddhism and Christianity. To claim that the differences aren’t really there or that they are only minor would do a great disservice to these other faiths which have a rich history of belief. But I would need to wrestle with each competing truth claim to see if it was in fact an accurate description of reality, and to approach Christianity the same way. This was a real turning point for me in my struggles with doubt and helped me to see how I can as a Christian respect other people’s beliefs though not neccessarily agree that they offer a true explanation for things.
Rearview Mirrorism
Another “aha” moment happened when we heard someone describe what they called “Rearview Mirrorism.” We had been talking about how we had been feeling this pressure to “grow” as Christians, and regularly felt under scrutiny that it wasn’t happening. I remember last year saying once that I never feel the freedom to “coast” as a Christian. I felt I couldn’t relax in my Christian life or in ministry, because I was always having to check in weekly about how I was doing spiritually.
Anyway, someone at L’Abri said that living this kind of life as a Christian is like driving down the highway while continually looking in the rearview mirror. The point is that you can’t get very far when you’re always looking behind you. Another way to put it is like trying to grow a plant, and continually pulling it out of the soil to check the roots. Now you don’t have to be a rocket horticulturalist to know that a good plant needs good roots. But if you keep pulling up the plant you’re going to kill it. That made a lot of sense to me, and it seems to me like Christian growth for me has been somewhat of an idol in my recent Christian experience. There is much more freedom to be had in relaxing the growth expectations placed on me by myself or others, and not needing to take constant stock of “how my relationship with God is doing.” In fact much of the Bible speaks to taking our eyes off of ourselves and being open to the needs of others.
Fun and Games
Life at L’Abri wasn’t all serious “spiritual” discussions. I developed quite the passion for ping pong this term. One of the houses has a table in the basement, and pretty much anytime we had lunch or dinner up there a few of us would play afterwards. Danny (one of the other students) and I played together quite a lot, and even managed to let serious conversation creep in now and then while smacking the little white ball back and forth.
I also took up a new winter sport: snowboarding. We lived less than an hour’s drive away from a ski area, and in a couple of outings I picked it up pretty fast. By the end of the second day I was cutting it up down a black diamond run. For the following week, though my knees were debating about whether it should have been a black or a blue run, because as soon as I hit the steepest section they became good friends with the ground. Bruises aside, it was quite an exhilirating experience to come shooting down the mountain shifting from my heel to toe edge and back again and enjoying the view.
What’s the Plan Stan?
In the short term, we’re headed back to L’Abri for the summer term. We liked it so much we want to go for another round. This time we’re going as helpers, which means we get room and board paid for, in exchange for well, our “help.” Our responsibilities will involve cooking meals (sometimes for 15-20 people) and working around the house. We’ll still get to participate in all of the community activities and discussions, but our personal study time will be limited. Jen and I are looking forward to being around and learning from the L’Abri staff more, and also for the opportunity to informally mentor younger students who come next term.
As far as next step career-wise, Jen’s strongly interested in pursuing a graduate level program in some field realting to community, poverty, and/or women and children. We’ve recently started checking into some programs at UC Davis, as well as seeing what UC Berkeley has to offer. At this point it’s looking like she’ll try to apply for the Fall 07 term in either Community Development or Social Work. If and when that happens I’ll probably work in an on campus job to pay her way through school.
Between the end of the summer at L’Abri and Fall 07 is an entire year, which neither of us is certain about. Unless something changes we’ll probably come back to the Bay Area and work for a year, or possibly travel a little bit, I’m not totally sure. I’m not sure yet what kind of career direction to go in myself. There was a period of time at L’Abri this past term when I was getting stressed out and putting a lot of pressure on myself to figure out my next life direction soon now. But I’ve concluded that right now it’s not urgent, and I’ve relaxed a lot in that area. So I’m relatively content to wait around to see what happens career-wise and give myself more time to get re-grounded in my faith.
And speaking of faith and sort of to conclude this book-length update, in the faith arena, both of us are doing rather well. As I look back to the end of last year, I can speak for both of us when I say that if we had continued in the path we were in (ministry wise with Campus Crusade, and personally in our own Christian faith) we may very well have walked away completely. We were both so burned out on ministry and burned out on our experience of Christianity. But at L’Abri we found a broader experience of what it means to be a Christian, one that touches all areas of life, not just the traditionally spiritual activities. We feel a sense of relief and a tremendous release of pressure to be where we are right now. I’m not sure exactly what’s coming next, but for the first time in a while, I’m optimistic for the future.