Episode 5: A Story of Suffering with Tanya Marlow
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Show Notes
Co-hosts
Jeff Chu
Find Jeff online: @byJeffChu on Instagram or @JeffChu on Twitter. You can also subscribe to Jeff’s newsletter, Notes of a Make-Believer Farmer on Substack.
Sarah Bessey
Find Sarah online: @SarahBessey on Instagram or @SarahBessey on Twitter. You can also subscribe to Sarah’s newsletter, Field Notes on Substack. Explore Sarah’s recent books on her website.
Featured guest
Tanya Marlow
Tanya Marlow is an author, speaker and broadcaster on faith and spirituality.
She is also a campaigner for those with chronic illness, disability and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Formerly a lecturer in biblical theology, with a decade of experience in Christian ministry, she has been published by The Spectator, Relevant, Premier Christianity magazine, and others. She admits to a weakness for karaoke, sunny days, and laughing at her own jokes. She is the author of Those Who Wait: Finding God in Disappointment, Doubt and Delay (Malcolm Down Publishing, 2017), a creative and transformative journey through the lives of four Bible characters who waited impatiently and found God in their frustrated longings. She also contributed to Soul Bare: Stories of Redemption, ed. Cara Sexton (IVP USA, 2016), alongside Seth Haines, Sarah Bessey, Emily P. Freeman and others. Tanya’s first book, Coming Back to God When You Feel Empty (2015), intertwines her own story with the biblical book of Ruth, offering a path back to God after disappointment and loss. You can find her in a vicarage in Devon, England with her husband and bouncy son, or writing honestly about finding God in hard places and the messy edges of life at www.tanyamarlow.com.
“All our tears and wordless cries are sacred prayers. And this is where God is—not in the false positivity, not in the fairytale ending, not in the squashing down of the emotion, but in our silences and lament, echoing our desperation for the world to be made right.”
Thanks to our producer, SueAnn Shiah, who also provided the music for this episode, you can listen to her album A Liturgy for the Perseverance of the Saints on Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, or Bandcamp and find her at @sueannshiah on Instagram and @sueannshiah on Twitter.
Transcript
Intro
TANYA MARLOW: All our tears and wordless cries are sacred prayers. And this is where God is—not in the false positivity, not in the fairy-tale ending, not in the squashing down of the emotion, but in our silences and lament, echoing our desperation for the world to be made right.
How, then, how then do we live in dignity and cope with uncertainty and suffering?
Well, we cope how we can—with laments, with anger, with tears, with chocolate and trashy TV and friends that help and sunsets and hugs, eating, drinking, breathing, one day at a time. These are all holy activities. We create and recreate our stories anew.
And when church leaders present a single narrative about the Christian experience, they fail us.
<<MUSIC>>
SARAH: Hi friends. I'm Sarah Bessey.
JEFF: And I’m Jeff Chu. Welcome back to the Evolving Faith Podcast.
JEFF: Sarah, how’s your week going? I know the answer is going to be, “It’s fine. Everything’s fine.” But I'm genuinely curious what you’ve been up to.
SARAH: Always fine, everything’s fine. I'm, like, the embodiment of that meme with the dog in the burning room, saying, "It's fine.” So, now, it’s your turn, how are you doing? What’s new in Grand Rapids?
JEFF: You will be excited to know that I’ve started to watch the show Derry Girls, which I know is near and dear to your heart. Just as Season 3 has just come out in the UK, I start season 1. I am always perfectly not on time.
SARAH: Sure, that’s class! I’m so genuinely excited to share this moment with you and with all of our listeners. That show is so dear to my heart.
JEFF: And I am so genuinely excited to be a wee gay fella.
SARAH: New Twitter bio! I love it. Even if Orla doesn’t believe in wee lesbians.
JEFF: So for anyone who hasn’t seen the show, which is probably me and Fozzie and three other people, Derry Girls is a comedy about a group of teenagers in Northern Ireland during the 90s. I think it originally aired in the UK in 2018, but I never watch a show or listen to an album when it first comes out. I don’t know why. I just don’t. And I actually don’t mind playing catch-up. I think I need my own time and space to process things my own way—like, I want to commission an icon of Sister Michael and I also want to exegete Derry Girls scripts.
SARAH: Listen, I would pay cash money for that exegesis. We both know that I’m not exactly right on the cutting edge of culture or media, but this is one that actually caught my eye when it first came out, probably thanks to some friends in Northern Ireland—who swear it is not a comedy but a documentary—and I have been absolutely devoted. And so, you’re also one of the few, I think, in the world, who know how well or how poorly I do a Northern Irish accent, particularly Michelle’s version, which I would never inflict on our dear listeners, of course.
JEFF: I invite everyone listening to this podcast to send up a prayer for Sarah to summon the courage to share her Northern Irish accent with us. One of the things I love about the show, though, is that faith is knit into the fabric of its characters’ lives—and none of them takes anything too seriously, even as the stories are set against the backdrop of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1990s. I find such hope anytime I experience a story about people who manage to find laughter and cultivate delight even amidst sadness and turmoil.
SARAH: Mm-hmm. It is one of the more real-life aspects of the show, for sure, the way that tragedy is happening and yet teenagers are teenagers and life is still life, even then. And, you know, that and the soundtrack makes all of us who were teenagers in the ’90s feel both very, very old and very, very happy.
JEFF: Oh my gosh. When I heard Whigfield’s “Saturday Night” and then the Cranberries, I felt very at home. And yes, kind of old.
SARAH: Okay, so if Schitt’s Creek was the unofficial GIF provider for our 2020 conference—if you know, you know—then I guess that means we're going to make Derry Girls our official one for 2022. So that begs the question: Back then we said, you know, maybe not entirely joking, that if we had to pick a character from Schitt's Creek, then I was probably Jocelyn and you were probably Patrick, even though maybe we were aspiring for Moira. The question then is which Derry Girls character are you most aligned with. I did one of those Derry Girls quizzes and it turns out I’m Erin Quinn, so there’s that.
JEFF: Well, at least you’re not Jenny. But I actually think your secret is that you were once Michelle.
SARAH: Slainté, BLEEP.
JEFF: So who do you think I am? Who do you think I am? You’re the one who has seen every episode multiple times.
SARAH: I don't know. I see shades of you in a few of them, but I’d say a good cross between James—that wee English fella, especially when he’s shouting about greasy food or trying to be a lad—and of course, you know, Sister Michael, who may actually be your patron saint by now.
JEFF: Ugh, that episode when James tries to be a lad hit way too close because I tried to be a lad once, honestly, and it was really ugly. Do you know what it’s like when a Baptist kid who has never allowed himself to say a swear word is trying one out for the first time? It is awkward and it is ugly.
SARAH: Oh, give it time, give it time. Or at least the rest of the next few seasons for you, you might work your way up there. Okay, but we could literally talk about this all day, and I think that our text messages affirm that truth by the time we’re done recording here so we do need to get to our episode today!
JEFF: Featuring the brilliant and lovely Tanya Marlow. Tanya’s appearance at Evolving Faith was a little bit of an experiment for us, and it was able to happen thanks to technology. Tanya lives in England. And due to chronic illness, she could not travel to be with us in Denver. But we didn’t think that was a good reason for her not to join us. So she agreed to pre-record her talk, which we broadcast on the big screen in the hockey arena where we held Evolving Faith 2019, in those times when it was safe to gather in person. And then she joined us live for the conversation afterward. It all felt so new and different in those Before Times, when Zoom was not a part of our daily lives. But I’m so glad we were willing to try, because Tanya is such a wonderful and warm presence, such a thoughtful and gifted teacher, and such a gem of a human being.
SARAH: It really is. She really is. I will never tire, though, of us referencing that this conference was in a hockey arena. It just made me so happy then, and even though it was incredibly cold in there, I still get a lot of joy from it. But for those of you who may not know Tanya or her work, let me introduce you. She is a British writer and theologian, campaigner and broadcaster. Tanya focuses her work on the spirituality of suffering as well as sacred storytelling, which you’ll hear her discuss and even model in this talk. She is currently pursuing a PhD; her research delves into chronic embodied suffering as depicted in the Book of Job. Before 2010, Tanya was a Christian minister, lecturer, and spiritual mentor when her life changed overnight after giving birth, and she became almost entirely bed-bound with M.E. which is short for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Her “journey of non-healing,” she says, has given her a passion for those on the margins of faith, an allergy to trite answers, and just a commitment to honest theology about where God is when life falls apart. She is also an activist alongside those with chronic illness, disability, and ME.
Tanya is the author of two books, most recently "Those Who Wait: Finding God in Disappointment, Doubt, and Delay." She lives in England with her husband, who is a Church of England vicar, and their golden-haired son. She has a weakness for karaoke, sunny days, and laughing at her own jokes, which makes her one of my favorite people. I love people who laugh at their own jokes.
On a personal note, I was myself in an accident about five years or so ago and my life was pretty changed by the development of chronic pain and illness, and honestly it was Tanya’s work and life and theology, among a few others, that was a huge help to me. She gave me language for this shift and lament that I needed to experience—yet another season of wilderness in my own life. We return again and again until the wilderness becomes a friend, maybe. But I’m personally very grateful for her work and witness. It has really mattered to me.
So here’s our dear and brilliant friend Tanya Marlow, who joined us from her home in England via video link at Evolving Faith 2019, in Denver, Colorado.
Part 2: Tanya’s Talk
<<<<TRANSITIONAL MUSIC>>>
We are storied people and look to narratives to find our place in the world.
America has a narrative that if you work hard enough and think positively enough, you'll be healthy and wealthy and maybe change the world. Britain has a narrative that there's no point in trying to change the world, because there's nothing you can do. But a cup of tea will probably make everything better. And both of those narratives are being tested out right now.
But they're extremely powerful, and we measure our lives by them. And the most dangerous stories are those that are true for a few, but not for all, but told as if they're the only story. So what happens when your individual story clashes with the big story? And today, I want to share with you three stories that don't fit the expectations of Christian suffering—my story, our story, and God's story. So let's kick off with my story.
Age six days old, as a tiny baby, I was rushed into hospital with a brain hemorrhage. The doctors didn't know what to do. And all they could suggest to my agnostic parents was to pray. So Nurse prayed with them. And the next day, they did the scans, I was completely better. And the doctor said, “This is what we call in the trade a miracle.”
So I always grew up knowing that God loved me and had miraculously healed me. And I wanted to live my life for Him, and felt a call to Christian ministry. Fast-forward now to my teenage years. When I was 17, working hard to try and get into Cambridge University, and I was exhausted and went to the doctor who took one look at me and said, Well, clearly, you're studying too hard, get out there and do some exercise. A week later, more exhausted, I went to see a second doctor. She said, The tests have come in. You've got glandular fever, mono. Whatever you do, don't exercise.
Fast-forward again to my mid 20s. And I've got my happy ending. I'm married to a Church of England minister. And I am also a pastor and lecturer in biblical theology. And this is the Christian equivalent of the American dream: house, spouse, holy vocation.
But an illness had crept up on me, and it wasn't going away. I felt exhausted, I had pain, I had cognitive problems, I had neurological symptoms. So I went to the doctor, and they said, It sounds like chronic fatigue syndrome. There's nothing physically wrong with you. But if you do graded exercise therapy, build up your exercise gradually, little bit per day until you're up to an hour per day, then you'll get better. So I did. And I increased my exercise gradually till I was fit and running three times a week, about three miles at a time. Until one day after two years of doing this, when my body snapped, and my legs would collapse after a few meters, and I became a wheelchair user.
As it turns out, I have ME, which stands for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. And it's a multi-system physical illness similar to MS or Parkinson's. And it's like having a body that's a phone with a faulty battery. It runs down really quickly of energy, and it's never fully recharged. And actually, at its worst, ME is an awful illness, and you can die from it.
In the 1990s, there were a bunch of scientists who decided that they didn't think ME existed. They thought it was instead burnout or stress-related exhaustion, and it could be cured by positive thinking and exercise. So they shoved it in with these other illnesses and called the whole thing chronic fatigue syndrome, which is a little bit like calling Alzheimer’s chronic forgetfulness syndrome. But ME is real, and overexertion and exercise makes it worse.
And I have an ME story that doesn't fit in with the majority medical narrative. And I could have done with one of those few doctors who would be saying, Whatever you do, don't exercise. And I'm one of just thousands who has been harmed by this approach to ME, and I'd love it if some of you could join with me in campaigning for medical equality for those with ME, and you can do that through the ME Action Network.
Fast-forward again to 2010. And the exertion of going through labor gave me a brand-new baby and a brand-new disability. After the birth, I was struggling to breathe, I could barely walk, I could barely talk. I was as helpless as the baby I was supposed to be looking after. And I just didn't get better. Those early years were absolutely terrifying.
That was nine years ago. And since then I've improved a little, but my life is still very limited. So I have to be reclining 21 hours a day. I can go out of the house just twice a month in a wheelchair. And I've learned to measure out my life in teaspoons. And my writing and speaking ministry is now from my bed.
And there's a narrative in some Christian circles that if you pray in faith, you will be healed. I wasn't healed. I've seen miracles, but I wasn't healed. There's a narrative that God never lets you go through more than you can handle; I couldn't handle it. There's a narrative that God gives suffering to special people who become more holy from it; I was not more holy from it. I was grumpy. I was sad. I was lonely. I was desperate. And in fact, I used this as a bargaining chip with God. I said, “Clearly, your Job experiment has failed on me. I'm not more holy. Let's quit while we're behind, and I'll go back to being a mediocre Christian who's well.” But that didn't seem to work either.
And there is a narrative that God is extra-close to those who are suffering. But I was at my lowest point, and God was desperately, devastatingly absent. And at my lowest point, I said to God, This is my baby. And I love him. And I would do anything to protect him from the kind of suffering I am going through. And you can—and you're not. How can I trust in You, as my heavenly parent?
The church tells a story of suffering that's true for a few, but not for all. And my story didn't fit. So what happens when you have a story that clashes with the big story? You break. It’s surprisingly devastating. We use these narratives to make sense of life—and so my life no longer made sense. I felt like I had been kicked out of the club, like I was a super-bad Christian, and that my life was meaningless and fragmented.
But though these stories almost drove me away from faith, it was stories that brought me back to faith. And whenever our story doesn't fit, we need to retell the story of God as if we're in it, because we are.
And so this is my first point: Our meta-narratives are powerful. And when the Church tells a single story of the Christian experience, it's hugely damaging.
So let's go to the second section: our story. Have you heard of Lectio Divina? Holy reading. It's a way of exploring the Bible so that you immerse yourself in the words. And what I and others do is one step further, and I like to call it Narratio Divina: holy storytelling, where you immerse yourself in the characters and time and place. And I'd invite you to do the same to retell and recreate those Bible stories, recognizing that the people have real emotions, and they're not cardboard cutout saints, but they are us, in another time and place. And I wrote an extended Narratio Divina on four Bible characters who struggled with waiting and published it as a book called Those Who Wait: Finding God in Disappointment, Doubt, and Delay. And I've been really surprised at the success of the book, but I think it's because people are really hungry for honest theology.
And one of the stories in Those Who Wait that I recreate as a Narratio Divina is John the Baptist’s. And what I've done today is make a very truncated version that I've written, especially for us. So listen and see if it sounds familiar.
You had such hope and promise, everyone always says. The miracle baby. Your parents and tightly knit religious community had high expectations for you. Maybe you'd be the religious leader they'd always been waiting for. Maybe you'd be an academic thinker who could change the world.
But you felt smothered by their expectations. And at the crucial moment, when you were supposed to follow in your father's footsteps, you ran away to the wilderness and disappointed everyone.
The older generation disapproved, but somehow, you became famous. First a trickle, then a flood of followers, came out to see you in the wilderness, looking for leadership and authentic religion. Thousands of rebels and misfits just like you.
So you point to the coming Messiah, and say that one day He will come, and everything will be right and made just again. And then it happens: the Messiah shows up, and you're relieved, because now you no longer have to wake up every day with that burden of the hurt of the people you represent. Now you can hand over to him. You will never forget that day, when everything was so certain.
Then it all goes wrong. You end up in a sort of prison and feel the limitations of your body like never before. Then you wait as other prisoners screen their arrivals and departures, wondering whether it would be freedom or death you face. The weeks turn into months of darkness, and you begin to worry. You miss the freedom of the desert. Your loyal followers keep you sustained with food. But it's weird to be the one receiving instead of giving. And you can't help but wonder how long it will be before they abandon you.
Everyone else's life goes on, but you are stuck in limbo. Eventually, the doubt hits. What if he isn't the Messiah? What if there isn't a messiah at all? What if your whole life has been a colossal lie? So you crack and you ask your followers to ask Jesus: Are you the Messiah? Or should we expect someone else? In other words, help. In other words, stop me living this half life.
And in the end, when the answer comes back, it's not a yes or a no. When your friends come they excitedly point to the signs of God's Kingdom already happening away from your eyes. And Jesus’s reply to you references Isaiah 35, where it talks about streams in the wilderness, the image of your life and words of comfort for those who doubt. Strengthen the weary knees and the faint heart. He will come to you. He will come.
And you can't keep tears away. Because the message Jesus said was not to pacify the crowd, but was also a love letter to you. He had not forgotten you. He saw you. He knew you. And then shame comes, stealing the relief, because you've been the disappointment. And now you're the doubter. And that's how you'll be remembered by Jesus and by history.
But your friends haven't finished, and they tell you about Jesus’s pronouncement on you.
Jesus said, You are the greatest of all the prophets. And you never knew how much you needed that affirmation until you feel the emotion rise in your chest and spill out into tears.
God values your life. You matter to the Almighty. And whatever direction your life takes, whatever direction our attitude to our circumstances, whether we doubt, whether we despair, whether we're angry or joyful or happy or sad, we are deeply, relentlessly loved by God.
This is John the Baptist’s story. This is our story.
Suffering is hard, and I don't know how my story will end. I could improve, I could deteriorate, and I don't know. But I look at how Jesus loved John, and it helps me remember that Jesus loves me. In Those Who Wait, I retold the story of the Bible as if I were in it, and realized that my experience had a place in the story of God after all.
And I want to be clear: This doesn't guarantee a happy ending, because we know John's story. And we know that he died a pointless death at the hands of an angry tyrant, at the peak of his spiritual calling, and his friends and his followers were left devastated, just as we are. We struggle with suffering that's pointless and unredemptive. Of course we struggle. Of course we doubt. Christians aren’t meant to be stoics in the face of suffering, somehow hovering over suffering, immune to it. We are made of mud. We are emotional, bodily beings. And when bad things happen, we hurt. There are no neat solutions here. And when church leaders present life as a fairy tale, they fail us.
And this is my second observation: The Bible is more honest than we are about the reality of suffering. So we retell the story of God as if we're in it, because we are.
We've had my story, and we've had our story. And now we come to the third story: the God who suffers with us. Where is God in the pain? Sometimes we think of God as someone who presides over suffering, as, like, a necessary moral lesson just waiting with disappointment until we can recover with joy and peace and learn our lesson. But again, the Bible is more honest than we are. So we retell the story of God as if we're in it, because we are. And we retell the story of suffering as if God is in it, because God is.
Let me take you to Jesus, crying at the grave of his friend Lazarus, because death is just so awful. Let me take you to Jesus lamenting outside Jerusalem, for the women who have been oppressed by war and violence. And let me take you to a garden outside Jerusalem, where Jesus was agonizing and anxious and crying about his impending death, begging for that pain to be taken from him. We do not worship an unfeeling God, but a deeply emotional God who is moved by suffering and weeps with us and will one day make all things new. And we hear of the Holy Spirit's beautiful ministry of restoration and healing. But when was the last time that we celebrated the Holy Spirit's primary, ongoing job: groaning?
Romans 8:26 says that the whole of creation writhes in pain, longing to escape suffering and death, and the Holy Spirit joins us in praying with us and for us with groans. And this, then, is a model for our prayer. Crying, groaning, ugly crying, where the tears come out all over your face and the snot goes everywhere and you have to wipe your face away. All our tears and wordless cries are sacred prayers. And this is where God is—not in the false positivity, not in the fairytale ending, not in the squashing down of the emotion, but in our silences and lament, echoing our desperation for the world to be made right.
How then, how then do we live in dignity and cope with uncertainty and suffering? Well, we cope how we can, with lament, with anger, with tears, with chocolate and trashy TV and friends that help and sunsets and hugs, eating, drinking, breathing, one day at a time—these are all holy activities. We create and recreate our stories anew. And when church leaders present a single narrative about the Christian experience, they fail us. But the Bible is more honest than we are. We are storied people. And we need true stories made fresh. So if your story doesn't fit, I invite you to retell the story of God as if you're in it, because you are. And if you are in pain, I invite you to retell the story of suffering as if God is in it, because God is.
And I'd love to end with a short blessing:
Blessed are the grieving,
for God stores all your tears in a jar and honors them.
Blessed are the physically limited,
for God became flesh and knows our frustration.
and blessed are the suffering,
for God is groaning with you.
Amen.
<<<<TRANSITIONAL MUSIC>>>
SARAH: If you’ve been listening to and loving this podcast, join us for Evolving Faith 2022, the live virtual conference. It’s on October 14 and 15.
So many of us are engaging in good, hard, holy work right now to cultivate love and reimagine and build a faith that works not only for us but for the whole world, and to find our way in the wilderness together. We need to be reminded of what matters, who is alongside of us. We need connection, inspiration, good conversations and laughter, and we need some hope too. We are gathering not in spite of these turbulent times, but because of them. So please join us.
We have set a big, rowdy table in the middle of the wilderness, and together, we will have a feast. We’re saving a spot for you.
Go to evolvingfaith.com and register today. You won’t want to miss this moment with this community. It’s pretty special. Okay, now back to the show.
Part 3: Conversation
SARAH: One thing we have in common with Tanya is our love of that proverbial cup of tea, which she mentioned at the beginning of her talk but it’s interesting to me that she made that observation, that “America has a narrative that if you work hard enough and think positively enough, you'll be healthy and wealthy and maybe change the world.” While “Britain has that narrative that there's no point in trying to change the world, because there's nothing you can do. But a cup of tea will probably make everything better.”And both of those narratives are being tested out right now.” And that was in 2019, before we knew what was coming, really. And it’s interesting to see those two postures towards the end of the world from this vantage point now, two years and counting into the pandemic.
JEFF: My mother was still a British subject when I was born—Hong Kong was a British colony for so many years—and then I lived in England for several years in my early adulthood, so I think I’m still a little bit torn between those two stories, between those two narratives. There’s a part of me that would just like to give up and have another cup of tea, preferably with a scone and some jam and clotted cream. And there’s a part of me, as the son of immigrants to the U.S., who was taught that you had to work hard and put your head down in order to make it, though I don’t know about changing the world exactly; that was never taught to me as a goal. But there is kind of a gracelessness in that American narrative, which is so much about individual striving. And I wonder what the place of mercy is? Where is there room for holy candor? And I’m curious, Sarah, you’re neither British nor American, so what narrative were you brought up with?
SARAH: Well, speaking of holy candor, we might have to have a fight about whether it’s skahn or scone. But…
JEFF: It sounds pretentious with an American accent to say skahn even though I know in some ways it’s the proper pronunciation.
SARAH: We will not even set a toe into the cream then jam or jam then cream kind of discussion about what goes on your scone. But yeah I don't know. Canadians kind of have a foot in both ethos in some ways but it’s undergirded by this grand smugness of being fine. So I come by that “it’s fine, we’re fine, everything’s fine,” which will probably be what’s on my tombstone at the end of all things, but we come by that very honestly. And I think that Canadians also love to tell ourselves a narrative maybe about ourselves that isn’t always true, maybe seeing ourselves as punching above our weight with those two, or more secure or safe or less racist or classist or “not as bad, all things considering” perhaps. Which has been exposed, apocalypse style, in particular these last few years though. But I admit that I still think a cuppa tea makes most things if not better then definitely more bearable.
JEFF: The U.S. over the past few years has been a convenient neighbor for Canadians who want to think more smugly about themselves. I think we really have been. But I want to amplify something important, especially in the West, where reason is so often elevated above emotion: Tanya lifts up this portrait of an emotional God. That’s really something that stopped me, because of course as a kid I read and heard that verse about how Jesus wept at his friend’s death, but I don’t think I ever really processed it. And the picture of God that was most often presented to me by pastors and teachers, it was one that was much more stoic and immovable and relatively unemotional, except of course when God was angry. I find I want to go back and know more about this emotional God, this God who feels deeply and powerfully.
And another thing I really appreciate about this talk, and that I most appreciate about Tanya, is her unflinching way of inviting us into a ruthlessly honest story—about ourselves and about God and about that emotional God. For those of us who have been through some stuff in life, it can be so hard to be in church and presented with this rosy picture of how things ought to be, because it just doesn’t compute for those of us who have felt God’s absence or asked serious questions about God’s seeming negligence amidst suffering. Sometimes it even feels as if we’re being expected to airbrush our stories to keep other people comfortable. So there’s something so beautiful, so hospitable, so brave, about how Tanya just says: This is what my life is. This is what I have experienced. And I am still looking for God amidst it all. It is truly practical theology.
SARAH: Yeah you know when she spoke about how “the most dangerous stories are those that are true for a few, but not for all, but then they’re told as if they're the only story.” And so she’s asking, “So what happens when your individual story clashes with the big story”? And that is an experience that a lot of us have had. We were told one particular story and then our stories didn’t quite fit. The prayers weren’t answered. The dream died. The healing didn’t come. The formulas didn’t work. The if-this-then-that, you know, kind of proved to be too simple. And yet that is so much more common than most churchy people like to admit, right? Which is what you said. Asking those questions about God’s presence in suffering. Tanya’s witness, or even honestly testimony, is an individual story that challenges the bigger story. Her honesty here about the narratives we tell about disability and pain and suffering and how inadequate but also silencing those narratives can be. And many of us have lives like that. What does it mean then to integrate and fully embrace these stories, our stories? And I think that Tanya models that really beautifully.
JEFF: I guess I’d qualify just one thing that you said:
SARAH: Oh good, just one thing.
JEFF: Just one thing. The prayers weren’t answered the way we wanted the prayers to be answered. And maybe that is one of the gifts that Tanya offers us—a model for sitting amidst the complexity of disappointment and the reality of the twists and turns in a story that you would never willingly have written yourself and the inescapable truth of the human condition. Her beautiful tenderness in the context of her story is so striking to me.
SARAH: You know, I find it remarkable that just as the narratives or those dominant big stories that we tell almost drove her from faith, it was actually stories that brought her back, too. And she spoke so beautifully about “retelling the story of God as if we’re in it, because we are.” And I could— I remember feeling very teary when I heard that, when I heard her say that for the first time, because we were thinking of the inclusion and the welcome, the love that is in that posture. If we aren’t in the stories that the Church has told or is telling, it’s an incomplete story. All the stories belong in God. Let’s start telling that story. Right? If narratives are powerful enough to cause our suffering and loss and loneliness, narratives are also powerful enough to bring us to one another and to God, too. It reminds me a bit of what we talked about when you watched that Netflix show Heartstopper. You mentioned how much you wished you had had a story like that when you were that age.
JEFF: Well, first of all, it’s kind of a miracle if I watch any show within one calendar year of it actually premiering, but I did watch Heartstopper! It’s this beautiful British series based on the web comic by Alice Oseman about a group of teenagers who are wrestling with questions of identity and belonging. And I do wish I’d had a story like that when I was a teenager, because it’s not just in the Church that we struggle with the dominance of one particular narrative. It’s also in broader society and culture. Heartstopper is so gorgeous in part because you see, woven together, deftly and pretty gently, so many different personal stories and backgrounds and kinds of families and relationships and ways of making one’s way through the world and wrestling with relational dynamics, and they converge in the sometimes really awful context of school. Someone else’s story can be a portal—a hospitable doorway into reimagining one’s own circumstances, and I think that’s why Heartstopper can be a gift not just for teenagers today, especially queer teens and BIPoC teens and misfit teens, but also for the rest of us, who are no less prone to reductive thinking. The main characters on the show, they feel big feelings, as teenagers do, and honestly as we all do, if we are willing to admit it. But they also offer one another grace, in such beautiful ways.
So there was an interesting thing that happened in the aftermath of Heartstopper debuting, which was just a couple of months ago. It was that folks started to express disappointment—for the complexity that couldn’t be included, for the conversations that weren’t had. Which to me says something about the deep and profound longing for better representation and for multiple stories to be honored. There was so much pressure put on Heartstopper, which, even in its glorious diversity, is just one show and just one story, because, I think, we’ve done such a poor job of honoring diverse stories. And to bring it back to Tanya, I think she helps remind us to honor diverse experiences and diverse stories, that we need more of these voices. It happens in the words and images she presents to us but also simply in the embodied presence of who she was and who she is. She helps us imagine what it means to be storytellers ourselves. There’s an invitation, I think, in her talk to be a thoughtful recipient of stories but also a wise teller of stories as well.
SARAH: I really like Tanya’s way of reading Scripture, I think for that exact reason. There’s a lot of us who have had the stories of the Bible in particular almost used against us, and so I find her way of reading the text, of telling the story, to be very tender and healing. I think sometimes we try to keep making something fit that doesn’t fit anymore—much like how many of us were introduced to the Bible. And it’s not that you can maybe ever go back to that, and so finding new ways to re-enter these sacred stories can be such a relief or a joy even. Maybe even it's just permission. Even her retelling of the John the Baptist story connects him to our story, to being loved, and that she found her story in his story, too. Even, and maybe especially, without the happy ending —or as she called it, and I loved this phrase, the “under-redemptive.” The payoff wasn’t worth it to our eyes. But she names the lack of the solution here and challenges us—not just church leaders, I think—to stop presenting faith as fairy tale. You know, as she said, the Bible is more honest than preachers, most preachers.
JEFF: One of the most devastating things is to realize that you’ve been taught a religious fairytale for so much of your life, and that life doesn’t actually work out that way.
SARAH: Listen, given my background in the Word of Faith, prosperity gospel, healing ministry world, if you lose that fairy tale, you feel like you’ve lost God. You feel like you’ve lost faith. And it is a steep fall and a big rebuild when you’ve been given a narrative for God that only includes victory. And so it’s a gift for her to invite us—I think for me, personally—to retell the story of God as if we’re in it, because we are.
JEFF: So I want to name this: The word “we” is so crucial in what you just said. Because if we’re in it, our neighbors are also in it. So at the same time as Tanya’s way of approaching Scripture makes room for her embodied experience, and as it makes room for each one of our stories, I hope we don’t stop there. I hope we recognize that God’s story is roomy enough not just for ourselves but also for others, and somehow, it can hold the tension of our stories alongside others’ stories. If we are going to do the good work of finding our place in God’s story, I hope we can also do the good work of affirming that God’s story is wildly expansive and that it includes others—and maybe even others whom we find difficult to love, even as we long to be loved ourselves, and maybe even others for whom we struggle to have compassion, even as we crave compassion ourselves. The story of God is never just about me. The story of God is always—always, always—about a ridiculously beloved, beautifully expansive us.
SARAH: That’ll preach, Jeff Chu. Holy cow. That’s a good way to end.
Part 4: Outro
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SARAH: You can find all the links mentioned on today’s show as well as info about our friend Tanya and her important work in the world, links and graphics to share, as well as a full transcript for this episode in our show notes. That is all at evolvingfaith.com/podcast. And to find me, just go to sarahbessey.com for the social media links, the sign-up link for my newsletter Field Notes, and of course my books.
JEFF: You can always sign up for my newsletter at jeffchu.substack.com. If you enjoyed hearing Fozzie sigh in the background of this recording, follow him on Instagram at @fozziefozz or me, if you really want to, at @byjeffchu.
The Evolving Faith Podcast is produced by us, Jeff Chu and Sarah Bessey, along with the gifted sound magician SueAnn Shiah, who also provided our music. Please join us next week as we shine the spotlight on our own dear Sarah Bessey and thoroughly embarrass her. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Evolving Faith Podcast. And until next time, remember that you are loved.
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