Does This Church Make Me Look Fat?: A Mennonite Finds Faith, Meets Mr. Right, and Solves Her Lady Problems by Rhoda Janzen

Author:Rhoda Janzen [Janzen, Rhoda]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Religious, Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Women
ISBN: 9781455502882
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2012-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Eight

The Gottman Island

Survival Experience

God was already showing me how a Christian relationship could be different from one not rooted in faith. Mitch and I were getting married in six months, but I naturally spent some time wondering why, if Christian marriage by definition enjoys God’s blessing, the divorce rate among Christians is just as high as it is among non-Christians. Something was wonky. I suspected that the wonkiness existed in proportion to the wisdom with which the two people chose each other. Maybe Christians were clinging to the blighted notion that marriage would be easy. Maybe they thought that God would automatically bless them with peace and compatibility just because they were entering into a Christian covenant. If he did, Christians wouldn’t be filing for divorce like everybody else. Let’s say, though, that you have found a sexy someone, and you feel optimistic about your future together. You feel excited about the possibilities. How, in the face of your fabulous new-relationship chemistry, can you even begin to assess?

The American novelist Peter De Vries once said, “The difficulty of marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.” If I was in love with Mitch’s personality at the beginning of the relationship, how would it be possible to proceed with wisdom?

The Gospel of Mark steered me in the right direction. It tells the story of a desperate but fabulous dad, my all-time favorite biblical character. I would set this guy up with my single girlfriends in a heartbeat because, wow, he’s honest and direct. He’s a risk-taker, too. He has a son who would break any parent’s heart. Since babyhood the son has been having big foamy convulsions, trying to throw himself into the fire. Whether you read the boy as a suicidal demoniac or a mute epileptic, it is clear that the loving, long-suffering dad has finally bottomed out over his son’s illness. The dad has tried everything, and he doesn’t know what to do anymore. So as a last resort he’s bringing the problem to Jesus. Curiously, the son’s condition isn’t the point, even though everybody loves a good demon story.

Rather, the point of the story is the dad’s condition. He’s distressed, he’s broken, he’s at the end of his rope. When Jesus says that anything is possible for those who believe, the dad cries out, “I do believe; help my unbelief!” I interpret this as, “I’m doing the best I can with faith, but I’m really, really bad at it!” The dad’s faith was blocked by years and years of parenting a son who never got any better. Don’t we all have something that blocks our faith? Mine has been blocked too, not by a child, but by my mind. In fact I read the tormented child as a metaphor for the tormented mind, possessed, as it were, with a destructive skepticism. I cling so hard to ratiocinative thought that I have trouble releasing myself into the mysteries of God.

Also, sometimes a nice mimosa brunch sounds better than church.

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