Last night I was told about someone… he and his whole family… life-long members of the Christian church… they left the church (not mine but theirs) for certain reasons. They are incredibly wounded because of things that were done to them. Without going into detail… they are done with church. They still love the Lord, but they are devastated, including their children, and they don’t want to risk subjecting themselves to that kind of harm ever again. My immediate verbal and unedited reaction was, “Oh! I love those people!” Not meaning just that particular family, but people like them. I know exactly what they are feeling. I’ve so been there. And my heart is moved deeply by such stories. I care so much for such people. They are my mission field. And it seems to be growing!
I believe they are victims, like many others I know and hear about, including myself. I am a walking survivor of spiritual abuse. I know intimately what it means. These people have suffered at the hands of the church. This is what I care about! I don’t think, I could be wrong, but I don’t think the church has the right to criticize them or challenge them… at least right now. I think they have the right to criticize the church. To criticize us. To criticize me!
If we, as the church, feel we are the church and are concerned about the welfare of all people, then I believe we must listen to all criticisms that are filed against us. Don’t you? I don’t think I am inaccurate to say that the church is guilty of and is constantly accused of abuse against its members. I feel we must listen to this and humbly absorb the possibility of this and make every attempt to rectify this… if we care at all about people like this family.
So, that being said, when someone claims they left the church and the faith because of the treatment he received at our hands, I think all mortal flesh should keep silence and listen to that with fear and trembling. Now is not the time to challenge them, but to challenge ourselves. On the last day, when I stand before the judgment seat, I don’t want to be accused of not listening to my brother just outside my gate, especially if I was possibly the one who locked him out there.
When I went through devastating abuse at the hands of church leaders, I didn’t need fixing. I didn’t need persuading. I didn’t need correcting. I didn’t need to hear their side. All I needed was to be heard. I finally found people that would just listen to me, hear my anguish, affirm my complaint, and love me as wounded as I was. In time, when the sharpness of the wounds subsided and the tears dried and my heart started beating again, I opened my eyes and realized that those very people who were just listening were my community. They’d become my church. They’d given me a spiritual home. And now I feel strengthened to go after the rest splattered all over the battlefield we’ve created.
I realize some might say, “There you go with your generalizations again… we, we, we! You’re not talking about me!” But isn’t it biblical, at times, to take upon ourselves the responsibility of the whole church and even the whole human race? Isn’t is right to occasionally fall on our knees just because we are a part of the human race prone to harming others and a part of an organization prone to abuse, and say, “Guilty as accused!“?
The drawing/ sketch is one of mind, based on an image I saw in a dream recently, called “Jesus Suffers Among Precious Stones”, available as a small print here.
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Jesus, in the face of a centralized hostility towards outsiders, foreigners and the unclean, spoke a message of decentralization, inclusion and the reconciliation of all things. He resisted the official representatives of an exclusive elitism, an insular ideology, a segregational salvation, and a divisive dogma. The people with their leaders had dismally failed in their mission to be a light to the whole world. The early church believed Jesus to be that light that ended the tyranny of darkness over all people and ushered in the new age of the all-embracing God. Paul’s journeys emphasize the universal scope of this love. It was precisely Jesus’ attempts to demolish the traditional and established strongholds of his religion that got him killed. Same with Paul and the Roman world with their pantheon of gods and the Caesars.
It seems to me that our preoccupation with private and personal sins misses the forest for the trees. We are so obsessed with the splinters that float in every one else’s eyes that we are blinded by the log lodged in our own. And, again, I don’t think that log is our personal or private sin, but precisely our compulsive need to make sure others measure up, settle up, line up, buck up, and straighten up. How are we any different than the CEO-s and their lawyers in the gospels? Do we, like they, really think we are doing the right thing by studiously discerning what is and isn’t sin and then sadistically discriminating against those who fail to meet the standards we’ve so soberly determined? Isn’t it possible that Jesus, when he ate and drank with prostitutes, drunkards, tax-collectors, soldiers, gluttons, criminals and foreigners, was living truthfully? Surely he wasn’t just acting symbolically or analogously, a sort of in-living-color demonstration that this is how God would act if he were here. Neither do I think he lived with them as an outreach. I think he was with them because they were his friends who constituted his kingdom. He told the religious that prostitutes were going into the kingdom ahead of them… no mention of reformed prostitutes… just prostitutes! Is it possible that we still don’t get it?
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I made a comment on one of my own previous blog posts that perhaps the narrow way isn’t so much a prescribed way to think and live, but the way of love and unity. I’ll be writing more on this later today. It seems to me that we’ve been required to love unconditionally as it has been shown to us. Instead, generally speaking, it seems that in the wake of our own reception of mercy, we go out into the world proclaiming who’s out and who’s in. In the afterglow of our own inclusion, we proceed to exclude others from community.
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They assure me
I’m among friends.
They say they love me
like their God does.
Oh how I hope it is true!
Could it be, that I could
find a place to be and rest?
Where I could belong?
I fear with all my might
that they will see
the me that’s inside of me.
I edit my words.
I tell my story with caution.
I read their faces.
for any reaction
that says I don’t belong.
He cracks a harmless joke.
But a word was used
that’s always used
against me and my kind.
Like a turtle, I’ll let them
eye my presentable shell.
But my self will stay hid.
I alone belong with me.
The image is a cropped portion of the artist Tim Lowly’s painting, Testimony of Transience (Steve the “Queer”).
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Some people treat the book as though it were some kind of ancient document of magical formulas. Just believe in a correct way, speak things in a proper way, and all your wishes will come true. When I watch what goes on on television and in some books I read, I sometimes feel like I’m at a magic show. Smoke and mirrors. Have you read Joan Didion’s book, The Year of Magical Thinking? Her husband suddenly dies, and she realizes that the following year was a year of thinking magically. That is… she realizes in her own self-analysis that she catches herself believing that if a person hopes for something enough or performs the right actions that an unavoidable event can be averted or something good can happen that one wishes for. I hear her! An analogy, in many ways, for many things. Silly rabbit! Tricks are for kids!
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I watched a film the other night, Factory Girl. It is about Edie Sedgwick, a rich, young woman who became a part of pop-artist Andy Warhol’s groupies who hung out in his art studio, called “the factory”. I enjoyed the film, even while I found it disturbing.
Warhol is portrayed as an immature, egocentric, blood-sucking leech on the lives of the rich young people he exploited. The whole time I watched the movie I was thinking about Picasso, another artist, who seems to have been the same with those around him. And the whole time I’m watching this movie and thinking about these narcissistic men, I’m thinking about how easy it is for those with powerful personalities and charisma to use those who gather around them, to live off of the adoration of their groupies, to even destroy the lives of those who love them.
I’m fully aware of this dynamic because, as someone who oversees a community, the temptation to let the appreciation, respect or adoration of those you care for feed your ego is enormous and perpetual. I’ve allowed adoration and used it to position me above others. But I’ve been on the other end too… more than once… where I’ve allowed my adoration of a man (which in itself is questionable enough!) to feed his sense of power and importance, while depriving me of my individuality, autonomy, and self-respect. I often wish I could relive those times. But I can’t. They are gone.
However, I can learn from them. And I have. I have learned to never adore another person, no matter how powerful or charismatic or influential. I’ve learned never to elevate another person above myself but to see myself as equal because I am. I’ve learned to not nurture adoration from others. I’ve learned to question appreciation and have tried to learn to live and work without a need for it. I’ve learned to debase myself in the face of admiration. I’ve learned to refuse elevation above others. I’ve learned to be discerning when it comes to charisma in others, especially if it’s cultured. I’ve learned to be skeptical of magnetism in leaders. In other words, I’ve learned to become completely suspicious of anything that sniffs of pride, arrogance and pomp, as well as the children of these: manipulation, control and exploitation. The world abounds in these, and organized religion is at the epicenter of it all.
The photo is the creation of my friend, Mark Hemmings.
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I think most of our thinking, attitudes, policies and behavior is exclusivist, when I think the message is inclusivist. That’s why it is called good news. It is for community, not segregation. Our task is to recognize the reality of this unity established in the good news and live it. We are not to divide, but unite, not partition but integrate. We leave the rest up to the Mystery.
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Last night I had a very disturbing dream. In my dream there are many lesbians as a part of our community. In fact, it looks like the entire cast of the television show, The L Word. They are my dear friends, brothers and sisters of mine that I love and enjoy. But the disturbing part is when they decide they have to leave. They find that the institution is becoming increasingly unfriendly, unkind and adversarial for them, and that they feel they have no choice, really, but to leave. Well, they do have a choice: stay if you promise to change into something else, or leave if you won’t. I feel as though I must stay behind in order to encourage and nurture an inclusive community of love, so their departure feels permanent and painful. I weep with deep sorrow and wake up crying.
I immediately realize that this doesn’t just apply to gays, but to all kinds of people because of race, creed, religion, social status, economics, and even personality types. The lesbians in my dream represent, for me, all those who must continually struggle within community because they are different. They not only have to fight for a place, but for their basic rights. I long to experience a community of broad diversity, and it seems increasingly impossible to realize. Of course, this must have been what, in part, inspired today’s cartoon.
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What gets me so many times in talking with others who have left communities is that they felt they were expected to conform to a standard which in essence was intended to kill their personalities. Many people don’t see it as an invitation to new life but to no life. Often, it is uniqueness of character that expresses itself in unusual and radical ways that offend.
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Something very good has happened to our community. If you haven’t been following along with my blog, in a nutshell… we sold some land and after over a decade of financial stress, we’ve suddenly paid off our mortgage. The benefits of this abound, one of them being that I suddenly don’t have to wonder if I’m going to get my next paycheck.
Theories abound as to why this has happened to us. As curious, existential, human beings we’re always trying to figure out the cause and effect of life. We’re always trying to find the secret to success (in order to secure it) and the formula for failure (in order to prevent it). Some of the theories are:
- We are being rewarded for our perseverance. I couldn’t tell you how many times we nearly threw in the towel but decided to give it one more Sunday, one more month. Almost everybody else concluded we were dead in the water and would never recover from such devastation. And frequently I felt that way. However, eleven years later we are still going… by the skin of our teeth… when out of the blue we are approached by a company offering us a proposal to buy land that we couldn’t refuse. Overnight, we might conclude, our perseverance paid off.
- Several years after the split in 1997, we made a risky financial decision to give away to charity and other struggling churches 10% of whatever income we made. We did this as a step of trust. We were going to be generous no matter what the cost, even if it meant not paying me. Some believe that it is because of our financial sacrifice that we are being rewarded financially.
- The split in 1997 was horrendous and I would never want to experience that again. It was nasty and cruel and devastating. We had to hold to a difficult decision that cost us almost everything. We felt that we were doing the right thing, in spite of the consequences. We became the laughingstock, the reproach of almost all of our neighbors. Now, some might believe that this is our vindication, the final proof that we were right all along and that we are finally being exonerated in everyone’s eyes.
- I feel one of the issues that caused so many people to get upset and split away from us was because I was liberal in my treatment of others. For those who were very conservative and perhaps more religious saw this as a libertine… an unfortunate and dangerous thing. It was the equivalent of endorsing sin. Others saw my approach as liberating, and finally found a community in which they could discover and express their unique authenticity. Some might believe that this sudden financial release is a public endorsement of who we are and what we are about.
I could go on. I don’t know if any one of the above “causes” brought about the “effect” we are enjoying now. In fact, we just don’t know, can’t know, and mustn’t know. We don’t even know if there is a cause and effect, a connection between something we do and a result. This is one of the greatest mysteries of life, that we can neither know our deepest motives nor the guarantee of the intended result. No one knows the heart of people and what goes on in our inner thoughts, not even ourselves. We would love to believe that if we do this, that will happen. We would be thrilled if The Secret were true. But it isn’t! We have no idea if this financial development in our community is because of any value we possess, any good we’ve done, or whether it is just an act of mercy, a gracious move of deliverance from years of stress, struggle and sacrifice. Some would question even that.
This kind of cause and effect reasoning is inevitable in our minds but futile. The opposite could be true: that we suffered for over a decade because of a bad decision we made in 1997 and that we were being justly punished for it. And now that the time of our judgment was up, we are finally released. Again, we just don’t know. We simply have to humbly acknowledge that in spite of our good, we may suffer, and in spite of our evil, we may live abundantly. In any case, I have learned that at all times the proper posture is the embracing of both repentance and gratitude, dying and living, sorrow and rejoicing.
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David Hayward is an artist trapped in a pastor's body, stripping to the essential.
