“This is why I hate the Church.” I’ve said these words before. Many times. They were an empirical statement and I was right, damnit!
I was wounded. I was hurt. I was lied about. And not necessarily by the church people. I was hurt by the pastoral staff. And not just once. Time and time again. And by church people. Time and time again.
I once wrote to myself:
Why is this place called a sanctuary? Isn’t a sanctuary a place of safety? A place of solace? How then are these sanctuaries capable of holding people in such judgment, disconnection, and death? I will never go to a church again.
I’ll readily admit: Sometimes I still have these feelings.
Over last weekend, I took a break from blogs, twitter, and facebook. Several days, dozens of blog posts, and hundreds of status updates later and I noticed a recurring theme: ”This is why I hate the church” or “This is why I don’t go to church” or “This is why I’m not a Christian” or some other creative variation of this comment.
Several of these posts had to do with some Christians’ responses to the homosexual community. Some had to do with exclusion and inclusion. Some had to do with peace and war. Others had to do with personal preference.
About 3 years ago, I was listening to a podcast from one of my mentors. At this time in my journey, I believed that the Church needed to be completely deconstructed. I believed that no good comes from the Church; that it was an elite institution only rewarding those who are the most competent and most charismatic.
At one point in this podcast, this person quieted down and asked (paraphrased):
You really believe the church does no good? You really believe that the only answer is to completely raze the entire Church?
Think about that for a moment. How many millions of people are fed around the world, throughout the ages, by the Church? Consider natural disasters. Who are the first responders? The church. Do governments and non-religious groups aid in times of crisis? Absolutely. And they do a wonderful job, at times. But on the whole, the Church is the catalyst by which much of this work is done.
And you’re sitting there in the isolated discomfort of your mind saying, “The church isn’t good for anything. We should just do away with it altogether.” Really? Final answer? You’re okay with all of those people not being fed and all of those people not being cared for?
This person’s statement weighed on me pretty heavily. For months I couldn’t shake the words. As more time passed, and I listened to those words more and more, I saw my attitude and posture begin to change. It wasn’t a quick process, but it did happen.
As I said before, I really struggle with this. But not because I still feel that way. I struggle with this because sometimes it’s easier to feel that way. I want to be mad at the Church for how some are treated and abused. I want to be mad at the Church for its exclusivity and opulence. And I believe that kind of anger is right. But I find it so much easier to stand in judgment? Rather than giving myself over to creative solutions, it’s far easier to simmer in the broth of unimaginative, tired, and borrowed impotence while offering no solutions whatsoever.
What I’ve discovered in my journey is that I didn’t really hate the Church. The Church isn’t what hurt me. A person hurt me. People hurt me. I hurt myself. I was projecting my hurt and humiliation at an institution because that’s a much larger target. It’s an easier target. I can’t miss when I’m firing at larger structures and let’s be honest, it feels better. It’s much more difficult to fire at a person with a face and a name and issues, many of which are the same as mine.
My mother-in-law once told me:
When kindness is wounded, it expresses itself in bitterness.
Instead of addressing my hurt directly with those that hurt me, I lashed out at something that couldn’t talk back to me. I can’t sit down with the Church and talk about what happened. And in all honesty, I wasn’t really interested in reconciliation. I was interested in self-preservation. I was interested in my rights. I was interested in my reward for my service to those people. This was about me; not them.
But we don’t serve others for reward, do we? We serve others because that’s the position that Jesus took and taught his followers to take. We serve because that’s the path to peace. We serve. We serve our friends and family. We serve our enemies. We serve those who support us and we serve those who hurt us. We serve.
We are called to this hard road of peace-making; a way of life that searches endlessly for creative, non-violent resolution to problems. And while it is necessary to name our hurts in order to work through them, I have to wonder if far too often we choose to live in past moments of pain and hurt because we feel that is easier than addressing those pains and hurts directly.
Well said.
I am reading Neuhaus’s book, Freedom for Ministry right now. Just before reading this post I read this great line:
“And so, because we do not pretend that the Church is the Kingdom of God, we offer no excuses for its not being the Kingdom of God. There will be no satisfactory Church, no Church that can be embraced without ambiguity, until the world of which the Church is part is satisfactorily ordered in the consummation of God’s rule. In short, we cannot get it all together until God has gotten it all togther in the establishment of the Messianic Age.”
Thanks. I needed the honesty, clarity and hope of your words today.
Thanks for stopping in Steven. Grace and peace to you.
I needed this, as you know, even though it was painful for me to read.
I can imagine it was as painful to read as it was to write. You’re welcome Brian.
I was at the Ekklesia Project here in Chicago this week. It’s the baby of Stanley Hauerwas and his students from all over the country. The topic was language–word-care, one of my favorite topics. What I heard (an over-simplification here)was talk about transforming our communities with the traditional language of the church with focus on Trinitarianism and Creeds. Much theological talk, which I enjoyed, but it wasn’t until the final worship gathering when Stan Wilson spoke about “I Love the Church” that I heard the real language of community that I could relate to.
I have never hated the church because I grew up in traditional mainline churches that may seem “liberal” today, but just seemed like church 50 years ago. No wounding, just frustration and some anger at specific people. But Stan reminded me of why I am still in Christian community. And will continue to search for those communities that courageously speak the Words of justice through the voice of Jesus. Can Christians focus on word-care in ways that encourage people-care without the language of the Trinity and the creeds? I hope so.
I agree with all of this, and it reminds me of an interview with Tony Campolo in the movie Lord, Save us from your Followers about the quote from St. Augustine: “The church is a whore, and she’s my mother.” When I heard this quote I was floored. It was everything that I had been feeling. The institution of the chuch has hurt people, has been unfaithful, etc, but for all of it’s whoring, all of it’s unfaithfulness, I would not be a Christian today without it.
Hey Ashley! Thanks for chiming in!
I don’t know. I kind of disagree; at least for me. I didn’t become interested in Jesus because of Church. I went to church because that’s what I was told I had to do to be a Christian. Not I understand that going to church has nearly nothing to do with following Jesus.
I would reiterate, it’s been my experience that the Church is incapable of abuse, hurt, and/or manipulation; as are all institutions. It is people that cause abuse and hurt.
So, from one ‘hurt person’ to another, in a situation where the individuals within the church are unapologetic and often take pride in the aggressive certitude that caused the original hurt, how do you bring yourself to go back?
I tried reconciliation with individuals. When, after years of trying, I was unsuccessful, I started to withdraw – to sit back and watch. I did this for a year just to see what happened. I was still at service every Sunday, I still worked within the small groups I was working in before but I was no longer struggling to be included and what I found was that people never missed me. I haven’t been to service for several weeks now and one person remarked that they didn’t even know I had been out.
What I found was that the struggle to be included was an uphill battle and that if I took my foot off the accelerator I ended up back at the bottom of the hill. So then I began to view my specific situation/church as exclusionary. As I sat back and watched, what I saw was arrogance, self-serving promotion, false faces presented to false people.
I can’t go back to that, but I yearn to fix it, to be a part of the solution but I know that I am not able to do that right now. I don’t believe I am called to do that.
So, while I don’t blame the church, I find myself in the difficult position of trying trust again… how do I do that?
It’s a process I’ll work through, but any advice would be welcomed!
Shirl
Forgive, forgive, forgive. And start again.
For me, recovering from abuse by the church leadership took YEARS. I’d moved away and become part of another body but was still certain that “church people” had it in for me. It took lots of time to build friendships and trust. Through the gentleness of God and the mercy of my new church family, I was able to start unbinding the wounds that had become so much of my identity.
A few things I have learned: 1) It is healthy to trust others; it is unhealthy to put our trust IN others for they will inevitably fail us. 2) When you find safety, begin to tell your story, not as a victim, but as a survivor. God’s grace has brought you through! 3) God is always good. He carries our wounds and is our true identity. 4) Forgiveness is hard, but it is the only option. I’ve even had to forgive myself for being so blind and trusting; I had to forgive my parents for not knowing how to protect me; I had to forgive the people who stayed loyal to the leadership; I had to forgive those who lied and those who listened. So much forgiveness.
My heart weeps at the abuse from the body of Christ. May God extend his grace in such a way that I am never in the abuser’s seat. My prayer, Shirl, is that you will receive His favor, his healing and all of his blessing. May his promises of joy blossom even as you shed tears of heartache.
Here’s the rub Brandon – and there is really no way of getting around this (which is both fortunate in its simplicity and yet somewhat troubling in how attainable it has been).
We all (well most of us anyway) still think we have rights. Not surprisingly then, we get some crazy notion that we should be being rewarded – and get upset when we see the church “only rewarding those who are the most competent and most charismatic” – and not us.
I think this is at least one of the keys (perhaps one of the very important ones) to unlocking kingdom life as the church here on earth. We hang on to this foolish notion in spite of the most incredible example Jesus set for us in His humanity. Paul knew this too – this is the heart of his concern / instruction from the first several verses of Philippians 2. It leads to divisiveness, loss of our own capacity to function as the instrument we were designed to be, and well – just an long long list of horribles…
It is a very easy thing to say I have come to the cross of Jesus and laid my life down – it is unfortunately very hard to do – at least to do so completely and utterly that in all things we are His. This is why your quote of a couple of weeks ago (settling for being a Christian) was so disquieting in my spirit – this is the conundrum I find myself struggling with. Cognitive dissonance, as this state was described to me recently kind of resonated with me.
But keep working these thoughts… and keep challenging us to not only be thinking about these things – but moving from thought to action.
Peter, I’m not sure what this means. I am a lifelong Christian, but this language is strange and sounds a bit like “blaming the victim of the abuse”. Sort of like telling an abused woman that she mistakenly expected to have certain rights and be rewarded for being a wife and shouldn’t complain just because her husband beat her up while other women were loved and cherished by their husbands. I have done a lot of conflict resolution in churches and talked with many people who have been hurt by other people, but this is cognitive dissonance for me.
Hey Peter! Thanks for your thoughts.
I agree. This is especially true for American Christians wherein we are taught that our nation’s founding documents are God-breathed and God-inspiried. Both of which are absolute rubbish, of course.
The Pentecostal I was raised in taught me that I had the absolute favor of God and deserved the best life possible as a result. It’s so sad how the writers of the words of the New Testament seemed to miss that very obvious American detail…
Brandon,
As usual good words and oh so timely. Thanks for posting this.
Thanks so much John!
Hey Brandon,
Thanks for the post. I’ve been hurt many times because of someone in church. I’ve even been guilty of feeling angry to a whole organization such as the denomination that I came from. Especially after I decided that I would hide being a gay minister.
This was encouraging and very thought-provoking!
Craig,
Unfortunately, I hear that part of your story far too often. Embracing how we’re created, the Imago Dei, is such a liberating journey. My prayer is that more people in the Church will not only encourage and support others in this journey, but also that they will be inspired to do the same.
Cheers
Timely post (and quite likely addresses most of the reasons some of us stay ‘in’ even when we’ve been hurt.) Interesting thing is most people watching as we are being hurt and hurting have no idea how painful their watching can be. Kind of like folks watching a person getting physically beat up in a mugging without stepping in or calling for help. May we all have eyes to see, ears to hear and the wherewithall to respond.
Hear our prayer…
So, I vote that you contribute to your blog more.
Heard once that anger grows out of hurt. Have found that to be true over and over again in my life.
How do we separate righteous anger from our own sense of injustice? My struggle is always When do I war and when do I rest?
Rachel, I have found that generally when my indignation on behalf of another who has been unjustly hurt, harmed, or hated, then it is likely righteous. When it is on behalf of myself alone, then it is more likely to be self-righteous. In the overlapping area of the Venn diagram, there is a sense of injustice I feel as part of a group that has been maligned, marginalized, or otherwise mistreated. It is here that I need to avoid the trap of self-righteous indignation and advocate on behalf of others in the group. That is where I find healing for myself, in treating other victims. Compassion grows in the giving, not in the receiving.
alltheblessedthings – thank you for your insight and words of encouragement. I miss the worship experience at my church, but not so much that I would go back. (even though I consider it often – it’s time I let go)
Penny – I agree with your assessment of Peter’s statement. While one might call a simple acknowledgment and thank you for your hard work a ‘reward’, I call it encouragement. I also believe that if my goal is to impact people positively, then it is quite reasonable to want outside validation of that. I’m not perfect, I don’t always do things right, so to a certain extent I rely on outside validation. I am not a slave to it, but it is one of many ways I measure my progress. Sure you can ‘see the result of your work’, but I’m biased to believe I’m doing good – am I really? This is where I really take issue with self-congratulations on the part of individuals, churches, denominations or even Christianity as a whole – sometimes I just want to tell them to do a reality check. Hmmm sounds like a blog post rolling around in my head there
Peace!
Brandon,
Great post and certainly something deconstructionists/emergents/outlawpreachers need to ponder. We need to determine what it is that we are pushing back against and where our motivation is finding it’s fuel and strength.
Some things your post made me think about:
We have to find a way to live within the tension of acknowledging the pain and damage that the institutional church has done/is doing and living free of the pain and hurt so that we can be free to create space for shalom to exist.
At the same time we have to remember that some are not strong enough – some are too weak at this moment, this week, this month, this year, maybe even this lifetime to live in that tension – some are too weak (after much hurt and abuse by an institution that they believed they could trust) to move very far away from their hurt and pain and so we must carry them gently – we must walk close enough to the edge of their anger, their depression, their hopelessness, their pain – holding their hand, draping our arm around their shoulder, propping them up under their armpit – in order to keep them from drowning completely.
It’s true that some of the pushback that is going on should probably be directed towards individuals (you said: What I’ve discovered in my journey is that I didn’t really hate the Church. The Church isn’t what hurt me. A person hurt me. People hurt me. I hurt myself. I was projecting my hurt and humiliation at an institution because that’s a much larger target.) but I think we have to acknowledge that the institutional church does exist, it is powerful, and often needs to be pushed against and sometimes the pushing even comes in the form of leaving. As for me I can’t really point to individuals who have hurt me individually in a significant enough way to make me “hate the church” — but I do believe/perceive I (and many that I love and care about) have been hurt by the institutional church and the system that it has created.
There is a very interesting discussion that went on at the end of June over on Kester Brewin’s blog called “Has What Emerged Retreated” – there are 4 parts – check it out if you get a chance as I think it links to this conversation well. Here’s the link to the first of the four posts. http://www.kesterbrewin.com/2010/06/21/has-what-emerged-retreated-returning-to-the-institutions/
This is something my husband has been trying to convey to me for a long time. I used to spout off a lot about the ills of the institution, but he always reminded me of the positives. We have been tempted to start a house church – a missional, holistic, organic group of people seeking God. But there is something about the institutional feel some people just seem to want or need before committing.
Obviously not everybody is this way. Many missional groups are finding much commitment, love, grace and peace. But many people really want to go to an actual program to seek God. It’s strange to me. But especially where we live, that seems to be the case for many.
And since that is the case for so many, for whatever reasons that may be, the institutional church has a special ability to sow into people’s lives. Raise funds for building wells in communities in Africa, host concerts to educate people about modern slavery and trafficking, feed the hungry in its own community and abroad, encourage people to sponsor kids through programs like Compassion International, and more.
I tend to get blinded by the fact that the program encourages us to be idle viewers rather than active participants in the Kingdom of God, to the point that I actually draw back and become an idle viewer. Because of my attitude against the whole thing. Then I become part of the problem and no longer part of the solution.
I once heard something I have found to be truth. It is ultimately impossible for someone or something to offend us. Indeed they may say or do something that is not proper, but to be offended we must take on the offence inside. It is not a condition that can be forced upon us. We must “choose” to take an offense. Much less of my life has been devoted to being “offended” by others, and doing much better things with my mind and time. You have more power than we know, and for some reason many choose to just give that power away and let it lead to self destruction.