I do write a lot about grief, and like grief is mostly about changes we would never embrace if we did not have to, so too this is an example of grief that is all too irreconcilable.
I saw it in a vision through an image of a group socialising in a lounge room on social media. They were having fun. They’d been friends for decades. And they’d also belonged to a church that had hurt them all considerably.
You see, this church had done something abusive to one of their number—with no thought of contrition, with every thought to their right to do such a thing. The group one-by-one left on mass. Anytime there is mention of this church, a mood of death hits the room. Some won’t go there. Others, once started, cannot stop venting their hurt, their frustration, their lament. Others are just silent.
I look at a group like this and I can see what bonds them and what binds them. Truth would have them all admit that those bonds and binds could fit a whole deal better, but that’s their lot. Nobody can change the past, and no one is going to change what the past meant for each one.
Too often bloody-minded churches are happy to let the haemorrhage continue undressed and unaddressed once it leaves its borders. As some are given to saying goodbye and good riddance so, too, do these kinds of churches say goodbye and good riddance. And it isn’t good enough.
Why do church leaderships, when they arrive at Matthew 5, skip over verses 23-24, and think, “Phew! Glad we didn’t have to go there!”
If you’re Christian and someone has been hurt by you, you go to them and seek to restore the relationship. Your love of God is inconsequential if there are relationships on a human plane that are damaged, and you can do something to reconcile and restore them.
It’s true, some people do walk out of churches hurt and disappointed and they don’t try to help the leadership of those churches understand the issues. But too many people and groups of people become aware of abusive dynamics in churches that churches simply won’t admit and, worse, defend—as their right!
That said, there is an authority problem in many churches. Churches by their nature hold Jesus as the head of the church, which means churches have the right to claim independence from other human authority, but these very churches are tempted to become authoritarian in their own right—especially when a leader, who ‘hears from God’, defends their right to rule as they see the Holy Spirit leads.
But it can’t be the Holy Spirit in charge if there’s division and disunity by way of people or groups leaving disgruntled and there’s no effort going in to reconcile.
I can tell you that if the powerful party (let’s say the leadership of a church) has nothing to gain, and therefore no interest, in reconciliation, there are people who become marooned in their faith.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to consider that Jesus was talking about millstones around necks and bottoms of seas in the context of those who so damage God’s and the church’s name by refusing to work with those who think those churches have got a case to answer.
How disgusting it is that churches get away with leaving people spiritually marooned when they’re greatly positioned to broker peace in broken people’s lives. Isn’t that what the love of Christ is about?
There is great pain in saying goodbye and good riddance purely in the fact that in many circumstances, no matter how hard people try as they leave a damaging church experience, they simply cannot say good riddance, because the problems don’t go away. It is incumbent on both parties to explore a solution that at least gives all parties peace.
Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash
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