Carrying Baggage: Duane W.H. Arnold, PhD
Carrying Baggage
A friend and mentor once told me about a conversation he’d had with the great Catholic theologian Yves Congar. It was in the years after Vatican II, when so much seemed to be changing in the Church. Congar, who had helped bring about those changes, surprised him by saying, “With all the Thomism I have absorbed, which has become a part of me, the Church has never changed for me.”
It’s a remarkable statement. Congar wasn’t bitter or resistant. He had been one of the innovators — a man who loved the Scriptures and the early Church Fathers, who called for reform long before it was fashionable. Yet he admitted something profoundly human: the way we see faith, church, even God Himself, is shaped by what we’ve absorbed along the way.
We all have that problem. None of us come to faith as blank slates. We carry with us the voices of pastors, professors, parents, and friends. We carry wounds from church fights, disappointments in leadership, joys from moments of worship that changed us. Whether we came from altar and incense or from youth rallies and altar calls, we bring our history along every time we open our Bibles or walk into a sanctuary.
I sometimes wish we were more aware of that. Too often, we approach faith like people who’ve never unpacked a suitcase. We react to every new theological or political issue as if it exists in isolation — as if we haven’t been shaped by decades of teaching, culture, or temperament. Then we wonder why discussions turn into arguments and why “dialogue” feels like trench warfare.
If I’m honest, I know the baggage I carry. Emotionally, I remain an evangelical — I still believe in a personal encounter with Christ that transforms a life. Culturally, I am Anglican — the rhythms of the liturgy, the cadences of the Book of Common Prayer, the bread and wine offered at the altar all speak to my heart. Theologically, I lean East — drawn to the mystery and wonder of the Incarnation and Resurrection that the Orthodox have guarded so well. And intellectually, I’m at home among the Thomists and Lutherans who still think theology ought to be coherent, even if we can never make it complete.
Of course, all of that comes with contradictions. I can be theologically conservative and yet socially progressive. I can love ritual but distrust empty ceremony. Like most of us, I contain multitudes, and sometimes they argue with one another.
The danger is forgetting that we carry all this into every new question. We don’t stop to think what’s doing the talking inside of us — the Holy Spirit, our experience, or the old baggage from years ago. We speak with the certainty of youth, and then wonder why others seem deaf to our wisdom.
Maybe what’s needed is a little more humility — to begin our sentences with “I might be wrong, but…” That small phrase opens a door to grace. It gives space for others to be heard and for us to be taught. It reminds us that truth is not conquered by debate but discovered in communion.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve started to unpack some of what I’ve carried for too long. Some things still matter deeply — the creeds, the cross, the conviction that God’s love is stronger than death. Other things I’ve learned to let go of — the need to be right, the comfort of certainty, the habit of sorting everyone into friend or foe.
What we carry matters. Some of it is ballast that keeps us steady. Some of it is just baggage that keeps us tired. The wisdom of years is learning which is which.
Perhaps that is the grace of growing older in faith — not that we finally understand everything, but that we finally understand what to set down.
Duane W.H. Arnold, PhD
This is so very good.
The most baggage I have is the culture I grew up in that makes judgments for without thinking…I always have to be aware that my experiences and outside influences color everything…
Michael,
Awareness of what shapes us is half the work of grace; the other half is learning when to set it down…
Thank you for this beautiful piece. I need to read it today. Thanks be to God.
Duane,
If I’m allowed to offer just one piece of advice to others in the body with respect to horizontal relationships, its this:
Be not afraid of some who has baggage and especially if they’re brutally honest about it, but be terrified and pray for he who thinks he has none.
He’ll be easy to spot as his teaching, words, and conduct boil everything down to a bumper sticker, and their overall goal is to appear superior (Jesus/the Bible is just pretext for homiies of their own perfection).
Any doubt of this can be easily verified by their wife/kids (but please ask them in private for their sake).
Regarding my life in God and His body.
I believe whatever box we’ve chosen for ourselves where we put God with us, once in the kingdom with our new understanding, by His grace I’ll finally be able to see and love Him abd He truly is, thus allowing me to do the same for others, as He intended.
Currently, my foul religious pride enables me to step over Jesus’ blood, pseudo-interpret His words to suit MY needs, and further building our Pharisaic walls of division.
To put it another way, Ive already known for decades to love those next door, but it feels much better to stay angry at unrelated things and seek scapegoats next door.
UnCCed
That’s deeply and painfully true.
If I may respond as a priest, I would say this: the one who admits his own pride and names his own Pharisee within has already begun to be healed. Or, at least, has taken the first step. The greatest deception of religion is not false doctrine, but the illusion of self-sufficiency. The moment we think we are without baggage, we cease to be disciples and begin to be judges.
Grace is not found in pretending to be unbroken; it is found in the slow courage of confession. You have described that courage beautifully. The task now is not to despise the anger or even the weariness, but to let Christ stand between us and both. The blood we sometimes “step over,” as you so powerfully put it, is still there — still speaking mercy, still summoning us to lay down our need to be right and take up the call to be reconciled.
If we could do that, even a little, we might begin to see one another as God already sees us — wounded, forgiven, and still worth loving.
Duane,
This spoke to me so deeply! I came out of a church tradition of ultra-liberal Protestantism. The church could just as well have been a social club for 60s hippies. I really wanted to know what the Bible meant and said, ended up reading through most of it (the NT more than a few times), and was confronted with who Jesus was and what he had done for me. I had a crisis of faith in May of 1973 and became a Christ-follower.
I really wanted to understand the Bible. A friend invited me to her church. They were kind and caring (my family wasn’t), and they taught the Bible well. They were also of the Independent Baptist tradition, which meant lots of rules! I was eager to keep those rules and be a “good” Christian. It was also easier to keep the rules than really think about why I needed all those rules. They were turning me into a good Pharisee until I went away to college, where i had to understand the why behind the rules (and I do think they were sincere). Fast forward 50 years, I still have the Bible teaching and great study skills my first church gave me, but I also understand that I can trust God to live a life of faith pleasing to him in relationship, not just rule-based. Whenever my inner Pharisee wakes up because something seems “off” (as in, where is the rule? why are you not obeying the rule), I prayerfully size up the situation with Scripture and parse it out. I obey God more because I love him, not because I am afraid of getting in trouble.
We need to show up at the next church we go to with backpacks, a couple of carry-ons, two wheeled pull along checkin suitcases and our Chihuahua in his carriage.
They wouldn’t let us in the airport much less a church. (Ch ch I call it. What’s missing? I am.
Linn,
That’s a beautiful testimony, and a wise one. What you describe is the path so many of us must walk — from rule-keeping to relationship, from fear to faith. The discipline of your early years was not wasted; it formed the framework through which grace could later be understood. Yet the heart of the Gospel is precisely what you’ve discovered: love casting out fear.
That inner Pharisee you mention never quite dies — it just needs to be reminded, gently but firmly, that obedience born of love fulfills the law far better than obedience born of anxiety. What you’ve found is spiritual maturity — to cherish Scripture, to wrestle with it honestly, and to let it lead you not to control but to trust. That is the journey from religion to relationship, and it is holy ground.
JD
Now that’s an image I’d pay to see! Though truth be told, most of us already bring that much baggage into church—just better disguised. At least if we wheeled it in openly, we’d finally be honest about it!
I’ve got enough baggage to need a Skycap or two. More than a steamer trunk full.
I don’t think there’s a church out there that shouldn’t get a warning that we’re coming.
Maybe we are on the no-fly list or something, from the looks we get.
I refuse to carry anything more than an over night bag.
Duane,
Thank you.
As the years transpire, the sin and even hubris of others thinking God does does not see doesnt shock anymore as much as deep down I knew.
I knew at the time how phoney it was, how empty, how plastic, but Jesus is real, and just as He was there to comfort the persecuted, He is here to welcome those of us coming out from materialism, consumerism, and nationalism, and other antichrists which dare lead Jesus’ body astray.
UnCCed
We are all prodigals returning home… every one of us…
I think the term ‘inner pharisee’ is well-warranted as are ‘inner-leper,’ inner woman-caught-in-adultery’ and so forth. Those narratives in scripture describe me, not only someone else or a historical figure. When we are willing to recognize we bring a handful of cards to the table, trying to figure which one to play at the most opportune time, we will recognize, too, we are broadly defined in scripture—not the one-size-fits-all “sinner”.
filbertz
That’s a truthful and perceptive observation — and yes, you’re right to widen the lens beyond the “inner Pharisee.” Scripture gives us a mirror, not a microscope. Those stories are not about “them” but about “us” — all the roles we play, all the ways we reach for control, or mercy, or healing, or shelter…
When we begin to see ourselves in the leper, the adulterous woman, the blind beggar, and even the self-assured Pharisee, the Bible stops being a rulebook and becomes revelation. It shows us that sanctification isn’t about discarding one set of cards for another; it’s about laying them all down before Christ and trusting Him to deal the hand anew.