I am seeing more and more people (mostly from my generation) deconstructing their faith. Some are famous Christian celebrities. Others, sadly, are people I know personally, and grew up with, and love very much. These people are sharing how they were brought up in biblical Christianity, possibly made a profession of faith at a young age, and then deciding they will be leaving their beliefs. Every story I read has something in common with all the others. There was never any sort of evidence that supposedly debunked the claims of Christianity for them. It was often because someone failed them. Someone who should have known better didn't do better. Sometimes, their life experiences didn't match what they had been led to expect as a follower of Christ. Some experienced abuse in the name of Christianity. I can sympathize with these hurts, and yes, even empathize with some, but I cannot agree with their solution that Jesus and the Bible were not true after all. There has to be another explanation. Let's search for the truth!
The greatest times of pain in my life have been from fellow Christians. Why aren't we prepared for church/Christian hurts? We prepare for other kinds of hurt. We wear seatbelts because we anticipate having to slam on the breaks sometimes, and want to avoid getting thrown around the car. We have first aid kits because we know that, sooner or later, we'll need a bandaid or antibiotic ointment. We keep medicine in our bathrooms because we know there will come a time when we'll need it. And yet we are not prepared sometimes for the biggest hurts we can experience in life--church hurt, or hurt from fellow believers in general. Why is that? Did the Bible warn us about it?
My pre-puberty childhood was very happy. I grew up in a friendly neighborhood, where everyone knew each other. All the kids on our street would jumprope and ride bikes together all afternoon and all day Saturdays. People helped and trusted each other. A group of us would ride our bikes to the shopping center down the road and get candy and ice cream. One of our friends would make prank phone calls from the payphone. Her favorite victim was Hooked on Phonics (1-800-ABC-DEFG). They would answer, and she'd say, "Hooked on Phonics works for me!" and then hang up saying, "I sure showed them!" I'm not sure what she thought she showed them. She would then beg us not to tell any adults she had done it. She was kind of the Eddie Haskell of our friend group.
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| With friends at our house |
Probably an even bigger influence was our church family. We were part of a close-knit church, that was also a home-school group. This was in the 80's before homeschooling had the acceptance it does today, and we functioned more like a Christian school. Our school had a name, and we had school T-shirts with a logo and everything. We had classes together during the week. We had field trips, park days, and skating rink days, all a few times monthly. This is not to mention that we also all went to Sunday school and AWANA together, and visited each other's families frequently. We were very close. I never felt left out or insecure. I was learning to know the Lord from people who really loved me, and loved my family. If someone had a birthday party, everyone was invited. Sometimes, we would even spend holidays with each other as families.
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With my siblings in front of our church--from our 1991 Christmas cards!
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The summer of 1992, everything changed, and not only because I hit puberty that summer. Our church fell apart. There is a lot to that story, and a lot that had been slowly happening behind the scenes, even in the best times leading up to it. All of my dearest friends left and got involved in other churches and school groups. We still saw each other around town, but I didn't have that close group of friends. The ones who stayed were petty. I'll never forget when Holly* told me in the worst spoiled-brat voice you can imagine, "I'm having my birthday party at Disneyland this year, and I'm inviting everyone in our class except you!" I was extremely hurt, but tried to act like I didn't care, and I replied that I thought Disneyland was boring anyway. It was horrible the day after the party when everyone else came in with their Disneyland souvenirs, laughing about fun memories made at the Happiest Place on Earth...without me. I wasn't important. Holly's mother was my teacher, and I adored her (still do), but she wasn't clued in on how mean Holly was, or how the other girls went along with it. This was a very lonely time in my life. On the other hand, my old friends--the good friends--moved on with their lives, as if our times together didn't matter or weren't important. I felt forgotten. I am still really sensitive about feeling left out, or forgotten, or inconsequential.
I think the Lord was doing things in my heart during those lonely times. I was growing more like Jesus. The next summer (1993), I went to a Christian camp, and there was a girl in my cabin who was bright and beautiful, but had been through a lot of hurt in her life, and was currently in a Christian foster home. The other girls from her church group were really mean to her. Knowing how that felt, my heart went out, and I knew God was calling me to befriend her. That was the first time in my life I felt called to do something specific like that. John 10:27 says, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I cried about the hurts she had gone through, as she told me. I found I listened, and took in. God was using this to shape my heart to be an adoptive mother years later.
Shortly after this, our church totally died. As far as I was concerned, it already had, but it ceased to exist at all. The next church we went to felt so alive after seeing our once-vibrant church die. I remember having a very hard time moving on, and even feeling guilty if I made new friends, because it felt like I was betraying my old friends. I eventually did make friends, and got some good babysitting jobs. But it was at this church that I would experience the biggest hurts of my life.
I believe good and bad can coexist in churches, even in individual people. The leadership at that church were used of God for tremendous good, bringing many to Christ. In what I'm going to share, I don't diminish the good, or someone else's story of being blessed and ministered to there. I know that happened. On the other hand, our family was irrevocably damaged forever. I need to be careful, because I don't want to tell anyone else's story, just my own. My sister and I were hurt badly by the mean girls there, and it continues to affect us both (mainly because no one took it seriously when it happened, and our needs were minimized, and excuses were made for the sins of others). The youth group was led by a husband and wife, and the wife made inappropriate comments about my body in front other others, and to this day, I struggle with body image issues (interestingly, when our class did a skit where we portrayed some of the adults in the church, she insisted I play her). She would belittle me and humiliate me in front of the whole youth group, not because I was doing something wrong, but because I would witness to new people who came. This woman called it "shoving it down people's throats" and would berate me for it. One particular time, she invited me over to her home, along with some other girls from the youth group. It was supposedly a new "discipleship" program. I was excited at having been invited, but she ended up humiliating me, and had this set up where no one would speak to me, and totally ignored me. It was meanness at its finest. One of the girls eventaully wrote me a letter, apologizing for that. It was psychological abuse. I know this woman will answer to God one day for it. That is my consolation, and what keeps me from hating her. From her teaching in our class, I gather that her god was very small, and not the same God I knew.
The last straw came when I was teaching in Vacation Bible School. Every Christian has a gift (Romans 12:16). My gift has proven to be evangelism. That summer at VBS, I was helping in the 2nd grade class with a very sweet older man named Mr. Johnson. God gave Mr. Johnson some special grace for me, and he asked me to share the Gospel with the class every day after he told the Bible story. When I stood up there in that room, this power came over me. I can't explain it, other than Acts 1:8 says that the Holy Spirit empowers us to share the Gospel. At that time, I couldn't have NOT shared the Gospel. That is why it is so hard for me when I'm in situations where I'm told not to share, because I can't help it. It is physically and mentally painful not to. It's like trying to dam a river. At that long-ago VBS, and many times since, the Gospel poured out without my having to plan what I was going to say. I was in control of my faculties. It wasn't weird, but God was guiding me to say it. That week, 24 children in our class came to salvation! One of them was the daughter of the teacher who hated me.
The pastor acted like he was really proud of me, but behind my back, he told Mr. Johnson that a teenager had no business witnessing, and not to allow it anymore. The children's ministry director even expressed legal concerns about my evangelizing. I personally think she was crazy. Mr. Johnson told me about the pastor's rule against teenagers witnessing later on. But he faced a moral dilemma. Would he obey the pastor, or the Holy Spirit? He chose the Holy Spirit, and I continued witnessing. I still have a letter he wrote me at the end of the week, thanking me for my help and telling me I made a very good missionary. He supported my ministry until the Lord called him home about a decade ago. The result of his obeying the Holy Spirit over the pastor was that both Mr. Johnson and my family were persona non grata at that church. For the rest of his life, Mr. Johnson struggled with forgiveness and finding peace after being hurt by that church.
I am now a middle-aged adult. I have seen power sturggles and misunderstandings. I've seen this in various ministries. I've seen it in communities. I've seen it politically. I know that this happens. But back in the mid-90's, I was a high schooler. I had no frame of reference for any of this. All I knew was that I had gotten my family kicked out of a church. I didn't know anyone ever got kicked out of any church. That sounded so big and bizarre. I felt very guilty, because it affected my family, not just me. I didn't mean to do it. My brother was the only one of us who wasn't treated meanly, and he had a lot of friends, and he lost them because of this. I hated that it did that to him, because I knew what it meant to lose friends.
If Mr. Johnson and I had been sinning, the pastor should have confronted us in love, and if we didn't respond, he should have brought two others with him and confronted us again. If we still didn't hear him, it should have come before the church. This is the method of church confrontations Jesus put forth in Matthew 18. The pastor did not follow it. He didn't have a biblical basis to follow it, beasue sharing the Gospel is, in fact, a command of God, not a sin. But not only did he not do the biblical method here, but after he told us we were no longer welcome, he acted surprised the next Sunday when we didn't show up. My parents had responsibilities and classes they taught, and he didn't get substitutes, and he told everyone we had just bailed and he didn't know where we were. We found this out from others who left shortly after us. That was an outright lie, and God can't honor lying. We still remained friends with some in that church, and months later, I was at their house and saw their newest edition of the church directory by their phone. Curious, I looked inside, and found we were still listed as members in that directory, even though it was printed after we had been asked to leave. That also felt dishonest. We had already joined another church by then.
When he asked us to leave, the pastor told my dad that I was just too "different' and people couldn't help disliking me, and it was my own fault the youth leader's wife had mistreated me. I wish my dad hadn't told me he said that. He told me in order to show how ridiculous it was, but I was still a teenager--an age when acceptance means everything, and I had been rejected by a place where we should feel the most acceptance. This all came on the back of losing my other church, that I had loved so much. I could still hear Holly's mean remark about not inviting me to her Disneyland party echoing in my heart, accompanied by the pastor saying I was too different and deserved to be mistreated, and the youth leader making mean jokes about my body. It probably isn't surprising that I became suicidal. If other Christians couldn't love me, it must mean I wasn't good enough. I remember one particular time, I considering drinking gasoline. I literally believed nothing good would ever happen to me again. I thought the best of life was behind me. That hopelessness isn't God's will for us. To think of any high schooler feeling this way breaks my heart, not even considering it was me. I can completely understand teen suicide, that feeling that you're lost and broken and no one can ever love you or help you again. Somewhere inside, though, I held on. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God. Psalm 42:11.
How did I get out of this? I am obviously not in that place now. I didn't drink gasoline (though I did some self-harm that I have repented of). I am a joyful Christian woman, STILL evangelizing (and yes, sometimes still facing opposition from those who should support it). I'm going to share a Part II soon, but for now I want to go back to my original question. Did the Bible warn us about church hurt? For a long time, I didn't think it did, but then I came across these verses:
John 16:1-4, “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you. Okay, what I get from that is that Jesus is warning them about being rejected and kicked out of their synagogues--their spiritual communities. Jesus wanred about being misunderstood by those who claimed to know and speak for God. But according to this verse, these people don't know God . I am not suggesting all pastors who hurt their people are actually not really saved. I know that this pastor knew the Lord for salvation. But he wasn't acting in a godly manner in doing this. He didn't have God's stamp of approval on rejecting my family and Mr. Johnson, or misrepresenting us the next Sunday.
Another biblical example is that Jesus was rejected and alone. Peter, a close friend, had denied him. Judas, another close friend, had betrayed him. If you or I have experienced rejection from those who should be loving us, we have shared in Jesus' sufferings. And sharing in His sufferings brings rewards. He chose me to share in that with Him at a young age, and I'm honored and in awe that He chose me. Buty it still hurts. I'll share more about how I got healing in my next post, but for today, know that Jesus did warn us. Someone harming us is not reason to leave the faith. Jesus is separate from those who claim to represent Him. Just because I was wounded in church didn't mean Jesus didn't really die for my sins. It doesn't mean the Bible is untrue. That never changed. That is non-negotiable. I never doubted God or His word, but I did doubt His people for many years. I distrusted a lot of good people. I acted normal in public, only to go have a panic attack in the closet when I got home. God has victory for people like you and me. Watch for Part II...
