First of all, I want to make it clear that I totally agree with you . . . but at the same time it saddens me. Not what you said (your choice of words) saddens me, but the reality of what you are saying if that makes sense.

For one, I agree (and my experience with AA has been limited) that AA and Al-Anon are a great resource for resolving and healing and candid-icity (my own conned word). Their great honesty is to be admired and is so important to their success. But I wish that the church could offer the same. The reason is, while AA gives partial resolution (eg. depending on a higher force, venting, supporting each other) that true Christianity can give true and total redemption.

What I am trying to say is that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to start church meetings with each person stating “My name is Mike and I am a sinner”—or we could add specifics, “lair, luster, envy-er” . . . or for some, maybe even “alcoholic.” But I don’t mean just having people sit in a circle and airing their dirty laundry week after week in a hyper- introspective way.

Going back to my example of divorce. There is nowhere in our church (except for maybe the women’s Sunday school class) where any of the problems of the couple could be aired in an honest, accepting and pre-emptive way.

Last year I had tried to start a home Bible Study with a focus on marriage. I’ve been happily married for 25 years, but our marriage has been far from perfect. We’ve weathered some horrible storms and know that even now it isn’t perfect (nor can it ever be). I really wanted this group to find a safe place to really open up and have us, as a group, help each other work through these things. I’ve led previous groups where this really happened . . . and it was so refreshing.

To “prime the pump” I did a lot of very honest sharing about my own relationship with my wife and the very real things that we deal with every day. But the group would sit in silence. Okay, one wife (whom I knew was struggle with some things from comments she had made to my wife) did share a few things.

Then two of the men, who were products of “Promise Keepers” and whom I think have the same “I am godly” complex that I carried for years approached me to let me know that they weren’t coming back. Their point was that they have “good Christian marriages” and we were just trying to dig up dirt, which offended them. So then a year later, suddenly there’s a divorce and another woman?

It is my humble opinion that the Church (and not all churches) have had a misunderstanding about sanctification. I know that I did and the group I was associated with for a couple of decades did. We really thought that we could read the right books, study scripture enough, practice enough discipline and presto . . . we could be “godly” people who rarely sinned. But it was a farce. The church then ends up playing the game that “I am a good Christian,” and to maintain that façade, we can never reveal our weaknesses (like you can in AA). Then the dragons in the hidden places are never exposed to the redemptive love of Christ and the support and total acceptance of our fellow believers.

I really liked your quote: “Religion is for people who don’t want to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there.” But a better twist on it, in my opinion, is “Religion is for people who desire to be god-pleasing (winning his acceptance by our good behavior) and true Spirituality is for people who’ve been in “hell” and know that they could be back in hell at any moment (in other words their great accomplishments can’t save them from hell on earth) except for the grace of God.

All the more reason to bring back Confession and Absolution. And not to let the government interfere with mandatory reporting etc.

“I really believe that it is our calling, as the Church, to create the safest place in the world. A place so safe that Christians can share the most honest parts of their lives.”

When I need to speak honestly about my imperfect life, I go to a 12-step meeting. I wouldn’t dream of telling the church people about my flaws, doubts, and rough places. The church folks love me and I love them, but what we do is not speak with total honesty. We pray and we share our griefs and some of our fears, but not anything that might be personally humiliating. I’m not sure why that is, but I do know that when I’m with my favorite church people, I am careful about what I say, lest they be hurt or offended.

In Al-Anon and other 12-Step places, we’re way beyond that.

Maybe it’s just like that old, rather snarky, 12-step saying: “Religion is for people who don’t want to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there.”

I have much I wish I could say but life is so busy that I can’t keep up with my own blog. So here it is late at night, after an exhausting day and I am ready to crash but I feel I must type something.

Ironically (considering this topic), I was at the LAbri – A Common Grace conference in Rochester, MN last week and have not caught up in my medical practice since getting back to town. BTW, Edith’s son-in-law shared that her dementia has progressed to the point, that I personally doubt if she will hear of Crazy for God and will certainly not read it. I think I mentioned before that I was living in Rochester when she was there and she gave me the copy of Frank’s book Sham Pearls Before Real Swine that he had sent her . . . having not cracked the cover.

I’ve posted before how much I appreciate the work of the Schaeffers. Baring the sovereignty of God working through some other way, I would not consider myself a Christian today had it not been for the Francis’ books and hundreds of hours of his taped lectures. Yet, in paradox (something I haven’t even sorted out myself) I deeply enjoyed reading Crazy for God. I think I have even a greater appreciation for LAbri because I know that they are mortals like me. Okay, I’m being redundant.

Frank himself, as the author, is a microcosm of God’s work in this world . . . a blend of the magnificent and the deeply flawed. Of course, Frank did not write the book out of completely honorable motives (nor can any of us do anything out of completely pure motives) . . . but I believe that much of his writing was so.

I am a post-Evangelical (not theologically liberal) Christian trying to live in an Evangelical world. Why? Because the only other choice I have is to be very, very lonely. It is my sense that the Evangelical church longs for this level of honesty and it is a subliminal craving. Very few would admit it.

One example of this is the fact that a “devoted” family in our congregation suddenly divorced last summer and left. People within the church were saying, “no one saw this coming.” I voiced (and no one seemed to comprehend what I was trying to say) that of course no one saw it coming because there is no place with this congregation that people can speak honestly about their imperfect lives. One of the church leaders commented that “Church is no place to dig up dirt.” If not within the church then where? Dear Abby? In a drunken stupor at the bar with non-Christian fellow workers?

I really believe that it is our calling, as the Church, to create the safest place in the world. A place so safe that Christians can share the most honest parts of their lives. Not to be theatrical in our sharing but as a plea for help and for mercy and as an example of our complete dependence on the Grace which is in Christ . . . not by our own godliness . . .earned by following steps 1, 2 and 3. of the discipleship workbook.

I still honor Frank’s parents . . . and my own, yet I am willing to fully admit their failures in my desire to live honestly, with distracting from that honor.

It is providential that I came across your post today. Since last Friday I have been looking at the issue of suffering, of pain, of our brokenness on my blog. I sparked a bit of controversy by strongly asserting that suffering has no intrinsic value because, as St. Augustine asserted “nothing evil exists in itself, but only as an evil aspect of some entity because every actual entity is good [omnia natura bonum est]“. I linked a post to this one because your post put very powerfully and succinctly what I have read before.

Last year, in preparing for a lecture, I read Cynthia Crusdale’s ‘Embracing Travail: Retrieving the Cross Today’ along with Rowan Williams’ ‘Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Story.’ Reading, digesting, and seeking to communicate these two books together was revolutionary for me.

So, thanks once again for your realism, for your loving critique, and for so wonderfully communicating what it means (or should mean) to be Church.