Let me tell you about my greatest fear come true, something I fought tooth and nail, something that has shattered my worldview and consequently my world.
New York City has changed what I believe. Jared and I moved to the City almost three years ago, and little cracks in my belief started to form. Really, I probably had some of them before we moved—but the longer I have been here the wider those cracks have become until now they are great chasms, swallowing up what I knew to be true. That absolute confidence that I had as a high school kid, temporarily broken in college but then reformed stronger and thicker, like the armor of a medieval knight. My belief was like an exoskeleton that held all the parts of my “self” together. And this city I love smashed it into pieces.
I’m not talking about my faith in God or even my Christianity—although that faith too has been through plenty of questioning and refining, digging through layers of what is authentic truth and what is simply the man-made fabric of my upbringing. I deal with my fair share of doubt, but I haven’t become agnostic or atheist, I haven’t walked away from God. If anything my religious affiliation is more traditional than it was before. I attend a Presbyterian-ish church where we talk about things like Advent and Epiphany, recite liturgies, and take Communion every Sunday. I cling desperately to my Faith because I can't make sense of the world without it.
But I think if Five Years Ago MaryEsther had seen what was in her future, she would have been horrified, or at the very least offended by what was to come. No, I haven’t stopped believing in Truth or Grace or Jesus. But I have stopped believing that I know what those pillars of my existence mean to other people. I’ve stopped believing that I can summon Them at a moments’ notice to tell someone else why they’re wrong. I’ve stopped believing that it’s my job to tell people what right and wrong look like.
It was pretty easy to get the idea growing up where I did, being friends with my friends, going to the college I went to, that there was right and wrong and that “Right” was me and people like me, and “Wrong” was everyone else. Being Right was the lens through which I viewed the world, it was the thing that defined me. And I was confident that being right meant it was my responsibility to point out when other people were wrong. I was on the winning team and I loved it.
I saw the first flaw in this logic in college when I faced down the question of Absolute Truth. Inexplicably this question came bubbling to the surface during a discussion of Don Quixote--he believes with all his heart in the reality he has constructed for himself, and even though it isn't the actual reality, it is still true. I attempted to chat with my professor after class about this matter, the result of which I assume is one of his most horrifying memories to this day—of a 20 year old student losing her grasp on reality in his office, crying hysterically in great sobs, trying to explain why in unintelligible gasps. I still remember the shock and then terror on his face when I started a sentence in a normal state and ended it with mascara rolling down my chin. What a saint.
That was the first time that a crack in my belief opened up, showing me that despite what I had been told, maybe I didn’t have all the answers--that maybe the giant unfolding story of God reconciling Creation wasn't simple enough to tie up in a bow and carry around in my pocket. But I mended that crack, I covered it over so that I could move on with my life. I continued on with my quiet assumption that there was right and wrong, and that you were on one side of that line or the other and that if you were right it was your job to tell other people. And I continued on being “right”.
Sure, I sympathized with people who were wrong, they probably didn’t know any better. I was still friends with them, if anything I was looking for those wrong people, tough to find in the circles I ran in, so that I could befriend them and eventually tell them about the right way to do things. I thought that was how you loved your neighbor—reeling them in by acting like you were cool with their choices and then slowly but surely revealing to them your more correct way of doing things. What a jerk.
Then in the freezing January of 2014, two days after one of the worst blizzards in recent memory, Jared and I moved to the City. You could say a lot of things about this place, but I think one of the first descriptions that comes to my mind is diverse. We moved around a lot when we first got here and every neighborhood we went to had it’s own identity—the Caribbean neighborhood, the Artist neighborhood, the Chinese neighborhood, the New Jersey neighborhood. And then we finally landed in Astoria, our own little slice of Heaven--as diverse as I imagine actual Heaven to be. When you live in a neighborhood filled with Muslim women in hijab, actors flying Pride flags, little old Greek Orthodox men, and everything in between, you very quickly realize that loving your neighbor as yourself--like, your literal neighbors--requires that you see these people, who are all so different, as individuals. You can't pretend that people are an anonymous "other" when they're all at your coffee shop every morning. And loving individuals requires a much more complicated response than "You're wrong, here's the right thing."
No, I haven’t abandoned my faith and all the absolutes that come with it. But what I have abandoned is the idea that I know other people’s reality. That I can size up their lives from afar and say what they’re doing right and wrong, that they should do something differently, and that I have the right to tell them so. That their religion or lack of one is wrong, that their drugs are the wrong drugs, that the people they love are the wrong people. I don’t believe it's my job to tell people they're wrong anymore, because these people are my neighbors now--they always were and I just didn’t know it. Being a good neighbor isn't getting to know people so that you can tell them what they need to change in their lives. Being a good neighbor is loving people in both practical and spiritual ways, sharing a meal with them, asking where they're from, learning their kids' names. I'm still learning how to love my neighbors, but I definitely know what it means to not love them.
I can see how this change wasn’t only caused by (objectively) the best City in the world. God had been working in my heart for a couple years, and last summer it all broke through the surface in dramatic fashion. One of my very best friends looked me in the face with all this fear and pain in his eyes and told me that he was gay, that he tried to fight it for years, that he was destroyed over it for so long, but that now he was happy and he hoped I could accept him this way. He told me he knew I didn’t think being gay was biblical as a Christian, that I couldn’t reconcile it with my beliefs and so he understood if I didn’t approve of him, if I didn't want to be friends with him anymore.
I cried big, ugly tears and not because he was gay. I cried because he thought I might not love him if I knew he was gay. Something in the way I lived my life had made one of my best friends ask me if I could still love him now that I knew who he really was. It hurts to think about it even now, more than a year later. I hugged him so many times that weekend. I wept when he dropped me off at the airport. I text him all the time now to tell him how much I love him and ask how his fiancé is and talk about the weather. And I live with the guilt that for years of our friendship he thought that if I knew his his secret, I would not be his best friend anymore. If that is what being Right looks like, I mean it, I want absolutely no part of it. And I don’t think Jesus does either.
What started as a crack in my armor while making friends in my neighborhood turned into a canyon that day. I decided then, I will never again let being “right” make someone I care about think for one moment that I don’t love them, that my God doesn’t love them. I won't let anyone I meet look at me and say "Oh, if that's what Christianity looks like, I don't belong there." I will not let my neighbors think they are unwelcome in my home or my life or my church.
And I know what you’re thinking if you grew up “right” like I did—I know because for years I said it too. “But what about telling the Truth in love?” {One of a million overused church phrases that have been repeated so often they’ve lost all meaning.} What about sin and isn't it our job to tell people that it's a problem? Trust me, I'm not saying there isn't sin to contend with--it's everywhere, most of all in my own life. That old argument still occasionally creeps back to the surface--if you believe something is right with all your heart, isn’t it Love to tell people about it? Isn't it our job to tell people they are wrong so that they can be right?
But here’s my answer to that. It's actually Jared's answer when I asked him those questions once, but I am stealing it because it's a good answer. After realizing that I live in a city--a world--full of people who live vastly different lives, who believe completely different things, who have experienced rejection and hurt in a million little ways, people who already feel like screw ups for one reason or another, people who are all just trying the best they freaking can, here's what I am going to do. I am going to focus my campaign against sin on the sin in my own life. And if the only Truth I “tell in Love” to my neighbors is the main Truth, the seed of the seed of the Gospel, if I focus all my energy on just showing people this one Truest thing I believe in: that they are the crowning jewel of Creation, that Jesus loves them and sacrificed himself so they could be with Him, and that I love them too--that will be enough. You. Are. Loved. That is the core of the Truth I am called to tell, a Truth overflowing with love and joy and acceptance.
Everything else is just being "right", and I don't care about being right anymore.
Love, Precious Flowers
