Searching to Belong

Took someone to a church the other week who was looking for a place to belong.  Had to search around to find the right community, as there were some unique needs this person had for belonging.  You see, they were part of the LGBTQS community.

It was striking to me that I had to shop around to find in the Church (the community that represents Christ), a specific community that would accept, welcome, and affirm/love them just as they were.  Rather than this being a hallmark of the communities of faith called the ‘church’, it’s the exception.  Thus the careful search.

This experience is similar for others who suffer marginalization of any kind, for whatever reason.  Do they live alternative lifestyles, do they suffer mental illness, are they from a culture/religion we fear, are they disruptive to our comfort zone…?  Fill in your own blank:_______

I’m not on a high horse here.  I am among the guilty who in the past had internalized (and then acted out) an ‘othering’.  I allowed doctrinal, moral and church-culture alignment to influence belonging and acceptance, rather than the wide embrace of love and grace that is the hallmark and the very essence of Christ.  I am so sorry that I did not think more deeply about what my tradition was demonstrating.  I went with the flow because it was what the community practiced.

I was fresh out of seminary and in my first church when I first faced this dilemma head on as a church leader.  Have to say that I failed the test.  My office was in the downtown area of a small Alberta town.  I’d sit in my office and think: “There’s a bar down the street.  I should head in there, have a coke and start meeting some of the people who gather there”.  But I didn’t, even though the Spirit was pushing me to go.  Jesus would have gone.  But I was conditioned into a thinking that declared it wasn’t the ‘right’ place for a pastor to be.  Not a good place for other Christians either.  (You can tell I am old and this was a long time ago given the social mores among Christians now).  What would my congregation say?  Would I be called on the carpet or even lose my job for associating with ‘that crowd’ or going into 'that place'?  The reality was that anyone in that bar probably would not come to my church anyway given they surely had already experienced the Christian cold shoulder.  There would be no welcome from us especially if we knew their ‘story’ was as someone who sat in bars. So there I was – not going TO them and then leading a community that would not let them IN either. 

So much for belonging.  So much for a love that embraces all.   So much for incarnation of the gospel into my neighbourhood and relationships.  And, so much for Jesus being 'good news' to them.

A big win for religion.

By the way, the church we went to the other week was fantastic.  A warm embrace, felt through the teaching, the atmosphere and the welcome.  Just like Jesus would have done. 

I Lost a Friend Today

I lost a friend today.  Found at home dead.  No explanation yet.  Just prior to that I had conversations with 2 families who are suffering through similar family circumstance that have been our experience the past 12 years.  My heart and soul became overwhelmed.  Went to my room and cried, almost uncontrollably, for a long time.  Wave after wave of what felt like the weight of the worlds suffering crashing on me.  Seemed out of proportion, yet it kept coming.

I have experienced this a few times.  An identification with, and realization of the suffering of people in this world.  I don’t ever feel much emotion in my relationship with God, but this comes to me every once in a while, unannounced and definitely uninvited.  And I am wrecked.  Interestingly (to me) it is not about agonizing over the “Why, God?” question.  It is about just entering into the loss, suffering and human experience of pain, and how unjust, unnecessary, and unexplained it is.

My emotion doesn’t need an answer.  I am always sad, but not angry.  It is as though God has me there to just sit in the pain & loss.  The experience comes on me and I cannot control it.  It’s as though Christ just wants me to know it and perhaps feel what He feels. This is the closest I get to feeling intimacy in my relationship with Christ.

Suffering is unjust and frankly, unnatural.  We were not made for suffering, so when it occurs it feels wrong – precisely because according to God’s created intent for us, this was never meant to be.  We feel this deep within us, in the recesses of our souls.  It is the image of God within us crying out for our true state of being all the while we are suffering.

I don’t subscribe to those who seek to glorify suffering as a means to deeper spirituality.  Bull****.  However, we must deal with it as part of the human condition on earth.  I do know that in Christ, who also suffered, I can endure and find strength and hope.  But to glorify suffering itself as though we should seek it, is warped religion.  Christ endured the Cross but He didn’t go looking for it.  Never glorify suffering.  Endure it.  Place your hope and perspective in Christ during your suffering, but never elevate it to some superior state of spiritual experience.  We were made for blessing, love, abundance and eternal life.  Suffering and death and pain are in the way, and while ultimately are resolved and defeated in Christ, in the interim we are left to endure and cope, mitigating the pain (ours and others’) through the strength and promises we have in Christ, that we will be restored to our created being as God intended.

This also why we must be engaged in our world, to alleviate pain, poverty and suffering of all kinds.  It is why we are to ‘show up’ and come alongside with human suffering.  This is how the Kingdom of God (the created intent of God) comes to earth and does its restorative, redemptive work.  Who the hell cares about your theology of salvation if it has little or nothing to do with the state of human life in the here and now?  That’s not gospel.  If your deeper life pursuits and your Christian church experience does not have an immediate & demonstrable relationship of love and grace to the need of the world, you are nothing but noise.

I lost a friend today and I am pissed at the suffering of this world.