Saturday, March 28, 2015

From the malcontent

From the malcontent:
I posted something and actually got a significant response. I appreciate that people who have been in ministry with me in various capacities felt that they should encourage me to not leave church. But as I read these responses, I have a few subsequent questions:
I hear that people accept that the church is full of broken people. I suppose that this is true, but what do we expect of the church from this point? Does the church have any power to reintegrate and repair brokenness, not that it can erase history, but does the church have any role in writing futures? If we have these expectations that church has power to repair individuals, then we should be sorely disappointed, I think. If we don’t have these expectations, then again I am left to ask what church is for (as distinct from worldly institutions)? I cannot accept church as hospice for a dying world. If all the church can offer is a regular sacramental bandaid, I’m left wondering if the nurse with the tie-dyed socks can’t offer me something a bit stronger to take away the pain, or, even better, the fear.
So, the fact that church is filled with broken people, people who often have been “churched” their whole lives and are still broken, seems to indict a church that claims some power to change. Again, if the church is impotent, if it can only comfort the dying, then how is this different from anaesthesia, hospice? But we seem to hope that church is the x-factor in this world, that it is the catalyst, the source of differing from the logic of selfishness that is, according to religion, the resting state of humanity. Well, I hear it being said, the church won’t become the change agent we want to see if people like us don’t invest in it. The church needs me so that the church can transform people. This is problematic, and I can’t see how this is a cure for selfish logic. The only analogy I can come up with is marriage, although you’ll have to forgive some patriarchal thinking. It seems that people are calling me to husband the church, to covenant with her even though she is broken and to work toward manifesting her liberation from that brokenness. But….I thought that was what Jesus was supposed to be doing. I thought that the church was supposed to be washed and purified (in real consequence) by the spiritual ministry of Jesus by his intercession to the Father and in the work of the Holy Spirit. I don’t think it coheres to expect me, or anybody else, a malcontent standing apart from the church to take on the role of Jesus to teach, lead, purify, etc. the church. Certainly some will think there’s traction if we think that we, the malcontents turned saviors, are the means that Jesus uses to achieve his ends. This may be so, but it is so against the best intuitions of generations of church leadership. What is church for if it is only itself saved through those it considers heretics, malcontents at the door?
So, I am left wondering why people seem convinced that if we disagree with church this discontentment, this restlessness, is a sign from god that we should go to church, with never-ending patience, to seek to teach people that don’t want to listen to us? If the church is doing anything, why are the young expected to lead the old, the foolish the wise, the blind those with farsight? This only makes sense because we’ve been backed into a corner and have to make sense of things. This is, I’m sure, part of an epidemic of martyr complexes among young churched-but-disenfranchised. The first instinct is not to “throw the baby out with the bath water”. Rather than run this narrative into the ground and merely explain my own fears about where this likely goes, I’ll just stop and further inquire to you, my friends, about how this scenario could work out. Are there any examples of how a young man or woman, disillusioned, turns back to the church, covenants with her and takes on the role of a young, unwanted, idealistic husband, and spends a life “being the change he wants to see” in the church? Am I being cynical to think that, when people encourage me to take my ideas back and work them out in the local church, what they’re really hoping (at least sometimes) is that I’ll go back and get distracted with the business of church status quo. That I’ll get married in a second sense and have my vision fragmented by the job of providing for yet another and much larger family. That I’ll be afraid to be myself, to speak my mind, because I’m just so afraid of what will happen if we can’t get along, get divorced and I be damned.
So much of church culture seems to be about taking the young and making them old. I want, on the contrary, to be made alive.

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