Transparency and sober conversation about pain are not really part of the institutionalized Church's gig. These things are, unfortunately, continually suffocated by the mask of "all togetherness". If you've got shit going on, "how quickly can God wave His magic wand to make your life blessed like the rest of ours" is the message.
The widespreadness and pressure toward this end is prevalent. The perennial message is "things are great in the Lord!!"
It leads many who walk through the doors who are in some zip code of Shitsville to question their bruised hearts, to think there is something "wrong" with their not permanently residing on Blessing Boulevard.
Most churches I've been in in the last twenty years permeate a cheery, upbeat, positive atmosphere from the moment you walk in the door. Anything wrong with that? Not necessarily. But if I'm a newbie, come to church while in shit, and wish to be accepted, what's the natural human tendency? I'm going to act like the people there, to fit in and quicken the time period of acceptance.
But what's been accepted? Not my heart. My heart is bruised and still hidden. I haven't opened up to these people who are barely and not even acquaintances.
And so I come in the doors and bypass heart acceptance for human acceptance. And I do get the human acceptance. A lot of it, and I begin to feed off of it.
People start calling me "brother". People smile at me. People tell me "God bless you". It seems like they like me, and maybe they actually do. And I discover that the more I smile back and tell people the same things, it becomes this self-perpetuating gerbil wheel. We spin and spin and spin, and go nowhere.
Meanwhile, what about my heart? Uh, what heart? I'm playing the game now, dude, and getting this surface-level feed from human acceptance. Occasionally I will think about my heart. It's still bruised, but that doesn't get brought up at church. I've fallen hook, line and sinker for the upbeat/positive thing, and I'm doing all I can to pass it along to other visitors and newbies.
And so my entire being in brick & mortar church becomes about posing (instead of about the heart). And I'm but one person in a large group of maskers and posers. So, what does that mean? It means I've drunk the Kool Aid, and become part of what is more country club, BlessFest and PraiseFest than what Jesus says is the Way.
What about you? Have you ever gotten caught up in the gerbil wheel, and let your bruised heart be shunned? (which is why you went there in the first place)
Have you later, at some point down the road in a private moment alone, thought about your heart? Soberly realized the truth is you've been playing a game, and in that burst of honesty thought about that? I have. Several times. And instead of getting raw I just jumped right back into the game.
It's a vicious cycle. And it's now been broken, forever, for me. No more posing. No masking. No more "I'm blessed, brother, praise God! How are you?"
No more game.
It's time the circus leave town, and stop slinging people's hearts to the side while quoting bible verses in doing so.
Hearts matter. The bible tells us to guard them. The bible says that from our hearts flow the issues of life. And Jesus' primary proclamation about His ministry, which is our ministry since we follow in His footsteps, centers around the heart:
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He's anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners."
The Way is healing hearts--not suffocating, ignoring and trampling them. It's not about detouring and shunning hearts (so as not to disturb Happy Clappy).
And the Way is about freedom--freedom for the heart, body and spirit.
That's a far cry from creating blind and shackled captives through the BlessFest/PraiseFest message.
How many William Wallaces of the heart will the Church continue to lure and trap, in the name of Jesus?
There is another way.
9 comments:
hey man... good to hear from you... i thought you'd like to read this:
http://www.ptm.org/07PT/MarApr/WhyIDontGotoChurch.pdf
whaddup, my brother from another mother?
Good to see you drop by, bro...we miss your salient thoughts, man.
You ended this post with "There is a better way" and I'm wondering - What it is?
There have been a lot of times that I've gone through something I couldn't handle. I tend not to tell people - not sure why. I guess because I don't think I've ever told anyone without regretting it. That's probably because it didn't solve anything.
Looking back I think that the only advocate in those kinds of battles I really need is God and that I need to work out the battle plan with Him.
I have a close relative that I've gone to when things got tough and still didn't tell that person what I was going through...but it helped anyway because that person is so upbeat I left feeling better...if only getting my mind off the heavy stuff for a while.
Anyway, what is the better way? jp
You know JP, I have operated that very same way for many, many years. It's bad. It's all sorts of nasty destructive. The enemy can work on you so much better when you are isolated. He picks off the stragglers alone at the back of the fold.
I know it's scary to share your heart with people. They often do say the wrong thing or are unhelpful.I have struggled with this very same thing. There have been issues and problems in my marriage for 11 years really bad issues and problems. It has been very difficult and painful to go through alone. We are not meant to struggle alone.
Even if someone doesn't say the right thing, or they reject you or disappoint you, as a believer it is critical for us to share our burdens with one another. Even if there is a great deal of foolishness among you and stupid mean nasty things are said, God's love flows through the vine and its branches. God can function in foolshness just fine. He has been doing it a long time. He's an expert at dealing with idiots.
So when you go to other people, if you go to them with that in mind, and you allow God to work within that, he can do really amazing things. The thing that you struggle with...maybe someone else struggles with too or maybe they need to see or learn something about your experience that they can't see in themselves. Maybe something you say in a conversation could be a light bulb for someone else...and it doesn't hinge upon us. It hinges upon the orchestrator, the weaver of our experience to knit the characters in the story together the way he wants it to go to manifest what he is doing.
I struggle with humility and with putting myself out there with people. I have often been a facade. That is why I started my blog and why I put a lot of my down and dirty out there. If you click on My Music link on my blog, you can listen to my song "hide." It a sort of musical description of what evil does in me to keep me alone and under its thumb.
I have been there with problems and pain and things that seem so terrible that if other people knew, they would think all sorts of stuff about you. A lot of people now know a lot of things about me and my marriage and some of them are and have judged me and said a lot of really stupid stuff. I'm still glad I put it out there.
Everyone fears being judged and there are a lot of people out there that think their crap doesn't smell. I have done and sometimes still do hide. But evil works on you under the covers and it's bad. It is better to be judged and stand under the scrutiny of others before everyone else than it is to sit under wraps and be devoured slowly throughout your life.
We are to confess our sins to one another. Are people going to say stupid shit that annoys you and is unhelpul?...(I dunno, J330, have we said stupid shit to one another? :)
But God...he works within all the stupidness to do really awesome and amazing things if we are willing to let go of control and allow other people into our hearts and lives. We have to try to trust one another.
I don't know what it is you are struggling with...but sin is wonderfully egalitarian...it makes us all no better or worse than anyone else. We just come in different flavors of sin...but everyone has their flavor and none is worse or better than the other, just different. If someone judges you for what you go through and what you struggle with, it's because they are an ASSHOLE and they think that they are better than you....Guess what? That's a sin. No one is better than you and you don't have to fear that. We all suck equally, none more or less than anyone else. Drink that in...it's good wine.
Jesus doesn't die a bigger, worser, nastier death for a porn addict than he does for a person who cheats at cards. He died one big terrible nasty death to save us all.
I hope that whatever it is that you struggle with, that you get it out there and deal with it in reality and stop letting in attack your life from within your heart and mind. I have recently learned just how very important this really is.
The words I leave you with here are words repeated in the Bible many, many times, JP
Fear not, God is with you.
God loves you no matter what and so do we.
(sorry for the book J330)
Thanks MJ,
I know what you mean. At the moment I'm not dealing with any heavy stuff that is out of the ordinary.
I just wanted to know what J330 meant but maybe it's what you were talking about.
Anyway - thanks again - you have a heart of gold. By the way -your "Freedom" post was really good! Guess I should have said that on your blog. :-)
hey jp,
I've just gotten back from a road trip, thanks for stopping by and your sober comments. (I've only read your first comment so far.)
When I first read your saying "I tend not to tell people - not sure why" my thought was "probably cause she's found out most people really putridly stink at 'ministering'". But you went in a different direction (maybe): regretting it. Regretting "because it didn't solve anything". Maybe our thoughts are related.
Today's Body at large seems fixated on fixing. Fixing other people, fixing other people's situations, fixing attitudes, fixing one's "outlook" on things. It's pandemic.
And I think many people also have a mindset to 'be fixed' by others.
Churches boldly claim to be able to meet people's needs, and people go to church expecting their needs to be met.
This type of living and expectation are a treadmill in a gerbil cage that never stops spinning. It's a vein of the "make a difference", "change lives", "change the world" mantra. No more spinning of those types of plates for this guy.
I just don't look at things this way. I decided to step off the treadmill because it has been nothing but hollow and shallow to me, and I'll be damned if I'm going to be a part of something hollow and shallow when intercoursing with hurting people.
And maybe that ties back into your regret. Maybe you likewise were hearing the God- and Jesus-slathered words of others, yet something deep within you was saying "no, there's something more to it than this. I hear what they're saying but there's something more."
I've decided to explore what this "more" is. I have tasted it, am tasting it, but am just beginning to reach my arms out around it. So, I can't really give an answer to your question, I can only say there is much more to God than what the Church at large today considers "ministry". And it is wonderful.
What is the way?
I think it has something to do with intersections. We are all free to be who God made us to be, and to intersect with others. Each intersection has the potential to change, for better or for worse, everything.
Part of the problem with our institutions is that they are too intentional. We went about setting goals to change people: to convert people and to fix people, instead of just intersecting with them.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes YES......seems I agree with you! That's why i've suffered so much abuse and neglect at the hands of the institutional church. I expected it to be a place where I could bear my broken heart and I would be loved encouraged and healed. Instead I was made to feel like a leper and ostracised and made to feel it was my fault I didn't get instantly healed. Now 10 years later Gods still working on my healing!!!
I was basically made to feel there was something very 'wrong' with me as every one else was alwyas so happy -(false)I don't know what the answer is but I fear for the hurting in church.
Julie
Julie, there's no way to verbalize how utterly sorry I am this has taken place.
I'm sorry your heart has been bruised, trampled and kicked to the curb by people who think the Way is about nothing but getting drunk on Happiness Kool Aid.
I'm sorry they have told bold-face lies to you, such as "when I'm feeling down I just begin to praise Him and I don't feel down for long!!!"
This is the biggest fucking crock of shit being spoken these days, and boy is it being spoken all over the place.
It's spoken by people who have no regard whatsoever for the heart.
They're off in La La Land, and they have looks of utter consternation when you aren't mesmerized by their snake oil.
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