A Long December

It’s been so long since I have written that I’ve really struggled with what to write about.  Being a person with an overactive mind can make it really difficult to translate those thoughts into speech or writing so I just let the thoughts bounce around in my head.  Medication helps, therapy helps and a pretty amazing support structure helps as well but I am still left with feeling like I get out about 1 percent of what I think about in any given day. This heavy reliance on thoughts and not expression kind of leaves me feeling lonely and misunderstood even when I know I’m not really alone but maybe slightly misunderstood.  I started this blog several years ago now with the goal of addressing some of the aspects of Christian faith and practice that have been, and continue to be, problematic.  I didn’t want to just be a critical cynic though and leave it at that, so I always tried to write with a hopeful slant.  Plucking up broken ways and planting fresh hopeful expressions of faith.  Part of my struggle has been the realization that there seems to be less and less actually redeemable parts to what white, western Christian faith has become.  It is difficult work to dig back into my experiences with my faith and the circles that it brought me to, to I realize that there are little pockets of trauma along the way.  Add to that trauma with the fact that built into the system is the inability to speak ill of the system.  If you talk about these things then people will quickly remind you that the Church is the bride of Christ and it is unfaithful, or even evil, to challenge the structures that Christ himself has put in place.  The thing is that a power structure that operates that way, that is above reproach, who’s challengers are wolfs intent on destroying God’s sacred plan, is not a safe place.  That kind of structure isn’t a blessed community.  That kind of structure is a cult.  Cults demonize dissenters, double down when leaders are questioned or challenged, and say that if anyone leaves it is because they were never truly saved in the first place.  If you grow up in a cult you don’t stop having all of the questions, you just learn to keep them in your head where they are safe to be kept floating around in the ether.  

This is where my current mental state comes in.  Remember how I said that I have thought after thought that I don’t share with anyone?  In reality I believe that no person can be trusted to share those thoughts with.  When you grow up witnessing people who question scriptural interpretation, authenticity or the male dominated hierarchal structure and then are banished and excluded, you best believe that you are going to be pretty careful about what you say.  Because of this, you never really share what it is that you think.  You may even be praised for being a good believer who falls in line with your communities agreed upon beliefs but deep down you know that even their pride in you is empty.  They love the version of you that you spent a lifetime crafting.  

I’ve been working really hard to not just let people off the hook who have hurt me in certain ways.  As a pretty empathic person, I can give a reason for why people have hurt me.  They grew up with the same thing, or worse.  They have also been conditioned or abused as young believers, etc so I’m not going to do that here.  What I will do is say that not all aspects of growing up in the church were bad.  When you meet people within the church that you can get past all of the bullshit with it is truly remarkable.  I have a list of people from my church experiences that have been amazing.  Some people have truly reflected the love of Christ to me, my family and to our community.  I have known people who have given their time, a shoulder to cry on, and a trusted ear to listen.  The sad thing is that those people are the outliers.  

Some of you may say, well it isn’t all people.  Well, you are right, but I would say that it seems to be most.  Some of you would say that the church is imperfect and is becoming something beautiful and good to which I would say, then why do we seem to be regressing.  The selfishness that I have seen preached from pulpits, displayed in the lives of confessing Christians and the racist-ableist-misogynistic-sexist-nationalist rhetoric of church going “believers” makes me ill.  Do I still believe that this vehicle that we call the church is going to get us towards God’s preferred and promised future? Yes, but I have to say that it is going to take more than a fill up or oil change.  This church has a scrap-title and we may need to send it to the junk yard.  A shared power in collective imagination for those of us that are fed up with this shit may be our only hope.  For two years I felt like I was going crazy until I realized the church and this nation are actually the crazy ones.  It hasn’t felt right because it isn’t right and as much as those of us who grew up in the church were taught not to trust our feelings, well that was bullshit too.  

So, as an evolution of my writing I hope that I can still have a hopeful slant to what I have to say but I also am not looking to preserve this broken-down version of Christianity anymore.  I believe in Christ.  I believe their Church will prevail.  But I don’t think it is going to look anything like the church of white America.  Thank God for that. This Christmas I will be awaiting with hope the birth of a brown, Middle-Eastern, Jewish, baby to bring clarity to a white, male dominated American church. A woman carried the hope of your faith. The men managed to shut up long enough to let that happen. The mystics, magicians, poor shepherds, and the cosmos believed, marveled and participated in its significance before the politicians and religious elite could corrupt it and attempt to claim it for their own. It’s been a long year and I don’t have the strength to say that I’m claiming back some spirit of Christmas but I will make every attempt to celebrate, mourn, laugh, cry and worship in as honest of a way as I can. That’ll have to do for now.