Jeff, a neighbor, responded to the invitation to attend church with a resounding, “Not only NO, but…” His wife, Pat, interrupted his outburst by loudly clearing her throat. Jeff continued in a calmer voice. “I attended that church for nearly three years. I liked the worship services. I could understand the pastor. His sermons challenged me. Often he’d say, at the end of the service, ‘Many of you will walk out those doors of amnesia at the back of the church. I call them doors of amnesia because many of you will forget just about everything that I have said this morning. Your lives will not be any more conformed to Jesus’ teaching this coming week than they were last week.’” Jeff continued, “I emailed him one time about that statement. I complimented him on his boldness and asked why he didn’t do something about those ‘amnesia doors’? His assistant emailed back and recommended we join a Life Group.”
“We tried belonging. We really tried. We needed something. We were transplants. Family and friends, the church we both grew up in, were all back East. We were lonely. And honestly, our marriage was gruesome. But most of the groups we wanted to join were closed to newcomers or focused on subjects we were not interested in. In our desperation, we did get involved with one group for a while. What a waste of time! Truthfully, Pat and I got really good at ‘faking it,’ you know, being dishonest. Even though we were fighting all the time, at our group meetings we acted like things were sunny. To me, it felt like that’s what our group expected of its members. No one there seemed to have any problems. I sure was not going to be the only one with a problem. Yes, they all talked about honesty and accountability and transparency, but I never saw it. Anyway, we never felt like we fit into either that group or the church.”
“You know what helped the most? My VFW. I felt welcomed. I felt like I belonged. They didn’t judge me because I was from another part of the country or that our marriage was falling apart. They were honest with me and expected the same. My VFW buddies would not let me wear my ‘saint’ disguise. If not for them, Pat and I would be divorced. Do you know how comforting it is when someone asks how you are doing and you don’t have to mentally evaluate your response through some church language filter? Isn’t it sad! You go to church and lie so others think you’ve got your act together. Do you remember the story of the flea that eventually limited his jumping height because of the glass lid on the container he was in? After hitting his head so often he quit jumping so high. That church and the small group made me feel like that flea. No, I don’t want anything to do with that church or any church.”
from dissertation "Spiritual Renovation through Accountability: A Contemporary Look at John Wesley's Class Meeting and his Admonition to Watch over one Another in Love" by Robert Marshall, George Fox University
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