Episode 0 - Start Here. Please.

Explore with Anni what it means to identify as barely, yet fully, Christian.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to Barely Christian, Fully Christian. This is Anni Ponder. This podcast explores loving Jesus, being repulsed by much of Christianity, and relating to the Holy Spirit as the divine feminine, or as I prefer to call her, Mama God.

Welcome, I'm so glad you're here. In this episode, I'll explain a little of what I mean by calling myself both Barely and Fully Christian, and give you a heads up for what you can expect. I'm really glad you've decided to join me for this podcast. Thanks for being here.

I often get the question from friends and family who know me and are interested in what I'm doing now, “Why are you calling yourself ‘Barely Christian, Fully Christian?’ What's that all about?”

Well, as I'm sure you can probably imagine, there's a story to go along with the name.

So, about a year ago, as I was reflecting on both my love for Jesus and my disgust with so much of the way that Christianity shows up in the world, a phrase dropped into my mind: Barely Christian.

I began to think about that phrase, and I looked it up on the internet to see if anybody was using it, and a couple people were here and there. But I really liked how it felt to think of saying, I am Christian, but only barely.

So, not long after that, I started tossing the idea around, what if I did something with the phrase Barely Christian? Then I went on a creative retreat, and it was an incredible experience. I'm sure I'll talk about it in depth at some point.

Many beautiful things happened there, and I met some, I hope, what will be lifelong friends on the retreat. While there, a challenge came to me and the challenge was: podcast. I had never thought about starting a podcast before, but then I was open to the idea and began to think, okay, maybe I could and what would I call it?

Well, I'd call it Barely Christian because that name was really resonating with me. So I told my new friends at the retreat, I'm going to start a podcast and I'm going to call it Barely Christian. And I used that phrase throughout the weekend: Barely Christian, Barely Christian.

On the last day of the retreat, this wonderful woman who is a bright light in the world, and I'm so glad she's here, said to me, “You know, I keep hearing you call yourself barely Christian.” She goes, “But something about that, I don't know. To me,” she said, she gave me this gorgeous gift with her words. She said, “To me, you seem like fully Christian. Just... the way you love people, the way you're so open -hearted,” and she said some beautiful things.

When she said the words “fully Christian,” something in my heart opened wide, and I felt like doing somersaults. And so then I was like, oh, what if I called my podcast, Barely Christian, Fully Christian?

And that felt right. So that's how the name came to be. And by that I mean, yeah, I am barely Christian and fully Christian. I really love Jesus, and I'll get into that a little bit later in this podcast, why I identify so strongly as Christian. But I have real reservations about Christianity and how it shows up in today's world, and America in particular. And I'm from America, and so that's what I'm gonna talk about. I don't know what else is happening in the Christian world elsewhere. So what I wanna talk about on this podcast is why I am both barely and fully Christian.

So who is this for anyway? Good question.

Anyone who is a lover of mystery who might identify as a seeker of whatever tradition . . . doesn't have to be Christians only.

If you're curious about or fond of the Man known as Jesus of Nazareth, if you don't mind a lot of questions, that's what I do. Maybe you might be amidst the process of deconstruction where you've been raised with a certain faith or you had one and it's not working the way that you think it should, and so you're taking it apart. Maybe you're dismantling it. This is a place where those kinds of questions are really welcome. I like to say if you want to throw out the bathwater, but you wanna hold onto the baby Jesus, this is a good place for you.

Also, P .S., if you love really silly puns, this might be a fun podcast for you to listen to because I crack myself up with things like throwing out the bathwater but keeping the baby Jesus, et cetera.

You might not enjoy this podcast at all if you are coming from a lot of certainty. If you enjoy proof-texting where you take a scripture and you say, this is the truth and I'm gonna prove it to you, this podcast is not for you.

If you have a lot of, like I said, certainty about your faith, this podcast might be really annoying because I'm really comfortable with big questions and taking things apart and looking at them and holding them lightly and gently and curiously.

Curiously? I also make up words on the fly and then wonder if that's correct. Used to be an English teacher, so I guess I'll take a little bit of license there with my language.

Speaking of language, I am on my own journey. I am growing and learning. And that means I'm evolving and changing. I really want to have the very best language that I can, the most inclusive that recognizes, hey, I'm not the only person in the world and when I speak, I want anyone who hears to feel like they are welcome.

So I'm on this path of trying to make my language as inclusive as possible, but I'm open to hearing of better ways to express myself. So this is just a gentle invitation. If I use language that maybe I don't see a blind spot or I say something that's triggering to you, I would be more than willing to hear about it if you could say it kindly.

Let me give you an example of this. I was talking to a good friend, one of the gorgeous women that I met on that retreat I spoke about. And I was sharing with her one of my core beliefs. I have two of them. I'll get into that in a minute. One of them is that God is good. And so she was like, “Well, what do you really believe?” And I said, “Well, my first belief is that God is good.” And she goes, “Oh, that phrase has so much baggage for me.”

And I was like, “Oh, what really? I had no idea. Oh, okay. Tell me about that.” And she did. I didn't know that the phrase ‘God is good’ might be a trigger point for her. And so I am learning as I go, as I speak and write and have conversations and read and listen and pray and all of this.

I'm learning to use better and better words all the time. If something that I say is offensive or triggering, I would really like to hear about it. I'll tell you at the end of this podcast, how you can get a hold of me.

But like I said, please be kind and gentle because I don't respond well to angry criticism.

So what do you need to know about me? One time I was starting therapy with a, turned out to be an absolutely brilliant counselor, and he started the first session by saying, “Well, what would you like to know about me?”

And I thought, oh, thank you, that's really kind. Most of the time you go to therapy and they're like, just tell me why you're here and what you need to work on. And he was wise enough to realize that I might have some questions about him before I could open up to him and learn from him.

So I would like to start there. What would you like to know about me?

Oftentimes when you meet somebody new, the first thing they ask is about, well, what do you do for a living?

Like I said, I am a retired teacher. I spent about 16 years in the classroom, loved teaching, taught everybody from four years old all the way through college, and taught several subjects, like I said, English, Spanish, I taught Bible for a while, I taught typing and photography, and there were other things as well. So I loved that career, but there was something I wanted to do even more. And that is write and speak about Jesus, about Mama God.

We will get into that. I haven't mentioned that much yet, but this will touch on the feminine aspect of God that I see in the Holy Spirit.

I really wanted to be using my voice in a broader context than just the classroom. So that's why I made the switch.

You might wonder, well, what credentials do you have to talk about God? I

don't, I'm not a trained theologian. I have not studied theology formally beyond what I needed. I did get a minor in religion back in college. That feels like a long, long time ago. And so now when I read about and talk about and write about God, I am in a large part relying on the work of other theologians.

I say ‘other’ because I like to think of myself as a baby theologian, but I rely on those who have the skill and the credentials to really do the work of understanding the context that the Bible is written in, the culture, the history, the language.

And the good news is that this is what I think I would be doing even if I had gone after that. The degree that I wanted to get was called a Master’s of Divinity. Can you imagine that? MDiv. Like you can master Divinity anyway, but that's what you get if you wanna be a pastor, which at some point I'll probably share that story.

But for now, all you need to know is that I am a retired teacher and a new writer and podcaster and blogger. I'm a mama, I'm a wife, I'm a friend, but more than that, I am just myself. And though I'm not an expert necessarily in anything at all, as one thinker said, I think it may have been Amy Bird, I'm just a thinking woman.

And so that's the credential that I bring to this table. Also, you should know my name really is Anni Ponder. I've had a few people wonder, is that your stage name? No, my name is Anni Ponder. And it's pretty fitting because I really do like to think very deeply and ask questions that go way beyond just the surface level of what's happening and get down to the root.

Well, now let's talk about barely. Why would I want to say I'm barely Christian?

I hope that doesn't rub you the wrong way. Let me explain. Have you ever met somebody or maybe a group of people who are very religious, the very religious sort, who seem to have all the answers? And in fact, maybe if you have a question, they've already got a little pamphlet on that topic, and it's got all of the answers sorted out for you.

I was raised among such dear people, and I don't mean to put them down. I really do appreciate their fervor, but the longer I looked at that, the more uncomfortable I felt with religious certitude. And so the first reason I identify as barely Christian is because I don't have all the answers.

I barely understand what is really happening. I have way more questions than answers, and I don't like to be in conversations where people are like, here's how it is, we can prove it to you, this is the truth.

Now, that's not to say I don't think that there is absolute truth, because I really do. I really do think some things are really true, and some things are really not. But I'm uncomfortable associating myself with the idea that I've got it all figured out, and I know all the answers.

Another reason that I say barely is because, at least within some of evangelical Christianity, and much of fundamental Christianity, which is where I was born and raised, it looks at the world through a very political worldview lens and wants to tell people, hey, you've got to look like us and vote like us in order to be one of us.

And the way I relate to Jesus, the way Jesus relates to me, that doesn't seem to fit. In fact, when I look at Jesus' life and his words, I don't see much in there about, hey, here's how to vote. You need to be of this political persuasion.

I think there's a lot of room for a lot of variance within the followers of Jesus. The body of Christ, I think, is a really diverse and beautiful, varied place. And so I kind of want to create a little bit of distance between myself and politicized Christianity.

There's a part of Christianity that just flat out ignores the suffering that's going on in the world today. There's this sort of, maybe you've heard it or come into contact with it, like everything is great and God wants you to be really wealthy and if you'll just follow this plan, this is how you're going to be prosperous.

And what it misses often is just the tremendous suffering being experienced by people, by children, by animals, our planet. And I can't sign my name to some of that. So that's another reason for Barely Christian.

There is of course something that I feel very passionately about. There's a church in my town, maybe there is one in yours too, where there's a super politicized doctrine that's preached from the pulpit.

It tends to be exclusive of people from the LGBTQ community in particular, not only that, but it seems to target that lifestyle and they're kind of fond of saying things like, love the sinner, hate the sin and emphasis on hate.

In fact, it got to such a place that recently I heard that from the pulpit, it was preached, “God not only hates sin, but he also hates sin. Sinners.” And when I first heard that, I was like, no way, there is absolutely no way a Christian preacher would say those words. It's heretical to say God hates people. God does not hate people, God is love. The whole, does God hate sin? Okay, that's another debate, but definitely God does not hate people and what are you doing going around saying that? I thought it was not true.

I thought for sure I had misheard it. So I actually happened to sit on an airplane next to somebody associated with the church and we had a great conversation and I was like, “Okay, Okay, hey, help me out here, straighten this out for me. I heard this was said from the pulpit, right? Like, tell me that's not true.” And it totally was. That had been said from the pulpit and it was being supported by the members of the church administration.

And I just, wait, what? Have we gotten to the place where we're telling the world that God hates sinners? Are you kidding me? I just can't, I just cannot. My daughters get this magazine that's published by, you probably would recognize the name, a pretty fundamental organization.

And their aunt sends them this magazine. It's for young Christian girls, right? I opened it up one day, there was an article talking about inclusivity. And I thought, ooh, I'm really curious, what will they say about inclusivity?

And it was basically the bottom line was, you know, this, inclusivity out there in the world. It's not for us, it's not for Christians, because you can't just walk into a hospital and say, “Hi, I wanna be a doctor and I wanna work on patients.” You have to go through steps, you have to become a doctor. You have to get credentials and degrees and you have to do clinicals and you have to go and get your internship and all of that. And so you can't just become a doctor.

And therefore, you can't just say you're a Christian. You have to do some things, you have to say some things. You have to be like us. And so therefore, inclusivity is not how we're gonna roll. And I just thought, oh, yeah, no, I can't sign my name to that kind of thinking.

Of course, those are not the only reasons that I wanna say barely Christian. There are a lot of things within Orthodox Christianity that I can't agree with. That's things like the doctrine of, maybe you've heard of this, it's called eternal conscious torment or ECT.

It basically means that anybody who doesn't make it to heaven ends up being tortured alive forever, for all eternity by God, because God is a God of love and mercy. What? I have a lot of questions.

I also can't agree to the doctrine that, God is all male. Nope. No, thank you. Actually, I think there's a lot more to the story that we've been missing. There are many doctrines within Christianity that have been preached as gospel truth that I've got questions about.

And so there's another reason for the barely. And of course, I actually wrote a blog about this. You could find it on my website. It's called “Barely.” There's a lot within the history and present day expression of Christianity that I wanna distance myself from things of course, like the Inquisition, the Crusades, slavery being supported by people who claimed to be Christians, the subjugation of women, you know the drill, the whole thing, the way that, “Christian” people will go into, well, I don't wanna get too much into pointing fingers here, but the hatred that comes out of Christianity sometimes, I can't stomach and I want to be as far away from as I can.

And so, for those reasons, I'm sticking with, yeah, barely Christian.

But then on the flip side, we've got the fully part and that's what I really love to talk about the most. Why would I say I'm fully Christian, especially if I don't espouse a lot of the, you know, supposed staples of Christianity?

Well, that's because I only think there are really two things that I can honestly say I wholeheartedly believe these things are truth, and I think these are the only things that really are required for somebody to say, “I'm a Christian,” and here they are.

Okay. Number one, I believe with all my heart, everything in me agrees to this. God is good, and I hope that's not triggering for you. If it is, I'm sure we'll unpack that together at some point. God is good.

I believe that ultimately, no matter what is going on right now in the world, in my own life, that God is looking out for the good of me, of my neighbor, of the world. And there's a lot I don't understand, right?

Because the question about, it's called theodicy. It means the problem of pain, like the question of, well, if God is good, then why does so much suffering exist? That has captured my attention, and I've really looked down that hole—it feels like a hole—for the better part of my adult life. I don't have a great answer for that, but where I have come to is, I so firmly believe that God is good, that I can truly say, when things don't make sense, when bad things happen, or good things don't happen, I have to believe, and I really do believe, that there is more to the story.

And that at some point in eternity, maybe, I don't know how all that afterlife works, at some point, I will say with my whole heart, “Oh, okay, God was always working for our good. We just didn't see it because there were other things in the way.” There's more to the story. I truly stand on that.

And then, belief number two, second belief that I believe entitles me to call myself Christian, is, I believe Jesus is God. I believe Jesus is God's son.

I really think Jesus came to the earth as recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Maybe we're missing some things and certainly there are some gospels that I like to read that were left out.

And I think there's room for, it's an incomplete picture, but I really do believe the story of Jesus of Nazareth being born to the Virgin Mary, living a life of obedience to God, communion with God, at some point recognizing his Divinity and what he was here to do and teach.

And I really think the whole point of him being here was to show us the way to live, the way to forgive, the way to die, and that death doesn't last. I really think that's what he came to do. Much more than I think Jesus came to die to save me from God's wrath at my sins. That's a doctrine that fits back in the, I'm gonna go with that with barely. That's called the theory of atonement. And I have a lot of questions about that, but I do really with all of my heart and soul believe that Jesus came here to show me how to live.

So something that's been helpful to me recently in recognizing, hey, I am maybe not like the other Christians on the playground. Somebody told me, “Hey, just keep in mind, Christianity is not monolithic.”

And then I had to look up that word to make sure that it meant what I thought it meant. Sometimes I do not think you mean what you think you mean. Sorry, there's also going to always be Princess Bride references.

Monolithic basically means that everything is all the same within a structure and Christianity is not that way. And so there are lots and lots of ways to express faith and belief in Jesus. I reserve my right to have a reasonable doubt.

I often think of myself as the kid in the front of class with my hand in the air, waving to try to get the teacher's attention because I have a question and it won't stop burning and the teacher's ignoring me.

And so maybe I use my other hand to hold up the hand in the air and it's waving around. And I just have to ask my questions, but I really, really believe in Jesus. One reason for that probably if you've read any of my writings, the biggest reason I started being a Christian, I started following Jesus when I was three years old and He came into my room and gave me a hug. It's a really beautiful story that I'd like to tell you sometime. I tell it cautiously because I recognize not everyone gets to have mystical experiences like that. And I hope that hearing about mine won't make you wonder if maybe God doesn't love you as much or whatever our brains do when we hear something that makes us doubt or have misgivings.

But I will share that at some point because it's where I got started. And for my whole life, I can tell you this, I've never been alone. Jesus has walked with me the whole time. And I've been through some really dark valleys. I'll be sharing about that in the next episode. But I've never been alone. And so no matter how many questions I have, no matter how much doubt I have about all the things, I just cannot get enough of Jesus.

And actually, I'm pretty sure he cannot get enough of me either. So for those reasons, I'm claiming fully Christian.

So a few more things you might want to know about me. First of all, yes. I did mention we are going to be talking about the sacred feminine aspect of the Divine. I call her Mama God. I wonder what you might call her, but the Holy Spirit, Shikina, the El Shaddai, oh all these names from the ancient scriptures that reveal the femininity of God. I can hardly wait to get into that. The Ruach, it's all there and I promise it's so exciting. So stick around for lots and lots of exploration of the femininity of God.

I want to tell you though that, also just as another disclaimer in case this is a problem for you, I'm also really comfortable with a very open-handed interpretation of scripture and with its fallibility. There's a lot out there within Christianity about the inerrancy or the infallibility of scriptures, rather, and I don't think that's the best way to look at this from what I have been able to study, even though I don't have the degrees.

I think there's a lot of mistranslation. I think there have been some omissions, maybe purposeful, maybe not, but I don't think we have the whole entire complete story in the library that is the books of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, or the Old and New Testament.

So you'll hear that I'm pretty comfortable with a little wiggle room for how scripture is interpreted. Not that I don't believe it reveals God, I really do, but I don't think that scripture is the Word of God. I believe firmly that Jesus is the Word of God. And so whenever there is a question, my practice is to go back to, well, what did the character of Jesus show us? What were His words? I think the Bible is useful and wonderful, but I don't think it's inerrant.

So just keep that in mind as we journey on together.

I also wanted to mention I am gonna do my very best never to plagiarize, however, a lot of what I'm sharing is just stuff that I'm reading and talking about with other people and listening to.

And I realized that very little of what I'm saying is original content. In fact, I think there's a book that I'm really enjoying right now by Brad Jerzak called Out of the Embers. It talks about the Great Deconstruction, how so many of us are looking at our faith and going, “This doesn't work anymore, this part isn't working.”

And so we view it as a tree. And instead of being a tree that just needs to be chopped down, maybe, this is actually my pastor's analogy, maybe the ax is not the only tool in the shed. Maybe we grab some pruning shears or a little saw and we take off this branch or this limb here and maybe this is where my knowledge of agriculture stops, so I'm going to stop with that metaphor, but we don't need to cut down the tree. Or to use my own metaphor, we don't need to throw the Baby Jesus out with the bathwater. We just need to drain that and rinse him off, and then we'll have a whole way, a whole much better way of approaching this.

I do know also that I am evolving and growing and changing. And so who knows? A lot of this is up for debate. A lot of this is in wet cement. The only two things that I really hold are God's goodness and Jesus' Divinity, but other than that, I'm growing and changing too, as are you.

And I like to think of myself as a tree, and right now I am a sturdy middle-aged tree, but one day I will be a glorious old tribal elder tree, and my branches will be thick, and my roots will be deep, and maybe children will be able to climb way up to the very top of my canopy.

Anyway, as you can see, I really like analogies and metaphors, but that's my, that's me as a tree, and I know that I am going to get rid of some things between now and then that don't serve anymore, but the essence of me will always be the same.

And that's true of you as well.

Hey, thanks so much for joining me for Episode 0. As always, I'd love to hear from you, especially if you want to share what your own journey has been like. You can get in touch with me in the following ways:

Go to anniponder.com or barelychristianfullychristian.com if you feel like typing more. You can connect with me on there, you can find buttons to follow me on Instagram or Facebook, or you can simply drop me an email at connect@anniponder.com. And remember, there's no E in my name, Anni.

Also on my website, you can catch up on my blogs and sign up for my newsletter if you'd like to hear what's going on in my world.

The artwork for Barely Christian, Fully Christian was lovingly created by Lauren Leith of Little Moon Market. You can find her on Instagram if you'd like a beautiful moon of your own. This gorgeous song by Wyn Doran and Paul Craig is called “Banks of Massachusetts.” Enjoy.