Mixed-Up Love

FaithWords

Leaving Home

We love to go hiking in state parks. Along mountain paths there are signs,similar to most roadways, telling you what to expect and how to stay on thepath. Someone has usually hashed marks of paint on trees, a small swath of whiteor yellow on the bark, showing the best way to progress upward. There can be somany hashes and signs by journey's end, it feels like cheating to say youactually hiked a mountain. Such a hike can seem less like an adventurous journeythan like falling forward in the way you're pointed. This is not what explorerswere doing when they sought the source of the Nile.

Such clear signage isn't usually available in life, personal, professional, orreligious. But it sounds a bit like how Jon's Sunday school teachers who used tospeak of "following God's will," which was supposed to be easily discerniblefrom reading the Bible. Surely, it's never that simple. Or at least it wasn'tfor us. In this realm we feel more like Speke and Burton asking the nativeswhich way to turn.

Granted, by the time we met, we had both traveled rather complex paths in ourreligious lives. While your own journeys may have fewer twists and turns,exploring your own path—how you were raised, the choices your family madefor you and those that you made for yourself, the examples that were presentedto you about religion and relationships—will help you understand who youare now as a person exploring an interfaith relationship. You may be surprisedby what you discover.

JON Not only have I somehow missed the clearly marked path, or done a lousyjob of following the obvious signs, but my religious life hasn't necessarilybeen a process of going forward. Nor do I claim to be climbing upward, as if Ican tell that I'm getting progressively closer to God. In some ways I'm actuallygoing backward.

I was born into a non-denominational evangelical church, moved toEpiscopalianism before I was twenty, and eventually became a Roman Catholic.Today, even though I'm still a Catholic and go to mass, I pray and practicemostly with Jews, and Michal likes to repeat a remark made by a friend overdinner years ago that perhaps I'm eternally regressing, and Zoroastrianism mustbe next in line for me. This is really just a joke, but sometimes I wonder.

Baptist -> Episcopalian -> Catholic -> Jewish -> Zoroastrian? -> Did cavemenhave a religion??

I was born with an evangelical Protestant imagination and have been trying toexpand it ever since. "Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood wasshed for me"—I sang that hymn over and over as a child in church inWheaton, Illinois, leaving my pew for the center aisle, walking forward tocommit and recommit my life to Jesus Christ. If you share a background likemine, you know what I mean. Wheaton was the macrocosmic mecca of evangelicalismand a microcosmic world that included Vacation Bible School, "sword drills"(games training kids to quickly find Bible references), worship servicesdominated by sermonizing, mission trips from the suburbs to Central America, andone-on-one evangelizing, even revival tent meetings—I helped organize oneonce.

Earnest belief came early. When I was five, I kneeled with my father in theliving room to ask Jesus into my heart. That's of course what we calledit—what millions of people still call it. Phrase by phrase, I repeatedafter my dad: "Heavenly Father ... I realize that I am a sinner ... I ask foryour forgiveness.... I want to change and become a new person.... I ask you tocome into my heart." This may sound ludicrous to many of you, but believe me, Imeant every word of it. Or at least I knew how to demonstrate that my meaningwas sincere. With a perspective that has changed much over the last forty-oddyears, I now realize that meaning is more complex, and best practiced ratherthan stated. But back then it was simply spoken words that were heartfelt.

I was fascinated with the crucifixion. We learned about it often in Sundayschool, and I had it described to me in vivid detail from the pulpit. Thepassion of Christ—the stages from his arrest to his humiliation to histrial and then death—enthralled my imagination. Jesus knew every kid'snightmare: to be taken away, stripped naked, beaten up, pointed at, and laughedat. And, as I was taught, I had done these very things to him—made itnecessary for Jesus to undergo such awfulness. So I experimented. I would closemy bedroom door and strip my action figures naked, leaving Batman and G.I. Joeto hang on crosses of my own design, easy to link together with Lincoln Logs.Then, I would sit quietly gazing at them, praying with as deep of a sorrow as Icould muster. By the time I was in Christian high school, I gave a chapel talkin which I presumed to describe, Mel Gibson–style, what it was like to becrucified.

My father worked in the world of evangelical book publishing and so I wasexposed at an early age to some of the pillars of our faith. I sat at dinnerwith Charles Ryrie, the seminary professor and famous Bible translator, and wentto lunch with what was then a young, heavyset magazine editor named JerryJenkins, later to become famous as the author of the Left Behind series ofapocalyptic novels.

It was strange being a certified Christian in a public school full of kids who Iknew were going to hell. I was supposed to witness to my playmates, to save themfrom the eternal torment that they were headed for, but I never did. When I wasbaptized in church in the fourth grade, such a momentous event was unknown toanyone at school.

After nine years of public school, I attended a religious high school. WheatonChristian High School (now called Wheaton Academy) was a sort of prep school fornearby Wheaton College. My family would have struggled to afford the tuition hadmy mother not been the school principal's executive secretary, making it free.It was a rigorous education, with lots of one-on-one attention from teachers.One teacher, Mr. Masquelier, made a sizable impact on my life, feeding mycuriosity to learn, and insisting more than any teacher had ever done that Iwork harder. I was able to take classes that included Modern European Literatureand a Shakespeare seminar. The reader in me was born. I pored over a lot ofbooks that were outside the curriculum as well, including the complete poems ofWordsworth (as a freshman, while moodily strolling among elm trees), WendellBerry essays (introduced to me by a local bookseller), and the dialogues ofPlato. My mind was expanding just as my spirit was at its most sensitive.

Attempting to atone for the sin of failing to convert my playmates in gradeschool was one reason why I chose a college that surprised even my conservativeparents: Moody Bible Institute. My parents had met and married at Moody, indowntown Chicago, but they never imagined that their son would choose to gothere. Moody was primarily a place for training missionaries or evangelists, notlovers of the liberal arts.

Since childhood, I'd been to "Founder's Week" at Moody every February andwatched with admiration great evangelical preachers from around the world. Irecall being enthralled once as a famous British minister preached for an hour.Each sermon was broadcast live around the world on radio, and a series of smalllights lit up on the pulpit to signal when stations would be breaking forcommercials at the top of the hour. I watched as a tiny yellow light quietlylit, signaling two minutes remaining. "Let me conclude by simply saying this..." the minister began. A minute later, the orange light came on. Sixtyseconds. "Let us pray ..." he said. Finishing praying, all eyes reopened (butmine), and the small red light gently shone. I was impressed beyond words. Moodywould school me further in the ways of God-talk, and give me an opportunity toput them into practice. Surely that, I believed at eighteen, was more importantthan all the books in the world.

My only year in Bible college proved to be a shocking adjustment, however. I wasat heart a student full of questions and curiosity, and Moody was geared towardyoung people who already felt that they knew the answers to life's questions andonly needed to deepen their commitments. So instead of discussing new ideas,there I was in classes such as Evangelism 101, learning how to witness on thestreets of Chicago.

The summer before college, I had applied to become a missionary, and at the endof my year at Moody I was sent by the Conservative Baptist Foreign MissionSociety as an assistant church planter to Batangas City, the Philippines. I wasinstructed to convert the native Catholics, to show them the importance ofpraying to ask Jesus into their hearts. We taught that the sacraments of theCatholic Church, such as taking communion, going to confession, and doingpenance, would not bring either happiness or security, on earth or in heaven. Weclaimed that the Church made these things up, and they'd become like idols topeople, something to completely eschew. We preached that each person mustprofess born-again faith in Jesus Christ, and be re-baptized, or baptizedcorrectly. Catholics are usually "sprinkled" with water as infants, as we likedto differentiate, rather than "immersed" in it, as we believed the scripturesshowed it should be done.

That summer was a turning point. Faced with devout Catholics living engagedCatholic lives, I simply couldn't disrupt them. The pain of some of the people,as they struggled—weighing the relative merits of eternal salvation (as wewere presenting it) versus everything that they knew and loved (their families,their communities, their Church)—struck me deeply. The experiencehighlighted what I had begun to realize before I left: asking people about theirreligious beliefs can almost feel indecent. Most people find it inappropriate,if not wrong, to challenge such things. I also began to realize that what theysaid they believed was not that important. Most people don't have a ready answerto questions of belief. I'd been taught how that was a serious problem. But myCatholic friends in the Philippines were the first to show me that a creeddoesn't make Christians. A life does.

Sitting in Filipino living rooms, I watched as Catholics prayed, and I wanted topray as they did. In church I witnessed their liturgical celebrations and wantedthe joy and mystery they seemed to experience. I began to study the lives offamous Catholics like Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Avila and saw how theyseemed to be seized by a love for God and a desire to be a channel for that lovein the world in practical ways, ways that had little to do with my faith.

The souls of the people I met no longer looked desperate, as I once believed ofall souls that hadn't prayed the prayer of salvation. This, I now realize, was asort of Catholic stirring inside of me, as Christian life before the 16thcentury was infused by the idea that there is a small piece of divinity residentinside of us. Meister Eckhart called it a spark. Julian of Norwich called it apart of our will that never really wanted to sin. It was the first Protestantswho made popular the notion that there is not a shard of goodness in humankind.

I was a miserable failure as a missionary. In fact, by the time my summer wasover I was convinced what I was doing was wrong—that there was somethingwrong with my childhood faith. I began to fall in love with Catholicism. I wassent to show them how they'd gotten it all wrong, and instead, they showed me.

Having transferred out of Bible college, my evangelical vision was beinggradually replaced by something much broader. I wandered from church to churchlooking for others like me. Mennonites counseled me on how to register as aConscientious Objector with Selective Service. Swedish pietists at theEvangelical Covenant Church showed me that it was possible to have differingpoints of view on religious matters and still gather together and worship. Andthe monasticism of Thomas Merton's writings drew me more than once to visit hisold monastery in Kentucky.

Becoming a Catholic would have absolutely killed my parents, not to mention mygrandparents, so it never seemed an option. Then, while waiting tables at aMexican restaurant at night, and working part-time at a campus bookstore, Ibegan attending North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. I thought for awhile that I might become an Episcopal priest. I remember fondly Don Dayton'sKarl Barth seminar, and David Scholer's introduction to the Gospels; I tookevery January term class offered by Paul Holmer, who'd recently retired fromYale and come to North Park to teach Wittgenstein, Kierkegaard, and Lewis. Butafter two and a half years I left, realizing that I was in no shape to pastoranyone. This was just at the time when the market for religious and spiritualbooks was burgeoning and my love for books and ideas sent me in that direction.That was 1991, and for more than two decades now, I've worked with books in oneway or another.

Most of that time I was a good Episcopalian, for almost twenty years, preachingin church on occasion, and serving on diocesan discernment committees. But I'vehad the opportunity to keep my fingers and toes in many spiritual pots. I'venever been a one-church person, and I've never really been a one-traditionperson, either.

It was for that reason that when I was curious to find a new and morechallenging job in 1997, I replied to the founder of a Jewish spiritualitypublisher in Vermont, curious to see what he sought in a head of marketing. Itturned out that he wanted someone who understood the Christian market, yet alsohad a broader perspective. Friends told me that taking the job was nuts; whatdid I really know about Judaism? My parents told me that taking it would appearto compromise my Christian belief; can you be a Christian and market booksreflecting another religious tradition? But I accepted the position and becamethe vice president of marketing for Jewish Lights Publishing.

Two years later I cofounded a new publishing imprint dedicated to multi-faithexplorations of spiritual and religious topics. We named it SkyLight PathsPublishing and it became rapidly successful. I acquired, created, edited, andmarketed books by people of faith and spiritual practice talking with each otheracross the traditions. We created new editions of classic spiritual texts, mostof which have names that sound forbidding, such as Zohar, Philokalia,Ramakrishna, Ecclesiastes, and Gita, but we tried to make them more accessible.Then we did the same for spiritual practices, showing how the same practicetends to pop up in different forms in many different religious traditions. Therewere reasons why people began calling our small company in Vermont "the Ben &Jerry's of religious publishing."

Along the way I began writing myself. Praying with Our Hands introducedtwenty-one ways that people across religious traditions use their hands, notjust their thoughts or spoken words, to pray. Working on that project rekindledmy interest in Catholicism, making me want to explore and write about Catholicsubjects, and as I did, I was drawn to live a more Catholic life. I begancarrying a rosary in my pocket, praying it only when I was alone. At work Iwould sometimes pause at midday to pray the noontime liturgical hour—inthe men's room. I even went to confession for the first time while on a businesstrip in London where no one would know me. For a decade I was a Protestantwriter who appreciated Catholic tradition. I would give talks at conferences andin parishes and say, "I like how you think, how you look at the world, and Iwant more of that in my own life." And I meant it.