She watched the group of people. They were singing and swaying their hands back and forth to the music. The leader kept singing, "hallelujah to the Lamb". She watched him and she watched the people and none of it made sense to her any more. She closed her eyes and allowed her mind take her back to a time that it did. She remembered being up on that stage, just like the man and leading the singing. At the time it made sense. At the time it was right. She slowly opened her eyes and looked around, shook her head, it doesn't make sense any more. It doesn't seem right any more. I'm not the same, she slowly seemed to understand what that meant.
I'm not the same. Today we drove by our old church. The cars were packed in and apart of me longed to be in that church. Another part of me didn't. Unsafe people lie within that building. People that have knowingly turned their back to pain they have caused and still have not acknowledged it are there, leading the church even. I couldn't walk back in there.
Today while Blake we sleeping I turned on some random channel on the t.v. It ended up having some kindof CCM Festival. I watched the crowds and I watched the performers and I realized I don't understand that lifestyle any more. On top of which I realized I don't fit in that lifestyle. And it brought me back to our old church and it made me think about the church we were visiting for awhile.
I'm not the same any more. I don't know that I will ever be able to walk into a building of Christians again. The buildings for me have become like a warning signal. "DON'T ENTER!!!! DANGER DANGER!!!!" The symbol they hold is a fake reality, a small world view, a small God view, a sheltered view, a hate for community, a hate for hurt people, and the hate for honesty. Some of you shake your head and you think, "oh, not my church. not me. if you knew me..." No you see I know you. I was you. I didn't understand people who could not enter a church. I looked down upon them. Thinking they must have this horrible relationship with God, the whole time hiding the horrible one I had, thinking that if only they joined in they would be enlightened and things would change. I don't see that any more. I stand outside the mass and I see the mess. I look down at myself and I see the scars of years of my own denial, but others denial as well.
So now I'm out here. I look around. I long to be in, but knowing if I do I die. I don't know too many people who understand what it is like to try to enter back in and when others realize you aren't the same the second rejection does to you. I had that situation. And although it was not the visiting church, it was too closely tied to what had happened. I haven't been able to get myself to go back there since. When I think about them, I think about the message that was told from the pulpit or I think about the person who kept harping and telling my husband to change.
Right now I just need a community to walk into and just be ok. That my husband is ok. Where he is not judged as a smarty pants and needs to be cornered and shutup until he fits their standards. Where I can cry about the hurt of my words being tangled and mangled for someone's gain. Where I'm not some "hot property" to add to someone's community, but as a soul who is on the journey, looking for other souls who are there as well. Where the gossip doesn't exist and the history of its pain is not there. I want to sit in a community and see something real. Not the fake "Sunday smile". I can't take that smile. Where I can say that I have struggled to even bother to read the bible and even try to speak a prayer is ok. To look into someone's eyes and see that they understand that pain, that frustration, and that journey. A community where the words, "well, the bible says so" or "what does the bible say" does not exist. The raping of the bible is frowned upon, but honest looking into God's word is taken seriously and no one is looking to behold the ultimate truth, but just wanting to behold The Truth (for those who don't understand that, then I suggest move on from this post). Where all voices are welcome. Not the voices of some, but all the deep readers, the shallow thinkers, the dreamers, the logical, the illogical, and so many more come together and form the a journey, a journey towards Christ.
I don't think that community exists. Its what I want. Its what I need and I know others need it as well. I have been shown, at least in "my world", that people don't want it to exist. They want to be kept in their huddles. The thing is I heard the "break" and I have broken out of the huddle. I've been out of it for a long time and I'm still wondering where the play is going to be made. I have my hands ready for the ball, I have my ears open for the call, and to be honest I'm wondering if I just misheard. I feel as though I was awoken from a good dream and I look around me and what I thought I was being called to was some big mistake. I don't know who God is. Y'all I can't even begin to tell you any more what he wants or where he is going. To be honest, I'm just another "dork" waiting. I don't behold all answers of God like I used to think I did. All I hold any more are questions and anger. That is it. That is all I've got, period. Nice, huh? Boy and you thought this build up was to something. Nope, it wasn't. Its just to here and this is where I'm at. Ugly isn't it? Lonely too. I even have realized I have taken some steps back, because when you have friends telling you, "man can you tell me before hand if I get on your bad side?" you know things are pretty bad. At this point I don't know what else to be. Everything else didn't work. Faking it till I made it failed. Being real, well that got me and my husband booted. Heck, speaking it out loud into reality hasn't helped either.
I'm not the same any more. I'm different. I'm not fit. I'm far gone. And what does all that mean? All I know is, I'm outside the mess. You figure everything else out from there.
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6 comments:
It's a shock, and, it is ACTUALLY a relief to find someone saying that such could really happen.
I do know that that sort of shock really DOES exist, and that it can bring one to real self-hatred, and all because one feels that it can't be others, not CHRISTIAN others, who are wrong, and oneself right, so therefore there must be something wrong with oneself, or else somebody ELSE would certainly notice the profile of a given community, and so on.
Um, yes, God really IS what he says He is, and yes, the Lord DOES open up other Christian communities that are much less at fault in the ways you might have found. yet, at the same time, they are far from being perfect communities, but, of course, it wasn't that you were looking for that.
However, it's good to have that initial disillusionment, in a way. It helps one be very plain in what the gospel is and is not, and just look for the basics, maybe.
I, personally, felt so much self-hatred from a Christian community at one point that it was dangerous. Domestically, I had everything to live for, and, in other ways, I did, as well.
However, when the Christian community seems to turn on us, it is so close, in our minds, to being of Christ, that we feel that He, somehow, has turned against us, because, after all they represent Him, right?
We MUST remember that Church at Laodicea, so often representative of some of our modern age. Where was Jesus? He was OUTSIDE the door.
He is with us until the end of the age.
It is also true that the APPARENT church will have huge apparent growth, but not all of it -- whether you are talking about persons or atmospheres -- will be based on the truth.
It is good, in a way -- in the long run -- to be thrown into a position in which we're FORCED to analyze the church.
When we're in a position in which we're 'at ease in Zion,' we're less inclined to do so. When its practices or its persons are difficult for us, we then become encouraged to be far more analytical. And that's good.
Just as a ballpark idea, consider the following -- if you were, say, attending a Presbyterian church, the name of which [presbyter] puts the idea of ELDERSHIP to the fore, wouldn't you be surprised if the people there had little idea about elders? You would think, well, that they would at least know about THAT, no? since it would be one of their distinctives? You'd think they'd be falling down on the job a bit if they did not understand something that maybe their ancestors or predecessors had actually DIED for?
If you were attending a Baptist church, would you not be surprised if the people there DIDN'T baptize? Wouldn't that be one of the things they'd know, for sure, maybe? Something that THEIR predecessors had been drowned for, in Europe, eh?
What about a Church of Christ that had never thought about the word 'restoration'? Or, at least, the concept?
Of course, in all these cases, we'd want the people to think first about being 'born again,' but right now, we're talking about those who had been, but were not really into their Bible studies really well.
I'm thinking that if you were in a church that is by definition "brethren" and the folks there were relegating a great deal of the ministry to relatively professional ministry [and that's not the nature of the distinctives of their group, eh?], would you not be inclined to think that some people weren't terribly keen on the things in the Bible that had, in THEIR case, been something right up front and visible?
And if they were not interested in what, in their group, would be the most obvious aspect of Bible study, how much would they be paying to matters other than that relating to godliness? They would be, perhaps, resting on their lees, and that's not a great position -- not commended in the Bible.
If they had relegated the ministry to professionals, then, what would that say about their opinion of eldership, or their vision for it?
If a group has let their own PARTICULAR distinctives slide to that extent, I don't know as I'd expect too much of them on other fronts.
Julie
I sent you an e-mail, please read it. I think you'll be surprised by what I had to say.
Hugs,
Karen
Julie, dear, you're a nice gal, you stand by your man, you're a sweet lamb pie. As a President of yours said, "Don't let the turkeys get you down!"
Like, the psalm about the mountains being thrown into the depths of the sea is sometimes a physical circumstance, but is sometimes also, maybe, an emotional one. Everything can go out of place. REALLY OUT OF PLACE.
Um -- we DO have an adversary when we try to do the right thing. The idea is to discourage us, no?
And, well, if we were always doing the WRONG thing, well, would that adversary put the gears on us much, then? No.
It's a storm. It will subside. People who are adversarial now may not be the ones that will be so,later.
In any case, our battles aren't REALLY against the people. Even against the people who seem to be presently against us. There's a spiritual warfare going on, and they might have been given wrong ideas from some source that they will correct, later.
The hour can be dark. VERY, VERY dark. That doesn't mean, in my experience, that the dawn does not come. If no dawn were coming, the Adversary would have no reason to discourage us, anyway, to make us lose our nerve, to have us write off the whole business as a bad job.
It seems to be a common experience, to have those bad and confusing times. When the 'right' people aren't with us. Think of the various characters in Scripture. David, et cetera.
Sometimes, bad things come because we're doing bad. Sometimes, bad things come because we're doing right. Sometimes, bad things come not in relation to either of those two factors. In any case, most of the time, we do a mixture of the two, so it's a confusing thing.
Jules
I agree that our struggle is not against flesh and blood.
To be very clear it is against spiritual powers and principalities including those at work in the institutional church !
Yes, and no doubt there are going to be people crying that one shouldn't see a demon behind every bush and that christians can't be demonised.
But they can be decieved .
and willingly decieved.
And that is what I am talking about. Spirits of legalism and self righteousness and spiritual pride and judgementalism don't operate in bars and clubs, they aren't to be found amoungst the hedonists.
You know that I have been exactly where you are now, in some ways I still am. I will never trust 'the leaders' and I will never trust 'the church' unthinkingly ever again. I will always weigh what is going on against scripture and against what the Spirit says to me, and against the wisdom of univolved christian friends (some of them even in Canada ;) ).
So I have been there are I know how dark it can be. I don't think that growing in maturity means that we will ever have a happy childhood in the church again.
Maybe God will lead you to spend time in another branch of the IC, maybe he has other plans. But either way you won't believe that system, you won't believe, ever again that leadership equates to holiness or even honesty, that just because people wear sheeps clothing that they are not wolves.
Andrew
Hey Jewelze :)
Long time no comment :(
The below really helps me when I get frustrated with community/IC stuff...it's a good reminder to meditate on.
I AM what you're looking for.
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