The Way Down

In March 2021, Emily Hyland went to the elders of her church because she believed her pastor and boss was treating her unfairly because she was a woman. When the elders told her pastor, Dane Ortlund, about the conversation, he got upset. A few days later, he fired her. After five years of legal battles, a judge ruled the firing was illegal retaliation. Dane kept his job and speaking opportunities. Emily had to find a new church and a new career.

A Twitter friend won an award. I thought about posting "Congratulations!" but I was too jealous to celebrate. I thought about my hesitation the rest of the day. It felt like goosebumps that never went away—something unsettling, but this time, under my skin. When the theologian Augustine wrote *Confessions*, it was the first time anyone had tried to tell the soul's story. In it, he admitted that even his good deeds were often mixed with selfish motivations. Twelve centuries later, the theologian Martin Luther read Augustine and gave this tendency its Latin name: homo incurvatus in se. Man curved inward on himself.

"I'm your pastor. Tell me." I looked down at my burger, then out the window of Huey's, looking down Madison Avenue in Memphis. I didn't feel comfortable sharing, but I also didn't know how to say no. He kept pressing for more information until I felt empty. It's hard to follow leaders who demand that we bow to them, but who never bow themselves.

In high school, my Bible study leader did a verse-by-verse study on Ephesians. By the end of it, I was convinced that predestination was true. In college, a Christian philosophy professor persuaded me that God had given us free will. After another summer Bible study, I reconverted to Calvinism. After another year of philosophy, I had another perspective. I read hundreds of pages. None of it taught me how to follow Jesus.

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, the Narnians arrive at an island at the edge of the world, where they meet Ramandu, a star at rest. Eustace tries to be helpful, "In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas." Ramandu replies, "Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of." It's tempting to define ourselves by our biology or our past. But Paul invites us to dream about being like stars.