Her story, though profound, is not unusual among my readers. So so many would identify with a relate to what she writes:<\/p>\n
I was and IDP and then a refugee.<\/p>\n
Yesterday\u2019s post took me back to a long-ago incident. I wrote down my thoughts about it but hesitated to share it here. However, it applies to today\u2019s post as much as to yesterday\u2019s \u2013 maybe even more:<\/p>\n
What might be called my first \u201cpsychic break\u201d from the Christianity I\u2019d been immersed in for several years came when I was 20. I\u2019d returned home from almost a year on the road with a gospel choir because my dad had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. No, the trigger for this change was not the fact of his illness. Yes, I did go through an emotional \u201cif only\u201d syndrome: feeling that if only I\u2019d been a better daughter it might not have happened \u2013 yet at the same time I recognized that as an irrational but common emotional reaction. I also flirted with the idea of trying to bribe God by making outlandish promises if only he\u2019d perform a miracle \u2013 but knew that was also an irrational but common emotional response.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t believe that either God or the devil had anything to do with it \u2013 or karma or luck or anything mystic or magical. Bad things happen to good people. I believed that what mattered was how we reacted to things and that God was there to comfort, support, and provide guidance \u2013 not to wave a magic wand and make it go away. I believed that prayer was most beneficial to the one who prayed \u2013 it wasn\u2019t an incantation or spell that would change the external world or alter God\u2019s mind, but would instead change the person praying. Praying wasn\u2019t about getting things \u2013 it was about seeking wisdom. It wasn\u2019t about \u201cGod change them\u201d but \u201cGod change me\u201d.<\/p>\n
I knew my outlook was different than most of my Christian acquaintances, and radical to the crowd my family and I fellowshipped with. We belonged to a mega-church that was on the cutting edge of the apostolic, headship \/ submission, and prosperity fads that were becoming all the rage. I\u2019d had well meaning church members try to fit me into their one-size-fits-all box many times. But as annoying, frustrating, and depressing as that could be, as mind-bending, manipulative, and confidence-destroying as it was, I hadn\u2019t considered leaving. But when Dad got sick, I saw and felt the response of these \u201cgood\u201d people for what it was \u2013 cold, hard, rigid dogma utterly lacking in compassion, empathy, or any type of wisdom or truth.<\/p>\n
You see, the verdict was that it was all Dad\u2019s fault. Not because he\u2019d smoked a pipe for years (although he\u2019d quit at least five years earlier) or that he breathed Mom\u2019s second hand cigarette smoke for decades. Those were, actually, very likely real, physical contributing factors. But no, that wasn\u2019t the problem (except to the extent that smoking was considered to be a sin and therefore placed the smoker outside of God\u2019s protection). No, the awful sin that caused this terrible calamity was much worse. It wasn\u2019t even that Dad had married Mom \u2013 a divorcee \u2013 all those years ago. Of course, that certainly didn\u2019t help things \u2013 it wasn\u2019t the proximate cause, but was evidence of \u2013 well, something. I\u2019m not sure what, but it was enough to prevent Dad from becoming a deacon. Never mind that Mom left her first husband for reasons that would make most \u201cgood Christians\u201d cringe. Ignore the fact that Dad embraced not only his wife, but adopted her child as his own, fathered two more, and had been, by that time, married for almost 30 years. That he\u2019d married a divorced woman made him unworthy of acting as a leader in the church.<\/p>\n
So, what was the really awful thing that placed my father out of God\u2019s protection and put him in a position of vulnerability where Satan could smite him with a brain tumor? Why \u2013 hold your breath \u2013 he and Mom did not regularly attend a home \u201ccell\u201d group and place themselves under the \u201ccovering\u201d of a \u201cshepherd\u201d. Oh, on Sundays they both taught Sunday school and attended both morning and evening worship services. Dad was an usher, and entrusted with processing the collection (he was a financial comptroller by profession). They also attended Wednesday evening worship service. Dad was also a troop leader in the church\u2019s version of Boy Scouts. They hosted weekly bible study\/fellowship groups. And they varied their attendance at a couple of different home groups. They also more than tithed. But they hadn\u2019t bought in to the latest fad for micromanaging church member\u2019s lives. They said the pastor was their pastor and God didn\u2019t require them to submit to any type of \u201ccovering\u201d beyond his grace. That was the great sin that, according to far too many of those \u201cgood\u201d people, landed Dad in the ICU.<\/p>\n
Those who believed that rubbish were quite vocal about it \u2013 and not only to each other in their own homes or at church. They phoned Mom and told her what they thought. They said it to my face in the hospital. And I realized that they were far more lost than anyone they\u2019d ever consigned to hell \u2013 hard-hearted, blind, doing wickedness in the name of good.<\/p>\n
I remember sitting outside in a garden next to the hospital, realizing that I\u2019d come to an intersection. I had nothing in common with most of the people I\u2019d been going to church with and little in common with the remainder. I knew that I would never again try to be what was expected or to fit in with them. I knew I had a choice \u2013 I could squash everything good and alive and hopeful and creative and unique about me and pretend to be like one of the group, or I could resolve to be true to myself and what I knew to be right.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to say that at that point I left the church in general and began walking a very different path, but that was a long evolutionary process. I did leave that particular church \u2013 reluctantly, and not immediately. Even then, I didn\u2019t give up my membership for years. It was more than a decade before I left church behind entirely and still more years before I realized that what had been faith had metamorphosed into something entirely different.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Thanks so much Syl for being so kind and open as to share this amazing story.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is the caliber of some of my readers. Syl responded to me by email after she had read one of my posts. I invited her to share this on my blog, and she left it as a comment on yesterday\u2019s post Are You a Spiritual Refugee?. I again wrote her and told her that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":349,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[533,4],"tags":[19,11,540,1111,260,2627,367,2628,722],"class_list":["post-11263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","category-thought","tag-cartoon","tag-church","tag-comic","tag-david-hayward","tag-faith","tag-guest-post","tag-healing","tag-leaving","tag-nakedpastor"],"yoast_head":"\n
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