To the GC2019 Delegates who Voted for The Traditionalist Plan

Dear Dad,

We haven’t talked in a while, mostly because our last talk didn’t go very well. It ended with me crying while you were screaming at me, and I thought that maybe things would go better if I wrote you instead of trying to talk face to face.

I know that you are disappointed with the way I live my life and the way that I conduct myself. You raised me to follow the Scriptures as they are written, to add nothing to and take away nothing from God’s commandments like it says in Deuteronomy. You raised me to live in strict adherence to your interpretation of the Word, and I know that you feel that I am not living a life that reflects what I was taught; that my life doesn’t give glory to God because I am disobedient to what you think is God’s word.

I also know that you disapprove of my relationship with Jes, that you think his skin is the wrong color, and that he loves in all the wrong ways, and that he is a hippy-dippy liberal who wants to give away everything to everyone when they should have to work to earn it.

I am writing these things to you, not because I am agreeing with you, but because I want you to know that I have heard your admonishments all these years. I really have listened, Dad. I’ve listened until I can listen no more. I know what you think of me and my life. I know that you think I am a disobedient child that needs to be taken in hand and ‘schooled’ until I behave correctly.

Dad…I am 54 years old.

I am not a child. I am an adult. I pay my own bills and run my own life. I don’t ask for anything from you but love.

Sadly, for all the disapproval and lectures that you seem to be able to give, love doesn’t appear to be on the list of things that you have for me.

Love isn’t another lecture.

Love isn’t telling me just how badly I’ve screwed up my life or yelling at me about my disobedient nature.

Love isn’t telling me that you don’t want to speak to me until I’ve set aside my childish behaviors and started acting like the adult YOU taught me to be.

Finding Jes and falling in love with him was amazing for me. I never felt so alive! It took years of him loving me without judgement for me to realize that he knew I wasn’t perfect, that I wasn’t everything he wanted me to be, but that he loved me anyway. That’s called unconditional love, Dad, and it is life changing!

It took a long time of me being with Jes to understand that you never really loved me, because love doesn’t treat another human like an object to be bent to the owner’s will. Real love doesn’t seek to control and dominate. Love doesn’t oppress and demand obedience. True love invests in relationship knowing that close, loving relationships have influence, and influence brings change without demanding that one person ‘submit’ to the other. True love leaves space for individuality, and for appreciating differences of opinion and choice. True love doesn’t demand conformity, because that isn’t love for another; love that demands conformity is love for self over all others, and Jes says that love like that is diseased and broken. When he says these things to me, I cry, because I want so much more for you and I, Dad. Jes wants more for us too, and that’s why he’s stood by me all these years while I tried to make our relationship better.

Love isn’t me letting you tell me how to live my life, Dad. Real love is a set of choices based in a commitment to the best for another person, even at the cost of self-sacrifice for their good.

When it comes to love, Dad, Jes taught me that the proof is in the pudding. The pudding that Jes has for me is sweet; it feeds my soul and nourishes me in ways that I cannot even describe. The pudding that you have been shoving down my throat for my entire life tastes of domination, dehumanization, and verbal and emotional abuse, and I can’t stomach it anymore.

I’m letting you go, Dad.

This has been a long time coming, and I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but Jes keeps telling me that I deserve better than this.

Jes doesn’t always think I’m right, Dad. Jes has disagreed with my decision to keep in touch with you for a long time—for years in fact—but each time he just tells me what he thinks and then reminds me that no matter what I decide, that he will have my back and be here for me because he loves me.

I don’t remember you ever telling me that you had my back, or that the decision was mine. The only times I remember you saying that you loved me was after you yelled at me for being wrong (again). You would remind me that you only spent time correcting me because you loved me.  I get what you were trying to say, but there is more to love than correction and demands for obedience.

Jes has been telling me for years that your ‘love’ is toxic, and I think he is right.

So I’m done, Dad. I’m done trying to make our relationship work. I’m done trying to please you, to mollify your demands for obedience to your way of thinking and living. I’m done with all of it.

If you ever change your mind and decide that you are willing to accept me as I am, to love me without trying to change me, Jes(us) and I will be right here in Arizona, and you will always be welcome when you are ready to give and receive real love.

I love you, Dad.

Goodbye.

Epic Fail Birthday

This has been one of those weeks when I feel like an epic failure.

Not that everything has gone wrong this week. Far from it; in fact, many good things have happened this week. What has me feeling like an epic failure is that something went wrong with one of my clients—like wrong—and she quit therapy abruptly, which usually causes me to seriously question if I am burnt out, if I am in need of a tune-up of my skills, or if I am just slowly losing my mojo as a therapeutic person.

Obviously, I cannot share any specifics of what happened, since I want to (and legally need to) respect my client’s privacy. Let it suffice to say that we had a major parting of the ways over a religious issue; my client is very conservative and is an activist in this area, and I am a committed progressive that does not believe that my morals should ever dictate what other people are allowed to do. We have laws to dictate behavior; after that, my morals should stop with me.

I have to admit that I view this person as an extremist. I say that because she holds an ethical viewpoint that labels anyone who disagrees with this viewpoint as immoral and of lower personal character.  I also view her as an extremist because she spouts “statistics” and “facts” without really examining if those statistics and facts meet the test of simple logic, which means her belief is unexamined and also unchallengeable.  After all, how do you challenge someone’s viewpoint once they have chosen to simply accept whatever data they are fed by their ‘leader’ without any critical thinking?

This is where I got into trouble with her.  She was sharing her views and statistics, and I lost my ability to smile and remain silent.  And of course, that loss is why I feel like an epic failure right now. I’m not okay with losing my patience with someone and arguing against their opinion. I’m not supposed to speak sternly to a client, ever. I’m not okay when I act like this whether it happens with clients or just with people in general. Sadly, I find myself behaving like this often enough for me to be embarrassed to admit to it.

It’s my birthday today, and I keep hoping that my increasing age will grant me greater amounts of patience, compassion, silence (oh how I could use some ability to remain silent!), and wisdom.  While I often get really nice presents for my birthday, God has not yet chosen to shower me with the gifts of patience, silence, and wisdom.  I don’t know that I actually need to be more compassionate that I am, but I often think that I would be better at tolerating extremist viewpoints or just generally stupid behaviors and viewpoints if I was more compassionate.

Then again, maybe if I didn’t give a damn that would help too.

But I digress.

I keep waiting to grow up, to become more of all the things I thought I would become with age. It isn’t happening, at least not the way I want it to.  I won’t deny that age has granted me a number of characteristics that I didn’t possess at 22. I told my oldest daughter not long ago that the greatest gift of aging is that you calm the hell down. Actually, I think I said it more colorfully than that. Nonetheless, I have calmed down a great deal since my 20s. I have also become a bit more comfortable with having others tell me that I have screwed up. Sometime in my 30s I decided that being wrong isn’t as horrible as we like to make it out to be.  Discovering you are wrong is embarrassing and it hurts your pride a little, but only just a little, as long as you don’t act like you’re being accused of a capital crime and start defending yourself as if your life was on the line. The truth is that being wrong represents an opportunity to learn from someone, to thank them for their honest feedback, and to prove yourself to be a responsible and accountable adult. Oh yeah…and you get to be certain, at least for a moment, that you are now just a little ‘righter’ than you were a minute ago. Nice, huh?

Growing older has also granted me the wisdom of realizing that things are never as great or as bad as they seem, and that I need to step back and let things unfold, instead of going straight into freak-out mode. I used to freak-out over the slightest little thing that didn’t go well…now I moan a little and grump a bit, and then get on with dealing with whatever it was that just happened. I suppose that this could come under the heading of ‘Calm the hell down’ but it also contains a great big piece of ‘Look for the good to show up, because God always sneaks in a little good into everything’. God has a funny habit of blessing me even in the midst of the ickier parts of life, which has led me to start looking for the hidden blessings in just about everything.

You know, considering just how much aging has blessed me with already, I guess that it’s reasonable to hope that sometime in the next 30 years, God will sneak a little patience, silence, and wisdom into this hard head of mine. Maybe He’ll drop a little more compassion into my heart just for fun as well.  In fact, perhaps this particular epic failure will contain the seeds of great things…a few more hidden blessings from God.

So for my birthday, it appears that God has gifted me with hope that I’m still growing up and growing wise, and that is a very nice present indeed. Well played, God.  Well played.

Unclean

So…we United Methodists have been in the news lately.

Nothing big, we just elected ourselves an openly gay bishop last July and someone on the other side of the nation got their undies in a knot about it and asked the United Methodist Judicial Council for a ruling about whether or not this was ‘legal’ under the UMC Book of Discipline rules regarding clergy and specifically bishops.

The Book of Discipline (BOD) of the United Methodist Church states that homosexuality of any kind (thus including all LGBTQIA persons) is ‘incompatible with Christian teaching’ although the BOD does say that the UMC affirms “that all persons are individuals of sacred worth, created in the image of God.”  Then in a later section on ordained ministry, the BOD goes on to restate how “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching. Therefore self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be…ordained as ministers…or appointed to serve in the United Methodist Church.”

Wow…feels discriminatory to me.  Not what I want to see in my church’s polity.

Setting that aside, I have been thinking all week about that statement “incompatible with Christian teaching.”

Says WHO??

Who decides what is “Christian teaching”?  Is there a central committee somewhere that I’m not aware of?   I’m really confused about the statement “incompatible with Christian teaching”.

You see…I went to seminary, and when I was in seminary, I read a host of theology books. Some of those books were written by neo-Orthodox theologians like Karl Barth, some were written by evangelical theologians like Stanley Grenz, some were by liberationist theologians like Ronaldo Muñoz or Dorote Sölle, some were written by process theologians like Marjorie Suchoki or C. Robert Mesle, and some were by progressive theologians like Phillip Gulley or Roger Wolsey. Basically, I read a whole lot of theologians who understood God in very different ways, and how they defined ‘Christian teaching’ differed. Some basics (like the existence of God and Jesus) were the same from theologian to theologian, but what each theologian considered important was different and unique, and therefore the things they defined as tenets of ‘Christian teaching’ was also unique.

What I’m trying to tell you is that there very little consensus as to what the full complement of ‘Christian teaching’ is, so to have something as basic as sexuality be ‘incompatible with Christian teaching’ begs the question “Whose Christian teaching?”  Because it is not incompatible with my Christian teaching or that of many of my colleagues and we all have Master’s of Divinity degrees and are ordained ministers and therefore theologians in our own right.  Moreover, we have a lot of theologians who are far more well-known and well-spoken than we are who back us up.

The thing that strikes me as odd is that the Book of Discipline doesn’t state that homosexuality is forbidden in the Bible (Rom 1:26-27), or that it is an abomination to the Lord (Lev 18:22), or that it is a sin and therefore worthy of condemnation (Lev 20:13).  The Book of Discipline doesn’t cite scripture to condemn homosexuality, it just gives a weak statement about homosexuality’s ‘compatibility with Christian teaching.’

Well, if that’s the argument they are using, then let’s get out our Bibles and turn to Acts 10. It’s time for some ‘Christian teaching’.

^9b Peter went up on the roof to pray. ¹⁰ He became hungry and wanted something to eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. ¹¹ He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. ¹² In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. ¹³ Then he heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” ¹⁴ But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” ¹⁵ The voice said to him again, a second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” ¹⁶ This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven. ¹⁷ Now while Peter was greatly puzzled about what to make of the vision that he had seen, suddenly the men sent by Cornelius appeared. They were asking for Simon’s house and were standing by the gate. ¹⁸ They called out to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was staying there. ¹⁹ While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Look, three men are searching for you. ²⁰ Now get up, go down, and go with them without hesitation; for I have sent them.” ²¹ So Peter went down to the men and said, “I am the one you are looking for; what is the reason for your coming?” ²² They answered, “Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man, who is well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, was directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and to hear what you have to say.” ²³ So Peter invited them in and gave them lodging. The next day he got up and went with them, and some of the believers from Joppa accompanied him. ²⁴ The following day they came to Caesarea. Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. ²⁵ On Peter’s arrival Cornelius met him, and falling at his feet, worshiped him. ²⁶ But Peter made him get up, saying, “Stand up; I am only a mortal.” ²⁷ And as he talked with him, he went in and found that many had assembled; ²⁸ and he said to them, “You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.   (Acts 10:9b-28 NRSV)

Okay, anyone with half a brain who wants to argue with me is going to read this and say “Yeah, but this is about the food laws.”

NO it is not. The vision was about food, but the rest of the passage of scripture is about God sending Peter to teach a Gentile, a man who Peter (a righteous Jew) would have found unclean according to Jewish law. Let me remind you that Jewish law is laid out in books of the Bible like Deuteronomy and Leviticus, a book that I quoted earlier in reference to laws against homosexuality.

In Acts 10:28, Peter tells Cornelius and the people in his home that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit Gentiles, and then Peter says “but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”   God didn’t tell Peter that the laws in question were now null and void.  The laws stood as they were written and yet…God was simply no longer interested in maintaining God’s own law when it caused certain people to be cast aside and considered unworthy.

The point of today’s Christian teaching is: God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.

God has shown me that I should NOT call anyone profane or unclean, no matter how nicely I do it, or how sweetly I preface it with a statement acknowledging that “all persons are of sacred worth, created in the image of God.”

If God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean, wouldn’t it be ‘incompatible with Christian teaching’ to label someone unfit for ministry because of their sexuality?

Yeah, I’m thinking so.

And if we don’t want to be profane and unclean ourselves, maybe we should knock that off, you think?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watch Out For the Alligators!

Lately I have been busy.

Like, epic busy. Ridiculously busy. I have been so busy that I am on the precipice of becoming crazy busy, which means that I will be unkind, unloving, and unreasonable.

Perhaps that’s not fully the truth, because if you ask my husband I’ve already been unkind, unloving, and incredibly unreasonable, but not consistently.  Right now I am just unkind, unloving, and unreasonable in spurts, which thankfully my husband can bear for short periods of time.

Despite his patience with me, I hate when I get so busy that I’m not a nice lady anymore, especially when I am not nice to my own husband.

Back to my point. I’ve been really busy doing work for the Church. Not that I haven’t had work for my counseling practice; that’s always a thing. It’s just that I’ve been doing more work than normal for the Church.

I’d love to go into details because when I start listing all I’ve been doing, other people get that look on their face that says “Oh dear God…seriously? I’d EXPLODE if I had to do that! I’d lose my MIND if I had to do that!” and then, of course, they ask how the heck I’m doing all that.

I told my girlfriend that my work for the Church has me up to my a** in alligators. After listening to my frustration, she corrected me and told me that at this point, the alligators have taken up residence in my a** and I should start charging rent.

I like the way that lady thinks and have to admit that having alligators in my a** might explain why I have been unkind, unloving, and unreasonable.

Seriously, though, how did I get into this predicament?

I have had a number of people tell me that I need to learn to say NO when it comes to requests for assistance.

There is some wisdom in that, because being able to set boundaries is a huge part of healthy living.

The thing is that you don’t always get the opportunity to say no. What do you do when the cost of saying NO can be the integrity of the project that everyone is working to complete?  What do you do when no one asks if you would be willing to do something…and instead just tells you that they need you to do this?

What do you do when you feel like NO isn’t an option?

There is no easy answer to this question, but I am learning where the line is that demands that I say NO.

You see, I am one of those people who is really pleased with my own efficiency, my ability to get things done when things are on the line. I like to be the person that everyone relies on, the one that people turn to when the going gets tough.

There is nothing wrong with knowing what you are good at and making sure that others know what you are good at…on the other hand, it gives me a huge sense of pride to be doing all that I am doing, and a huge sense of martyrdom to be working as hard as I am working, and neither of those things is good for my ego.

It makes me an idiot to think I am more committed, more dedicated than everyone else in my position. It makes me haughty to believe that I am sacrificing myself for the sake of the group.  It makes me…unhealthy.

What the heck am I supposed to do?

I guess that I should break this into pieces and look at each piece.  Let’s start with “It makes me haughty to believe that I am sacrificing myself for the sake of the group.”

There is never a time when haughtiness, or extreme pride, is good.

Pride in itself is not bad. Pride is that thing that allows you to feel good about the things you do, what you are able to achieve and what your abilities allow you to contribute to the mix.  I like to be good at what I do, and being good at what I do allows me to be proud of myself.

Hello, self-esteem!

There is nothing wrong with self-esteem. Self-esteem, however, is based in the idea that I give the best that I can to any given task so that I can succeed as much as I am able.  It isn’t based in anything other than my own ability and my awareness that sometimes I am exactly what is needed to get things done.

On the other hand, extreme pride, or haughtiness, causes me to think that I am better than others.

What does that mean, to be “better than others”?

Is that a permanent thing, or am I only better than others at this particular moment?

When I’m better than others, does that mean something concrete or is it only relative to the people I’m working with at this moment, and the project I’m working on at this particular moment, and the needs of the group at this particular moment?

Are you seeing where I’m going here?  Being better than others is always relative to the project at hand, the people doing the work, and this particular moment.  In other words, I can be better than others at what we are doing right now but I cannot be better than others, period. I cannot excel past my brothers and sisters once I step outside this particular project and this particular moment.

Being ‘better than others’ is so limited to a specific place and time as to be meaningless.

Self-esteem, the awareness that I have done well when people were relying on me…self-esteem is just as time bound as haughtiness, but self-esteem’s location in time cannot erase the reality that I did the right thing at the right time for the people who relied on me.  The good thing about self-esteem is that it doesn’t rely on what others are doing, just on whether or not I fulfilled my task and helped the people that God set before me.

But what does that have to do with saying NO to too much work?

Well, if I need to be better than others, if I need to fulfill my haughty need for perfection and being ‘better-than’, there is no such thing as saying NO.  I can’t say NO, because I have to better-than-others and people who are better-than-others do not say NO. Only mere mortals say NO.

Self-esteem on the other hand lets me say NO when NO is the most reasonable answer. Self-esteem lets me say NO when I am not able to fulfill the task in a way that will be satisfying to everyone involved. You see, self-esteem doesn’t like to fail any more than haughtiness does, but self-esteem will admit when the job is too big or too difficult or beyond our abilities right now…because self-esteem can say “I can do a lot but there is no way that I can do this thing you are asking” and not feel like it has lost anything. Haughtiness and extreme pride need to be the best every time, all the time, and there is no space for NO there.

The last three months has been a lesson for me. I can do way more than I thought I could, so much more than I thought I could. I can be busier than is good for me for extended periods of time and not fail. On the other hand, it has also taught me that my self-esteem is much stronger than I thought it was and my self-esteem is ready to say Enough!!! and slow things down.  It’s nice to be efficient and it’s nice to be relied upon, but I have no interest in letting myself buy into the bull poop that haughtiness would like to sell me.

I guess what I want to tell you is that there is a fine line between self-esteem and haughtiness and that only YOU can determine where that line is. Only YOU can figure out where the line is between being healthy and being pride-filled, and that means that no one else can tell you when to say NO.

It is only January 13 and I have run into my limits.  Admitting those limits, as much as it will chap my behind, can only be a good thing.

This year my resolution is to stay with self-esteem and kick haughtiness to the curb.

I’ll let you know how I’m doing with this NO thing in the coming weeks. I pray that my ego gets out of the way and lets my self-esteem have a breather.

Here’s to health in the New Year!!

Are You Listening?

This election has been frustrating for me, mostly because of the rash of evangelical faith leaders who have spoken out in favor of Trump. Recent revelations about Trump’s behavior have caused a number of them to withdraw their support but there are a few, especially Jerry Falwell, Jr., who continue to endorse Trump, even to the point of saying the allegations don’t matter. If I think about it for very long I get so angry that I am almost boiling hot because I cannot understand how a faith leader can support anyone who openly admits to sexual misconduct, and when I say sexual misconduct, I mean sexual assault, unwelcome sexual contact, and voyeurism (Trump has admitted to walking in on Miss USA pageant contestants while they were changing clothes and partially or totally nude.)

While Trump’s behavior disgusts me, Jerry Falwell Jr’s continued endorsement of Trump infuriates me.  Does he not perceive how his continued support for Trump also endorses the idea that women are objects to be used? Does he not understand the message he sends to victims of sexual assault? Does Graham not perceive that God calls ministers and priests to be the protectors of the weak and defenseless, not the yes-men who kowtow to the rich and powerful?

The saddest part is that I know, intimately, the power of a preacher’s words. My own story and my recovery from sexual abuse was heavily impacted by the words of a preacher.  I want to share my story with you because I believe that we need to fully understand how our words (both spoken and unspoken) have a profound impact and the power to change lives.

Shortly after I found out that I was pregnant with my first child, I began to have memories of being sexually abused.  My abuser molested me sporadically from the time I was approximately 3 years old until I was 8 years old.  Trying to deal with the memories was very difficult because the emotions were overwhelming and the memories so disturbing that they impacted my ability to function on a daily basis.  I no longer felt safe in the world and every man (except my husband and my father) seemed threatening. I was always on the edge of tears and struggled to not fall back into the eating disorder that I had struggled with as a teenager.  I was so consumed with fear and overwhelmed emotionally that I had difficulty thinking clearly and focusing at my job became almost impossible.  Combine all that with the hormonal fluctuations that go with pregnancy and what you get is a hot mess, and let me tell you that I was a hot mess every day for months on end.

Despite the difficulty I had functioning, I did my best to maintain my routines and one of those routines was going to church on Sunday mornings. As worship began that particular Sunday morning, a woman in the back of the Sanctuary rang a hand bell.  The sound of the bell resonated through the room and then we stood for the call to worship.  I forgot all about the woman with the hand bell until she suddenly rang it again in the middle of the announcements, which was odd because she rang it while the pastor was speaking and the pastor didn’t seem to notice.  She continued randomly ringing the hand bell throughout the service: once during a hymn, once during the Scripture reading, and even several times during the pastor’s sermon.  It made no sense and I was rather jarred by the sound even though the sound of hand bells is normally soothing to me.

The pastor’s sermon was a bit odd as well.  He was preaching on a passage from the Old Testament: 2 Samuel 13:1-22, the story of the rape of Tamar.  Who preaches on that?  And considering the hot mess that I had been for several months by that point, I didn’t really want to hear about sexual violence against women. I had enough to deal with just trying to deal with the sexual violence done to me.

The sermon focused on Tamar’s rape for quite a while.  The preacher highlighted the ways that Amnon (the rapist) treated his sister Tamar as an object to be possessed and used for his needs and his pleasure without regard to the consequences for Tamar.  He stated that not much has changed since then and pointed out the ways that women are still objectified, possessed, and used by men. He preached about the ways that society devalues women and children, counting our lives and our experiences as less valid than those of men.  He especially focused on how society silences women and children when we speak up against the violence done to us because it’s just so unpleasant to hear…and then how they ask how we came to be alone with the man who abused us, as if his choices were our responsibility.   The whole time he spoke, the woman in the back of the sanctuary kept randomly ringing the bell.

The preacher highlighted to us the many ways that the Church has silenced victims of physical and sexual violence by insisting that we need to stop complaining and forgive our abusers, often before we have actually had a chance to recover from the abuse.  He became visibly angry as he spoke, accusing the church of refusing to be a refuge for victims because dealing with their suffering makes us uncomfortable and God forbid the Church should have to bear a little discomfort in the face of human suffering and exploitation. He reminded us that our demand for the victim’s silence was nothing more than another act of violence against the victim.  The bell rang again.

By this time, I could hardly contain myself.  I was doing everything I could to remain seated and hide my tears.  Then the preacher explained the bell ringing in the back of the room; it had rung every six minutes since the service had begun because every six minutes another woman or child in the USA becomes the victim of violence or exploitation.  He said that the worldwide statistics were much worse, and as he said that, the bell rang faster and faster…

I ran out of the room and into the church restroom where I hid in the stall sobbing and trying to breathe.  It was close to twenty minutes before I could calm down enough to sneak out of a side door and sprint to my car.

Later that day I called the preacher at home.  When he answered the phone all I could choke out was “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” and then I hung up.

Years later I found out that he was called before the leaders of the Church and heavily criticized for his sermon.  They told him that nobody needs to hear a sermon like that.

I did.  I needed to hear that what happened to me mattered, that it mattered to God and that God expected it to matter to the Church.  I needed to know that the Church was supposed to be a refuge for me, a place where I didn’t have to hide the mess I had become because of the abuse.

That day, that one sermon…that sermon saved me more than I can say, and I have never forgotten the power of the pulpit to welcome someone into the safety of the Sanctuary or to shackle them in silence and shame.  The words spoken in the pulpit are so powerful that they can even lock someone outside the door of the Church and make it clear that they will never be welcome.

Franklin Graham Jr, are you listening?

Are You Sure You Want to Say That?

This week has been a hard week of watching one unkind thing after another, mostly on Facebook or the news.  I would love to say that I can rise above it all but I can’t simply because of one thing: the dang Christians.

I have been a Christian my whole life and I know, and have experienced, Christians making terrible mistakes and doing incredibly stupid things.  I have been blessed not to have been deeply damaged by those ‘stupid things’ but that’s mostly because I had very loving and kind parents who provided me with plenty of love-based Christian teachings that countered all the judgmental, ‘holier-than-thou’ crap that I experienced at the hands of others.

Nothing beats good parenting when it comes to overcoming the slings and arrows of growing up in the Church.

And then…I became a pastor.

After I began doing ministry, I began to understand at a much deeper level the immense damage that Christian leaders can do to the community with judgmental words, with words of condemnation, and with the way that they dismiss the experiences of others they deem ‘not Christian’ or ‘not truly Christian’, thus rendering those realities and the people that experienced them insignificant.

What in God’s name are we doing?

Over and over again I am confronted with horrible words posted on Facebook by church leaders and pastors who supposedly preach the love of Christ while condemning anyone who doesn’t believe and behave like they do.  Some of them even condone violence!

Over and over again I am assaulted by news reports of another church leader or pastor arrested for horrifying crimes…some financial, some sexual, some for crimes against children.  I could swear that I remember Jesus saying that it would be better to tie a millstone around your neck and drown yourself in the sea than to lead a little one astray.

I’m getting the feeling that we’ll be able to build a pier with all the Christians tied to millstones that we’re going to find, if you know what I mean!

One of my clients brought up another incident in session the other day, and I guess the look on my face shocked her. She said that I looked like I was going to cry…and she wasn’t far from the truth.  I have come to the point where my heart actually aches and cries out to God when I hear reports of cruel and unloving Christian behavior, especially when that behavior comes from a pastor—the very people that God called to lead His children, to guide them in the way that leads to peace.  How can we tear apart the very people we were called to shepherd?  How can we not see the carnage we leave behind and the people we destroy?

My reaction shocked my client. I guess she didn’t realize just how deeply her words would affect me. She started to apologize for upsetting me and I told her that she had done nothing wrong. I had simply come in contact with another example of what is wrong with the Church.

You see, we are all broken people. We come into the world whole, but then circumstance and losses and the failures of the people who are supposed to love us start the cracks forming…little cracks that over time can develop into huge broken areas in our souls.  And as life goes on, losses become tragedies that define our lives, events we can neither escape nor undo, and our own choices add to the sorrows that break us.  Sometimes our choices become the tragedies that we cannot escape and we become our own worst enemies.

At some point in our journey in this life, the world itself starts to tear us apart one chunk at a time, labeling us ‘Not Good Enough’ or ‘Worthless’ or ‘Ugly’ or ‘Stupid’ or (insert racial epithet here) or (insert gender based insult here) or (insert sexual orientation based insult here)…  It goes on and on, and each negative label tears us apart a little more.

In the end, we end up broken and torn, un-whole and aching, wondering what we did to deserve what life has dealt us.

The funny thing is that our lack of wholeness isn’t really that problematic if we will simply own our broken and torn places and then seek out the healing places.

I’ll try to explain what I mean, but I need you to be patient for a moment.

Most of us are aware that Alcoholics Anonymous groups use the 12 Steps to guide recovery from addiction.  What you may not know is that there are also 12 Promises that they count on as they recover, and I have found one of those promises to be crucial to my own sense of wellbeing.

“#10 Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.”

At first you may think “What does that have to do with this post?”  More importantly, what does this have to do with our broken and torn souls?

Well, when you read the fuller text of the 12 Promises, it tells you that you no longer have to fear people and economic security because really, what you are fearing is not having enough…not enough friends, not enough money, not enough acceptance, not enough stuff, not enough wisdom, not enough information.  Promise #10 is that we will no longer have to fear all the things that people and money can bring or deny us.  WHY? Because…within the group (in the case of the 10^th Promise, they are referring to the 12 Step group) we will find everything we need.  Essentially, the promise is that within the group, we have everything we need.  Do you need a truck so that you can move?  Ask the people in your group.  Do you need someone to help you sort through some feelings? Ask the people in your group. Do you need to borrow a mixer so that you can bake your child a homemade birthday cake?  Ask the people in your group.  Do you need comfort because you’ve realized the magnitude of your brokenness? Reach out to the people in your group.

Within the group, we have everything we need.

In our lives, we group together with friends, family, Church members, coworkers, colleagues, neighbors, even with something as simple as the folks in our yoga class. We have tons of groups we participate in.  And each member of every group is broken and torn. Some are broken and torn in the same way that we are, and some are broken and torn in different ways.  The people that are broken and torn in the same way truly understand how we feel, and the people who are broken and torn in different ways are often strong exactly where we are weak and they can offer us someone to lean on.  Do you see?  Within the group, we have everything we need!

I think that this is why Christ founded the Church.

The Church is supposed to be a place where you take your wounded, broken soul and find peace, healing, and love.  You are supposed to find unconditional acceptance inside the Church and people who will walk with you along the path to finding a relationship with God and a deeper love for yourself; one that reflects the abundant love that God has for you. When you love yourself in the right ways it’s so much easier to love everyone else in the right ways.  Christ wanted us to be able to turn to the Church to find our group…the people who understand us perfectly because they are familiar with our particular brokenness, and the people who can help us understand what things might look like if we weren’t broken or torn in that specific place—people who can be strong while we wait on our healing, while we discover what love can do.

This is why it breaks my heart and hurts so much when pastors use their position and power to judge, to condemn, to be the force in the world that breaks and tears and stomps and does damage.  We have enough sickness in the world to do that already and we don’t need the people of God to help the sickness and hatefulness along, you know?

If you are one of the people who has been broken and torn by the very people who were supposed to love and nurture you, by the Christians who were supposed to help you find your path to God, please accept my heartfelt apology.  It was never supposed to be this way, and you have no idea how much it hurts me to know that the Church failed you.  Let me encourage you, however, not to give up…because God has way more up His sleeve than you can imagine and there are many wonderful people in the world, both inside and outside the doors of the Church.  Look for your group—the one that will love you for the broken, torn, beautiful creation of God that you are—and then set about becoming part of what makes it possible for the group to have everything you (and the rest of the group) needs.  Don’t just take, because no matter how broken you are, God has not failed to fill you with good things that have been kept hidden just for a moment like this.  The fantastic stuff that is you cannot be destroyed by the world. It can be broken, and it can be torn, but it cannot be destroyed and God delights in making treasures out of the brokenness that we bring Him…and it works best when we do that with a group of people who are willing to be a living expression of God’s love to us while we wait on our healing.  This applies as much to pastors as it does to everyone else: find your group and let yourself be healed in the most wonderful ways.  And don’t be surprised if the group you find is inside the Church, because there are just as many wonderful people in the Church as there are holy terrors.

If you are one of the pastors who is doing the breaking and tearing, know that I cry for all you were called to be and have abandoned.  You have bought into the lies of the Enemy, who tells you that your power and your false righteousness are impressive to God.  Trust me: you and I cannot impress the God who created the entire universe, and God has no faith in our ‘righteousness.’  If he did, He never would have sent Jesus. The proof that your ‘righteousness’ is worthless is hanging on the cross, bleeding and dying for all the damage you’ve done.  It’s not too late.  Abandon your righteousness and own your brokenness and you can be healed…or admit that you love the blood on the edge of the blade of your self-righteous words far more than you love the man on the cross.