The South is full of nice pastors and nice churches. It surprised me when I first came here. There was a nice church that I went to my first Sunday in college. The ladies there offered to give me a ride from campus every week if I wanted it, then passed my name over to a church where they thought I would fit better. I wore a head-covering and they were kind of over that at their church. The new church called, sent someone to pick me up, doted on me during the service and treated me to lunch at a members home that afternoon. The nice old ladies also told me to be safe when I went home for Christmas because I wouldn't want any of the Arab terrorists getting me. It was my last Sunday there.
Then there was a nice church that I went to for over a year. There were nice young couples who were leading the small group--until the pastors found out their marriage was in serious trouble. Then one of the pastors took over the small group with his wife in their nice and very big house. I was pretty happy with the church until the day that one pastor mentioned in passing that many women consider themselves abused when they really haven't been and it shouldn't be a cause of divorce among Christians. He said it nicely. He was also nice enough to sit down with me and talk about my concerns with his statement afterwards. He explained that it was verbal abuse he had been referring to. Physical abuse would be cause for separation. I never quite trusted him afterward. Yet surprisingly it was the same pastor who gave me the measure by which I have evaluated others since. "Never follow a man's teaching until you can see into his life." He was talking about the danger of idolizing television preachers and such not.
I turned it around on him instead. I couldn't see into his life at all. It was, as many leaders lives are, opaque. You have to take the man at his image and his word. You receive charisma. You are persuaded. His wife is perfect. His kids are good. They are always dressed for the cameras. And you never get to know them at all. Pastors often perfect a combination of hospitality and isolation. Everyone comes over and no one sees them as they are. Our family managed it. I know the job from the inside. It's why I can spot it every time.
The next time I picked a church, I picked the one I am in now. It leaders are....not perfect. One of them would be more at home as the head of a construction crew. It's what he did for years and he acts like it. He's brusque, not nice. If you go to him crying, he'll probably tell an awkward joke with a little hopeful half laugh and grin. Like salt, very salty. But he'll help you out with anything you need too: a pick up truck, a couch to sleep on for the night, a visit to the hospital. You can count on him, just don't count on him for soft words. Another pastor when I started attending was the head of an outdoor leadership program. If there is ever a pastor I have butted heads with, it was him. But he was a pastor I could have a fair fight with. There aren't many of those. He moved on to Kentucky and it made me sad. We had another pastor who was an avid Rolling Stones fan and would quote some piece of classic rock, something from 80s TV and some quircky piece of pop psychotherapy in every sermon. Not to criticize it--no, he believed in it. He really believed in old rock, 80s pop, and Freudian psychotherapy, and the Bible and Luther. Though we are an Anglican church. A church in Texas snagged him up, and we are the poorer and he the richer for it.
The biggest question mark for me though was our head pastor, or as we say in the Anglican tradition, our priest and rector. He was a great preacher, of quiet and short sermons (compared to the great expositional works of my father that is). But I couldn't figure out who his wife was for the first few Sundays. I was so used to wives being on display--the great pastor props. It kind of surprised me when I figured out that he had a wife and many children, all of whom were at the church. None of whom were poster kids. He would actually pay the kids a dollar if he used their lives as examples without their permission. They had privacy.
But what was behind the privacy? It turned out he was just a plain man. His wife is a beautiful and stylish woman who has things to do besides being a second, unpaid staff member. She runs one prayer meeting a month. As far as I know-that's it. His kids go to public school and have gymnastic competitions. Two of them are adopted. All of them are loved. His oldest daughter hates sitting alone during the sermon. His wife doesn't cross herself when she prays. One of his sons has now grown up and is somewhat involved with the youth group. All of them are allowed to be themselves. And our priest is himself too. Plain and simple and incredibly nerdy. He has encyclopedias on prayer books. He consulted them when I came to the office with a pastoral question. Then he told me he wasn't sure, but his best guess would be... And that he made a C in Pastoral Counseling and it was an accurate reflection of how good he was at it. Which is true, by the way. But he is a good pastor. He is the best pastor I have had yet because he doesn't try to be any bigger than, or any different than what he is. He doesn't veneer his family either. It's the first time I have trusted a pastor as a person. Also, he has two bishops he has to answer to. I don't have to be the one who would have to correct him. It's incredibly freeing. It's why, with all the faults of my church, I haven't left. I feel that it would be hard to find that kind of leader again. I am learning a lot from watching him. And I do watch.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Monday, December 9, 2013
Jeremiah's disappointment
What do you do when you grow up in a godly, pastoral community with good friends and relatives as mentors and it turns out that everything they were doing, saying, and teaching was dead wrong? They were predicting the results of political actions--wrong. They were teaching the importance of rituals--wrong. They were teaching you the nature of God--wrong. They were giving you great promises for prosperity in your life--and their promises were lies. And they were all so very wrong.
The churches they were in were dry and the Holy Spirit had given up and left decades ago. The pastors were abusing their wives and kids. The missionaries had mental health issues that would terrify your average psychiatrist. The salvation they were preaching turned out to be a water-baptized version of hypocrisy: a nice whitewash to hide all their junk behind. A pretense at a changed life had been erected only so that no one would question the insular, rotten existence they really lived.
When you found this, you would question God. You would doubt his existence, you would doubt his word, you would doubt any inspiration and calling you had ever felt. You would doubt his goodness, you would doubt his power. You would doubt his love. You would doubt his gift. You would doubt his church. You would question any sense of obligation you might have felt to this negligent Being and his screwed up people. And you would yell. A lot. And cry. Buckets worth. And sometime down the road you would find yourself in shriveled little heap on the floor, curled in a fetal ball, saying, "I don't know, God. I don't know you, and I don't know how to pray. I can't read the Bible and I don't know what it means. And I want to give up. This is too hard to believe. But if...If you might be something different than all this that I've seen... then maybe...."
How do I know that process? I know it because I lived it. Not just my life with my messy family, but a half dozen or more Missionary Kid friends with their families deserting them, abusing them, neglecting their basic medical needs then blaming them for their broken bodies. Divorces, sex addictions, alcohol addictions, domestic violence--all within the missionary community that I was supposed to revere. We were the priestly cast. This was the priestly cast. The role models of the church. This. Mess.
Jeremiah was a priest. A priest from a small town who had always looked forward to going to Jerusalem and serving in the temple. That is a priest's life goal. He was given the gift of prophecy and felt honored. He was going to join the ranks of prophet-priests. He had listened to them all his life. They gave the people of Israel such comfort, such good guidance. They lied.
Jeremiah discovers this and explodes! He states that no one, not a single person can be trusted (9:4-6). He asks God to punish people (12:1-4). He mourns the "heritage" which he has had to turn against (12:7-13). He tries to alter God's word by reminding him that the other prophets promised God would save Israel and not destroy it (14:13). He prays for people even though God had commanded him not to (14:19-22). He pleads with God when his prophecy dries up (15:15-18). And finally, after years of telling everyone the truth only to have them all go about their lives and make him look a fool, Jeremiah shouts to God: "O Lord, you have deceived me and I was deceived!" (20:7). There is no possible stronger way to call God a liar. The word of the Lord has become for Jeremiah "a reproach and derision all day long." He thinks "I will not mention him or speak any more in his name," and then finds that he cannot avoid this. He has to speak what he has learned.
Jeremiah's is a priest who loves the priesthood, who loves the word of God, who loves the worship of God and who loved God himself. Yet he has been betrayed. He is betrayed by the priest hood. He is tricked as a young man thinking things to be the word of God that are not. The worship of God has been twisted out of reasoning yet kept enough like the original to be a parody. And who is God? How can a young man who has been so disappointed by his mentors and religious leaders possibly know? Yet whoever this God is, Jeremiah is his prophet. And he is driven by a love too strong to give up on his people, his message, his God. A betrayed and disappointed love that holds on.
What do you do when you have to speak against the community you grew up in love with? The people you were so proud to be a part of? The nation you were honored to be from? When they are wrong. When they punish you for speaking the truth. When you are expected to keep secrets and keep silence. When you want so much for your anger not be just anger but to bring someone healing somewhere. To build something. But everything around you is built so badly that you have to tear it down.
I hate it. I hate every time I have to speak out against it. I give up too easily. I lose my voice. I walk away from the conversations. I dream about joining a different community and abandoning my original one altogether. How can I prove to someone that their economics are ungodly? That their "calling" is ruining the basic structure of piety required of their lives? That the Bible they believe they "know" is not the same as the Bible the way it was meant to be read? How can I sound sane in the madness when I am so mad at them? How can I possibly communicate that my "heresy", my "disloyalty" comes from my love of this very community? That I am unwilling to let it go stubbornly down the drain. That I will love God--even if I have to totally relearn who he is. And all this is about as pleasant as having a tooth pulled. The same tooth pulled over and over again.
I guess that is why I try to hide sometimes. It's why I prefer not to be introduced as a missionary kid. Why I have definitely stopped using the term evangelical to describe myself. Why I go for months without reading the Bible because I am so wounded by its interpretation. Yet its words echo around and around, gaining new meaning with greater distance--a big picture.
I am grateful for Jeremiah's moody and depressed Scriptures. Without them, I wouldn't have the narrative I need to know what to do with the betrayal of this thing called the church. I'm not sure that I do know entirely even with Jeremiah. His story isn't hopeful. It just provides one avenue that I can live. One life in which I can see a bit of my own and grasp onto a tiny bit of something like hope, or at least like determination.
The churches they were in were dry and the Holy Spirit had given up and left decades ago. The pastors were abusing their wives and kids. The missionaries had mental health issues that would terrify your average psychiatrist. The salvation they were preaching turned out to be a water-baptized version of hypocrisy: a nice whitewash to hide all their junk behind. A pretense at a changed life had been erected only so that no one would question the insular, rotten existence they really lived.
When you found this, you would question God. You would doubt his existence, you would doubt his word, you would doubt any inspiration and calling you had ever felt. You would doubt his goodness, you would doubt his power. You would doubt his love. You would doubt his gift. You would doubt his church. You would question any sense of obligation you might have felt to this negligent Being and his screwed up people. And you would yell. A lot. And cry. Buckets worth. And sometime down the road you would find yourself in shriveled little heap on the floor, curled in a fetal ball, saying, "I don't know, God. I don't know you, and I don't know how to pray. I can't read the Bible and I don't know what it means. And I want to give up. This is too hard to believe. But if...If you might be something different than all this that I've seen... then maybe...."
How do I know that process? I know it because I lived it. Not just my life with my messy family, but a half dozen or more Missionary Kid friends with their families deserting them, abusing them, neglecting their basic medical needs then blaming them for their broken bodies. Divorces, sex addictions, alcohol addictions, domestic violence--all within the missionary community that I was supposed to revere. We were the priestly cast. This was the priestly cast. The role models of the church. This. Mess.
Jeremiah was a priest. A priest from a small town who had always looked forward to going to Jerusalem and serving in the temple. That is a priest's life goal. He was given the gift of prophecy and felt honored. He was going to join the ranks of prophet-priests. He had listened to them all his life. They gave the people of Israel such comfort, such good guidance. They lied.
Jeremiah discovers this and explodes! He states that no one, not a single person can be trusted (9:4-6). He asks God to punish people (12:1-4). He mourns the "heritage" which he has had to turn against (12:7-13). He tries to alter God's word by reminding him that the other prophets promised God would save Israel and not destroy it (14:13). He prays for people even though God had commanded him not to (14:19-22). He pleads with God when his prophecy dries up (15:15-18). And finally, after years of telling everyone the truth only to have them all go about their lives and make him look a fool, Jeremiah shouts to God: "O Lord, you have deceived me and I was deceived!" (20:7). There is no possible stronger way to call God a liar. The word of the Lord has become for Jeremiah "a reproach and derision all day long." He thinks "I will not mention him or speak any more in his name," and then finds that he cannot avoid this. He has to speak what he has learned.
Jeremiah's is a priest who loves the priesthood, who loves the word of God, who loves the worship of God and who loved God himself. Yet he has been betrayed. He is betrayed by the priest hood. He is tricked as a young man thinking things to be the word of God that are not. The worship of God has been twisted out of reasoning yet kept enough like the original to be a parody. And who is God? How can a young man who has been so disappointed by his mentors and religious leaders possibly know? Yet whoever this God is, Jeremiah is his prophet. And he is driven by a love too strong to give up on his people, his message, his God. A betrayed and disappointed love that holds on.
What do you do when you have to speak against the community you grew up in love with? The people you were so proud to be a part of? The nation you were honored to be from? When they are wrong. When they punish you for speaking the truth. When you are expected to keep secrets and keep silence. When you want so much for your anger not be just anger but to bring someone healing somewhere. To build something. But everything around you is built so badly that you have to tear it down.
I hate it. I hate every time I have to speak out against it. I give up too easily. I lose my voice. I walk away from the conversations. I dream about joining a different community and abandoning my original one altogether. How can I prove to someone that their economics are ungodly? That their "calling" is ruining the basic structure of piety required of their lives? That the Bible they believe they "know" is not the same as the Bible the way it was meant to be read? How can I sound sane in the madness when I am so mad at them? How can I possibly communicate that my "heresy", my "disloyalty" comes from my love of this very community? That I am unwilling to let it go stubbornly down the drain. That I will love God--even if I have to totally relearn who he is. And all this is about as pleasant as having a tooth pulled. The same tooth pulled over and over again.
I guess that is why I try to hide sometimes. It's why I prefer not to be introduced as a missionary kid. Why I have definitely stopped using the term evangelical to describe myself. Why I go for months without reading the Bible because I am so wounded by its interpretation. Yet its words echo around and around, gaining new meaning with greater distance--a big picture.
I am grateful for Jeremiah's moody and depressed Scriptures. Without them, I wouldn't have the narrative I need to know what to do with the betrayal of this thing called the church. I'm not sure that I do know entirely even with Jeremiah. His story isn't hopeful. It just provides one avenue that I can live. One life in which I can see a bit of my own and grasp onto a tiny bit of something like hope, or at least like determination.
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