Book Club - or where I talk about books that have affected me

Rachel Held Evans was a writer and blogger who recently passed away.  I suppose she was a Christian writer but her thoughts were different than most people who are labeled the same.  I remember the first time I read one of her books.  I was simply meandering through shelves in the Huntsville library. I had climbed the stairs to the non-fiction floor, and started walking around reading titles.  One book title caught my eye, “Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions”.   I picked the book up and read a few pages, and instantly I knew I had to read it.  Rachel had grown up in a very evangelical church, in a family that sounded just like many the families I knew from our home school activities.

I didn’t grow up like her, but in many ways my husband did and we had raised our children in the same way. I found her book at the perfect time in my life, as I was feeling disillusioned with the fundamental faith I had chosen while missing and yearning for the closeness and family aspect of that same faith.  

Rachel writes about her childhood, a happy one in a good faithful family that lived in the same small town where the Scopes Monkey Trial took place.  This was of course the trial of the science teacher that dared to introduce the Theory of Evolution to his high school biology class in the public high school.

When I was in high school I was shocked to find out some of my friends didn’t “believe in evolution.”  I studied biology in college, but I also fell in love with a man who didn’t accept the theory that my entire degree was based on.  I wavered back and forth most of my adult life between Christian apologetics and evolutionary articles.  I taught my children that nature and science reflected the beauty and mind of God and that it was possible to accept both, but deep inside I only hoped it was a truth. 

I taught biology in a private Christian School.  I tried hard to make sure my students knew what evolution really entailed.  I tried to combat statements I would hear from students, such as “Human evolution isn’t real because there are still monkeys around.” At the same time I taught Christian evidences.  I enjoyed showing strengths and weaknesses of different ideas and I never expected my students to accept anything, just to learn and to think.  I am very thankful I didn’t try to push anti evolution on anyone, but at the same time I allowed people to think I didn’t accept the theory. I fear I was straddling a fence I didn’t need to be on.  I remember co-teaching a class on Christian Evidences with another mom in one of our homeschool groups.  I covered science and had fun dissecting pig eyes, and she taught philosophy and morality.  I made sure to teach what Darwin actually wrote and not what people claimed he said. Many Christian Evidence books misrepresent Darwin’s writings.  The other mom bought a copy of “The Origin of the Species.”  She laughed and told me she felt guilty placing it on her bookshelf with her other good books.

Rachel Herd Evans had questions.  Her questions mirrored the ones I had and suppressed, then worried about, suppressed again then finally led to where I am now, wherever that is. It was such a comfort to see her thinking and questioning the same ideas I questioned and had so much trouble with in my faith.  There is no lonelier feeling than when I am sitting in a church building surrounded by my brothers and sisters in faith and yet to feel alone and isolated, to see them rejoicing and singing praises while I sit, sad and empty.  

I struggle with basic Christian ideas, the type of thoughts a person who has put years into her faith should have dealt with by now.  I don’t understand the concept of Hell or even Heaven for that matter.  I can’t understand forcing the multitude of people into small boxes of behaviors and expectations in order to be correct.  To me love, patience and humility are the important values, not what we would call the moral issues.  

Back to Rachel Herd Evens. She was an excellent writer, a deep thinker and an extremely compassionate person, as far as I can tell from her books.  She worried about the same things I worry about.  Unhappy with her faith she still tried to live a Christ like life, and she still took her kids to church.  She had found a way to live with all the conflicts that are threatening to tear me apart.  I wanted to have what she had.  And in reading her thoughts I felt hope that I might come to some understanding, some day. I am sad she won’t be able to finish the journey she started.  I am sad for her family and her children, her many readers, and for me.  I wanted to keep reading as she kept trying to find her way.

The last book of hers I read was titled “Searching for Sunday.”  In this book she wrote, “I have seen the first few ribbons of dawn’s light seep through my bedroom window and there is a dim, hopeful glow kissing the horizon. Even when I don’t believe in church, I believe in resurrection.  I believe in the hope of Sunday Morning.”  She also wrote another thought that felt equally important to me.

“But no one really teaches you how to grieve the loss of your faith.  You’re on your own for that.”

I am on my own, and yet I am not.