Categories: uncategorized
Date: 24 February 2007 10:11:15
If you've read the last few days you may be thinking, well why do I stay? You might be wondering how I can have, at points, so much so negativity towards evangelicals but still go to an evangelical church and effectively be part of that sub-culture.
Well, I have been part of that whole subculture for the last 25 years, that's 5/7ths of my entire life. I have grown up within it and it has been there through the high and low points of my life. Basically, it's my tribe; my family and just like with any other tribe or family we may want it to be very different to the way it is, but it is the one we have. It is the tribe who I share language and memories with. It is the tribe who I have experienced life events with and the tribe who have shaped, in many ways, who I am today.
As I have grown as spiritually as well as physically I have learnt, as we do within any family or tribe, to be an individual. To acknowledge what I find difficult about the norms and values of the group, and to question what I don't understand and start to be honest about what I don't believe and where I have chosen to reject some of the norms and values which are dominant within the group. At the same time, as within any tribe, I have learnt that it is people who make up the group and just as I want them to be sensitive to me that I have to be sensitive to them. I have to understand each has had experiences that have made them who they are, I have to understand out of respect for them I have to be quiet sometimes and just follow certain ways of doing things or not voice my anger and resentment sometimes, but rather try to over time build dialouge, because that is just the way they are and that is the only way they have ever known. I have to realise that however disfunctional the tribe / family may appear at times for better or worse that is part of who I am. I could reject my tribe and find another, which I might overtime feel happy to be adopted into, but at the moment I am happy remaining within the tribe.
We might find each other difficult at times and wonder at how a member of the tribe can hold views so different to those which are dominant amongst the majority, but they do not reject me, rather they recognise me as one of their own and treat me accordingly. So there you have it, how I can be part of evangelicalism without holding on to all the norms and values of evangelicals.