I Will Forgive You

I know this is not a normal post-church sort of entry, but it's one that I am beginning to find I can't get around. It is a fact of life I see time and time again in people recovering from spiritual wounds: there comes a time to move on. I may not be there yet and you may not be either, but let's look at this inevitable future anyway.

If you've spent any time in a religious institution and you're reading this blog willingly, you've been hurt by spiritual leaders or peers. God knows I have. My first induction to spirituality, beyond the Catholic church in which I grew up, was run by greedy megalomaniacs who manipulated whoever and however they saw fit in order to suppress their masses. From there, I went on to Teen Mania, and if you've ever seen Mind Over Mania or have been to the blog Recovering Alumni, then you have an idea of how that went. From there, I spent months in a church with an impermeable clique, and then found my first real home called Emanuel's House. Call me racist, but for months, I thought it was a prayer group that met at the house of a Hispanic guy named Emanuel. When I did finally attend, I was home within months. I did more growing in that church than I have in any other church. Some of that was thanks to some very involved and dedicated mentors. Some of it was because that is where I met most of the best friends I have ever had in my life (if you were at Emanuel's House and you're still on my facebook friend's list, you're among those people). However, as most good things must come to a close, this did as well.

I hope anyone personally involved in this will forgive me, but let me just say the pastor cheated... on so so many levels. It turned into yet another pastoral sex scandal, but was a much deeper community wound than that phrase can cover. The first man I ever deeply trusted on a personal level, who was my pastor and my close friend, had taken great care with that trust at first. Eventually, he got power hungry, like so many in any sort of leadership role. He manipulated me, my trust, and his position through lies and poisoning me against certain people, and certain people against me. My wound was one of the lesser ones, even after all of that. However, he cut an entire church deeply, one that functioned like a family, and divorced like a family too.

Then I moved, to North Carolina, and quickly found what would seem to be my next home--a church that seemed open and welcoming to people from all sorts of walks of life--including my hardcore sub-culture-identifying family. We spent several weeks there, feeling quite comfortable, feeling welcomed, feeling safe and liked. However, the longer we were there, the less welcome our differences seemed to be. We didn't even differ much on the levels of theology at that point, but we didn't fit the mold. We wore black, listened to loud music, played with our daughter instead of parenting like a boot-camp, and were honest people who hid very little--including how ill I was and how much we were in need, financially and otherwise. I had taken a turn for the bed-ridden, and my husband tried to support us on less money than he was promised at the job he took, and we couldn't make ends meet. We turned to our church who, in turn, told us we weren't involved enough to expect anything from them.

Now lets back up here: I was bed-ridden. The days that I did come to church, I would get dressed, barely, and then have to wait another twenty to thirty minutes before I had the strength to walk to the car. Then, on top of that, I didn't have the strength to sit up in their crappy folding-chairs, and so I would have my husband push in an arm-chair from the lobby just so I could go to church. And the pastor, who had never once come to visit me while ill (remember, that thing Jesus said about those who call him "Lord, Lord," but didn't visit the least of his while they were ill?) finally came to my house to tell me I was too needy, talked about my illness too much, didn't contribute enough to the church, and that if I wanted to expect any help from them, I would have to change that. In foolishness, I forced myself to endure a few more months there before I left and never, ever looked back.

Then there's the wounds I've endured from people who consider themselves far more spiritual than myself. I've been accused of and called many, many terrible things by anyone from strangers who don't know me to family who are supposed to love me. It's been enough to store up a huge list of debts and wrongs and entitlements, big enough to fill a house. And really, some of these people do owe me--if nothing else, an enormous heartfelt apology. I could go on all day about the hurts I've suffered, and I have, but they're starting to weigh me down and I am sick of carrying them.

Before you tune me out, I'm not saying I will ever submit myself to some of these entities or ever have a relationship with these people again. I'm not suggesting that we all let these people and places who have hurt us continue to do what they're doing. I'm not saying, "forgive because it wasn't really that bad," because, yes, it really was. I'm not even saying to do the churchy thing and forgive because it's "the right thing." See, I say that because I think we are often missing the point of forgiveness in our sermons and counselling. We forgive because WE need to. Not because they deserve it. We let go because we need to move on, not so that we can allow them to move back in. I'm not saying that we should okay the behavior that hurt us or give them permission to move back into our hearts. (Sometimes that's the right thing to do, and sometimes it's the worst thing we can do for our own mental, physical, spiritual, or emotional health.) What I am saying is that, for every wound we've received, we deal with it however we need to. Vent. Bitch. Turn off the computer or phones for a week. Shut some people or places out of your life and move on from them. It doesn't matter how we do it as long as we don't sweep it under the rug, don't down-play it, and don't ignore the gaping wounds in our chests. Jesus never said to do that. No healthy psychiatrist did either. No, that was guilty-as-hell people telling you that your anger was sinful, that your cussing into your own pillow was obscene.

All I am saying is that when we hold on to those hurts too long, they start to decay in our hands and all we have left is a stinky pile of death reminding us, not of our rights, but of our pain. And that, my readers, is why we must forgive, and why I will forgive, even if we never give that person or place ten seconds of our time again.

My Church Detox

Even though I am thirty-three, a college graduate, a parent, an accomplished traveler, a spouse, and a lot of other things, there are some essentials of adulthood that I am just now figuring out. One is that I don't have to agree with you to like you. Another is that I have a pretty solid sense of what's best for me and don't usually need to be told by another human what that is. This might seem like common sense for most, but the reason it's a somewhat recent revelation is because of one institution: church.

Before, you write me an angry email, I know that it may work for some of you, and I know some churches work pretty decently. However, I know the opposite is true as well--that there are many who have been indoctrinated, even brainwashed in a lot of instances. There are a lot more people who are hurt, disenfranchised with churches than I dared to believe not so long ago. I'm not saying church in and of itself is bad. In fact, I attend one on a semi-regular basis. What I do intend to say is that churches have been insisting on conformity of thought and doctrine from A to Z for far too long. The results of this (and of many other factors) have been propaganda machines who walk out of church, try their best not to get dirty or think the wrong things, and get so wrapped up in their religion that they--for whatever reason--neglect works of charity and act of kindness, random or otherwise. 

Another result is that free-thinkers are not accepted, and either leave or suppress the part of themselves that knows better than to swallow whatever is placed before them. If you think I'm saying this about you, you're probably none too pleased. You probably think that you read the bible critically, scrutinizing sermons based on what you know. If you do, kudos. But what happens when your heart tells you something different than scripture under the interpretations you were taught? What are the consequences when your free-thinking mind bucks at an entire sermon or tenant from your favorite preacher, home church, or sector of christianity? 

What happened to me was that I was half run out of one church and fully run out of another.

This started with women's equality to men, with me refusing to believe that women are here to serve their husbands and cater to his every whim. Now, those who know me may say I wasn't run out. (You may also say that this wasn't the point of that book, but I wholeheartedly disagree.) The truth is that I felt so uncomfortable with some people at that church at that point in time, and so disappointed with the leadership telling me I was the one out of place, that it became apparent that this institution and I did not have enough in common at the heart, and I left--spouse, kid, and all. 

The next time this happened, it was while I was in my cocoon, transforming from a conservative right-winged Christian to the very liberal counter-part that I have become. I questioned the church's role in society, the teachings that focus on 'sin' and on how good and bubblesque our lives should be, what we're allowed to say, do, watch, listen to, associate with, and I dared cross that unforgivable line from "We should love even the sinning LGBT community," to "Maybe I shouldn't judge," to "I was wrong and I dare say that those who are preventing equal rights are the real ones in sin."

That belief that I hold dearly to my heart--that there is nothing wrong with a loving relationship between two men, or two women, or a man and a woman--that we're all equal and the law should reflect this, has glazed over more eyes and deadened more voices than any other belief I've held as a Christian. Maybe even more than when I used to think I knew who was going to hell and who wasn't, and that I should broadcast this. (For those of you dying to know why I believe this, or just dying to debate me, I will get to it soon, but this entry is about another matter.) I feel strongly that it has made me more of a misfit among my own faith than anything else I could do except to renounce that faith. I also think there are those who believe that the two go hand in hand. Those people need to really reevaluate their priorities. 

When I was first out of church, I thought that maybe I was doing something wrong. However, I was so disenfranchised that I really didn't give a shit. (Yes, I just cussed. Paul said "shit" too. It's just that your translators were too chicken to write it in English). I was hurt, distrusted pastors and Christians and began to be repulsed by anything that reminded me of the institution of church. I couldn't force myself to pray more than the passing sentence pleading for help from above. I couldn't bring myself to open my bible. I certainly couldn't put in a worship CD or listen to a sermon. At first, this felt dirty, but over time, it began to feel more pure than anything I had ever done because a preacher or fellow Christian said it was the "godly" thing to do. I reevaluated what I felt was truly important in Christianity (the words of Jesus wound up on top), and I came up with love, above everything else. Jesus said to love God, love your neighbor and that the rest of the scriptures could be summarized in those two; that began to scream to me that love was the only right and everything else was details. It was the beginning of freedom. I could watch Dexter, listen to Lady Gaga, and write whatever I wanted. I stopped beating myself up for "missing the mark." I no longer spent energy dwelling on "sin." I started to really, really believe in the grace of God and that it was bigger than anything I could do. I stopped fretting. I started loving. I stopped filtering people out of my life because they soiled my bubble, and felt the nerve rising to kick out of my life harmful people, even those who quoted scripture while they shot their arrows. I became friends with so many amazing people who I would have turned away before, for whatever reason. I learned how to really, truly be me for the first time, and I finally felt like I could love my fellow humans according to my human abilities, without limitations born of doctrines that may or may not have their roots in scriptures (again, another matter for many more blog posts).

I could go on and on, but then you'd never read this in its entirety, would you?

The point is the following:

I left church for two years and it purified my faith.