Letters from leavers

Just a quick link tip: Letters From Leavers is a real gem where people who have left the institutional church, write letters to the church describing their decision. I think most church leavers feel a need to process their journey, and this is one good way to do so.

Smiling faces

It’s generally held that churchgoers “look so happy”. (At least it used to be. Times might be a-changing.) And I’ve found that to be quite true. But I’m actually not too thrilled about it. Ok, that sounds terrible — I’m not against people enjoying themselves. But to me that happiness is often rather shallow in the land of the churchianity.

The churches I’ve experienced have generally been homogeneous, white middle class. There are no real problems to talk about on the surface. Think muzak and yeah, smiling faces. But not genuinity.

When people join the club, and start their transition from unchurched to churched, they don’t fit that mold. They have issues. And they don’t hide them beneath a smiling face. That’s generally not that big of a problem, people are given some leeway, at least until they get the “saved” stamp and are expected to shape up their act.

The real problem is when churched people get into problem. No sorry, I meant when churched people show their problems. Having problems is quite accepted, but showing them is a big deal!

The church seems quite unable to deal with people with problems. I don’t mean the “I’m going to pray for you”/”he hasn’t been here for ages, say hello from me”/”we can’t accept that anyone who’ve done what you’ve done is [playing/singing/preaching]“/”you’re not welcomed here anymore” kind of dealing with problems. I’m more referring to, you know, genuinely caring about people.

In my experience church can be very supportive. Until you need support.

Passion for alienation

One thing that puzzles me is why the church tries so hard to alienate itself from the people outside the church.

When I was part of the church it was very much an us vs. them kind of thing. The church, the people and the building, was on one side. Everyone else was on the other side. We called them “the world”, and used “wordly” for things that belonged out there.

The church has its own special language, churchianese. It’s kind of weird, but you get used to it after a while. However, it’s quite effective in separating us from them. You can quite easily tell if someone is in the know, and they can quite easily not understand a word you’re saying.

The church is also quite good to come up with rules that clearly separates the two groups. Alcohol is a no-no. Tobacco is a no-no. Dancing is a no-no. Non-christian music is a no-no. See, we neither drink, smoke nor cuss and we listen to DC Talk. We’re different! Wanna join?

It’s mainly not about what you do. It’s much more about what other people think you’re doing. It’s like people wear “What Would People Think” bracelets all of the time. Yesterday I heard one explanation about why Paul in some bible passage tell the men to not have long hair. Supposedly at that time male prostitutes had long hair. So for people not to think the men in the church were prostitutes, they should cut their hair. Now, that interpretation seems rather fishy, but it pretty much sums up what I’m trying to say.

Another expression of this passion for alienation is that whenever the church is visible to the public it’s to let everyone know of the church’s disapproval of the morality in general. What people do in their beds, especially of the same-sexed kind, is the current favorite.

When I was part of the church I guess the alienation helped in a way for me to stay in the church. Now, when I’ve been out for a while, I’m repelled by it, and have hard times regarding the church as relevant. I no longer consider myself any better than the ones around me. I can identify myself more with a “heathen” than a church-goer.

I’m a them.

The Truth (capital T)

Craig Bob over at Out of Fellowship posted a podcast, Step Away from the Truth, that is spot on. Go and have a listen!

One major peeve of mine concerning the church is the truth thing. I can accept that there is one absolute truth out there, and it’s worthwhile pursuing it. What I postmodernisticly can’t accept is that we will ever fully grasp that truth. I interpret the truth in one way, and you interpret the truth in another way. There will always be a gap between different people’s views of the truth, and a gap between people’s views of the truth and the actual truth.

Take the bible for instance. Reading is an act of interpretation. The bible speaks differently to different people. But that’s not held true in a lot of churches. “You should not interpret the bible, read it as is”. There’s one officially sanctioned truth that everyone is expected to subscribe to.

The result of this is a monotonous state where people leave there brains together with their coats. If you question anything, you’re not questioning a viewpoint, you’re questioning the truth. You’re questioning God. And that’s not a good thing to do.

It’s not just the core that’s a guarded truth. It’s not just the deity of Jesus, or the cross thingy, or central themes like that. It’s also a slew of other issues, accumulated over the years, which you need to buy into. The tradition today’s churchianity rests upon plays a major part, probably more so than what the church cares to admit. It seems that the periphery is more important than the core most of the time.

The great benefit of that whole way of thinking is that it’s quite convenient. To have everything all figured out, is a great security blanket. You no longer need considering the hard questions. You just need to figure out how to best convince/convert others to share your beliefs.

However, at least for me, it’s quite a fragile state of living. You have to worry a lot about people taking away your security blanket. Since so many pieces are part of your absolute truth mosaic, threats to any of the pieces are threats to the whole mosaic, your whole belief system. That makes things like “The Da Vinci Code”, evolution, science, and questioning people scary.

When I stopped going to church my faith became gradually less black and white. I lost many of my holy cows along the way. I stopped being afraid of other people succeeding in tearing down my faith that I deep down knew I hadn’t fully questioned. A faith that was handed to me as a packaged deal. Buy one salvation, get a whole load of truths for free!

Doubt is highly underrated!

Benny boy

One of the major blows against my faith in the church came an evening when I was surfing the internets. I came across some allegations against a bloke called Benny Hinn.

I was never a big fan of televangelists so I had mostly ignored them. But Benny Hinn was one of those names you heard every know and then, and his book “Good morning holy spirit” was referenced at times. I didn’t know that much about him, but he wasn’t my cup of tea. It wasn’t my style.

The allegations against him were outrageous. Too bad to be true. However, I kept on reading and it seemed to be true. After a while I got my hands on some audio clips (this was a few years pre-Youtube, mind you) and video and DVD recordings of some TV shows investigating Hinn. It was obvious to me that he’s a crook and a liar.

I got a bit carried away back then. It wasn’t so much due to a Hinn being a crook. It’s easy to find crooks in the history of christianity. What troubled me was that I hadn’t heard anything about this in the church. If the church holds him in such a high esteem, what other crooks are running free inside the church?

Also, if that whole circus is manipulation, social conditioning and mass hysteria, how much of the rest of the curchianity is real, when the theology, methods and behavior are very similar?

Basically, Benny Hinn got me questioning a lot of churchianity.

Growing apart

In my late teens I moved for my univerity studies. Moving to a new place meant finding a new church. It was as natural as getting a change of address, landline phone, and home insurance.

But I never really got into it again.

I realized just how much of the whole church business was a social thing for me. Moving from a church where I had a lot of friends, to a much smaller one, it just wasn’t the same.

I also started noticing the internal power struggles. And the conflicts. On every Sunday service there was a constant struggle between the preacher and some of the attendance. I got really sick of it. Every service (disservice?) just brought me down, and I couldn’t see what good it was supposed to make. Why take part of something that only makes you miserable?

It was also about that time I started what most people do around that age, trying to understand who I was, where I was going and all that. Not very deep, and not rebellious in any way. Just started to reevaluating things.

What was taught in the church made less sense to me. Perhaps even worse, church felt much less relevant than ever before.

Starting at the beginning

In the beginning God created. No not that beginning. I was more thinking in terms of me growing up. Church was part of my life from a very young age. The flavor was a pentecostal one.

I quite liked growing up as a churchgoer. I did what most churchgoers around me did. You know, Sunday school, camps, meetings, youth groups, sports, choir. Stuff like that. I didn’t agree with everything that was taught, but I bought into the worldview in general.

At times I was very dedicated, and other times I was merely attending. But it was a big part of my life for sure. It was a big part of my identity.

I was a Christian.