One of the first things I have had to do in this journey is let go of searching for the “one right thing” and learn to live in the messy middle, the grey zone, the gauzy center. I was raised in a conservative Baptist church and school from birth to age 12 or 13, then we moved to a more contemporary Methodist church. (Much more to come on all of this in future posts). But needless to say, my very impressionable grade school years were filled with black-and-white doctrines of right and wrong, the allure of heaven and the threat of hell, the fear of God’s wrath, and the lens to see much of the rest of the world as wrong and evil. I had an image of Jesus as a loving earthly figure, compassionate and self-sacrificing, but God as a “just God” who doles out punishment and judgment, one to be feared, and not in a respectful way, but real, trembling fear.

After working through some garden-variety depression and anxiety with my therapist, we are now working through this new season of my faith. He is a former minister turned licensed professional counselor, so he is uniquely poised to support me in this work. He hit me between the eyes the other week as I was describing the above to him. He said, “Jen, remember, if it doesn’t look like Jesus, it’s not God.” Wow.

The run-up to the first red letters in the book of Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus, 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 generations from David to the exile in Babylon, and 14 generations from the exile to the Messiah. There may be lots of names in that list I don’t recognize, but many I do: Tamar, Rahab (the prostitute), and Ruth (notice the inclusion of women in the list); Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, all the way to Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, and his wife, Mary. It’s a motley crew of sinners and saints. Regular people and famous ones. Through a series of dreams and stars in Matthew 1-2, we get to Jesus who was saved from execution by Herod. Jesus, who is called Immanuel, means “God with us”. (Matthew 1:23)

I wrote in my journal the other day: “‘and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins’. Immaneual=God with us. I’m going to let that sink in today: God with me. That’s the essence of Jesus. God with me.”

The story of Jesus starts out personal. Notice Matthew doesn’t say, “Jesus came and you can have him if you find him in the right church, with the right kind of theology, and the right kind of worship style”. No. Jesus is Immanuel. God with us, with me. I find him in me, with me, in my corner of the world, in my experience, in my culture, in my community. This makes Jesus accessible to all of us throughout all of history and all around the world. It’s extraordinarily small of us as humans, especially in America, to claim a special corner on God; that we could somehow be the ones to draw up the rules about God’s kingdom.

God is bigger than space and time. He is dynamic. He has shown up for thousands of years, in thousands of places, in thousands of different ways. One of my first lessons is to let go of “the one right way” to understand Jesus and experience him; to let go of a lot of baked-in, man-made rules and just let the words of Jesus and the Holy Spirit guide me. I have to let God out of the neat box I have made for him. I’m not suggesting that there is no truth and that “anything goes”. I am suggesting that I need to be humble enough to realize that my understanding, my experience, may not look like someone else’s, but that doesn’t make their experience invalid or wrong. And conversely, I am realizing that I need to have the courage to allow myself to have an experience with Jesus that doesn’t look like my parents’ or my friends’. And that’s perfectly ok.

Disclaimer: My viewpoints are not necessarily reflective of my employer, or any local, regional or national organization that I belong to. As a matter of fact, I pretty much just speak for myself. Please keep that in mind.