Eikon AltView: John Hardin // Christen Byrd

this is part of a series called altView. these are stories of faith from the people of our community. no filters. no agendas. no prompts. just people telling their stories. hope you enjoy!

John Hardin

I grew up in a little church where everyone is called “brother” or “sister” and the Second Coming or the penalties of sin were preached about at least 6 times a month. Bro. Haney was a wise man in the church, covered with leather skin and grace, and he used his deep voice to sing bass in our choir and to gently tease or soothe those around him. He was universally loved and when he spoke people truly listened.

When I was around twelve we had a testimonial service, which is sorta like an open mic night at a bar. Anyone can stand up and share their story about the greatness of a god who saved a wretch like them. Unfortunately, like an open mic night, what you mostly get are uninspiring and quasi-forced renditions of stories that are amazingly similar in content.

On that night, Bro. Haney stood up to speak. Due to my respect for him, I stopped whatever time-killing activity I was involved in and listened. What he said prompted me to think seriously about god for the first time. Unfortunately, it also led to a warped sense of who god is and what is going to happen next in his narrative.

With the certainty of a bad prosecutor Bro. Haney launched into an apocalyptic colloquy, stating that within his lifetime Jesus Christ would be coming back to rapture the church. All I could think was, “Damn! This guy is old; that doesn’t leave us much time!” My focus then turned to fearing god and the goal of leaving this irredeemable earth and going to heaven. However, like any religion based on fear and fatalism, it didn’t stick over the long haul.

Over the next 15 years I experienced a lot of life. I left my homogenous hometown the first chance I got and made a lot of decisions that most would argue were bad. I didn’t worry too much about god because, as was explained to me during my season of post-Haney fear, this world was irredeemable anyway and I already had my ticket to heaven.

During that time my eyes were opened to the world around me. I was exposed to diversity of race and sexual orientation for the first time. I realized that the stereotypes I learned growing up were not only incorrect, but were unjust, ignorant and hateful. I learned that while I lived in relative abundance, others die from abject poverty. I learned about exploitative labor practices often used to make our food and goods, and the environmental damage often caused by both. I learned about injustices within our legal system. My eyes were opened to the plights of the “least among us”.

I don’t know what prompted it, but I also began to have a deep sense that god was indeed concerned about affecting change in this world for those suffering. The life, compassion and empathies of Jesus became real to me. I became convinced that the earth isn’t simply some stopping point on the way to distant places called heaven and hell, but a place for us to try like hell to turn back into what god originally created. I am now certain that is the essence of Christianity. Bro. Haney was not only wrong about his prediction, but he was wrong about the very purpose of following in the way of Jesus.

John Hardin is one of our community leaders. He bleeds social justice and community activism (we also believe he bleeds actual blood, but we haven’t done anything to him to confirm it). More specifically, John helps to connect the church as a whole and individuals to local justice/activism causes and, in general, brings awareness to local and global justice issues. When John isn’t fearing the day that we try to make him bleed, he spends time with his incredible wife, Shannon, and beautiful little boy, Cash.

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Christen Byrd

all in all, i think i have been on a journey for quite some time, and still am right now. my lifetime movie would be called “forced to trust god.” over the past 6 years i feel that i have had no other choice but to have some sort of faith. no matter how little faith or how much at the time. ryan and i started our marriage pretty great. everyone says the first year was the hardest…it was our easiest. married to my best friend, good jobs, all the time in the world to think about our wonderful future. little did we know where we would be now.

we moved to lexington, kentucky after a year for ryan to attend seminary. that was probably the worst year of my life…and the best. i had a horrible job in which i traveled about 4-5 days at a time. i had no friends, except ryan. i was definitely depressed, we were so broke we couldn’t even afford to get our heat turned on. i was so lonely and broken…yet ryan and i grew closer than we ever had…because we were forced to. all we had was each other and god…literally. even though i look back on those days and can honestly feel the loneliness and sadness i felt then, i am so thankful for them. i was forced to rely on god, completely. from being able to buy groceries to just getting to wherever the heck i was supposed to be while traveling across several states for my horrible job (did i mention i hated my job). even trusting god that ryan wouldn’t freeze to death while i was gone when we didn’t have heat…

thankfully, we moved after a year to paducah, ky to serve in a church plant there. it was also a major move in our lives that required just faith. basically because in april i said “we are moving in may…get on it.” when ryan tried to tell me to be patient, i refused, i found a job, an apartment…and we moved the last week in may. (i was right) this was a difficult/wonderful/exciting/frustrating experience for us altogether. we have so many great memories from our life in paducah…mainly lucy being born, of course (don’t get me started, i may start crying).

and now…we’re here. what else is there to say. no seriously, this has been nothing less of another chapter in my journey of my faith. i mean, we started this Eikon journey over 2 years ago. we were not handed the keys to a church building, a big budget, a congregation (i don’t even like that word). in fact, ryan’s kind of been told in more ways than one…”you have all the qualities of a great church planter, but you don’t want to do it our way, nevermind then.” it’s at that point you say “ah crap, what do we do now.” and you begin to second guess what you’re doing with your life, and what you’re dragging your family into, and is it going to work, are we going to fail? these are not fun things to think about or ask yourself.

however, i’ve found to not put my faith in my husband…but to put my faith in god. i trust that ryan will do what god has given him the ability to do. and it will happen if it’s supposed to. i hate the saying “it’s a god thing.” it drives me nuts! i mean, everything is dependent on god. so why are such wonderful things “god things.” (if you die…it’s still a “god thing,” but nobody says it so excitedly then. maybe i’ll try that at the next funeral i attend.) i’ve found that in the past i’ve put way too much faith in the wrong people and things and i end up being so disappointed.

I am definitely reminded of how much i am forced to trust god, each and every day. as a mom to lucy and olive, and another one in june (talk about faith)…i rely on him to help me be a better mom. seriously, this may sound silly…but you try being at home everyday with a 1 year old, 2 year old, pregnant mom…and being married to ryan. and i rely on god to help me be a better wife, every day. it has definitely been a long 2 years of planning and meeting and everything else that ryan spends most nights working on. and i’m not always that supportive (i know, you all think i’m perfect, sorry to burst your bubble).

i trust god that someday this will all be worth it. not because i plan on having some big mega church (although i definitely think ryan would look cool with a curly mullet)…but because i feel that i am finally in a place where i’m doing what i’m supposed to be doing with the people we’re supposed to be with. it has been such a long journey, but i can see all the pieces slowly coming together. i finally feel comfortable with a group of believers. i feel like god has a million other things for me to do…but now i’m in a place that i can actually do them someday.

Christen Byrd is a wife, mother of 2 (soon to be 3), photographer, graphic designer and keeper of all things awesome. Few people know that her spiritual gift is being cool and when she’s not doing that, you can find her working to build her fledgling online store, baby byrds, at etsy.

“The Justice Project”

New book recommendation:  The Justice Project

Edited by Brian McLaren, Elisa Padilla, and Ashley Bunting Seeber, is a eye-opening follow-up to The Emergent Manifesto of Hope.  It continues the theme of approaching a topic, Justice, from an array of voices.  While there were notables such as Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Peggy Campolo, and Lynne Hybels, the book mostly consisted of names I’d never heard of, activists working to challenge the status quo from their niches

It was that broad range of experiences that drew me in.  A chapter by Peggy Campolo challenged me with a story of a gay-affirming church here in Arkansas, as well as challenging the typical notion of what “Biblical family values” really are.  Her son Bart explained why campaign finance reform might just be the most important political “Justice” issue out there.  One writer told of her experience in a barely post-Civil Rights black church, which looked up to MLK, Jr. they way we look up to Jesus, and this backed up nicely to stories from South Africa where white anti-Apartheid advocates feared the suspicious, “accidentally” fatal car incidents with cops.  Then a description of Just Conservatism and Just Liberalism.  Samir Selmanovic, author of the newly released It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian has a provocative piece on decolonizing God’s name.

Particular sections where particularly biting.  The entire book was absolutely replete with Scripture.  An early chapter asks if capitalism can be just.  Has there ever been an economic system that paradoxically produced more good while at the same time producing such imbalance of wealth?  A definition of justice is in order, given that we have to decide whether Justice is distributive or redistributive; is Justice starting where we all are and going from there, or is it inherently redistributing and hence imbalanced against those who start off with more.  The West has traditionally ran with the former while the Tanak inarguably aims at the latter.  The question is whether or not a capitalistic system which, while creating a great deal of good, inevitably creates inequality is a redemptive system.  That takes it pretty far, maybe beyond what I am comfortable with, but it does strike me as true that there will be no room for any inequality in God’s economy.

Then cut to a discussion on immigration reform in which a Latino writer recounts a discussion with a friend.  One asks the other if he also carries his ID with him in his sock whenever he leaves the house so much as just to jog.  It’s a world I cannot imagine, where naturalized citizens of the US live in fear of illegal deportation because of the stories they heard about the unlucky neighbor who forgot his drivers license when jogging.  That neighbor is picked up, presumed illegal, detained and/or deported away from his family.  The author barely has to imply the Scriptures that call for lavish welcoming of the squatter immigrants among us.  It challenged me because I know we need serious immigration reform and laws to guide us.  But I also know that Scripture holds up this ideal for sheltering the alien that many of us consider simply too idealistic.  Maybe it is, but it is Just.

Just ecology.  Just land.  Just business.  Justice in the slums.  Justice in the suburbs.  Just parenting.  Just Trade.  Just church-planting.  Justice in religion.  Justice in racial issues. Just elections.  Just family values.  Prophetic Justice.

This is one of those books that has perspectives that anyone but the most hardened ideologue will have their heart melted by.  I’m really encouraged to see the awakening of much of the church to the Biblical primacy of Justice as integral to the Gospel.  The church’s Justice awakening has gained such a tide that there is even now a resistance to it by Christians who feel we should drop such emphasis on Justice and “get back to Jesus.” The Justice Project is one of those books that reminds me why that perspective isn’t much good news at all.  It’s got a perspective to unsettle, teach, encourage, anger, and give hope to anyone.

Eikon AltView: Tad DeLay

this is part of a series called altView. these are stories of faith from the people of our community. no filters. no agendas. no prompts. just people telling their stories. hope you enjoy!

A/theism

Tad DeLay

“He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow

When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,

And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart

Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing thou art.

Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme

Worshiping with frail images a folk-lore dream,

And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address

The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless

Thou in magnetic mercy to thyself divert

Our arrows aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;

And all men are idolaters, crying unheard

To a deaf idol, if thou take them at their word.

Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great,

Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.”

-C.S. Lewis

Yesterday, a friend asked if I believe in God.  It’s a necessary question, but peculiar in that it’s relevance is somewhat detached from me much in the same way that whether or not the earth is flat or whether quantum mechanics is bunk are irrelevant questions. Nobody really believes in God, at least not most of the time.  Belief in god is easily affirmed or denied.

I do not believe in God.

Lewis so eloquently describes how what we call god is not, in fact, God.  By our own definitions, God is transcendent to any conception, so try as we may, we can only ever speak of an idea of God, an idol.  To speak of God, we necessarily suspend our belief in transcendence.  We speak as atheists; every theologian is paradoxically an atheist in his moment of brilliance.  To be faithful and speak of god, or to speak of god’s ideals for the world, carries a necessary betrayal of the very God we are trying to wrap our minds around.  We speak as a/theists.

I do believe in God.

This lays the groundwork for humility in our theologies and philosophies.  We must become comfortable with the fact that when we speak of/for god, we are at least partly wrong 100% of the time.  No eye has seen; no ear has heard.  Our Scriptures set an example with irresolvable inconsistencies in the poets’ and prophets’ pictures of God.  The late Jacques Derrida wrote that Justice was the only nondeconstructable idea.  From Justice, all blessings flow.  We affirm this, and we call it Gospel.  The Scriptures did not so narrowly define our theologies for us; they did not intend to.  At best, the prophets could only narrow a definition of God to powerfully simple ideas: Love, Justice, Mercy, or Reconciliation.  We affirm that real belief in God looks like these things.  To move beyond simplicity is the essential work of theologians; to put them into practice is the essential work of the Church; to move these things into an inerrant, unquestionable system is the work of the idolater.  Embrace and excommunication is our tragic history of sorting these things out.

I am called to be a theologian, and it is what I will spend my life doing.  But I always feel this nagging suspicion that God is far less concerned with endless debates about what the Bible exactly is; he laughs at our foolishness, and she (does this pronoun aggravate?) weeps at our often destructive misunderstandings.  I assume God is far more concerned that we suspend our questions and do the things God hopes to see.  We prioritize humility and  Justice.  There is a time for debate, but it is always a good time for Reconciliation.

This is true belief, true faith in the Divine: it is only when I do not obsess conceptualizing god and instead unconsciously, as second nature, act out god’s dreams for the world that I truly believe in God.

I hope to one day believe in God.

Tad Delay recently married his best friend, and together they hope to spend their lives working out the social action their faith claims to believe. Tad is a hack theologian and will be sad to leave Eikon next fall for seminary, but may come back one day as Dr. Tad, Ph.D.

Eikon AltView: Paula Cigainero

this is part of a series called altView. these are stories of faith from the people of our community. no filters. no agendas. no prompts. just people telling their stories. hope you enjoy!

A Tattoo Story

My tattoo is a summary of my religion. To most, the tattoo just looks like a pretty design. But the center of it contains a Sanskrit word. Before I tell you what that word means, I need to give you a little background on me…

In high school, I was active in the youth group at my own Catholic church, but also attended other churches of other denominations with friends. I read the Bible, but also studied world religions in a class at school. All the while, none of these experiences ever seemed to fill the hole. The hole that made me feel there was “something more” out there that I just didn’t have the answers to yet.

Then, in college, things took a real turn. I encountered a big dose of hypocrisy, served up by classmates who I heard preach one thing, but who I saw do complete opposite at house parties on the weekend. At the time, my mind couldn’t process such total opposites in word and deed. So my reaction was to just push all religion away, all together.

That attitude continued until my mid-thirties. At that point, I had grown old enough to have realized that there are hypocrites in every aspect of life. Religion was no different. If I really wanted to fill the hole, I might as well press forward and not let other people’s issues stop my progress.

So, I once again looked into the myriad of world religions. But this time around I found I could see an important thread that tied them all together — that thread being love. Sounds simple, I know. But to truly love others with no agenda is a difficult thing to do. It takes practice. In Buddhism, that is how it is discussed… as something to be practiced. Love for others is referred to as “loving-kindness” or the Sanskrit word “Maitri.” The full concept of “Maitri” is a bit complicated to explain, but Wikipedia has a pretty good definition of it:

Though it refers to many seemingly disparate ideas, Maitri is in fact a very specific form of love – a caring for another independent of all self-interest – and thus is likened to one’s love for one’s child or parent. …The strength of this feeling is not limited to or by family, religion, or social class. Indeed, Maitri is a tool that permits one’s generosity and kindness to be applied to all beings and, as a consequence, one finds true happiness in another person’s happiness, no matter who the individual is.

When I became familiar with this concept, it became my deepest wish for myself that I could be a person who could practice “loving-kindness” everyday. I knew this was the key to filling the hole. But such a selfless kind of love is a hard thing to practice, so I wanted to carry with me a constant reminder of the type of person I am striving to be. And that is why I decided to have the Sanskrit word for ‘loving-kindness” (Maitri) tattooed onto my skin. Obviously, the tattoo is permanent, which is fine with me. Because I want loving-kindness to permanently be a guiding ideal as my journey of faith continues.

Paula Cigainero lives a life fueled by daily doses of soy-milk lattes. She enjoys the creative puzzles she gets to solve in her career as a graphic artist/art director. In the little spare time she can manage, you may find her running or hiking… but most likely, she’ll be sleeping.

Eikon AltView: Christopher Macdonald

this is part of a series called altView. these are stories of faith from the people of our community. no filters. no agendas. no prompts. just people telling their stories. hope you enjoy!

“I have heard many complain that they did not want to be “so heavenly-minded that they were no earthly good.” But we are usually in no personal danger of this. In fact, I have yet to meet a human being who was. I have met people who were in danger of being so “religious” that they were no earthly good; but never too “heavenly-minded.”

When people speak of heaven they often wax eloquent as if heaven were an ethereal dreamland. But heaven is more real than you or I. While we are but a vapor upon this earth, we speak of the throne of God as if it were a wishful wisp of smoke from our great-grandfather’s pipe.

In the same way that we are insane to create God in our image (when in fact it is the reverse), so to project a heaven out of your own infantile crayon-on-paper theologies is cute but should go no further than under a magnet on the fridge. Heaven informs our lives and those places in our lives now that seem the most solid in Christ are the beginnings of becoming a citizen of Heaven where such creativity, vision, knowledge and reflected glory will be more powerful than we can imagine. What does C.S. Lewis say? Beings so luminous that if we were to see them today we would be “strongly tempted to worship” them.

Not only is heaven our future, it is to be our present. We are to “seek the things above”- present tense -“where Christ is”- now – “at the right hand of God”. The closest I can come to interpreting the meaning of this verse is that we are to seek the reality of the Kingdom of God in our life.

Jesus Christ is the most heavenly minded, yet the most earthly good. Can you name one man who has ever been more earthly good than Jesus of Nazareth? Now can you name one man who has ever been more heavenly minded than Jesus of Nazareth? The truth is, the heavens themselves reflect the eternal glory of Christ, yet no man has ever been more earthly good than Christ, the “Second Adam,” God in the flesh.

The Jesus follower who is heavenly minded, will always be the most active, Why? Because Jesus is the most active agent in Creation in all ways at all times, even holding all of it together relationally at this very moment in a way beyond comprehension. To be a follower of this Living One to to actively become a part of that as you are “in Him” and He is in you.

To be “heavenly-minded” is to have the “mind of Christ”; and it is unfortunate that many of us simply want the old mind back. The eternal perspective is to be taught by God to see a bit from His vantage point. To be sure, in a “mirror dimly” is all we can take in. But someday “face to face” and then we shall be like Him.

Christopher “Mac” MacDonald does art and multi-layered writing of every kind from farce to deeply serious theological pieces and poetry. He’s a former professional apologist and cult-buster (not kidding), pastor and college minister, magazine editor, journalist, and web guru with an encyclopedic mind.