david hayward. artist. cartoonist. teacher.

A primary concern of mine as a pastor, and always has been, is encouraging people who feel spiritually disqualified. There are a lot of them. Religious communities are often very specific on what their members are to believe and how they are to behave. Conformity is usually the strongest dynamic at work.

So when an individual finally realizes that her beliefs have been prescribed and her behavior censured, she has a choice. She either continues in her conformity or, usually at great cost, she examines, explores and expresses her own beliefs and exercises, experiments and embraces her own behavior.

What I see happen most of the time is this person is made to feel uncomfortable and eventually unwelcome in the community. But again, she has a choice. She can choose to boldly continue in her independence and with courage and joy nurture her own spiritual life. Or, as I see happen most of the time, she will continue to allow the condemnation of the community to darken the skies above her and dampen her spirit and cause her to feel spiritually disqualified.

This is what I’m about: to free people within communities whether it means they stay or have to detach; and, once they are individually free, encourage them in their new-found spiritual liberty.

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Isn’t it interesting that those people we admire the most and sometimes even worship in our respective faiths are those who rejected and even opposed the popular religion, the status quo and the contemporary expectations of their peers? We are grateful to them for having the courage borne out of necessity to find out for themselves what the truth is. If they didn’t do it, we believe, then we wouldn’t be where we are today. There are the founding figures like Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Paul, the Buddha, Muhammad, and others. I also think of other figures such as Kirshnamurti, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Chogyam Trungpa, Thomas Merton, Rumi, Heschel, M. L. King Jr., the Dalai Lama, D. T. Suzuki, and so on. Such people have not only broken away from the prescriptions of the past, but have even redefined the belief systems and thought patterns of the faiths or movements they have challenged.

One of the things common to all the above people is that they were thoroughly raised under the tutelage of the faith, belief system, or philosophy of their own people group. However, at some point, signs of their latent heterodoxy poked their heads through the apparent normalcy of their lives. Jesus at just 12 years old showed precocious tendencies when he asked probing questions of the elders. And Krishnamurti who, at a very young age, rejected a career of guaranteed success when he disbanded the Theosophical Society of the Order the Star to teach on his own.

Religious and spiritual communities need to balance these two forces. On the one hand, we need to provide our children with a comprehensive and even deep understanding of our faiths or philosophies, but at the same time provide them with the freedom to explore and discover their own paths. Why, their own path might be a kind of trail blazed for the sake of so many others! But my experience has been that religious communities and cultures provide the former and punish the later. Convention is rewarded and dissension is crucified. You venture too far from center and you are excommunicated.

We need to encourage and honor our pioneers.

Every day I converse with people who have left the organized church. They are very spiritual people interested in living authentic lives of integrity, justice, love and vocation. But they are turned off of the institution we call church. I understand.

I had squirrels in my house once. Do you know how impossible it is to catch a squirrel? If they smell anything human on the bait, you won’t catch them. Same with my children and so many, many of my friends: if there is any sense of a trap, they won’t even come close. They can smell control and manipulation from a mile away. Even if the control is minor and sincere, they won’t take it. Not even a nibble.

Let’s look at the difference between a family and an institution. The problem with an institution is that it requires the sublimation of individual freedom to some degree. I think a healthy family is otherwise: it promotes individual freedom, nurtures it, encourages it and allows its expression. (Now, when it comes to hurting other people or themselves, then it needs to be addressed. Of course.)

Many of my friends and my own children want to be free. They don’t wish to sublimate their own freedom for the sake of an institution’s security or success. How is the church today different than Molech in the Old Testament that required the sacrifice of our own children for its existence? Can we be a collective, a community, a church, without requiring people to sacrifice themselves for it? Can individually free people gather together without allowing the principalities and powers to subtly take precedence and erode their own freedom for the sake of its own life?

My readers, these are serious questions for serious times.

I have homegroup every Wednesday night. Lately I’ve had to drag myself there. Last night was one of those nights. I really didn’t want to go. When this happens, I try to stop and ask myself, “Okay! What’s the real issue here?” I love the people. That’s not the issue. I enjoy being with them. I don’t mind the time involved. Part of my job. I went deeper and got in touch with something I was feeling deep in my gut: I felt the pressure to referee competing and even conflicting theologies. Ah! That’s it. You see, I have a diverse mixture of people who come to the group, whether there are just three of us or twelve or more. Some who come are very conservative in their beliefs and lifestyles. And there are some at the opposite end of the spectrum: very liberal in their beliefs and lifestyles. Sometimes I feel the pressure from people to be the wise guru who will give the proper answer and solve the dilemma. Naturally, people want their pastor to affirm and strengthen their already preciously held beliefs. That veiled pressure was what was bothering me.

Once I discerned this, I felt some relief. I realize my job isn’t to answer their questions or to solve their riddles or to remedy their problems, even though this might be what the people think they need. For instance, there are some in the group who think that in order to be a Christian you have to be a Creationist. Others in the group are blatantly Evolutionists while being Christians. Then there are others in between. I can’t solve that problem. I could wax eloquent about how the story of Genesis is an extended metaphor about how God created ex nihilo, but that doesn’t necessarily negate science’s contributions to the theory of evolution… blah blah blah… But this kind of explanation is usually meaningless to both sides. We don’t change our minds like that. It is usually intellectual trauma that forces change, and it usually ain’t pretty. Which is why we resist such change.

No. My job is to provide a safe context in which people feel free to believe what they believe and still be loved, accepted and even respected in spite of it. What I am interested in is how people of diverse opinion and theologies and lives can dwell together and commit to each other in compassion and peace, and even support one another. It is within that context of freedom that people may grow and feel free to change their minds if they want to. I am to make space for people to be free to undergo personal transformation. Now, that’s what makes my Wednesday evenings so much more interesting and important.

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