After this post from the other day, I got some responses that seemed to say, “We’re glad you’re back!” But I’m not back. I haven’t returned the same man. Even though I sensed a strong recall of what I’m to be doing: inviting people to freedom, and once they’re there or on the way, to work to provide a community where this freedom is not jeopardized. And this, I’ve come to experience and know, is rare as hen’s teeth!
You see, once I’d seen the dark side of organized religion and managed spirituality, I would be a fool to go back into it the same way. I have seen the dark side… many times. I could solve it personally by retreating into the solitary life of a hermit. And believe me, I’ve been seriously tempted. But that’s not my task. My task is to do what I said above, and that requires community. How can people be free and also love others? Is it possible for a liberated person to commit themselves to others? Is it possible to be a free person as well as a part of a group or even society? Is it possible to be free as well as responsible? Is it possible to be free and married? Is it possible to be free and have children? Is it possible to be a child and be free? Is it possible to be free at all in community? These are serious questions that must be asked by communities and their so-called “leaders” everywhere, never mind religious ones. But nobody seems to be asking them.
What seems to be consuming our time is exploring how to make our loss of freedom more tolerable. We are more concerned with how to make the community more pious, permanent, plausible and prosperous without making coercion, manipulation, abuse and bondage too obvious or distasteful. We are so into means-to-an-end theology that everybody everywhere seems willing to sacrifice their liberties for the sake of the herd. To me, this is a critical mistake and a fatal error, not only to the individual but to the community. We are like a dysfunctional family protecting an alcoholic. No one’s willing to rock the boat by addressing the real problem. Rather, we tweak, adjust, fine-tune, renovated, reform and accommodate in order for the community to succeed according to its own wishes. There really does seem to be only two options out there: leave the community in order to be free; or give up freedom for the sake of the community. Neither, in my opinion, is healthy or helpful. There must be another way, but so few seem to care.
The fine art photograph is the creation of my friend Howard Nowlan. It is cropped for your viewing pleasure. I used it today in reference to being “back“. Haha.
Contributions to nakedpastor are greatly appreciated.
David Hayward is a pastor artistically stripping to the essential.
” leave the community in order to be free; or give up freedom for the sake of the community. Neither, in my opinion, is healthy or helpful. There must be another way, but so few seem to care.”
There is no other way. For me, it is very hard to merge the two options without compromising the goal for each one of them. It is either of the two, choose freedom or slavery of the organized church.
“You can not serve both master, either you hate the other one and love the other or vice versa.”
It’s true that so few seem to care. And those that do care are easily overwhelmed by the massive question marks staring them in the face. When trying to meld the concepts of freedom and the organized church, I feel overwhelmed. It’s the same way I feel when considering what I can do about things like human trafficking and the AIDS epidemic and poverty and worldwide hunger.
The issues are so big; I am so small.
The issues are so complex; I am simple minded.
But I just can’t pretend the issues are not there.
They keep popping up; they haunt me.
I appreciate your struggle, David. I’m praying for you. I’m praying for me. I’m praying for believers everywhere who are being yanked well beyond their comfort zones when wrestling with these supposedly compatible (but usually dueling) entities of freedom and the church. The church as I have known it is dying; I don’t know whether to celebrate or weep.
Love is so bloody hard but it’s the only way. Almost don’t want to name it because I’m not worthy of it. But I’m gunna. I have to try and love my brother or sister with every ounce of respect that I know I’m worth. I have to find the balance between wanting to understand them and also understand myself. I want both – all of us – to grow. I don’t want to be afraid.
Please help us.
I actually just posted something similar to this.
I guess great minds think alike… and possibly think the same things at or around the same times?
In regard to the other day’s post, I think I was just glad to see you feel you still had a job to do, albeit a tough one.
We are all in a tough place right now. My own family is in that place. My sons do not see the church as a place of love and sincerity, yet what is the alternative? To stay home on Sunday and think they are going to have their own worship time? (That is SO not going to happen.) And if it did happen, are we not isolating ourselves from community, and neglecting our opportunities to lift others up?
You are right AB,
sometimes even if we don’t want to go to church because of the system, we still go because we can still influence others and lift up their faith.
I commented on the other day, maybe I should have placed it here…
The thing that is so compelling about this picture is that we are believers that have been deceived if we simply trust the ‘assembly’ and blindly follow.
but how? how do we take it back for Jesus? How do we fight to help them see that in their busyness towards ‘holy-ness’ they are prisoners?
prayer, yes, ’tis true, but aren’t we ‘His hands and feet”?
I think the awnser to your freedom question does lie in community, but the community you talked about in your last post isn’t it.
I have moved churches a number of times in my short 19 years of life, mostly because I’ve been pushed out the door for the way I want to do things. I got tired of people being shocked that I had issues, and all that lies with the fact that they have litterally ‘grown up in the church’, they knew what pain is in the real world but chose to ignore it. It’s these people, the ones who want to deny whats really out there, are the ones who are most likely to hold tightly to the way churches conform.
The churches that I’ve found who have drug addicts and homeless and everyone else are the churches that I’ve found to be most free in what they say and do. What I’m really trying to say is that if you put a whole bunch of christians in there bubbles in one room, it’s going to be dreafully hard to change the way the church works, because there all the same. What you need is a whole bunch of, how you described, free people. Then what people want in a church service will change too, and they need to change cos frankly I hate the never changing sing, give sing, talk, sing, get out. There isn’t any heart, it’s just a formular.
By the sounds of it, what your trying to do is on the way to being like that, and if you find some like minded people that want to help along the way, so be it. Having a bunch of like minded people who are in the same mindset as you wont be the same as having just another bunch of like minded people content on fitting together. Lol, this is an extremally long first comment. I’ll leave it there… hope you got my point anyway
AB, good to see you’re forcing your sons to do what they don’t want to do or aren’t interested in. Teach those little blighters who’s boss! Freedom of thought indeed! Pfft.
David, why is leaving the community unhealthy or unhelpful? There are other communities that may be better suited to your increasingly enlightened mindset.
I find your last paragraph very disturbing.
Especially the second sentence.
Very disturbing indeed.
My speciality in the business world, is creating repeatable operating systems with predictable outcomes. Meaning I figure out how to make the same thing happen in different situation. Why yes I do work for a frachise that is trying to produce the same meal across the approximately 15,000,000 square miles of the US and Canada. That is what most churchs try to accomplish as well. The only way to make that succeed though, is to make everyone fit the mold needed to make it work. There in lies the rub. We are not to fit the man made mold, but God’s mold that he has made individually for each of us. So trying to make people fit that mold is contraditory to God’s wishes. So for each church that has that aim, they are outside the will of God.
Freedom is also a reletive term. Abolishing laws, to create total freedom, would end in anarchy, that would create other prisons. The strong would pray on the weak. Then the weak would be confined to certain behavior to survive.
True freedom is when we choose what restrictions we want. It is the choice that creates the freedom. Creating rules that allow choices, creates freedom. It is when we create rules that abolish choice, is when we have created a prison state.
to: bewilderedbutnotbroken.
i am “brokenbutbeloved”.
be strong!
Oops, Darren, you are off the mark on this. We never try to force faith down our kids’ throats. What would be the point of that? Your faith in God has to be your own. No one can force a real faith on you.
As Christian parents, we have felt it was our job to expose them to it and raise them in an environment with Christian values. We have told them exactly that. We have told them that this is what we believe, and we want to share it with you. Then, as an adult, you will make your own faith choices.
They do not choose to attend church with us regularly at this age, and we do not force it. But to have never given them any education about the faith or exposure to the church community would have been very irresponsible, I think, as a believing parent. What they do with it now will be their choice.
They usually like to go with us if we are going out to eat after:)
so sad to discover your struggle . . . . but grateful to find others who are asking similar questions. I guess I had never put my search into this particular frame of reference, but I’ve often wondered why we are so disconnected within this Body, this community? Perhaps if we could be more loving and understanding of one another (not suggesting that “anything goes”, just that we embrace one another right where we are and then move forward) . . . . . . I just wonder if that might take care of some of the legalism that has wounded all of us. We all need to return with changed hearts and minds! Thanks for the provocative post!
PS to “bewilderedbutnotbroken” and “brokenbutbeloved,” . . . . . continue on, for with the encouragement of one another, we are sure to find the answers.
“We are like a dysfunctional family protecting an alcoholic. No one’s willing to rock the boat by addressing the real problem”
Totally agree. There are so many people around me who are deep, spiritual, holy people and yet can’t find a church that doesn’t squash them. Plus politics has invaded the christian church here in the U.S. so now you have to prove your a republican and against homosexual marriage in order to attend. Insane. I have a small group of people who I know meet with….we left the church and now meet on our own. you don’t need a building. keep rocking the boat…..its a good time for a swim.
Good morning! just had to reply to Trent’s message . . . . my fear of “rocking the boat” is what kept me hiding behind my mask of “Perfection” for so long it nearly destroyed me. I was terrified that if anyone in my church community knew what was really happening in my 25 year marriage, that they would blame ME, reject and abandon me, all for telling the truth. And when I finally broke, I discovered that I had been right all along! Most of my Christian friends condemned me and blamed me because the truth was too difficult for them to cope with. . .but time does have a way of revealing the truth, and healing broken hearts. We would all be so much healthier if we felt safe in being honest. If we could address the “real problems” in our lives, we might not be so broken. I jumped, had to swim for a pretty long time, but have now reached a place of peace and safety. Great discussion you started here, Oh Great Naked Pastor!
) Nina
I haven’t read all 17 comments before mine so I hope I’m not repeating anything but here is my take on your post:
I think you are right that our institutional christendom in the West is largely managed spirituality in which the church has been hijacked by a group of people with one set of gifts (pastor/teachers) and homogenizing behavior, culture, and style is more important than service to God and our neighbors. Building monolithic “sanctuaries” using institutions that look more like corporatins than communities has become the prison we worship in, tying up man-hours and financial resources needed to actually fulfill the Great Commission.
I think the reason it it is hard to marry freedom with community, however, is because our definitions of freedom and community may not be how God defines them.
Galations 5 says this:
1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. 2 Indeed I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing. 3 And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law. 4 You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace. 5 For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love.
7 You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? 8 This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you. 9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump. 10 I have confidence in you, in the Lord, that you will have no other mind; but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is.
11 And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased. 12 I could wish that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off!
13 For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.†15 But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!
So I think we are truly free – but freedom is to be used to love God and love our neighbors. And I would argue that only when we are committed to truly loving each other in community can we effectively love our neighbors and meet their practical needs (James 1). As social creatures committed to serving God and our neighbors, how hard can community be if we quit seeing community through the “church-filters” we’ve being seeing the world through for most of Church history? Seeing God, freedom, and community without churchianity’s filters is the hard part…
I may not be very articulate but hopefully that makes sense…?
That’s a strong mission, np. “inviting people to freedom.” I applaud that.
Recovering, I think you have summed up what has been discussed well. Thank you for using scripture.
I have been churchless for nigh on to 5 years due to the crush of disunity. I have been feeling the lack of fellowship and community due to my choice to abstain from ‘church’. Thanks be to all of you for the conversation. i was beginning to feel isolated and … bewildered…hmmm
In Christ we are free, but it is difficult to see that freedom when we are constantly battling the majority.
I know it is there, I know it is there, I truly believe that all we need is Jesus and He will carry us through ~ thanks everyone for being His hands and feet. Thanks for the fellowship, and especially thanks naked pastor for opening up a place for it to be discussed.
Freedom, what a concept!