If you know me (or don't), you may (or may not) be surprised to read that. But it's true.
The church is big, and deep, and wide, and complex, made up of thousands of people and cultures, all with their own particulars, strengths, weaknesses, shades of vision, yada yada yada. It is an imperfect band of ragamuffins, no matter how hard some of them would try to convince you otherwise, with big screens and flashing lights and big, flashing teeth, and pithy -isms intended to distance suffering rather than sit with it.
The church has both sustained me and broken my heart. Given me tools to survive, and slashed my legs out from beneath me. I've seen dead churches filter millions of dollars through themselves for stupid, lame reasons; I've seen incredible faith communities virtually ignored by their parent denominations. Seen the church eat its young and euthanize its old with one hand while feeding the poor and lifting the needy with the other.
Is it any wonder why so many people are so exhausted with the ambivalence of it?
I have my gripes and wounds just like any other current or former churchgoer, but I'm not nearly educated (or, lately, graceful) enough to feel qualified to speak outside my own experience. I'm heartened to read many well-written, well-balanced, forward-thinking commentaries lately - other peoples' takes on the church's direction. Deaths and births. Those leaving, and those staying amid the exodus, and why anyone would bother doing any of it. They all say, with grace and frankness, the things I feel, but can't speak (a wordless season for a writer is torturous). And in reading their words and not writing any of my own, I realize that they are starting the engine on what I've been subconsciously bit-chomping for: how long do we hold out? how long do we wait? how long? They're pulling the blinds and letting the light in. And I feel less alone, though I still can't exactly tell you why.
Whether the truth is closer to I have so many criticisms that I don't even know where to start, or the state of the church may not be as dismal as I believe it to be - it's probably best I keep my mouth shut until I figure out where to plant each foot. Because the truth is probably found somewhere near the middle.
I do know that, although I need so much distance from it so frequently, I can't quit it. I won't quit it. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, like a guilty outlier groaning rich aspersions set to heartbroken chords that press the masses' bruises and cause them to echo forth, and maybe that's why I keep my mouth shut, because who are you, standing outside, to criticize what's happening inside? - but I think the truth is that the state and direction of the church means so much to me that I can't articulate the ways in which its misdirections break my heart. My heart, which is no better than, no more tender or righteous, than anyone else's - but if I needed to state a criticism of the church (and, lately, I do need to), it is that my heart is broken with how many hearts the church has broken and walked away from - so often turned on its heel and left inconvenient souls in the dust while walking toward meaningless things that will swallow its soul.
I identify with the outliers, the I-walked-away-from-it-to-save-myself, the abuses and wrongs and where-was-God??? - and identifying with pain that touches your own is a heady thing, an occasionally irresistible draw that can lead you to darker places than you intended before you realize it. But I also identify with the very center, God-breathed core of the church - go, and do, in My name. I've been both the hand that's fed and, in spite of my wounds, the rod that's smitten. I don't have the words, but I identify with the triune: the church in spite of its deep imperfections, the broken under its feet, and, somehow, still, with the God who redeems it all in ways that I'm too tired to think about.
In all the things each side is crying out: they're both right. Sometimes at odds, and sometimes, they cry out over different wording of the same things, though they don't realize it.
And if the question is where can I go with this? I think the answer is the same as the answer to this question:
If your church were stripped of everything - building, every cent, community standing, all political influence, slogans, billboards, affiliations, sponsorships, everything - if your church were, in ten minutes, reduced to a group of bewildered people holding each others' squalling babies and bandaging each others' foreheads, sitting in a circle, just them and God: where would your church go from there? and who would you be? what would you be?
hm.
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