http://www.nakedpastor.com/2012/05/21/spiritually-displaced-is-not-unspiritual/ http://www.nakedpastor.com/2012/05/21/spiritually-displaced-is-not-unspiritual/#comments Mon, 21 May 2012 20:46:19 +0000 nakedpastor http://www.nakedpastor.com/?p=11281

Last week I wrote a post on spiritual refugees (people who have left the church and experience feelings of spiritual homelessness) and spiritually displaced persons (those who are still within the church and experience it as unhealthy for them but feel trapped at the same time). This is who I care about.

We are all free people. Whether we’ve left the institution or remain within it. We are all free. What’s important to remember is that, just like a refugee or an internally displaced person, they never lose their identity. Let’s say someone has fled Serbia as a refugee and has a brother remaining in Serbia who is afraid of his own safety. Does this make them any less Serbian? No, not at all. The same if you are a spiritual refugee or a spiritually displaced person: you are no less Christian, no less a believer, and no less spiritual… unless of course you want to willingly surrender these identities. If you have left the church or have found it mainly harmful and have experienced, as a result of your beliefs, opinions or attitudes, rejection from the institution and its leaders and members, this does not make you valueless.

In fact, it could be argued that you are healthier for taking your stand and making your move.

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I like this new posture. The right hand is peaceful and receptive. The left hand is defiant and non-conformist.

I think this is a good way to be.

Buy a print of this cartoon!

This is the caliber of some of my readers. Syl responded to me by email after she had read one of my posts. I invited her to share this on my blog, and she left it as a comment on yesterday’s post Are You a Spiritual Refugee?. I again wrote her and told her that I meant would she allow me to post it as a guest post. She gave me her consent.

Her story, though profound, is not unusual among my readers. So so many would identify with a relate to what she writes:

I was and IDP and then a refugee.

Yesterday’s post took me back to a long-ago incident. I wrote down my thoughts about it but hesitated to share it here. However, it applies to today’s post as much as to yesterday’s – maybe even more:

What might be called my first “psychic break” from the Christianity I’d been immersed in for several years came when I was 20. I’d returned home from almost a year on the road with a gospel choir because my dad had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. No, the trigger for this change was not the fact of his illness. Yes, I did go through an emotional “if only” syndrome: feeling that if only I’d been a better daughter it might not have happened – yet at the same time I recognized that as an irrational but common emotional reaction. I also flirted with the idea of trying to bribe God by making outlandish promises if only he’d perform a miracle – but knew that was also an irrational but common emotional response.

I didn’t believe that either God or the devil had anything to do with it – or karma or luck or anything mystic or magical. Bad things happen to good people. I believed that what mattered was how we reacted to things and that God was there to comfort, support, and provide guidance – not to wave a magic wand and make it go away. I believed that prayer was most beneficial to the one who prayed – it wasn’t an incantation or spell that would change the external world or alter God’s mind, but would instead change the person praying. Praying wasn’t about getting things – it was about seeking wisdom. It wasn’t about “God change them” but “God change me”.

I knew my outlook was different than most of my Christian acquaintances, and radical to the crowd my family and I fellowshipped with. We belonged to a mega-church that was on the cutting edge of the apostolic, headship / submission, and prosperity fads that were becoming all the rage. I’d had well meaning church members try to fit me into their one-size-fits-all box many times. But as annoying, frustrating, and depressing as that could be, as mind-bending, manipulative, and confidence-destroying as it was, I hadn’t considered leaving. But when Dad got sick, I saw and felt the response of these “good” people for what it was – cold, hard, rigid dogma utterly lacking in compassion, empathy, or any type of wisdom or truth.

You see, the verdict was that it was all Dad’s fault. Not because he’d smoked a pipe for years (although he’d quit at least five years earlier) or that he breathed Mom’s second hand cigarette smoke for decades. Those were, actually, very likely real, physical contributing factors. But no, that wasn’t the problem (except to the extent that smoking was considered to be a sin and therefore placed the smoker outside of God’s protection). No, the awful sin that caused this terrible calamity was much worse. It wasn’t even that Dad had married Mom – a divorcee – all those years ago. Of course, that certainly didn’t help things – it wasn’t the proximate cause, but was evidence of – well, something. I’m not sure what, but it was enough to prevent Dad from becoming a deacon. Never mind that Mom left her first husband for reasons that would make most “good Christians” cringe. Ignore the fact that Dad embraced not only his wife, but adopted her child as his own, fathered two more, and had been, by that time, married for almost 30 years. That he’d married a divorced woman made him unworthy of acting as a leader in the church.

So, what was the really awful thing that placed my father out of God’s protection and put him in a position of vulnerability where Satan could smite him with a brain tumor? Why – hold your breath – he and Mom did not regularly attend a home “cell” group and place themselves under the “covering” of a “shepherd”. Oh, on Sundays they both taught Sunday school and attended both morning and evening worship services. Dad was an usher, and entrusted with processing the collection (he was a financial comptroller by profession). They also attended Wednesday evening worship service. Dad was also a troop leader in the church’s version of Boy Scouts. They hosted weekly bible study/fellowship groups. And they varied their attendance at a couple of different home groups. They also more than tithed. But they hadn’t bought in to the latest fad for micromanaging church member’s lives. They said the pastor was their pastor and God didn’t require them to submit to any type of “covering” beyond his grace. That was the great sin that, according to far too many of those “good” people, landed Dad in the ICU.

Those who believed that rubbish were quite vocal about it – and not only to each other in their own homes or at church. They phoned Mom and told her what they thought. They said it to my face in the hospital. And I realized that they were far more lost than anyone they’d ever consigned to hell – hard-hearted, blind, doing wickedness in the name of good.

I remember sitting outside in a garden next to the hospital, realizing that I’d come to an intersection. I had nothing in common with most of the people I’d been going to church with and little in common with the remainder. I knew that I would never again try to be what was expected or to fit in with them. I knew I had a choice – I could squash everything good and alive and hopeful and creative and unique about me and pretend to be like one of the group, or I could resolve to be true to myself and what I knew to be right.

I’d like to say that at that point I left the church in general and began walking a very different path, but that was a long evolutionary process. I did leave that particular church – reluctantly, and not immediately. Even then, I didn’t give up my membership for years. It was more than a decade before I left church behind entirely and still more years before I realized that what had been faith had metamorphosed into something entirely different.

Thanks so much Syl for being so kind and open as to share this amazing story.

USEFUL THEOLOGICAL TOOLS: Buy a print of this cartoon!

Something to learn is that there is a lot to unlearn. At some important juncture you realize that a lot of what you’ve believed was to support an imaginary idea, someone else’s vision, or a neurosis.

Chuck it!

It is best to travel light to travel long.

A refugee is, by definition,

a person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.

So a spiritual refugee is someone who has a well-founded fear of being the subject of hostility or ill treatment because of his or her spiritual condition and who has left the church and is unable or unwilling to avail him or herself of the church’s protection and services.

Or, if you have not yet left the church, perhaps you are an Internally Displaced Person. An IDP is someone who,

has not crossed the border but shares many characteristics with refugees. They also cannot avail themselves of international law because they remain inside their own country. They are largely inaccessible to outside monitors and assistance because they remain within their borders.

So a spiritual internally displaced person is someone who is still within the church but who receive ill treatment and hostility because they have nowhere else to go. They feel trapped and that they have no recourse.

This is the problem with those who grow discontent with the church. They are either in unhappily or out altogether. It is a terrible choice to make that some find liberating and others find extremely terrifying. Just like refugees and internally displaced persons.

Perhaps you are a good and happy citizen of a good and happy church. In which case I am genuinely happy for you. I would encourage you to remember and do what you can for those I’ve been writing about above.

But if you find yourself within the church and feel that it has become detrimental to your spiritual health, or if you have left the church for this very reason, then it might be helpful to understand yourself as a refugee or an internally displaced person.

I will write more about this tomorrow.

I claim that in Jesus there are no boundaries. There are no edges. There is no center. All in all. None included. None excluded. The differences and divisions, separations and segregations are all inspired, fabricated, endorsed and enforced by the human race.

We are all already one. It is a present reality. Our task is to make it manifest.

(This cartoon first appeared on Believe Out Loud.)

When I pastored churches I spent a lot of time in hospitals visiting the sick. This happened so many times. It has also happened in my own life. In the face of this paradoxical mystery, easy answers sound as ridiculous as they are.

There’s another option. Why not see them as just people?

Now there’s a novel idea!