The Church and Me
So, I happened to get into several conversations with church people yesterday. Now, by church people, I don’t mean people who belong to a church or work for a church or love a church. I don’t even mean people who have accepted and are trying to live within the boundaries set by a church. When I say church people, I mean people whose identity is tied up in a church or some brand or denomination in the church or a particular theology or even just a bunch of cultural assumptions which are supported by part of the church.
Church people are people who will object to the way something is said rather than deal with the substance of what has been said. Or someone who keeps making arguments meant to address things you never actually said and don’t necessarily think. If they do listen, it’s only so they can look for footholds they can use to render what you say invalid. Or someone who, once they realize they can’t defeat the ideas they disagree with, falls back on looking for excuses to discredit and dismiss the messenger – “you’re obviously emotional/you don’t even belong to a church/you’re in rebellion” etc. Charges of hypocrisy are almost always involved. None of these behaviors are unique to church people. But that’s just the problem, isn’t it?
I don’t usually talk much with church people. I mean, I have spent plenty of time talking with and listening to church people in the past. And I’m plenty happy to engage with them on matters where we’re in broad agreement. But usually, I keep my interactions with church people to a minimum because at some point we’re going to disagree and I either need to just bite my tongue which after a while just means giving up your right to have your own voice. Or I can attempt to have a conversation about it. Which is pointless once everything that can be said has been said and rejected on all sides.
Plus, I have a sharp tongue and a thick hide, so I am often much ruder and blunter than I ought to be. I can be a bit much for a lot of church people to take. And I get that.
But yesterday seemed to be my day for dealing with church people. I would say I did my best to be nice, but I did have to apologize to someone for attributing his callous disregard for vulnerable human beings to his male genitalia. I have to give him props for accepting my apology and moving on. So maybe I didn’t do my best, but I tried my best. Which is all anyone can really ask.
Towards evening, I inadvertently got caught up in my third conversation with church people of the day. (I sometimes forget that just because something is obviously true, doesn’t mean it isn’t controversial and accidentally said something that got several people all riled up.) I think I handled that one pretty well. I’d be practicing all day so I wasn’t all emotionally wound up. But for at least the third time that day, people assumed that I was angry at the church or highly emotional about it or had been hurt by the church.
None of those things is remotely true, but then I went to my blog and noticed that on the front page are posts titled “Churches Don’t Like You When You’re Suffering”, “In the End Times, No One Listens to Their Pastor” and “The New Reformation”. And I realized that I may well be giving people the impression that I’m hostile to the church. Which is not the case at all. So perhaps some clarification is in order. Continue reading “The Church and Me”
God as Man
I think that when God became embodied, he would have had to go through a sort of forgetting process in order to experience life fully as a man. People who deal in mystical things commonly teach that we each contain all knowledge within us, but we need to remember. We’ve forgotten. So it makes sense that Jesus would have been born having forgotten everything he knew as … Continue reading God as Man
When Praise is a Sacrifice
Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. ~ Hebrews 13:15
Do you know that sometimes praise is a sacrifice? When there’s nothing left to praise but the air you are breathing and you praise God for air. When you’d just as soon not wake up for another day and you praise God for the bed you’re lying on. When there’s no comfort or relief so you praise God for revealing himself so you have somewhere to direct your thoughts when you’re suffering.
Sometimes praise hurts. Sometimes it starts as a bitter complaint. Sometimes praise has no emotion or action behind it because only your will can move in the direction of God. This is a sacrifice of praise. This is the sort of sacrifice God will never, ever turn away.
If your praises are sacrifices right now, I want to share a song with you. Many Sundays in our home after yet another week of one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after another, my husband will put this song on repeat and dance around with the kids. Because sometimes there’s nothing left to do but praise him!
Here’s the link for those of you reading this by email. Continue reading “When Praise is a Sacrifice”
More Recklessness, Please
Your Daily Cud
A random thought to ponder: We don’t have to become perfect; just better. Continue reading Your Daily Cud
Manhunt for Peace in the Dark Heart of Africa
You know my thing about Africa that I’ve mentioned a couple of times lately? Well, allow me to share a story out of the Congo and Uganda. Now, in Western minds, this part of Africa was long considered “the dark heart” of Africa. And unfortunately in the last few decades, there have been times when anyone who was paying attention would wonder if there wasn’t some sort of curse on that area.
The details of the back and forth that got and kept the conflict going are long and boring. But the basic outline of what happened is this:
A political uprising originally brought on, in 1986 and 1987, by genuine oppression (and thus serving objectives justified in the eyes of those who took up arms), so quickly mutated—by the end of the 1980s already—into a practice of radical violence, with no other aim, at the end, than its own perpetuation, beyond even the effective survival of the group.
(This quote and all others used from the excellent story Sign Warfare, by journalist Jonathan Little, Asymptote Journal, April 2014)
The way the conflict was fought was the sort of stuff you don’t say out loud when the kids are around and only in whispers in private. You don’t want it in their head that such things could exist. You wish it wasn’t in yours. So this conflict is the stuff of nightmares here. This is the conflict that gave us Kony 2012 and boy soldiers, the lost boys that some churches took in.
Today, the government, which triggered the original conflict by refusing to allow freedom for an oppressed, mistreated minority, is engaged in a manhunt to find the last 150 or so soldiers still fighting. 150. That’s it. They can’t just ignore them because they are so violent. 150 is so few, but they still have the power to kill thousands. And I’ll tell you what? If you ever have to make a bet on a face-off between a Navy Seal and one of the Congolese soldiers involved in hunting them down, I wouldn’t be too quick to write off the Congolese soldier. I’m just saying. They’re kind of bad asses.
But anyways, this isn’t your typical manhunt. What they really want is for the soldiers to desert and surrender:
[The combatants] who surrender are well-treated, they are interrogated but without violence, it isn’t necessary, once out of the bush they have nothing to hide; then they’re sent back to Uganda, where they’re granted amnesty, go through a program of psycho-social reinsertion and sometimes get some professional training, before being sent back home with a little money and a few household supplies, or joining the army, more or less voluntarily.
The biggest reason for the ongoing conflict at this point is that the combatants don’t trust the government. They think offers of help are a trick. Because it’s been that kind of war. But this time, it’s real.
That is amazing. This is not how human beings deal with their enemies. Especially enemies who are driven by a logic no higher than “we just kill for the sake of killing. It humiliates the government, that’s good enough for us.” Those are the enemies you kill. The ones that you and your people and generations to follow never forgive. The people who, at the very least, must be held accountable for their crimes.
What is going on in the Congo has never been done before. We’ve never ended our conflicts by forgiving and helping our enemy get well. Never. I am not saying that the government is now perfect or that this particular policy is the be all and end all. But this is something amazing which uses the logic of God’s Kingdom to defeat the power of the enemy’s kingdom. Continue reading “Manhunt for Peace in the Dark Heart of Africa”
Churches Don’t Like You When You’re Suffering
Now, I’m not sure if I agree with what this person thinks that the church should be doing for people. I’m actually kind of a fan of doctors, safety nets and mental health services. But this really does capture the way the church deals with the suffering.
I haven’t been involved in a church for a few years for a number of reasons. But probably the biggest obstacle for me was that I dread what happens once I can’t hide just how screwed up my life is. Just the thought of having to deal with the church’s reaction to suffering is exhausting.
All of the “well why don’t you just go get help so you can get yourself fixed” questions that feel like accusations. The way that if I try to explain that I’m already doing what I can, I’ll just get bombarded with more suggestions and challenges and more questions about why I haven’t gotten myself fixed yet. Contrary to what people seem to think, I don’t really need an extra voice telling me that the reason my life is a mess because I’m screwing it up. If fixing my life were easy enough for you to find the solution off the top of your head, it would be fixed by now. Don’t you think?
Churches tend to do pretty OK with an immediate, specific need or crisis. If you need meals made after the baby comes or while someone is hospitalized. If you need help moving. If you’re a single mom and your house needs paint. Things like that many churches do well. But if the problem is long term, perhaps permanent, churches tend to be bad places to be. There are only so many times you can call about your piece of crap car on the side of the road again. There are only so many times you can explain the details of your budget and why you don’t qualify for certain government programs.
Usually what people really need is a $20,000 cash infusion. Or if that’s not possible, just a supportive shoulder to cry on now and again will do. But churches are really bad at that. If you are bold enough to make your need known, you may find a kind soul willing to listen. But the burden is on you to keep seeking out that kind shoulder when you need it. Which gets really wearing. And it just highlights the extent to which the relationship is not between equals. The person who is listening to you cry is not going to call you when they have a problem. They aren’t going to miss you if you don’t reach out to them. It’s like starvation rations for a relationship starved suffering person. It may be enough to keep you from dying outright, but it’s not nearly enough to help you recover. Continue reading “Churches Don’t Like You When You’re Suffering”
Animals and Religion
Did you know that animals engage in what appears to be ritualistic behaviors which appear to show some awareness of the luminous, if not the spiritual? It’s true. In particular, a variety of animals have death rituals: Magpies, gorillas, elephants, llamas, foxes, and wolves all use ritual to cope with the death of a companion. Magpies will peck the dead body and then lay blades … Continue reading Animals and Religion
The Real Challenge to Religious Liberty in America
The things Christians decide are important enough to raise a stink over on religious liberty ground always astound me. Like the way we keep fighting for the right to say prayers at government meetings and such. As if such prayers have ANY meaning at all or losing them would be detrimental to Christianity. It’s a laughable proposition. Especially when the meetings that follow these prayers … Continue reading The Real Challenge to Religious Liberty in America
In the End Times No One Listens to Their Pastor
Remember me writing about the church’s inability to deal with the reality of the world rather than clinging to their ideas about the world? Well, if you would like to see what this looks like in action, ask a pastor why people leave church and then ask 20 people who have left church about their experience. The overlap will be non-existent.
Oh, I get where the church people are coming from. It’s easy enough to take “I never felt accepted” and hear “I’m unwilling to engage with people who don’t think like me”. Or hear, “I was turned off by the church’s fixation on sex and politics” and hear “I just want to be able to sin without anyone holding me accountable“. Or “I found peace in my heart when I walked away from the church” and hear “I just want to engage in navel-gazing as spirituality”.
I get the temptation to interpret people’s words in such a way as to affirm our assumption that they are in error. But what if we just took people at their word? What if we accepted at face value that people don’t find acceptance at church, are turned off by the church’s fixations and have found peace by walking away? What then?
I believe that people are being drawn away from the church by God. I think that people are leaving and have peace about it because they know that they know that they know that they are on a path towards God that has taken them out of the church. At least for now. The rise of the nones and the spiritual-but-not-religious types is actually a sign that we are seeing the fulfillment of scripture.
The bible tells us to expect a time such as this: Continue reading “In the End Times No One Listens to Their Pastor”
The Upside Down World 