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.

First Do No Harm

An awesome observation, used by permission:

What if pastors treated their congregants as patients? What if they approached every situation based on the premise of ‘first do no harm’? The phrase is well known in the medical community, and it means more than just avoiding intentional injury. It means thinking about the possible consequences of each approach to treatment.

Why don’t pastors consider how their response to survivors of trauma might cause further harm? How their response to abuse could add shame upon shame. Jesus didn’t rebuke people who were suffering. He understood we are both body and spirit; and, he addressed a person’s immediate need so that he could speak to their heart.

Churches are so filled with broken, lonely people. Yet, instead of being a place of healing it’s a place where we go to be reminded how to stuff our suffering under more submission, more praying through, more pretense. And when you’ve lost your last shred of trust in the place you were supposed to be safe, they label you as backslidden, kicking you while you’re down so you know your place.

And Jesus wept.

~Heather P

That really makes you think.

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Shaky arguments

Someone asked something the other day, and since then I keep thinking about the incident that changed my view of the bible and of certain doctrines of my former church completely.

Before I left my former church, I had joined a discussion board that was supposed to be for people who believed like I did. Through the next months, I’d realized that the people who were kindest were NOT the ones I would ever fellowship in person because, though they exhibited the most fruit of the spirit (love joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self control) they didn’t dress the way I thought they should, went to places I didn’t think any Christian should, and even did things and said things I didn’t think any Christian would. It blew my mind that they were the ones, these that I would have judged in person as least Christian, could actually be the most Christ-like.

About nine months after I left my former church, a question was raised on that board about baptism. These questions were typical on the board, but this time one woman was very adamant about her position, and she put others down if she felt they disagreed with her on any point. I didn’t get involved at first, but after awhile she said something that made no sense at all, even from our shared viewpoint. I said something about that. She assumed I was disagreeing with her stance on baptism, and for the next several pages of discussion argued with me about something I already believed! She was so convinced in her mind, just as I’d once been, that if a person didn’t agree with me on everything, they must not be a “real” Christian.

And so we went on to have a several page ‘discussion’ that ended with me radically changing my beliefs and my understanding of several passages. So in short, a Oneness Pentecostal argued so ridiculously for what she believed (and was determined I didn’t) that she actually converted me FROM that doctrine, rather than to it. And she did a really good job of it!

I’ve experienced the same multiple times since. The harder someone argues for their views without listening to any others or even stopping to see what the other person DOES believe, the more likely they are to drive me away from their viewpoint, no matter how much I believed in it. It’s crazy now, looking back on that thread, because what she was saying doesn’t even make logical sense. I see where she inserted a bunch of emojis, particularly when she thought she’d made her point… and unfortunately most often where those points had actually fallen shortest. She really thought she was doing something, posting as she was. I notice the many times she would get upset by a question, restate her point, and then go off on an emotional tangent about how her view was directly connected to how great God was and how she had the truth. And I know there have been times in my life when I did, too. Now I realize that all of my arguments for what I believed must have sounded absolutely stupid to anyone who didn’t believe them. Worse, I was certainly proud of them… and I think that pride probably made them even more off-putting.

I want to post part of the conversation, but it is quite lengthy and dizzying in it’s ‘rabbit trails’. What’s incredible to me though is not how convoluted the whole thing got. It’s that she, in all her pride and zeal, actually preached me away from what she thought I had to believe to be saved, even after I told her I believed it. A United Pentecostal actually taught me why the UPC teaching of Jesus name baptism as the only right baptism was wrong.

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The Dress

It was camp time, and I, as usual, didn’t have much money for the fancy evening clothes that most people my age would be wearing. Looking through the thrift stores, I found one dress. It met all the requirements: 3/4 sleeves, mid calf, not too fitted, high necked. It was a beautiful antique green-gray with a cream background, and it fit me perfectly.

Since having been kicked out of my previous church because my former pastor “felt in his spirit” that I was “lusting after” him, I hadn’t felt like looking very pretty. I had started, in my mid 20s, dressing in bulky dress jumpers a size or two too large, in dull or dark colors. This wasn’t modesty, though I didn’t know it then. It was humiliation and depression and a very unhealthy body image.

I wanted to look pretty in a way, but I was also very embarrassed about looking good. Wasn’t that immodest? Would I look sexy? I never wanted to be accused of causing a man to lust again. But I also wanted to look attractive. I saw other women my age at church. They didn’t dress like I did, and they weren’t accused. They were admired. And then I found the dress.

I questioned whether I should buy it. It looked absolutely great on me… and I wasn’t sure if that was great or terrible. But I loved it so much and I loved the way I looked in it. So I bought it. And the last night of camp, I wore it. I was a little self conscious in it, because I knew I looked good, but worried that it showed my figure more than my bulky jumpers, but I was also very happy with it. And so I shouted through the Friday night service and went back home the next day, very happy with my week.

And then came Sunday morning. The pastor’s wife taught our Sunday School class, and that morning she dedicated the class time to discussing how someone in the class had worn something terrible on Friday night. It was too fitted. It showed way too much. The person who wore it should have worn a girdle. She was so embarrassed for her…. For me. I was a size 6-8. I was 20-something with no kids. I’d never married. And the dress, apparently, though she never named me, was bad. I never wore the dress again.

Looking back now, I have to wonder what her problem was. I wasn’t dressed badly. I actually was dressed more like everyone else than I’d been in several years. I met all the rules of the dress code. Did she pick up on my self consciousness and exploit it? Was she jealous? Or was it just pure spite? If she was really embarrassed for me, if she really cared, wouldn’t she have come to me privately and expressed her concern, rather than spending Sunday morning detailing her embarrassment of the unnamed person to the class? (And wouldn’t she have done the same for whoever it was, if it wasn’t me?)

I wonder these thing now, looking back. I recently lost weight and needed new clothes. The ones I had were so large they were falling off of me. And every time I go to try on clothes that really fit, I think of that dress from nearly 20 years ago, when I was condemned for feeling pretty.

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Oh be careful… what you say

It’s been nearly two years ago that a friend, a pastor’s wife, posted to Facebook, “How can anyone call themselves a Christian and vote for Hillary?” I’m sure she meant no harm. I’m sure she was making what, in her mind, was a political statement. I’m sure she thought everyone reading her posts was of her same mindset.

I’ve struggled for two years with that and other similar statements she and others made during and since that time.

She didn’t persuade me to vote her way. What she did do was make me question everything about American Christianity, especially the fundamentalist, pop culture Christianity that seems best known in the Midwest. Her words were ungracious and unwise, leaving no room for argument: Either you agree with me or you’re not a Christian.

It’s a theme I’ve heard too many times as the closing statement of an opposing view:

How can you call yourself Christian and…
Do you REALLY have the Holy Ghost if you think that?
Well, if you think that, you must be backslid!
Wow, did you hear what you said?!?! You better pray through!

And unfortunately it’s one that affects me deeply, particularly because it makes traditional denominations sound eerily like the cult I left. The cult I left was very good at questioning our salvation… but as it turns out, other Christians apparently are, too.

I have considered multiple times unfriending her and others like her on Facebook. It’s not like she ever reads my posts. It’s not like we were ever good friends. And it’s not like I’ll ever see her again on earth. Yet when I consider it, I freeze. I have friends of other persuasions that post their opinions on Facebook or state them in person. I don’t have any problem with their very liberal posts. I’ve told others they need to listen to both sides of a discussion before forming opinions. And yet I’m considering silencing one ‘side’ – the conservative Christian one – in my life. And I cringe to think that I am. Why am I silencing one side but not the other? Why is it only the conservative Christian posts that bother me? Why have I come to view these posts as uneducated, arrogant, and rude, but haven’t viewed the posts from friends on the opposite end of the spectrum the same way?

And I realize I have an answer. My friends on the opposite end of the spectrum are very liberal and they are very vocal, but they are not judgmental. They have not labeled, criticized, or unfriended me for questioning their opinions or posting an opposing view or thought. They haven’t told me “this is my wall. I’ll post what I want.” They have never said, “I don’t care if it’s true or not. I don’t have time to research everything I post to see if it’s accurate. So I don’t care if it’s right or wrong. I like it, I think it’s faith-building, and I don’t want to hear any other view.” And they have never, EVER said, “How can you call yourself a Christian and disagree with me?” I know there are people who do (even on the liberal side), but my more liberal friends have not.

The reason the conservative opinion posts bother me isn’t so much that they are posted, but that they are posted with the assumption that every Christian will agree, and often with the statement or inference that anyone who doesn’t agree is NOT Christian. My friend whose daughter is trans posts her opinion, but she doesn’t ever say that anyone who doesn’t agree will go to hell, is not a part of a specific social group or persuasion, or even cannot be her friend. Another social activist friend also posts things related to her opinion, but she doesn’t stereotype others based on their opinions. She doesn’t label or judge. Another posts about race, but she is posting about how race affects her life; she’s never said “anyone who disagrees with me is an idiot.” And I’ve never wondered if any of them would unfriend me if I questioned their opinions or posted an alternate view.

Those I know who are liberal and post their opinions view and post them, in other words, as their opinions, not the voice of God.

So I guess really I shouldn’t feel guilty, shouldn’t feel that I’m limiting the voice of only one “side” while accepting the voice of the other. I’m not choosing sides, just limiting posts to those that are respectful of others no matter what ‘side’ they’re on. It’s unfortunate that the most vocal Christians on my Facebook friends list (and in person for that matter) are so often disrespectful of anyone they perceive as different from them. But I’m not unfriending them for being Christian. If anything, I’m unfriending them for behaving in a very unchristian way.

And so I’m cleaning up my friend list, and that means deleting a surprising number of my Christian friends. I’m not doing it because I’m not a Christian. I’m doing it so that I can somehow hopefully come to a point of believing without hearing the voices of those who question my faith based, not on whether I believe in Jesus, but based instead on who I vote for, how I dress, and where I go to church. Or even who I fellowship.

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“Let the Lord Fight your Battles”

I believe I had this idea to some extent growing up. It was definitely reinforced in the unhealthy churches I was in. We even sang a song about it. I was furious when I learned my former pastor’s son was molesting boys in the church. We’d been told often that if we had any concerns about the pastor and his family or anything they were doing we should “hold our peace and let the Lord fight our battles” (just shut up and pray) and God would take care of anything that was REALLY wrong (ie not just our evil imaginations, because if we thought anything negative about the pastor or his family it was surely us who were wrong).

Well, where was God? If he was to fight our battles, if we were right to just obey the pastor and pray, then how could he have not fought for those boys? Everything I’d been taught about trusting God, it seemed, was wrong.

I think back to my teens and young adult years when so many songs were about being God’s hands and feet in missions and ministry. The concept was that God is a spirit and Jesus is no longer on earth. It’s his people who now do his work. How in the world is staying quiet and just praying EVER considered OK when kids are being abused or other things are wrong?

Mom used to say that she might have faith, but she wouldn’t stand in the middle of the road and pray not to be hit by a car. But that’s what we did every day, staying quiet and expecting God to do for us what we should have had the decent common sense to do for ourselves.

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