losing faith
Published by Amy under Friends, Jesus on January 14, 2007And we interrupt this commentary on disability rights and the life a disabled medical student to discuss matters of faith…..
Warning…this entry is a religious, theological and long rant…you have been warned….
I have lost my faith in institutional religion. Not Jesus, just the Church.
If I was going to be logical and write chronologically where I lost my faith. I would have to start in HS. I would have to talk about my year of private Christian education and how my sisters and I were persecuted for being public school scum and having our navy polos and khaki shorts from Wal-Mart yet every Tuesday we took communion as a school and talked about how much we loved each other. I would have to talk about how one of my spiritual mentors from my early teen years was told there was no place for her in the church because she and her husband wanted to be ordained together when they graduated from seminary. And we don’t ordain women. I would have to talk how my best friend from Roanoke being chewed out by a Deacon’s wife for letting two broken, kids who were turning to drugs because their lives were so messed up attend her Jr. High bible study where the Deacon’s home-schooled daughter also attended.
I could then talk about how in college I experimented and explored more liberal varieties of Christianity and how much I enjoyed reading the Koran and Christian Feminist writers. But I would have to say also how overall I found giving up a belief in Christ alone emptying. How bland and bitter was the taste of watering down my faith to something that resembled an amnesty international memo where Jesus was another nice guy with some nice ideas about social justice (not to say this is really what all “liberal” Christian believe but I felt like this is what it would take for me personally to fit into that mold). I could talk about how I asked the question: why can our culture tolerate most beliefs but not those of an evangelical Christian? And I could talk about how I came to my answer: because we have failed to be anything more than a whiny mess that has become more of an exclusive cultural and political movement than an accepting, inclusive spiritual one that we claim to be.
I could talk about in college how my best friend from childhood married a man who is convinced that I don’t have enough faith to faith heal myself. I could talk my best friend from college who is involved in a religious group that is a web of legalism and deception that gave her an anxiety disorder yet she still can’t find a way out. I could talk about how much Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and Bob Jones and George Bush and people who burn down abortion clinics makes me want to throw things at the wall. I could talk about how I wrote 86 pages on how the Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe bowed to communism and watched people be tortured and killed for their faith (Jews, Christians and Muslims). And how the Orthodox Church watched the government pass laws that put women and children in desperate horrific situations and did nothing and how they to do this day almost ignore the 2 million children who are still suffering from the backlash. I could talk about how more of my close friends than not who are Christians no longer attend church. Because there is no place for their age group, political view, professional goal, gender, etc.
I could write a book about how it all happened, how I fell out of love with the Church. I could refine my story down to a poignant narrative with random theological and sociological tangents that reflect my academic religion background. But all it would be about is another Christian who has failed to find a home for her faith in the post-modern world. Another hippie intellectual Christian who refuses to be associated with the conservative evangelicals but can’t assuage the guilt of abandonment of a sustainable Christ alone faith to go hang out with the liberals. So instead either gives up on church altogether or goes and whines about every week with their family and friends over Sunday lunch (my current Sunday ritual). I don’t want to write that book, all it would do is justify how much it all sucks.
What I want to talk about is a vision that me and two close friends from college dawned upon this weekend. And I am not talking about a Joseph Smith-esque vision in the woods with angels or a Mohammad vision in a cave. We don’t have any new scriptures or rituals or articles of clothing and we are not predicting the end of the world. We also will not be coming to your door offering you a new way to heaven. Nor we will be nailing anything to any doors. We just happen to have all came to the same conclusion at the same time.
6 months ago, we graduated from college and unknown to us lost the closest thing we have ever known to an Acts 2 church. You see when preachers get frustrated with their churches for not taking care one another or backbiting or politics, they preach about the Acts 2 church. On Sat night, Pete, Karen and I all at around the some point realized the we felt a large hole in our lives. And we finally found a name for it: a lack of community, of openness of genuine real depth in relationships. And since Christianity is as Don Miller tells us entirely relational, this is a problem. Then today we heard an Acts 2 sermon. Our preacher (who I actually really respect for a change) spoke eloquently about a community of persecuted Gentiles and Jews eating together, sharing all they had, caring for one another. Then it ended with a big…GROUP HUG…and we all broke bread and ate fried chicken
Just kidding.
We also talked about how Peter and Paul came to blows over which table to sit at and if you can have sliced ham. How Paul left John Mark behind and Barbaus and Paul parted ways. How Ephesus struggled to not be influenced by one of the most active Pagan movements in the Roman world (cult of Artemis, her temple is one of the 7 wonders of the world). How they struggled with sexuality, relationships, racism, cultural stigmas, slavery, violence and persecution. How they were imperfect and mocked for it. And I began to think about if I had ever experienced that kind of community in my life. And I thought of two different instances both in college and neither of them in a church setting (although in a Christian one). (this is not to say I have not felt this kind of community on an one on one level because I have had with people: LK, BK, Ariana, etc)
One was Living Parables. In all its drama both on and off the stage, they were one of those few groups of people who I felt like it was ok to cry with and take things that I was ashamed of. Not that we were perfect because we were far from it. And not that I always appreicated them and not that they didnt make me angry because they did. And ironically we were very exclusive you had to audition to get in. But we invested so much time into what we were doing and thus into each other that we knew people at their best and their worst and took care of them anyways. We shared and supported each other even when we couldn’t stand each other which happened far too often. We also wrestled with theology and morality in an open forum more than any other group I have ever been in. We also told each other when we were being really stupid.
The second group is not as good as an example. They were the diaster relief trips teams I took on two spring breaks. Due to the large amount of time spent and the need to be collaborative to get stuff done I saw glimpses of that community and bonded with the people I was with. But this was short lived and in a very unrealistic idealistic environment so I discount this one in compared to LP where we lived day in and day out for better or for worse.
I say all this not to praise LP and relive college but to acknowledge the fact that I worshiped, prayed and fellowshipped in way I have never worshiped or prayed or fellowshipped before in college. I think some of it was the love of the ministry and the college environment. But I think a large part of it was the smallness and the intimacy of it. Whoever came up with the idea that church had to be huge and impersonal? It is not that way in many other places in the world (minus South Korea and a couple other exceptions)?
If we really want to be an Acts 2 church, if that is the church we idealize and strive to be. Then we want to be a house church or at least a 50 to a 100 people church. A house church was a self-sustained community that pooled their assets, lives and meals into a small close knit unit. I don’t believe they were completely cut off and exclusive because we know they sent missionaries and grew in numbers. But I know they were no mega church. I know they broke bread with each other and not just in the 10 minute coffee break before the service. I know they provided and prayed for each other and became a part of each others’ lives.
(in a special interfaith-interruption, Islam started this way too, folks worshiped in homes, I have Muslim friends who have similar issues with the institution of Islam…as we can all understand)
This idea would be so intensely unpopular as Pete, Karen and I have discussed. Not only is it completely contrary to mainline churches’ pulse these days. It would require people to give more sacrificially (never a popular idea) and people to be less independent (a very unpopular idea in America despite polls that say we are lonely).Also in order to truly work, people would have to let go of their prejudices a bit, people would have to learn to accept and love people who they might not have chosen to be friends with.
It is a naive, romantic sort of notion. It is sounds like some sort of Christian commune like environment. But it is something to strive for, something to hope for even when you have lost your faith in the institution of the Church. It is something to talk about with your friends who are struggling with losing their faith entirely because of how badly they have been hurt by institutional religion. It would take a revolution in church culture but we might need a revolution if it is to survive or have any meaningful influence on the world.
)