Church: How I Go Without Getting Angry

a few weeks ago my mom copied an excerpt from a book she's been reading and gave it to me.  she periodically does things like that. 

it's been sitting on my desk, which i have been cleaning off, so i just read it for the first time.  it's nicely on point with other things i've been blogging about recently.  i have no idea what it means in the larger context of the book, but i like it.

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from the novel 

Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirtuality

by Donald Miller

Chapter 12: "Church: How i Go Without Getting Angry"

It should be said I am an independent person.  I don't like institutionalized anything. I don't like corporations.  I am not saying institutions and corporations are wrong, or bad; I am only saying I don't like them.  Some people don't like classical music, some people don't like pizza, I don't like institutions.  My dislike might stem from a number of things, from the nonpersonal feel I get when I walk into a corporate office or the voice-mail system I encounter when I call my bank.  It might be the nonengaged look on every fast-food worker's face or the phone calls I receive in the middle of dinner asking me what long-distance carrier I use.  Those people never want to just talk; they always have an agenda.

My dislike for institutions is mostly a feeling, though, not something that can be explained.  there are upsides to institutions, of course.  Tradition, for example.  The corridors at Harvard, rich with history, thick with thought, the availability of good, hot Starbucks coffee at roughly thirty locations within five miles of my home.  And what about all those jobs?  Without the corporate machine, where would people work?  I suppose we need them.  The institutions.  The corporations.  But mostly I don't like them.  I don't have to like them either.  It's my right.

I don't like church, either, for the same reason.  Or I should say I didn't like church.  I like attending a Catholic service every once in a while, but I think that is because it feels different to me.  I grew up Baptist.  I like watching religious television every once in a while.  It's better than Comedy Central.  I want to study psychology so I can sit in front of religious television and figure out these people's problems.  For a while I was very fascinated with televangelists.  I couldn't afford a television ministry but I had a computer, so I would go into Christian chat rooms and try to heal people.  It was funny at first, but it got boring.

Some of my friends have left their churches and gone Greek Orthodox.  I think that sounds cool.  Greek Orthodox.  Unless you are Greek.  Then it sounds like that is where you are supposed to go, as though you are a conformist.  If I were Greek, I would never go to a Greek Orthodox church.  If I were Greek, I would go to a Baptist church.  Everybody there would think I was exotic and cool.

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I go to a church now that I love.  I never thought I would say that about a church.  I never though I would love a church.  But I love this one.  It is called Imago-Dei, which means "Image of God" in Latin.  Latin is exotic and cool.

In the churches I used to go to, I felt like I didn't fit in.  I always felt like the adopted kid, as if there was "room at the table for me."  Do you know what I mean?  I was accepted but not understood.  There was room at the table for me, but I wasn't in the family.

It doesn't do any good to bash churches, so I am not making blanket statements against the church as a whole.  I have only been involved in a few churches, but I had the same tension with each of them; that's the only reason I bring it up.

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Here are the things I didn't like about the churches I went to.  First: I felt like people were trying to sell me Jesus.  I was a salesman for a while, and we were taught that you are supposed to point out all the benefits of a product when you are selling it.  That is how I felt about some of the preachers I heard speak.  They were always pointing out the benefits of Christian faith.  That rubbed me wrong.  It's not that there aren't benefits, there are, but did they have to talk about spirituality like it's a vacuum cleaner.  I never felt like Jesus was a product.  I wanted Him to be a person.  Not only that, but they were always pointing out how great the specific church was.  The bulletin read like a brochure for Amway.  They were always saying how life-changing some conference was going to be.  Life-changing?  What does that mean?  It sounded very suspicious.  I wish they would just tell it to me straight rather than trying to sell me on everything.  I felt like I got bombarded with commercials all week and then went to church and got even more.

And yet another thing about the churches I went to: They seemed to be parrots for the Republican Party.  Do we have to tow the party line on every single issue?  Are the Republicans that perfect?  I just felt like, in order to be part of the family, I had to think George W. Bush was Jesus.  And I didn't.  I didn't think that Jesus really agreed with a lot of the policies of the Republican Party or for that matter the Democratic Party.  I felt like Jesus was a religious figure, not a political figure.  I heard my pastor say once, when there were only a few of us standing around, that he hated Bill Clinton.  I can understand not liking Clinton's policies, but I want my spirituality to rid me of hate, to give me reason for it.  I couldn't deal with that.  That is one of the main reasons I walked away.  I felt like, by going to this particular church, I was a pawn for the Republicans.  Meanwhile, the Republicans did not give a crap about the causes of Christ.

Only one more thing that bugged me, and then I will shut up about it.  War metaphor.  The churches I attended would embrace war metaphor.  They would talk about how we are in a battle, and I agreed with them, only they wouldn't clarify that we were battling poverty and hate and injustice and pride and the powers of darkness.  They left us thinking that our war was against liberals and homosexuals.  Their teaching would have me believe I was the good person in the world and the liberals were the bad people in the world.  Jesus taught that we are all bad and He is good, and He wants to rescue us because there is a war going on and we are hostages in that war.  The truth is we are supposed to love the hippies, the liberals, and even the Democrats, and that God wants us to think of them as more important than ourselves.  Anything short of this is not true to the teachings of Jesus.

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