Author: Through Grace

I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12). I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ. 1 John 4:7-8 7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

Finding home

Two months ago I started attending a church… after around 5-6 years of swearing I was done, and after one infamously sarcastic Google search for what I thought was the impossible… a church that accepted even doubters and unbelievers.

For two months I’ve watched people in this church – leaders and laity – being authentic, accepting and loving. They’ve invited me to sit with them and welcomed me to their classes, groups, and discussions. They’ve never once pressured me for information about myself or pushed for any commitment from me. They’ve listened, they’ve shared, and they’ve loved.

When I first started going, I’d physically shake and my blood pressure would go hypertensive, which is very unusual for me. But I was actually IN a church building, and that was a terrifyingly dangerous place in my mind. And this was a different kind of church than I was used to (thank goodness!), and the unfamiliarity was also scary. But there was something incredible happening and I knew it, and I knew that this church was part of it.

I asked God at the time to please provide answers to some of my many questions without me having to ask. That prayer has been answered many times over, and is still being answered in amazing ways but I’m not afraid to ask questions now. This is a safe place to wonder, to question, to ask. Even to doubt or differ.

The last two months have brought healing to 22 years of deep wounds, and a restoration I didn’t dare dream of.

I’m so incredibly happy that I’m joining this church tomorrow. No, membership there changes nothing. There’s no extra perk to joining, unless you count getting a name tag, and no one will expect anything more or less of me. Nothing changes because they will continue to do just what they’ve already done and be what they’ve already been. But it means a lot to me, and it’s my opportunity to say, “me, too.”

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Buyer Beware: When God Becomes the Sales Tactic

It seems it happens nearly every time I need work contracted on my house. At least one estimate, generally from a contractor I like, comes back with a fish symbol or a “God bless!” or a bunch of praying hand emoticons.

There’s nothing wrong with these… except this is a business, and the businesses I worked with in the past who used God as a sales tactic… generally were closer to being in league with the devil. Seriously, those businesses that tended to advertise as “Christian owned and operated” or otherwise indicated their faith as part of their business model lied, cheated, took advantage, and sometimes left me with more problems than I started with.

The worst was the HVAC man. He was a guy in my former church. A preacher, one of those in the ‘inner circle,’ one of those people whom the pastor bragged about and told others to respect. Good guy? Well, I was told he was. “Keep business in the church.” “Use him, he’ll give you a deal because you’re a sister.” I asked him to install a new AC unit for me. He ordered it, had me pay, and put it in my basement. He did NOT hook it up, though he’d promised to. A year later when I was trying to sell my house… it was STILL IN THE BASEMENT. The pastor finally did intervene, but it was a very stressful situation for me and even then, the man tried to shame me for wanting it installed. AFTER A YEAR. No one else would even touch the install, because they hadn’t ordered it… and apparently because it was nearly too old to meet the new rules for installing.

Another time, tree trimmers came. Good church members, always so helpful. They cut the tree down for me, but when I told them that yes, they could leave some of the trunk for a table and could leave some firewood for my fire pit, they left the ENTIRE trunk, in one piece, in the middle of the yard. I called and asked about it and they said I’d asked them to leave it, and what did I want them to do, now that it was there? It was too large to handle once it was laying on the ground, because it was huge. Well, a trunk 12+ feet long and over four feet in diameter at the base is too big for firewood OR a table, too!

There were other situations like this, from people within my former church… and unfortunately people from other churches too. Today it was a concrete contractor. The estimate came in with “God bless!” and immediately I had a gut feeling. I started digging in and researching more, and searching for some references that he did NOT solicit. Unfortunately, they were all one-star-never-again bad. And unfortunately it began to be apparent that most of the good reviews were associated with a single church and a single job, done for the cost of materials only, for one local church. It’s hard not to leave a good review for one job done at cost, with free labor. You’d almost think it was an advertising ploy.

Over time I’ve learned, leaving a card with “A Christian owned business” emblazoned as the byline, or a flyer or website with a fish symbol or cross on it, or email or text communications ending in “God bless,” or worse, with little Christianese emoticons (emoticons are not professional communication – double warning sign!) on them, is a reason to beware. Those have been the businesses in my experience that were least likely to treat people right. It’s almost like they expect those things to sell their business… and get those who solicit their business to back them even when they’re bad. They remind me of abusive pastors in that way.

Churches aren’t the only ones who spiritually abuse or take advantage of people ‘in Jesus’ name.’ Too bad God doesn’t sue people for slander, using his name in vain like that.

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Labeling and shaming

As a teen, before I ever went to a Pentecostal church, it started. I even remember where it started, outside my immediate family, and who it started with.

“Mary, look at his butt on the court!”
“Umm… OK”
“Don’t you think that’s sexy?!?!”
“Not particularly. He’s just a guy in shorts.”
“What, are you gay?”

Actually, I seriously doubt my response had anything to do with being gay. It was a bunch of scrawny teen boys on a court. We were in the balcony. We saw them every day, and I simply had no interest in them in general because I DID know them. The same ones who threw snowballs with rocks in them at me. The same ones who followed me down the halls trying to grab me inappropriately. No, why would anyone be interested in that?

The girl who asked was supposed to be my friend, but she was a bully… and she had a strong influence from Pentecostal churches herself. She treated me incredibly poorly throughout junior high and high school. And no one really noticed. Definitely no one, to my knowledge, ever tried to stop her.

I didn’t have but one boyfriend in high school, and he was a jerk. I enjoyed going out alone much more than being with a guy who snapped his fingers and pointed to the ground behind him, expecting me to follow him. And so the questions continued in my small school. Usually quietly, but always from the same group when they arose, and generally at times when everything seemed to be going well for me otherwise.

I didn’t associate it with church or religion at the time.

In college, I joined a United Pentecostal church. Before I was even a member, the comments started.

“We wouldn’t have even known you were a girl, your hair short and you wearing pants like that.”
“Maybe you should wear a padded bra.”
“You just look so much like a boy!”

They’d tell me that I should spend more time with the ladies, but the ladies wouldn’t accept me and I didn’t relate well to their gender-divided culture. My parents and grandparents all shared work for the most part and interests and clothing colors weren’t divided by gender. I’d never been discouraged for learning to use hand tools or helping Dad work on the car (well, except maybe by Dad since my help usually led to extra work!) or playing cards “with the guys” rather than sitting in the living room “with the women.” We could choose what we wanted to do and who we wanted to be. We played with toy cars sometimes as well as dolls. There weren’t ‘boy colors’ and ‘girl colors’. (A church would later preach that if a man wore pink he was effeminate.) I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup or get my hair done or go on shopping trips; my parents often told those things were too expensive or I didn’t need them.

But at church… around these new friends, there was ‘something wrong’ with me if I didn’t fall right in line with a very different culture, one where women separated from the men and kept to themselves, where hair and clothes were a really big deal and actually part of identity, and shopping trips were not just a thing to do once in a while, but actual events. Big events. Out of town, overnight, look-forward-to-this events. I didn’t get it then and I don’t get it now. And yet repeatedly I was labeled or shamed because I didn’t conform. And often my sexuality or sexual orientation were questioned.

I never married and people now ask why. I never met a man in church who could look past the labels and see me, respect me, and love me. And so being single became a very good thing, because who’d want to marry someone who couldn’t?

Did their labels or shaming change me? Yes, but I believe for the better. The labels didn’t change who I was, nor did they force me to conform, but in time they did increase my empathy and acceptance of others. I guess all their efforts backfired on them. And I’m glad.

Shaming and labeling… the tools of any unhealthy group to force conformity and/or to dehumanize those who are different in order to isolate them. It’s easier to hurt “the gay” or “the Jezebel” or “sinners” of whatever sort than it is to hurt “Mary” or “Joe” or “Jane.” Mary and Joe and Jane are people with their own lives and stories, but “sinners” are “bad people”. And so, they shame to try to force conformity and when that doesn’t work, it’s a short jump to labeling… and it is much easier to bully, to shame, to isolate and mistreat “those bad people” than a human being. It is also easier to label them “bad” than to consider there might be another way than their own to exist. And sometimes… sometimes they’re simply jealous. After all, it must be frustrating and even frightening to think that the people they’ve labeled “bad” are happy, free, and confident individuals, especially if they are freer, happier, and more confident than those who are doing the labeling.

If you’ve been shamed or labeled, be encouraged. Don’t accept the labels and don’t try to conform. Instead, simply become a better person as a result of them, and keep being the wonderful individual you are meant to be. God made you YOU. And even if you are the girl who likes the pixie cut or the guy who enjoys wearing pink, be you. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. You’re exactly who God made you to be.

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Faithful or Fanitical?

The reports keep coming of people who refuse to stop holding live services and refuse to socially distance, even in places where this COVID-19 virus is spreading very quickly. Some churches are even encouraging people to bring visitors, laying on hands, and even busing large numbers of people in.

What they are doing is wrong. What they’re doing, these churches that are insisting on assembling and not practicing social distancing and saying God will protect them, is a whole lot like the snake handlers they’d probably spurn as backward, uneducated, unbiblical, or fanatical.

So… if you wouldn’t go to a snake handling church and possibly pick up a rattler to show your faith, don’t feel you have a lack of faith for not going and potentially exposing yourself to this virus, either. Both are equally crazy, and both equally deadly. One’s just more shocking because a 4′ rattler is bigger and scarier looking than a virus to most people. Still, both pack quite a bite.

Stay home. Be safe. In this time, if you want to prove your faith, prove it by trusting that God will take care of you even if you can’t go to church. There are other ways to assemble. So prove your love for everyone else by not putting others at risk. God is love, not a building, anyway.

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Faith Versus Works During Crisis

I keep recalling this passage: “James 2:14 What good is it, my brothers, if someone claims to have faith, but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? 15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you tells him, “Go in peace; stay warm and well fed,” but does not provide for his physical needs, what good is that? 17 So too, faith by itself, if it is not complemented by action, is dead.”

Now, 19 years in Pentecost tells me that ‘works’ would be going about our day as though nothing has happened, as though we are not facing a pandemic, as though there’s no way we could be sick. But think about the times this was written, and the times just past this. The church was persecuted. People were being killed for their faith. Was their response to have more church, to have bigger churches, to dare the Romans to come and get them? No. They met in private, in secret, sometimes in catacombs. They didn’t hide their faith, but they didn’t go shout “Come and get me! You can’t touch me!” Because they knew that wasn’t the case. They knew they could die, and so they were careful. But their caution or risk wasn’t what this passage was discussing.

And what it WAS discussing might be something these churches that insist on meeting should consider. There were Christians, apparently, according to the passage, who needed help, who needed special care. And there were other Christians who, rather than caring for them in ways that would meet their needs, would simply say, “praying for you!” “Thoughts and prayers!” And James said, “No, this doesn’t show your faith, saying ‘praying for you’ and then walking away! Faith goes hand in hand with action.” And today, that would mean not praying for people and going to church and bragging about not following the stay home orders or social distancing requests, but instead caring for those with weakened immune systems and the elderly and their caregivers by doing as we’re told.

Faith and works, James says, go hand in hand. You cannot have real faith without ‘feet’ — without acting on that faith by loving others. And the best way to love others right now is to stop hoarding food, stop going out, start keeping your distance and staying home when possible, and start spending your time, rather than bragging about how great your faith is, showing it. Sew some masks for critical care workers who are putting their own health at risk to help others in this time. Offer to tutor students or post a few informational videos that might help parents trying to teach kids at home. If you want to go out and shop to show your faith, offer to pick up some groceries for someone who can’t or won’t because they don’t want to catch or spread this. And give people space and thank the cashiers and stockers when you do. There are plenty of ways to show faith – loving others, caring for the sick or elderly, simply listening. And staying home to help ensure others are safe. That’s faith with works. That’s love. And that’s what everything in Christianity is supposed to be about.

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