5 years ago...

She looked at me in shock.  The professor of a class on cultural competence had asked all the students in her classroom if any of them had felt discriminated against because of who they chose to love.  There was one story about a bi-racial couple.  Then there was silence.  I was expecting a same-sex couple story, or one about someone dating a much older or much younger person.  I heard the "crickets" in the room, so to speak, as no one responded, so I raised my hand.

It was confusing, I'm sure.  What's a 21-year-old white, heterosexual female from a middle class background doing talking about discrimination?  When I was chosen to speak and told my story, people were honestly surprised.  5 years, I began to date the boy who is now my husband.  We were young and we were not into anything we shouldn't have been.  But that did not stop my small, private Christian high school from deeming this relationship ungodly.  As members of the prestigious leadership team, Chris and I were not supposed to be dating, especially since we were both on the team.  This is why our parents told us not to even say we were "dating".  We were only allowed to go out in groups with people.  We told almost no one at the school and we did not act any differently than we had before as just "friends".  We, did, however, change our Facebook relationship statuses, and that changed everything.

You might be asking how I faced discrimination. Sounds like I brought the trouble upon myself, huh?  This is only the beginning...

The day that the headmistress of the school and her daughter (one of the leaders of the missions trip I was to attend that following summer), brought me into a room to talk.  I knew this could either be good or bad.  Sometimes these meetings signaled a request for a special responsibility.  Maybe I would finally be able to lead my own group of middle-schoolers on the Spring trip rather than just "help".  I remember she told me to bring my lunch that I just heated with me.  But once she started talking, I felt like doing anything but eating.  The question was: am I going out with someone on campus.  I said: "Yes, I am."  "Is it with Chris?"  "Yes, Ma'am."  After this, I got the classic: "How could you do such a thing?  You know that this is not appropriate for your position and it makes the school look bad?  We must be beyond reproach in our example."

I was honestly not concerned about this.  I was concerned about how she found out.  We thought we had covered all our bases.  Darn Facebook.  We had been found out by a fellow classmate and it was told to the people in charge.  Don't always trust Facebook people...

Then, as I was being questioned and brought to the point of tears, I saw my mother walking up to the building through the window.  She was coming to play piano for the school choir.  I gave her one look through the window and her Mama Bear instincts turned on.  She came in and the meeting pretty much ended there.  Later on, Chris's parents met with the school.  My mother revealed to me that she was instructed by the school on how to handle Chris and I's relationship.  She ignored it.  She told me that, although some Christians believe they can tell others what to do with their lives, it is still wrong.  Christ never called school teachers or spiritual leaders to force their instructions for living on other Christians. 

Now, we were instructed by our parents to follow every rule as closely as possible on the spring trip.  Of course, I felt targeted the entire trip.  After months of warnings that I may steer Chris's heart away from the Lord, and being questioned about my relationship by other class mates (whom I gave little information to), I was pretty sure that if I made one wrong move, I would be the girl who brought the entire school down.  Chris bore a small part of the blame in the situation.  Apparently he was being prepared to be a leader.  I think I was just there to be an extra pair of eyes to make sure kids weren't illegally walking on sand dunes or picking sea oats, so I was expendable, so to speak.  On the trip, I found that many other of the leaders had relationships, as well.  And many of their parents came on the trip in case they needed to defend their children.  My parents were there because my sister was in middle school.  But my mom still came to my rescue a couple times. 

One night, I remember Chris and a group of our friends were rushing back from dinner to put on the skit for the middle schoolers.  Chris tripped over a root and hurt his ankle.  Me and one other friend (a male) turned and helped Chris waddle back inside.  We set him up with ice and elevated his foot.  During the leader meeting that evening, I took turns getting ice for Chris's foot.  I was promptly grabbed by the arm and told to sit on the other side of the room.  I needed to be beyond reproach, remember.  Later that night, I found that one of my good friends had supposedly become upset over Chris and I’s relationship.  She and another friend talked to me on the porch of our hotel room.  I remember screaming for my mother until she finally showed up, and the girls could not get another word in.  My mom told all of us to go to bed, and she assured my friends that she and she alone would worry about parenting me.  Granted, I believe wholeheartedly that my friends thought they were helping.  They knew that any more wrong moves and I would be in serious trouble.  At this time, a seed of bitterness began to grow inside my heart.  How could friends and mentors I trusted all suddenly turn on me because I had done one thing they did not like?  There was no PDA.  In fact, some people began to ask why Chris was ignoring me so much.  Chris and I perfected snubbing one another.  We communicated through letters secretly delivered by only people we could trust (which were all Chris's friends, by the way).  It was all I could do to wish for a quick senior year so I could move on with my life.

As time went on, I began to lose faith in myself.  I became bitter.  I became convinced that God could not use me, especially not at school.  I literally trusted no one anymore at that school.  Although I now know that many of the people who seemed to hate me were simply trying to follow the rules and keep me from getting into more trouble, I felt betrayed.  Christians are supposed to uphold one another in love, not try to run each other's lives!  Following that junior year of high school was period of rebellion in my heart.  You brought up anything that happened in that high school and words of bitterness would flow from my mouth.  I became someone I did not need to be.

That's the problem with Christianity sometimes.  You try so hard to become above reproach, you become reproachful.  You point out everything that's wrong in everyone else and it's supposed to make you feel better. You're helping them stay on the straight and narrow.  Or you do the exact opposite.

I do not think now that anyone at my school hated me.  I think they just misunderstood me.  I do not think they meant to hurt me, they just did not take the time to ask how I felt. 

I remember how my professor looked at me when I finished the story.  She said: "This is a Christian school?"

Yes.  Yes it is.

In the book Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, he speaks of the Great Sin.  He states: "There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people...imagine they are guilty of themselves."  This sin is pride.  As Christians, we are taught that pride comes before a fall.  We are taught that Satan's pride is what had him thrown from heaven.  We are taught the Pharisee's pride in their piousness is what caused Jesus to describe them as whitewashed tombs, teeming with stench and death on the inside.  How could any of this be present in our lives as Christians and go unnoticed?  Simple.  We begin to view Christianity as something we do, instead of something God does through us. 

This sounds harsh, but I know it from it happening in myself.  I prided myself in being the exact opposite of the people in my school my senior year.  I avoided anyone I had been on the leader team with.  I assumed they wanted nothing to do with me.  I turned up my nose at their so-called "stereotypical Christianese" mindsets.  Somehow I had transcended all this.  But I was not conceited.  Alas, C.S. Lewis writes that "If you think you are not conceited, you are very conceited indeed."

I was conceited, I was bitter. I was tired of trying to be above reproach.  What does that even mean anyway? In 1st Timothy 3, Paul speaks to Timothy about the overseers and the deacons over the church.  He states: "Now the overseer must be above reproach".  This means to be above blame or criticism.  My school was basing this principle off the Bible. If you are going to lead others, lead with a good and pure example. I think that is great.  What I do not think is great is that it becomes so easy to and deflect the areas of our lives that are not above reproach by being reproachful to others.  This means we point out their faults and emphasize the blame we think they have. In other words, we become like the Pharisees.  This is why C.S. Lewis described pride as the Great Sin.  What better to way to ignore the hurt in our pride from messing up, by pointing out the wrongdoing in others?

So, in the end, we were all wrong.  The school, my friends, and most importantly: me.  But here is how the discrimination comes in.  The best definition I found was this from the online dictionary: "treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs, rather than on personal merit."

In other words, this is like judging others and then acting on it, instead of keeping it to ourselves.  Now Jesus warned us not to judge others, lest we ourselves be judged.  I have gotten into many a debate over this.  But Julia, it is good that we judge other Christian's behaviors so that we can help them steer clear of bad stuff.  Yes, that is all good and well, but not every Christian you meet wants you as their personal accountability partner.  And another thing, are you trying to pull a speck out of your friend's eye while you still have a plank in yours?  They are not going to it seriously.  We must examine our hearts carefully when making judgments.  We must not judge people on generalizations other than individual merit.  At my school, I always felt there were unspoken categories of people.  There were the favorites, or class pets.  There were the good girls, the good boys, and then there were the bad one.  Many times the people in the bad categories were simply misunderstood, because people judged them because of the group they fit with rather than getting to know them personally.

Welcome to the American Church.  Again, a harsh statement, but I have been to many churches that reminded me of my high school, to an extent.  Being judgmental was no big deal.  Bible studies turned into gossip sessions.  People ostracized because of how they dress, what their hair looks like, who their boyfriend or girlfriend is.  And yes, I have seen much pride.  That's why when I came to the current church I am at, I was in shock.  After what I had been through at school, large groups of Christians hanging out in one place seemed a little scary to me.  I hoped no one would judge me on how I dressed, or on the fact that I had a boyfriend (gasp).  But I received the exact opposite.  Chris and I found great friends there.  Friends that did not care about making sure we gave off the right image in our relationship, friends who did not pass judgment and friends who did not offer "advice" without asking first.  We eventually began to serve in the church.  I used to think I would never serve in a religious setting again.  I figured people would find some reason I was not fit to represent the church.  That has never happened.  If anything, I still lack confidence when I serve because the flashbacks of things I went through in the past are still there.  But I am working through it.  My church now taught me that it is wrong to hold on to bitterness because we felt betrayed by religion.  My church gave me a place where I could share privately with someone I trusted and know the information would not be the center of a "prayer" meeting.  Last year, Chris and I got married at the church in the presence of our family and friends.  We have had no end to the blessings and love poured on us by others who have been through life and who want only to help us succeed.  Thanks to January 3rd, 2008, and to Chris, I have learned that Christianity can be a place of reproach, judgment, and discrimination, but it doesn't have to be. 

Hurt people hurt people, they teach you in social work school.   Honestly, I think that this is why many churches and Christian organizations find themselves caught in the situation I was in.  When our pride is hurt, we think hurting another person might make us feel better.  People who have faced discrimination in the past because of their race, orientation, gender, etc. often become bitter and take it out on the others.  It doesn't make what happened to them wrong, it just makes it harder for them to move on.  Trust me, I know.  We, as Christians, often judge others under the guise that we are trying to help the person stay in the right with God.  News flash: that's not our place.  We can offer advices and tidbits of wisdom when appropriate, but my mother was right.  It is not up to us as Christ followers to tell our brothers and sisters how to live.  We need to remember that we only see the outward appearance but God looks at the heart. 

Finally, I want to remind all of you that the people who ran the school I went to, I believe, honestly love the Lord and want to honor him.  I am not, for one minute, comparing them to the Pharisees or anything like that.  I am simply trying to show an example of how things can get out of hands when us as Christians try to keep up appearances instead of simply living the way God instructs.  Yes, high school should not be riddled with relationship drama.  Christian schools should not encourage PDA or premarital sex or anything like that.  But I honestly believe, in my situation, things got a little out of hand. 

Oh well, it's in the past now.  I just really wanted to share my story and I wanted others to know how important this day is to me because it changed my life.  I want to apologize for all the judgment I've passed on my school and my classmates. I know you all were only trying to help.  I know we all just did not quite understand each other.  Thank you.  I would not be where I am today without the people at my high school and the experience I had there.  I would not be where I am today without Chris, without our parents' guidance, without Momentum Church, and most importantly...I would not be where I am today without God.  I would probably a bitter college student finding any logical reason why I should not be a Christ follower because I was burned so badly. 

Don't give up hope if you have ever felt like you aren't good enough for God.  God knows you aren't, and that's why His son Jesus to die for all your sins, past present and future.  All He asks is that you accept this gift and strive to live the rest of your life according to His word.  Yes, you will meet people who have many different interpretations of what it means to be a Christian, but hold on to your faith and listen to God and search His word.  He will guide you.  And the blessings will surpass your wildest dreams.

Love and peace,

Julia