Sunday, November 08, 2009
chasm
I'm not conservative enough for my church, and now even they are beginning to realize it. This feels like a gulf that can't be breached. I'm not sure how to proceed.
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About Me
- Cindy Bryan
- Married 24 years to Keith. We're parents to a fantastic 9 year old whom I homeschool. We live in the country about 25 miles south of Montgomery, Alabama. We have an old pony named Cupcake and a teenage horse named Wrangler. Keith and I currently lead worship music at our church.
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16 comments:
I wish I could resolve it for you. I'm here to listen.
I wish I had wisdom to share with you as well. All I can say is embrace the vocation that is the love of Christ. While we may be spread around the planet, there are many of us here for you. Praying!
Peace,
Jamie
May I offer a couple of thoughts? First, many things, though called "conservative" or "liberal", are neither. They are just different. We put these labels on them because it is a way to pejoratively place the other person in a category. Second, where you are is the natural outcome of the progression in thinking you have been going through for some time. Based on my experience, it is highly unlikely your church will adapt to you. The question becomes whether you will find a way to adapt to your church circumstances and remain true to your understanding of what you should be/do. If not, you are left with two alternatives: Either forsake your beliefs or leave.
May Father provide you with the wisdom to choose what will be best for all. May Father provide the love and compassion in your heart, no matter your choice, for relationships to be strengthened, not further frayed.
Yeah, I think if my church knew what I really thought - about doctrine, politics, whatever - I'd be "shepherded" right out of the building! :o)
Thanks, Erin, and Jamie.
Traveller, thanks, and--you're right. In the interest of time I used an outdated stereotype as a descriptor.
Jim- nice to know I'm in such good company!
I guess I should write something else here. I've said most of it before, so I don't want to replay that broken record.
I hit these spots in the road when I'm reminded more often than usual of the differences, and that's where I am now. I know I won't change anyone, and I don't even want to try-- most of the time.
It's just hard to listen to people I care about espousing a "faith" based worldview that is so exclusive and filled with intolerance and ... hate. And knowing that I am paid (however little) by these people to lead them in worship. I want to say- "Hey- you want real worship? Go find a Muslim, and tell him or her that God loves him, and that He doesn't blame them for what others in their faith do (anymore than I am blamed for the atrocities committed in the name of Christ)." That would be a worshipful act of kind justice that would please God.
But I don't say that because there would not be one single person to back me up. It's getting pretty damned lonely.
Yup.
You know what gets me? People who confuse the LUCK of their life and circumstances with divine purpose or manifest destiny.
Why don't people see that, Jim? I could have been born in Iraq. I could have been born to a family of poor illegal immigrants in this country... Most folks talk as if we did something to deserve whatever life we've been given. That would be Hinduism, now wouldn't it?
Precisely. That self-satisfied, self-sanctified sense of complacency drives me crazy.
And I don't know why they don't see it. I honestly don't. I look at so many people less fortunate and think, "There but for the grace of God go I." And I FEEL it. I've done some stupid, stupid things in my life that could've led to me being in a much different position in life than I am now, or dead. So I look at my life and feel blessed and lucky, but no more deserving of that blessedness and luck than anyone else. So then I want to share it, not horde it all to myself and think that somehow I am special.
I feel it too. Ditto on the stupid stuff. Grace grace grace. Somebody in SS sunday said, "I'm sure a lot of people would say I should be more tolerant, but I'm not and I'm not going to be. Period." And then she laughed. This was, by the way, the person in the room who'd be most likely to try to see my point of view. I think I gave up Sunday. I don't know what that means, but I may have really given up this time.
And that's why I don't participate in Sunday School, Bible study or anything else like that. Because I'd just have to sit in there and chew my own tongue off while listening to that kind of thing, meanwhile not daring to say what's actually on my mind. Been there, done that.
It will be interesting to watch your journey unfold!
But if God himself chooses who he wants and doesn't want, wouldn't that make the chosen ones somehow special?
Because what I hear is something like this: God doesn't choose everyone. Because God chose me to hear the good news of the bible and say the sinners prayer and accept Jesus into my heart...I must be special.
So that sense of entitlement comes directly from that distortion of the gospel.
I don't think any of our folks would say that, but it could be the general notion working in the background. sigh.
In my experience, this thinking is the natural evolution of the theology of predestination/election in a consumerist society. The 'haves' vs. the 'have-nots'.
The haves are special simply because they have and the have-nots are not special because they don't have.
Which, if I wanted to dig deeper, might suggest the foundation for why so many Christians don't think it's important to help the poor. If the poor 'have-not', it's because God wanted it that way.
Call me cynical...it's just the thinking I've run into.
In this case, our denomination doesn't hold to the doctrine of predestination. The interpretations is more along the lines of foreknowledge. But that doesn't change the shortsightedness at all, apparently.
Cindy, I understand your frustration. I frequently experience this myself in conversations with others. It is hard to live in circumstances where no one sees the world, or God, the same way as you do. Perhaps you are to be the person that challenges their thinking as difficult as it might be.....and lonely.
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