"Take Me As I Am"?

If I had been on the creative counsel that picked out the theme for the National Young Adult Conference 2006, set for August 4 thru 6 in San Francisco, I think I would have had a few things to say. "Take Me As I Am." Is it catchy? Yes. Is there some pastoral value in it? Maybe. Is it a bit confusing? Perhaps more than a bit. The first thing I think of is all the questions I have about this theme.

"Take me as I am." Who is saying these words, and to whom?

If they mean it as God saying these words to us, then all I can say is right on. (It's even rather perfect that the words "I am" are in the theme.) That's something that absolutely needs to be said to a world that has been making it it's business to redefine God in terms that make us all feel "validated" and good about ourselves. For all our whining about feeling judged and oppressed by moral authorities like God and the Church to which he gave that authority, we don't often realize that we judge God with far less mercy and understanding than he judges us. If I was the keynote speaker at this conference, that's probably the way I would take this theme, even if it wasn't what the authors intended.

But alas, I have a feeling that the theme is intended to be precisely what I fear it is: a command to those in moral authority--the Church or God or both--to be more accepting of people who have difficulties with the standards they so rigidly set. (Course that's pretty much all of us who are not God, including the leaders of the Church.) If I'm right, and these words are spoken by us people to either the Church or to God then it implies some or all of the following to me:

1) an unwillingness to change, that is, an unwillingness to be converted from sinful inclinations, tendencies, and practices. A demand that those in authority, either the Church or God or both, change in order to be reconciled with me, AND / OR
2) that the Church or God or both need to learn to be more forgiving and accepting of sinful people like myself so that we can enter into the process of conversion without being judged or looked down upon, AND / OR even
3) that the Church or God or both need to recognize that not everyone agrees with their moral codes, and that they are free to disagree and practice their own versions of the moral life. In other words, these moral authorities need to be "tolerant."

I'm not saying that this is what the crafters of this theme or this conference intended by this theme, just saying that's how I took it at first and why it confuses me. "Take me as I am" implies to me a certain acceptance of "who I am" that is simply not healthy for a serious Catholic.

The least abhorrent of those three to me is the second. I suppose there is some value in that, because at least in that case it accepts the Church's moral authority and asks the Church to do better at inviting people in so that conversion can actually take place. But I can't help thinking that in that case it accepts the premise that most of the Church is cold, uninviting and judgmental. I've been to confession hundreds and hundreds of times in my life and the number of times I have walked out of a confessional feeling more judged than loved is once, by an ultra-ultra-ultra-conservative priest who I don't think I've ever seen smile. (I've also known some liberal priests whom I've never seen smile.) Priests (and people in the Church) like him are the exception, not the rule.

This is why I can't help thinking that dedicating a whole weekend to telling the Church to accept me as I am is a waste of time. Heck, I don't want to be accepted as I am. I want to be expected to change, to convert, to grow closer to him. That's what Catholic spirituality is all about: constantly repenting, constantly renewing, constantly turning back to Jesus. "As I Am" seems to neglect that whole journey and process. That's how it struck me anyway.