I graduated from seminary in 2012.

A variety of leaders and peers had discouraged me from going. They called it “cemetery”, a place faith goes to die. They said it was a waste of time and money.

I actually found it refreshing.

One of the things you do in seminary is fortify your faith by challenging its suppositions. You have assignments that force you to defend your position. You are surrounded by people who follow the same God, and read the same Bible as you, but draw completely different conclusions. You come to see that many things that you have accepted as “simply Scriptural” are in fact “simply doctrinal”, and not every Christ-follower shares your doctrines.

In seminary, you study a range of theologies. You also learn about hermeneutics, which is the study of the interpretation of texts. A literal hermeneutic will deliver a much different reading than an allegorical hermeneutic. A Historical-critical hermeneutic will differ from a philosophical hermeneutic. With a hermeneutic of law, you will read God as meting out consequences. With a hermeneutic of grace, you will see God as merciful and loving.

I was closer to a hermeneutic of guilt: whatever happened, I was pretty sure it was my fault.

The Master of Divinity program I took included a three-semester track of Spiritual Formation. And one of the things we did in this class was dozens of personality assessments.

After doing one of them, the proctor explained that it had a built-in lie-detector.

It revealed a tendency to give “the right answer” rather than “the true answer” to authority figures.

It could also reveal a tendency to make yourself look worse or less capable than you were.

I registered positive on both, which initially made no sense to me.

If I am telling leaders what I think they want to hear, why on earth would I be telling them I’m worse than I am?

I gave leaders the right answer, and my right answer was “who me?”

But it was a learned behavior, a perverse but polished survival tactic that said the safest thing you could be is non-threatening.

I remember going from sixth grade, where I was encouraged to know the answer, to seventh grade, where everybody pretended they didn’t know anything, and feeling like I was in Bizarro World, but you learn the rules of Bizarro World pretty quickly.

But you need to be able to unlearn them just as well.

Some of us spend a lifetime shrinking.

We learn that we are too excitable, or too emotional.

We learn that we are too curious, or too loud.

We ask too many questions. We shine too bright.

And in a world where we seek the approval or acceptance of others, some of us conclude that shrinking it the cost of belonging.

We learn from parents, and culture, and our peers that we have to conform.

We learn from frightened and frustrated people that we’d better get In line. We learn it’s not safe to stand out.

We see any number of cultural illustrations of this principle.

1. The “crabs in a barrel” will prevent any one person from rising above and getting out of their circumstances. You don’t have to put a lid on crabs in a barrel. They will pull each other down.
2. Identity police of various stripes will check us for doing things that don’t fit our ethnic, or gendered, or cultural code. No true (insert group here) would vote that way. Nobody from this neighborhood should wear those clothes. A real man doesn’t cry (if you read the Bible, they weep, but I digress).

I am always shocked to see the latest random battleground in our endless culture wars. Electric Vehicles? Mr. Potato Head? M&Ms? The comedian Gary Gulman tells a joke about growing up in Boston in the ‘80s, and being bullied for drinking Sprite, which was declared to be a woman’s beverage. I had to Google it, because I had never heard this, and it seemed like an insanely arbitrary gripe. That, however, is what we do. We could be engaging in any number of legitimate, nuanced conversations about the values we hold, and the ways we can achieve them in the world. Instead, we flock to hot topics packaged to agitate and priced to sell.

In seminary, you unpack your presuppositions and articulate your core values. While it may bring discomfort, it ultimately makes you a better servant, whatever and whoever you choose to serve.

We have the opportunity to do the same in life, to examine our motivations and rationales, consider whether they are serving us, and discern and decide our core values and core purposes.

In the process, we may uncover some unproductive beliefs. We may learn we fit better, or worse, with a given group than we thought. We may find our own hills to die on, the places we will not compromise.

I pray you discover your priorities.

I pray you articulate your philosophy

I pray you shrink for nobody.

I pray you tell the truth.

Somebody needs to hear it.

(Photo Credit:Ann H)