First Chapter: The Faith of a Child
From the new book, Confessions of an Amateur Believer. Here is Part One of book editor John Pattison’s interview with the author, Patty Kirk. Read Part Two of the interview here. And you can visit Patty Kirk’s blog at www.amateurbeliever.com.
THE FAITH OF A CHILD
Unlike most of the people I go to church with these days, I wasn’t always much of a believer. Although as a child I attended church weekly and did believe in God, I never heard of concepts like having a “personal relationship” with Christ or just giving my troubles to Jesus. My relationship with Jesus Christ was, at best, respectful but remote, like my relationships with relatives I knew only from my parents’ stories. As I was growing up, my troubles took me not into the arms of God but ever further from the faith of my childhood, and I spent a big part of my adult life unable to believe at all.
I grew up one of six kids in a Catholic family. I was baptized not long after I was born, and we attended church every Sunday, where I listened to three readings from the Bible weekly: one from Psalms, one from the epistles, and one from the gospels. I made my first communion when I was six or seven. At twelve, I was confirmed in my faith by reciting my baptismal vows and adding the name of a saint to my other names.
Polycarp. I had to fight the nuns and get permission from our Monsignor to use a male name. I chose Polycarp, I explained to Mssr. Dziodosz, not just because his feast day was my birthday but because I liked his story in our family’s Little Pictorial Lives of Saints. Faced with martyrdom unless he cursed Christ, Polycarp replied: “Eighty-six years I have served Him, and He never did me wrong; how can I blaspheme my King and Saviour?” In my child’s mind Polycarp was saying, “Well, I’ve followed God for so long that it hardly seems worthwhile to change now.” The strange pragmatism of this statement of faith struck me as funny.
My family ate fish sticks on Fridays when I was young, and we carried in our car a cross-shaped wooden box that twisted open to reveal a bottle of holy water, a white silk stole, and a rolled up sheet of paper with instructions on how to perform an emergency baptism. Sometimes, when my parents drove us places in our station wagon, I fantasized about coming upon an accident and watching my father crouch beside a dying person to read the words on the paper, getting spots of blood on the stole.
This was in the sixties, before the modernizations of the 2nd Vatican Council had really sunk in. In those days, my sisters and I wore organdy dresses poufed out with stiff slips to church and lace caps bobby-pinned to the tops of our heads. My older sister Sharon told funny stories about the nuns at a parochial school she had attended for awhile when I was just little. I coveted a soft focus painting of Jesus praying that night on Gethsemane that Sharon had above her bed - the sky the inkiest midnight blue above what I thought of as the cheery lights of Bethlehem twinkling below.
My dad told stories, too. Of stealing the communion wine in his altar boy days. Of a gigantic nun who punished him by lifting him off the ground by that especially tender hair that grows at the temple. Of his uncles shouting, “Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph.” Of snow and knickerbockers and growing up in Brooklyn, which were all part of my Catholic heritage, as it seemed to me.
On Christmas Eve some years, my parents took us to Midnight Mass. Imagine it. You’re six or seven or eight years old and have never stayed up past nine o’clock, not for any reason, and certainly not on Christmas Eve, that night of nights when presents appear out of nowhere and the air itself quivers with carols. You were so excited when they put you to bed that you couldn’t sleep for a long time, but now, seconds later it seems, your parents get you and your siblings up out of the warm covers and thrust you into your church clothes. Nobody talks much. It is the middle of the middle of the night, and the world is darker and quieter than it has ever been in your remembrance. And then you’re riding in the back of the station wagon and then you’re in the cold church, waiting.
Your mother or father gives your siblings and you each a little candle from a box at the end of the pew. It has a paper apron around it that your mother whispers is there to protect your hand from drips of wax. And then the lights go out, and the whole church is dark except for a leafy creche at the altar: a Hawaiian looking house surrounded by palm fronds. And you sit in the dark, waiting.
Soon there is a shuffling noise from behind, and you crane around to see. First some altar boys appear, some of them only your age or younger, carrying gigantic candles on poles. Then, behind them, the priests, swinging censors wafting the exotic smoke of frankincense and myrrh. It is a fabulous smell that collects in your nose and sinks to your lowest places and stays there. Days later your closet will smell of that night.
Posted on April 9, 2007 12:00 AM
Comments
Patty notes the following:
"Sometimes I consider this exchange an important opportunity to correct the macabre habit my fellow evangelicals have of bringing the crucifixion into every discussion of who God is, even discussions of the birth of Jesus. At my church's Christmas sing-along, someone invariably requests "Up from the Grave He Arose" or "I Am Redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb!" Wearing a baby on a chain is my attempt to get them see the ghoulishness of such thinking.
But the bigger ministry of my little necklace is to myself. Hanging from that chain is not the baby Jesus at all but me, one of God’s daughters...I am, mysteriously, God’s own baby girl."
I have not read her book as of yet, so I cannot comment as to any context that may bear further light on her comments, but I wonder how we resolve the tension between her statement and the following:
"...we preach Christ crucified [which]...to those who are called [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God." (1 Cor 1:23-24)
"Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, 'Father, save Me from this hour?' But for this purpose (to be crucified) I came to this hour." (John 12:27)
I affirm that God's love may be communicated in the symbolic beauty of a baby Jesus or a baby Patty Kirk. But I also affirm that God's love is communicated fully in the giving of His Son to death on the cross.
I don't know that this means we all need to wear crosses on a chain instead of a baby on a chain or that we need to bring the cross into every discussion about who God is. Yet I find that calling something that Jesus singled out as His purpose "macabre" or "ghoulish" to be disingenuous with His own testimony.
We preach the cross of Christ because it, as the singular point of history, is the fountain of great news and immense joy!
Posted by: Chris | April 9, 2007 1:30 PM
I really enjoyed this first chapter.
What got me thinking the most was what your husband said about always being saved even if you lose your step.
I wonder and hope that is true for everyone.
Posted by: Cat | April 9, 2007 2:17 PM
Chris,
I understand your point, but I think you're completely missing the point. It is the empty tomb, not the cross, that is the fountain of great news and immense joy. It is the empty tomb that means Jesus is alive today, slowly and mysteriously changing me from a self-centered bastard into a person who loves people. It is the empty tomb that gives me (and the rest of the world) hope that one day all that is effed up in this world will be made right, that death and pain and brokeness does not have the final word.
Clearly the cross is important - vital - to what it means to be a Christian. But to make that the focus of the story is, I believe, to deeply and profoundly miss what makes the good news that we have so good.
Posted by: David | April 9, 2007 2:31 PM
Chris,
I also see your point. It was through the blood of Jesus shed on the cross that God reconciled to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven (Col. 1:17-20). But, as Dave wrote, it is the empty tomb that is our great hope.
I don't think there is anything wrong with publicizing Jesus' birth, if only to offset the "over-emphasis" on his death (see below). But there are other reasons: it was in a lowly barn in Bethlehem that God broke into history in a mighty way; and Jesus' death and resurrection make less sense apart from the context of his birth and life. We forget that sometimes.
I would further support Kirk's assertion that many Christians have a "macabre," even "goulish" obsession with the crucifixion. I don't think you have to look much further than the near-sadistic portrayal of Jesus' last hours in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" (and the unsettling allegiance many believers have to that movie), or the soul-crushing mournfulness of many communion celebrations. There is a fine line between humility and self-flagellation - I know, because I am frequently on the wrong side of it.
The apostle Paul DOES preach Christ crucified, but he doesn't preach Christ STILL on the cross. He writes later in 1 Corinthians that if Christ has not overcome death, then his preaching was in vain and our faith is in vain.
Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?
As so many of us proclaimed yesterday: "Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!"
Posted by: John Pattison | April 9, 2007 3:58 PM
David and John,
Thank you for your thoughtful responses.
I affirm what you both say about the resurrection--it is the empty tomb that gives us hope as followers of Christ! Because Christ conquered death, we can be confident that our Redeemer lives and intends to give His own eternal life as well.
I simply restate that the cross is the fountain spring of our salvation. Without it, we have no propitiation for our sins; without the resurrection, we have no hope in our faith.
I do not believe we should be ghoulish or macabre or sadistic or soul-crushingly mournful in our remembrance of Calvary. But perhaps we should be deliberate about its centrality in the message of the Gospel.
To embrace the cross as the center point of our existence does not mean that we must idolize it or wear it or obsess over it. To embrace the cross as the center of our existence means that we recognize that our relationship with Jesus Christ was made possible only by His sacrifice.
When we stray from the cross, we endanger the faith by focusing exclusively on the consequences or results of the cross to the detriment of the full Gospel. If Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6), then our faith in Him runs through His perfect life, through Calvary, through the grave, through His ascension, and straight to the right hand of the Father (Romans 8:34). The complete presentation of the Gospel will include all these marvelous truths.
Focusing on the cross then trancends the physical cross or the blood or the pain or our image of what it must have been like and instead focuses our spirits in humility on Jesus: on the redemptive power of Jesus' blood (Colossians 1:20); on the fact that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ (Romans 8:1); on the picture of the greatest form of love (John 15:13) so that we may reach the world through God's love (John 13:35).
The resurrection and Christ's ascension are what give us our hope that these things are true. But the cross is what makes these truths possible!
"But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Galatians 6:14)
Posted by: Chris | April 9, 2007 5:28 PM
I wanted to comment on a couple of things in the above chapter and the comments that followed.
First off, I read the article with great interest and liked the honesty with which Patty shared her heart. I wanted to touch on something though about once saved, always saved. I am a firm believer in that theological doctrine, because if one says that you can do something to lose your salvation, then it follows that you can do something to gain your salvation and the Bible clearly says that salvation is by grace through faith, not works so that we can't claim the credit (paraphrase of Eph 2:8-10)However, I don't know that anyone who is truly saved could ever renounce God and become an atheist. I think their is a huge question of whether that person was truly saved in the first place. I do think it is possible to be saved and move away from God, but not to the point where you can say "there is no God". Salvation is more than just saying that you know Jesus is the Son of God and that He died and was resurrected. Even Satan knows that. Salvation is about saying "Christ, I know who you are, I know what you did on the cross for me, and because of that, I surrender my life to you and ask you to save me." Are there times when we have surrender parts of our lives to Him again? YOU BET--for me it's daily. We're sinners and that's part of our nature.
The second thing I wanted to touch on was the whole aversion to discussing the cross both in the article and in the comments that followed. In the Old Testament, God said there was only one way to atone for sin, through the shedding of blood. It had to be an animal without blemish and perfect. God sent His only Son to be that once and for all perfect lamb without blemish to be sacrificed for the not just the sins of the Jewish people of a year, but for the every person in the whole world, both at the time it occurred and forever in the future until the end of this world. What a huge, awesome thought to contemplate. To take away from the suffering and death on the cross is to take away from the meaning of our salvation. The reason Christ was born, was so that HE could die. The whole Old Testament beginning in Genesis is leading up to, and prophesying about His suffering and death and resurrection. We don't have salvation because He was born, we have salvation because HE willingly chose to be beaten, bloodied and hung on a cross. If we ever lose sight of that, then we are in trouble.
Posted by: Patrick Sexton | April 9, 2007 8:54 PM
I'm glad the first chapter to Patty Kirk's wonderful new book is generating so much discussion. Chris and Patrick, thank you for your lengthy, well-researched comments. Dave, thanks for debuting the new word "effed" on the BWC. I expect we'll be seeing that in some future appendix to the OED.
We should be careful to read Kirk's book in its literary context. "Confessions of an Amateur Believer" belongs on the shelf next to "Blue Like Jazz" (Miller) and "Traveling Mercies" (Lamott) - not the other "Confessions," whoever wrote that. Kirk's book is about a life, not a theology. It's more about questions than answers. It's all about a journey and less about a destination.
We should read her book as a kind of travelogue, or as a series of postcards from the hometown we all share. For those of us who have lived here most of our lives, the perspective of a relative newcomer can be valuable (I refer you to my interview with Kirk elsewhere on this site).
The conversation is great - keep it up, and I mean that - but let's not miss the forest for those other things.
Posted by: John Pattison | April 10, 2007 9:36 AM
As for the book:
Wow, wonderful first chapter!
I especially loved the description of midnight mass. Patty Kirk really got to the heart of the old-fashioned, almost ridiculous, intoxicating mystery of that experience.
As to the discussion:
There are too many subtopics in this conversation to comment on everything but several things came to mind (heart) and I've decided to share.
First of all, I'm a big fan of Lent and Easter, of suffering and salvation.
And I think Patty is too. The line on page 2, "Instead, it is God's first response to our hope and longing and frustrating blindness: the birth of his own son in our world." gives her away.
There are two parts to this sentence:
Part 1: "our hope and longing and frustrating blindness"
Part 2: "the birth of his own son in the world," or "God's response."
These two parts represent, at least to me, crucifixion and resurrection.
Patty's sentence makes sense because it is made up of both parts. After all, happy endings happen at the END of the story. After all, great epic romances of longing and hope are not complete without them.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
The focus, folks, is the cross AND the empty tomb. It's lion AND lamb. It's servant AND king. It's serpent AND dove. It's Alpha AND Omega. And the list goes on.
Pretty soon, we figure out that we're not talking about seperate ideas or characters but about ideas and characters that are both seperate AND the same. Pretty soon, we figure out that we're talking about many facets of one thing, each distinct and colorful but unified in beauty, like panes of a stained glass window. And the window is a picture of Jesus.
It's Jesus. Just Jesus. That's the focus. That's what's important. But we know this already, right?
You know, baby or cross, we're still talking about the same guy.
Here's a tangent for you:
Actually, I found it funny that Patty sees mainstream Christianity as being macabre at times. I see the opposite. Recently, (well, during LENT if you want to know the truth) I've been infuriated by Christian music and all it's happygolucky-everything's ok-ness. I shout to the heavens: (a.k.a. the speaker hanging in our cafeteria) What is this crap?! Where is the gore? Where is the suffering? Why is everyone telling me that if I sing something sad I'm not really a Christian? Didn't David do that? Didn't Jesus weep?
And, ok, I still think I was going somewhere good with that... But, here's the bigger point:
Jesus is in Lamentations AND in Christian pop.
Baby or cross, if it's about Jesus, I need to put on my big girl panties and deal with it. Even *shudder* listen to it.
Because Jesus is not made in our image, we are made in His. And the truth is, there are going to be things He says, does, and is that we are not going to like. But who's the God, Him or us?
What I'd like to leave you with is this:
God grant that our characters be better than our theology.
And one more word:
Jesus.
JesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesus
JesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesus
JesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesus
JesusJesusJesusJesusJesusJesus.
Amen.
Posted by: grace | April 11, 2007 10:32 AM
Grace and others,
Thank you for sharing your hearts. I am encouraged and challenged and strengthened by your words. And Grace, I think you blew up this page with your 165 letter word, which is pretty sweet.
I agree with you that the focus comes down to Jesus--you have spoken well. In my journey of faith, I've found that my desire for an all-consuming relationship with Christ grows most intimate when I set myself in the proper context--when I present my body to Him as a living sacrifice. Through the myriad of spiritual disciplines--fasting, praying, meditation, study, reflection, recollection, denial, suffering--and in my inability to be disciplined in any of them, I've found the cross to be the center point of this journey called faith. Because the cross upends the universe which I believe to be centered on me and places it back in its rightful place around Jesus.
I don't mean to beat this horse any more than necessary, but to focus on the cross doesn't mean to isolate our thinking on the literal cross to the neglect of any of the other necessary components of the Gospel. To preach the Gospel or to live out the principles of the Gospel involves more facets on one thing (as you noted). It simply means we visit Christ at the point of His greatest love. Our only natural response from meeting Him in this place is to give ourselves completely to Him. And our meager sacrifice, in meeting with His great sacrifice, is the strong root from which the Spirit may produce a bountiful harvest of righteousness in us. And to reference John comments (thank you for those), I would say this is the forest. I know for me that Patty's comments led me to this forest--to the foot of the cross of my beautiful Savior and Lord.
And I pray alongside you that God may grant that our character be better than our theology.
But, if I may, I'll caveat your statement and say that better theology leads to better character. It is, as you've noted, the AND that should not be neglected, meaning good theology AND good character are symbiotic and strenghten one another. The more I've probed the unending depths of God's word, the more I learn that I have a lot of half-truth theology. And my half-truth theology has led me to believe certain things about God and my relationship with Him that may or may not be true. The more I learn about how to properly view and understand God, the more I learn about His nature and character. And the more I learn about who He really is, the more I want to serve Him. Jesus did promise the woman at the well that we would worship God in spirit and in truth.
To Patty, if you are reading this, thank you for pouring out your soul onto paper in order to encourage others in their pursuit of God. You can see that a number of lives here are already touched because of your obedience.
Posted by: Chris | April 11, 2007 11:29 AM
Chris and everyone else,
I have been reading, and it's been enlightening.
I'm glad Grace spoke on behalf of my intentions. (Grace, what an appropriate name you have: I can always count on grace to speak on behalf of my best intentions, as opposed in response to my actual unworthiness. Whoever named you, in any case, saw the future.)
Jesus' death and resurrection are, of course, central to my faith. Still, for whatever reason, I find that the portion of the Jesus story that moves me the most is not only that all powerful God became one of us-someone who could die and suffer at the hands of mere humans-but that he came to us first as a helpless baby. A creature who could not do anything for himself. Who, without humans to take care of him, would have died. The idea of God as a human baby just undoes me.
This morning, coincidentally, I added a little crucifix to the baby on my chain. Just a little reminder to myself, no one else, that God's son became a human child, who then grew up and was murdered. And that he submitted willingly to these indignities-these experiences of powerlessnes-all on account of scuzzy people like me.
Posted by: patty kirk | April 11, 2007 1:24 PM
I loved this first chapter. I love seeing how God works in individual lives. It gives me hope, encouragement. It is so unique, so tailor made to each individual. It is not theology but life...the creature and the Creator face to face in a beautiful dance of life. I love seeing how God has touched you, Patty and by being an observer He has touched me too.
I was especially touched by what your husband believed in about you and especially about God. It reminds me of the faith of the centurion. Gives me goose bumps!
Posted by: Patty Musick | April 12, 2007 6:38 AM
It really is "all of the above" that we appreciate and honor in our walk with God: The wonder and surprise of the Messiah baby, the lessons of the Teacher man, and the bloody (yes, John, even macabre) sacrifice of the Savior God. Even if I don't always understand why He chose to reach out in these ways, they are all parts of the gift God gave us to share. Like Patty Kirk says by adding the cross to the baby on her chain, we should not forget any of them.
Posted by: John Pattison, Sr. | May 8, 2007 12:01 PM
Loved your chapter, Patty. I also have find memories of midnight Mass, and the almost primeval recall of the censer of incense, linked with the sound of it hitting the chain, always in a pattern of three.
The incarnation is the greatest miracle, who else but the Almighty could have thought of this---God, with US! I mean, after all, we know us!
Thanks for the inspiration.
Blessings on your journey.
Posted by: Charles | May 11, 2007 6:03 PM