Transparency and vulnerability are two of the greatest gifts we can give one another, though I believe both are far too underestimated in power and far too infrequently used (by myself included). I realize that this is a blog open to anyone in the world who may come across its existence, but the dots for what I have been learning this year are finally beginning to connect, and strung across them all is the need for transparency and vulnerability. So here I will let you into the deeper and more complex brain of Rylie Shore, and for those who care to read the long story to follow, I hope that it can also bring you the encouragement and boldness to ask your own big questions, wrestle with yourself and with God, and then to be transparent and vulnerable in sharing that journey with those around you. May your journey be a blessed one.
In the beautiful nation of Italy lies a quiet, storybook lake that majestically reflects the famous Alps in its glassy surface. Alongside this breathtaking mirrored image lies a quaint and tranquil town known as Bellagio. This time of year, fall has touched everything just enough to combine the perfect balance of reds, oranges, and yellows with the colorful houses that stand in perfect contrast to the green hills and blue, still water. Being from Southern California, this concept of changing leaves and chilly air are foreign to me, so as I soaked in my first, true, fall experience in one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, I was very much out of my element and enjoying every second of it.
As my three traveling companions and I were wandering through this creativity the seasons threw at us, we came to a small, empty Catholic church and decided to sneak inside. At the front of the tiny space lined with pews sat a small array of red tins of candles, some lit with the prayers already sent to God and others still fresh and unlit, awaiting another prayer to be sent so it too could add its light to the dim room. Having seen one of my friend’s light one at another church earlier in the day, I asked her if I could light one even though I’m not Catholic. She chuckled and said “of course,” so I set my things down and slowly went to the front to again step out of my element. I fumbled in lighting my candle, but I somehow got it aflame to add its glow to the room before making my way to a pew to talk to God. As I sat there watching the flames dance, sometimes in unison and other times of their own accord, my mind was flooded with images from the past year. Before I knew it I had been transported back to South Africa, sitting on the windy, freezing rock formations that jutted out into the sea where the Indian and Atlantic oceans cross borders to intermix their waters.
There I sat, wind whipping my hair in chaotic waves around my head, seemingly making my equally chaotic thoughts tangible in the crisp, winter air as I threw my frustrations and questions at God. The three and a half weeks that birthed all these conflicting emotions and unanswered questions had been spent studying the division and corruption in the Christian church, though this journey became much more personal than I had initially anticipated.
To make an extremely long and complex history short, the South African church has been heavily divided by race for as long as the white man made contact in the region. These white Christian men came in with their Bibles and guns, gave the black men the Bible and took all their land and rights, justifying their actions by deciding they were “God’s chosen people.” Now centuries later, despite the fall of Apartheid and the transition to a democracy, the Christian church is still extremely divided and has made little headway in reaching reconciliation.
Heartbreaking to see is that the church has made little headway in reconciliation because of their inability to be vulnerable with one another in admitting their flaws and mistakes. As I walked on the South African soil where Christ’s church is visibly divided, this cause of its brokenness and division became very personal for me. It is one thing to be able to point out the flaws and destruction in another’s system or another’s life, thinking you have the light and solution to their problems. However, it is a much more humbling and difficult thing to acknowledge your own flaws and corruption and take actions to change them. South Africa forced me to do just that, because this concept of reconciliation suddenly struck a little too close to home.
Accompanying me in this journey through South Africa was a friend of mine, but not just any friend. My closest friend, my friend in whom I found home, the friend who knew me well enough to remind me who I was in those dark moments when I could forget. But in South Africa, she suddenly became estranged from me. Due to a multitude of unexplainable circumstances, this treasured friend and I hurt each other so deeply that we spent thirty days together, 24/7, and had maybe a total of four conversations, 75% of which were marked by tears. And let me just tell you how quickly we could both wall up in pride, trying to forget the friendship we shared, pushing one another out of our lives, refusing to look at our own contributions to our shattered friendship, all the while studying how broken the church is for these very reasons of forced forgetfulness and silence.
Had I resisted God and remained in my pride, I can admit that my friend and I would most likely have ended our friendship together after that trip. But miraculously, God is gracious and doesn’t let me get off that easily. Rather than letting me sit in my pride, he took me to my knees, broken and crumpled in tears, as he lovingly but firmly called me out in my wrongs, held them up so I could look them in the face, and reminded me that this is exactly why His church, His body, is so broken. My inability to admit my own wrongs and my resistance to being vulnerable with my dear friend mirrored the very causes for the lack of reconciliation in the Christian church. This thing I was studying and becoming passionate about was no longer a distant idea but had become about the most personal, painful journey of my entire life. How could I expect these people in Christ’s church to reconcile if I could not even reconcile with the girl I had once called my best friend?
As Christ equally worked on both my heart and hers, we humbly, brokenly, and vulnerably came back together to begin a long, painful, but rewarding journey of reconciliation. Thankfully and beyond my comprehension, our God is one of insane depths of grace and redemption, and strictly by His miraculous work in both of our lives, our friendship has been restored. However, my journey of facing the brokenness and division in Christ’s church did not end here.
As I was still in the process of healing and reconciling with my precious friend, a man walked into my life very unexpectedly and much to my resistance. Having been through so many frustrations and heartaches with guys in the past year, I was just not in any place to even desire another relationship or anything close to it. In fact, I was almost at the extreme of bolting out of the room when a man my age walked in the door simply to avoid even potential attraction. But God has a sense of humor. He likes to surprise me and remind me that He is constantly in control, even when I have yet to detect Him at work.
Having just learned about vulnerability and literally being so broken that there was nothing left in me to even attempt to hide that fact, I was about as raw and real with this man as I had ever been with anyone. I was pretty confident this would scare him off, at any rate. But oh how incredibly wrong I was. Here I will spare you the details of my affections, but I will share that my feelings for this man took everyone, myself included, by great surprise. Now you might be wondering, how could there possibly be a problem with this?
The issue was that, unknown to me at that point, I was on a journey of feeling the division of the church on an extremely personal level. So as I had first learned of the destruction of lack of vulnerability and reconciliation through hurting and being hurt by a best friend, I was now learning of the destruction in claiming one denomination or group of people know God better than all the others with the first man I loved.
Now comes the essential twist in the plot of any good story. The twist here is that he is Mormon. I can honestly say that I have never felt such tension between people who all claim to be following God as I did in the responses of people who found out I was dating him. Having never met him, I had great-intentioned friends telling me it was dangerous to date a Mormon, that I could be led astray from God, etc. But to this day I cannot understand these arguments. Though I am fully aware that we do have some key differences in theology, this man loves God more than most Protestants I have met and loved me with the pure love of Christ. We had some great and challenging conversations where we asked each other big questions about faith and God, and through all of this I encountered God in more real ways than I had before meeting him. But when it came down to it, this man-made thing called religion separated us.
I sat up many late nights asking God this question: “How can two people be faithfully following you all their lives, praying to be led into your truth, and come up with two different answers? This should not be.” And once again, God had walked with me into very personally feeling His frustrations and sadness. I quickly felt how His heart breaks as He watches His children compete with one another to be the church who has it right, rather than supporting and loving each other because we all worship the same Father.
And so I had to watch this incredible man walk away because of something men created that then divided Christ’s children against one another: religion. In perfect succession to the summer (because God is very creative and had His grand plan all along), just as I was wrestling with all of this and with God and with truth, it was time to come to Rome.
I could not have been more perfectly placed to study church history and the next sect that claims Christ as their Savior: the Catholic Church. And again, as I sit with people, question, think, and pray, I have felt the tension that lies between Catholics and Protestants. But as I sat there, in that small quiet church in Bellagio, watching my prayer manifest in the dancing flame, I was reminded that God is so much bigger than we make him out to be. It is ignorance for me, or any man, to claim to know the fullness of God. His glory and majesty are so vast that no human being could ever grasp Him in all His fullness. He is far too vast and we are far too simple. But God made it that way, beautifully so.
Far more than being glorified in a specific religion, I believe God is glorified in the lives of those who humbly come before Him, asking for His wisdom and truth, and then boldly and faithfully go forth in it. As I watched that candlelight dance, I realized that God was and is glorified in the way my dear friend humbly came before God to take that first step in reconciliation with me. He is glorified in the way that my first love faithfully devotes his life to the truth he has sought up until this point in his life. He is glorified in the way Catholics come before Him with deep respect and reverence, fully acknowledging His power and holiness that can sometimes seem to be lost in the protestant churches. Protestants exude the freedom and grace that Christ gives, while walking forth in passion and fervor to serve the overlooked and marginalized. And Mormons faithfully give up two years of their lives to bring people to Christ, exhibiting the sacrifice and dedication our Father has called us to.
I know Catholics, Protestants, and Mormons alike who know God intimately. I also know those of all three sects who do not, which has only gone to show me that no religion can figure out God. He is too unpredictable, enormous, and far above our level of comprehension. However, He is God of all who call on His name, and His simple but powerful command to us all is to love Him above all else and to love each other as we love ourselves. Now I am not saying that we scrap church, because Christ came to bring the church, His body, together. But as His children, we should be loving one another, humbly acknowledging our own flaws, challenging each other with big questions, encouraging our brothers and sisters in what they are doing well (for this world is so large we need the combination of all our strengths to fully accomplish the purpose Christ set out for us), and giving God the glory for all of it. After all, He is whole reason we started church in the first place.
When In Rome 