Author Sara Billups, Enneagram 4, Speaks to Orphaned Believers
Sometimes my teens ask me, "What were you all thinking in the eighties and nineties with those extreme styles?"
Even as I sometimes long to ask the same of them now, I laugh and groan because I know we were each doing our best to live life and to fit in culturally. Indeed, I have the pages of my old sassy journal to tell me I was trying to live my best life amidst the trials of life and faith that were also quite extreme in this season.
Yes, we're still climbing through our April series on spirituality and I know that those of us who feel the sharp dialectics of culture may feel the most wounded in faith circles, and yet we ALL know we need more than just marriage and family to satisfy.
We need community and we need a sense of hope and purpose for our lives and this podcast addresses just this.
Growing up, I felt this so poignantly, especially in my faith community for many reasons, none of which were any one person's fault.
At public school, I was a leader. At church, I didn't attend the attached school and thus I didn't fit the in-group, plus my mom's mental health story was a shadow over the church as well - it was a doomed relationship for me and the church in that season, especially as a thinking type who questioned everything.
It would take a couple of older and honestly probably very tired but chill youth group leaders in my later teen years that accepted me, questions and all, until I would really find a community fit in these early but very real-to-me deconstruction days.
Marriage researcher Eli Finkel echoes the importance of culture on our life and faith and reminds us of the sobering statistic that social death is more devastating to us than actual death.
So whether you're struggling in community or faith, I wanted you to know that our guest, author Sara Billups, who addresses this topic with raw depth and wisdom on this podcast is an enormous gift to us!
On the pod, she walks with us through her groundbreaking book, Orphaned Believers: How a Generation of Christian Exiles Can Find the Way Home, and she reminds us of how politicking, culture wars, and even a quick-all-you-can-grab faith some of us experienced in the 80s-90s as quick-rapture kids is not the best of the historical church, nor will it ever be.
However, she also reminds us NOT to give up on each other and the surrounding generations who were and are indeed shaped by culture as well, just as we are today.
I know I get pretty hyped about the topics we share here - or I probably wouldn't share them - but this one personally means so much, and reminds me of why and how community, even imperfect community, can be part of the healing processes for us.
I hope you love this book (a much deeper dive if you love that 5 space like I do) or episode as much as I loved walking through the pages with Sara as well as interviewing this brilliant Enneagram 4 (in that 4-5 Glow!!)
