and the truth will set you free...and tick you off

So, while my professional week was amazing and totally awesome (unbelievably, I didn't leave work yesterday too exhausted to think), my social week was full of a froth of insecurities I thought I'd buried right after high school.

See, in high school, like so many people of academic and artistic bent, I was an uncool, badly dressed, painfully awkward geek. The only setting in which I felt comfortbable was the classroom, where I won a certain amount of respect for being smart. When I had to set foot in the hallways, though, it was like running a gauntlet from one class to another.

So when I came to college I blossomed. Particularly because at Grove City the cool people WERE the academics and artists. I have never in my life been surrounded so consistently by so many brilliant and truly cool individuals. I don't think I ever will be again, unless we all scream "Chuck it!" to the world and start a Grove City Alum commune somewhere in Montana. In college I learned that I'm likeable, fun, outgoing (but still an introvert!), engaging, and a decent addition to a group of people. I had so much fun I didn't sleep for four years. I came out with a completely madeover and much more accurate self-perception, which stood me in good stead talking to strangers in retail and meeting people who were continuing their education at higher levels. I had confidence in more than my intellect; I had confidence in me. (Insert Julie Andrews singing and swinging a suitcase around here.)

But at some point this past week it all fell apart. Granted, after last Friday's insane party we were probably all tired; but Club 23 felt a bit strange and my interpretations of people's behavior faltered. Now, it's true that when I'm tired my grip on reality fragments like a dropped light bulb, but even being tired didn't explain the strength of the resurfacings of the old, old convictions that no one likes me and everyone wishes I weren't around because I'm not good enough.

Because that's all hogwash. I knew it; but still, I wanted to know where the misery came from. I like to understand my own irregular tickings. And in a conversation with MP yesterday (now that we're not roommates we've gone back to being best friends, it's fabulous), I figured it out. It was an occurrence in church that set the whole thing off.

Last week, in compliance with my 2006 goal of 3/4 Sundays in a month church attendence, I went to church. Rather eagerly, in fact, as the (young single) people in my Sunday School class have been welcoming and fun, while letting me have my newcomer distance. I went to the early service, where I noticed a few new (to me) faces sitting with more familiar Sunday School faces, and I thought, Oh goody, I'll get to meet more people. Several of them were rather good-looking mid-twenties guys. (Hence the oh goody. Not that I'm cruising for a boyfriend, but I like to test the waters, you know?)

But when I set foot in the Sunday School classroom, it was like plunging into cold bathwater. A couple of people I'd already met said hi, but the group was so much larger that they were the minority, and the people I didn't know made no overtures of friendliness. None. They wouldn't even make eye contact with me. The seats were set up along three eight-foot folding tables arranged into a "U," with the chairs running along both the inside and outside perimeters of the "U." One particularly good-looking guy (good-looking in the way that you notice him and think, "He's probably an asshole" -- he had a sort of cultivated indifferent arrogance to his mien, rather like some guys I knew at Grove City) sat directly across from me. Two feet away. He would not look at me or acknowledge my presence, before, during, or after class. From two feet away.

The other guys were more or less the same. And something in me quailed. Part of me thought defiantly, "Why should I introduce myself? I'm the newcomer. It's THEIR reponsibility to make the first gestures of niceness." And part of me, very simply, was afraid. What if I stick my hand out and introduce myself and they ignore me?

I left CHURCH on the verge of miserable tears. I endured my share of Christian assholes in my high school youth group, who made me feel marginal, awkward, and worthless, but I met a greater share of Christian and agnostic guys in college (mostly in the English department and theater) who treated me with dignity and love. This throwback to adolescent anguish caught me completely off guard.

Why? Why wouldn't they say hello? Why wouldn't they look at me? Oh yes. BECAUSE I'M PRETTY. And because I'm single. Somehow that appears to spell "danger" to the usual Christian guy. And I don't understand. The way they ignored me (and I was looking at them with friendly, open interest -- not interest in their hands in marriage, interest in meeting them -- most of the way through class) made me feel ugly and small. I wondered what was wrong with me. I forgot all the lessons I learned in college and through the grad school community and began to slip into old patterns of self-doubt and fear.

I'm not going to rant about this at length. I would just like to point out the strange irony that I felt safer, more cherished, and more appreciated at last Friday's party at 3 a.m. among people who had had too much to drink than I felt thirty hours later in the house of God. And while I won't apologize for the fun I had at the party or criticize anyone there, myself included, I want to say that there is something WRONG with the contemporary church when the best and warmest times I have in my life fall outside it. And this has been the case for a long time.

This is one of the reasons why I basically eschewed church attendance all the way through college. And I don't know what to do about it. Because now I NEED a church body, a baseline of people who share the same faith. Especially with my family so far away. So I'll continue to attend, but not with the same eagerness; more with a sense of perseverance through something mildly scary and unpleasant. I love the services. I love the preaching. I don't like having to try to convince people that I'm a good person to have around. I shouldn't have to. Everyone that I've met anywhere else but church hasn't needed convincing. Why should the church body? I like most people I meet on sight. I like people. What is this furtive silence that cripples the outgoingness and warmth of the church? I haven't even busted out with my scary opinions yet.

But at least I know again that everyone else, church aside, enjoys my company. Self-doubt is a horrible thing, but now that I know where it came from this week, I can categorize and contain it, and not let it bleed out into all my other relationships.

Maybe I should be bluntly specific and say that this whole post (which you might have already gathered) has centered around guys. The girls in Sunday School are much more approachable and friendly. So I guess what I'll do is go to make friends with them, and forget about the guys completely. But for how long is that a healthy thing? Part of being a body is interacting with members of both sexes. And part of being a woman -- particularly a single woman, with more social freedom -- is interacting with men. Not because culture dictates it, but because I want to interact with men. I want to cultivate friendships with men, because I like men, and some far-off, hoped-for day I want to have a man who is exclusively mine.

Gah. Oh and one more thing, while I'm irritated -- why can't Sunday School classes and small groups exist apart from study books and study guides? My youth pastor might have screwed up a lot of kids through leading them to believe that God only loved a perfect individual, but one thing he did right: He had us do this novel thing and READ THE BIBLE. My high school Bible studies went something like this: "This month we're studying First Peter. Open your Bibles. Okay, ready? Chapter one, verse one. Go."

Sola Scriptura. One of the glories of being a Protestant -- in fact, one of the fundamental tenets of Protestantism for which, as MP pointed out, people in history have died -- is knowing that, with the Holy Spirit inside us, we can read and accurately understand the Scriptures ourselves. We don't need a "Life Issues" book, a topical studies book, a study guide, or a set of videos to interpret the Scriptures. We have the Holy Spirit, the vast context of the Bible itself, and the body of believers to make, clarify, and guide our interpretations.

I'm sick of study books. I love the Bible. I love the beauty, the power, and the awful magnificence of the words of the Word. We're not refined by the words of John MacArthur, or Jerry Bridges, or even Oswald Chambers. Sure, their opinions can be helpful and serve to expand our understanding. But they shouldn't be our tools for interpretation. We have the most valuable tool -- the Spirit of God -- right at our fingertips, right under our ribs, enfolding our minds, less than a breath or a firing neuron away. Why are we cheapening that, and our own ability to understand what the Spirit gives us to understand, by thrusting it aside and clinging to things from the NavPress? And why are we cheapening the Bible itself by not allowing it to stand on its own?

It's a glorious book. I just want a group of people that can sit down around one chapter a week and dissect it. Other people's insights -- the insights of normal, everyday, nontheologians -- are so enriching. And when people sit down to discuss the Bible, just the Bible, together, there is a revelation and a powerful accountability that takes place. If someone has an opinion that's way off base, other people can point it out -- using Scripture. If someone has a fabulous insight that no one else has heard before, it can be heard. And when the Bible is sat down to and read in its own context (a whole chapter, not just a verse here and there...I'm not a big fan of topical studies, unless it's relevant to the chapter you're actually talking about), something holy happens. Because this is a book that is meant to be shared, bread broken among the body of believers. This is the book that lays out the whole basis of our faith. Why are we letting it collect dust in our minds by only opening it where the Navigators tell us to? Not that the Navigators are bad interpreters; but they're limited. The Bible is not.

The Bible speaks for itself. So does the living Spirit of the living God.

So we should read it. Corporately. Because this is where real transformation happens.