Background information: The following was written in July of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic had been raging for several months. Protests against mask mandates and other restrictions were widespread. George Floyd was murdered by the Minneapolis Police Department. Seeing the response of the Christian church on social media, specifically the evangelical strain, led to the reflections below.
You said tyranny was on its way.
But what you meant is you were asked to think of others, and you did not want to.
You said all lives matter.
But what you meant is your life matters more.
You said life is precious.
But what you meant is your life is more precious.
You said we should respect those in power.
But what you meant is we should respect those in power who sound like you.
You said our country used to be better.
But what you meant is our country was better when more people who looked like you were in charge.
You said all our society’s problems can be traced back to the loss of God in the public space.
But what you meant is all our society’s problems can be traced back to others having a voice.
You said life is better in community, life is good because God is good.
But what you meant is life is better when everyone acts like you. Life is good because you been given favor by your trinitarian gods of privilege, capitalism, and fate.
The response to the pandemic was the straw while the reaching justifications and hypocrisy of the response to another lost life were merely further confirmations to a decision I have been making for years. I am done with church, again. I see no reason to maintain good standing with church. The church claims to love, it claims to accept, it claims to be the foundation of a just and good life.
But it’s all bullshit.
Of course, it always has been. It is a not a new statement to make albeit perhaps a trendy one to make right now. I have never attended church because I thought the church loved me. I have never attended church because I thought the church accepted me. I have never attended church because I accepted its claims that it was the foundation of a just and good life.
I look like the church and it has never loved, accepted, or provided me any sense of a good or just life. Rather, the church actively seeks to diminish me and shape me in its image.
Not the imago Dei but the imago evangelical.
Why then did I attend church? Why then did I participate? Why then did I belong to a structure and community that seemed so at odds with the faith I attempt to follow? Why be a nomad in a desert of intolerance, ignorance, and hate?
There is a space in the church that is safe, a space that always felt safe. It was a time and place that felt safe as a child and it is a time and place that made me linger as an adult, lingering in an attempt to enjoy the innocence of childhood that has long since been lost.
After the service has ended, in the space between the doors of the sanctuary and the doors leading outside the building. There is a pocket of joy in that moment, a joy that quickly vanishes as the reality of the harshness of life rushes back in moments later.
I never feel safe entering the church. Every single time, like a traumatic response, I gear up for whatever stressful experience I may encounter because others assume, they know what they do not.
I never feel safe during the service. I have felt attacked too many times from the pulpit and the chorus of Amens from the pews as hurtful words are spoken sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly but always confidently.
“In case you have forgotten, let me remind you. You are not enough. You are dirt. It is your fault. You are sin. They are ruining it for us. We must protect ourselves from them.
They are cockroaches and we are the light that shines on them.”
I attended church because my mother took me to church as a child and taught me the goodness found in Our Creator. I attended church because my father and brothers were hurt by the church and I naively hoped I could be someone who did not hurt them.
I attended church because my grandfather was turned away by his church, yet he still loved like I was told the church was supposed to love. I attended church because my grandmother attended every week and I enjoyed the comfort of knowing I was always welcome to sit next to her.
I attended church because my wife, like my mother and grandmother, taught me the goodness found in Our Creator and always showed up. I attended church because my children enjoy the space, the friendships they have made and the love they have experienced from others in the church because of the status of our family.
I attended church for my family, for pockets of people over the years who have shown kindness and love. I will likely continue to attend church, but I am done with church. A statement I am not yet fully sure of the ramifications.
Church you have shown me who you are over and over and over again. Like a battered lover, I come back time and time again. I find myself unable to be angry anymore, only numbness bordering on apathy as I scroll through your words waiting to be hit again.
I tire of pithy reassurances that the church should not be expected to be better, that it is made up of broken members, that we must do the hard work. I tire of the justification for why it is okay to treat others poorly, to take advantage of true brokenness, and to put restrictions on how much we can really help.
The church should be our safe space. It should be the place I fall back to when I am hurt, when I am struggling, when I am unable to resist the claws of my own brokenness once again violently reaching up out of the depth of my soul, tearing me down to where the church reminds me I belong, a hell of my own creation, a hell devoid of any of the unconditional love promised us by Our Creator.
The church should be a safe space. It should be the place where I can participate in the formation of my faith, to learn how to be like Our Creator and experience the trials of those who have come before me. Instead, I seek out life on my own, knowing I will fail, knowing I am wrong, but not knowing any other way to go.
I will never abandon Our Creator. And I do not gladly abandon the church. There is no feeling of peace, no feeling of relief. I am not excited nor gleeful.
I am in mourning. In mourning and wanting to turn my back, to run away again from the calling I once heard so clearly. A calling whose words I have put into the action of my work for twenty years.
Work that brings me into the lives of the oppressed and downtrodden. Work that I know I am not good enough to do, work that I have no natural gift for other than a willingness to listen and a curiosity to know others well. Work that forces me to live with the knowledge that I am not doing enough, that I will never be able to do enough. Work that does not allow me to ignore that I fail every single day.
I will continue to do the work that I do because I believe it to be good work. I will continue to expect little from the church to do that work as well. Perhaps for a few weeks, but the church eventually goes away. Life gets busy with hosting events that bring fleeting joy and collecting money that fund monuments to man’s ego.
I guess I prefer it that way though. All the church does is muddle things up with their ignorance and intolerance. The sooner the better that the church is back to its self-absorbed bubble of end time theology and prosperity teaching.
The church promotes a good life. A life without hurt, without suffering. A white life. A life that the church buys into whole-heartedly. And then real-life steps in and says, “life hurts, life is full of suffering, joy is fleeting unless you fight hard for it, unless you find space to cultivate it.”
I do not want the life the church promotes. Life is full of injustice and hurt that does not need to be whitewashed over.
I want a church that recognizes that others are hurting and works to make their lives better. I want a church that recognizes that others have needs different from its own and it is willing to give up what it has to meet the needs of others.
I want a church that allows me to be broken, to not be perfect, to just be who I am and loves me for it, not a church that accepts me because of the color of my skin, the gender of my body, the sexual orientation of my identify. Accepted only because I am privileged to look the part.
Unless the church begins promoting that real sort of life, the sort of life that Our Creator wants for us, a life where doing the right thing is cherished above doing what is best for me, well, the church is bullshit.
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