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.
Thank you for this, Johanna. Though our stories are very different, it puts words to much of what I feel. I used to think that if I had had a different family, a different community, a different church, then things would have been different. But when I look around at all my wounded friends, I wonder if there are any who grew up in the church whose wounds don't begin to bleed every time they pick up the Bible.
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