I have longings to be in it, but I have experienced so much manipulation and emotional blackmailing from the elders and my ex-husband who used church doctrine to put me into submission until I finally got a restraining order put against him. He still goes to that church of Christ, spreading awful stories about me, making me look like the “bad guy.” He thinks that just because he is in the church, he can do all sorts of sinful and evil things outside church life and still be in God’s mercy for salvation.

My low thoughts lie in these issues, mainly. Outside of religion, I have a wonderful independent life with a bubbling career and wonderful children I have been blessed with. But my religious state has put me in a situation where I feel that I am condemned to eternal damnation, no matter how good I am, and no matter where I go to worship GOD, because these “bandaid” churches only last for so long.

What is a person like me to do, really?

Bottom line, we need to change ourselves looking only to Jesus and no other for our example. As long as the Pastor preaches the truth from the Bible and the whole Bible at that we should be able to tough out the non-essentials. But in the end it is all about what we personally did when it came to Jesus and His lordship of our lives.

Shalom,

matt

We had a spectacular example of that out here in SoCal some 15-20 years ago. Remember the guy in the rainbow fright wig who’d hold up this “John 3:16″ sign for the media cameras? He was the darling of Christian Media for his “Witnessing (TM)”, inspiration for Steve Taylor’s “Bannerman”, spoofed in crowd scenes from Saturday Night Live to The Simpsons, and given his own entry on the Kooks Museum website. At first, an eccentric turned semi-accidental celebrity.

His career came to an end in 1992, when after planting smoke and stink bombs at various places he ended up the perp in a God-Told-Me-To attempted-kidnapping-turned-hostage-situation on an upper floor of what was then the Los Angeles Airport Hyatt. (Just this morning, I drove by that very hotel, dropping someone off at the airport.)

Took a few hours before the LAPD SWAT team dug him out of there, with the surrealistic touches of demands to Witness The End Is Nigh on broadcast media and Bible verses sprayed on bedsheets and hung out the windows of the room where he was holding a hotel maid hostage.

After his bust and conviction, there was a lot of hot air on Christian media about “PERSECUTION!!!” I asked then and still ask now how or why nobody noticed this guy going round the bend until he finally snapped completely. He had to have had associates — friends, pastor, brothers-in-Christ — who should have noticed him going from eccentric to crazy. Was it that as he was losing it, he said all the right Christianese things? Quoted the right chapters and verses? Put enough God-talk into his craziness that everybody mistook his crazy-talk for the Holy Spirit?

Before I was the lead pastor, I saw the gap between where the church is and where it should be, but it didn’t bother me that much. But when I became the pastor that changed. Partly because I began to think about what church could be like in all its beauty, truth and justice. But also because I assumed I had a large part of closing that gap. It IS frustrating to see the promised land, but, because of your own weaknesses as a leader, not be able to bring God’s people to that land.

I still know I do have a lot of responsibility in this regard. But your post helped me to see and enjoy where we are.

Thanks

If I want a place to pursue my passion for justice, maybe I’ll be Episcopalian or Catholic, depending on my politics. If I want a better life, Rick Warren or Joel Osteen will tell me what I need to do. If I’m looking for aesthetics, I can find high church beauty (orthodox) and more plebian forms (megachurch). If you want a church with no “problems” then try Unitarianism.

I appreciated many of these things, and dabbled in these churches (except Unitarianism), but I kept coming back to doctrine. I enjoyed evangelical churches but could not get past their attempts to domesticate Christ’s mysterious words: “This is my body” (really? yes!) and “go and baptize” (why, what does it do? Jesus commanded it and says it saves!) Catholics deny Christ’s assurances of salvation, which I could not survive without, and (frighteningly) make my efforts matter to my fate. I could understand Orthodox about as well as I can Buddhism.

Ultimately, because of the question I was asking, what church teaches what Christ taught, I wound up where I last expected to: the place I had been baptized and confirmed: the LCMS. Of all the things I’m thankful for about the LCMS, the most important is that it taught me to ask the right question.

I began to see political issues as not very important to the realm of the church, gave up trying to figure out single predestination and the other Biblical paradoxes, grew to appreciate the single-minded focus on pure doctrine, and found beauty in the theology of the cross. Confessional Lutherans aren’t much fun sometimes, but I’m not at church because I like to socialize with the people there. I’m there because I’ll hear Christ’s assurance of his love and receive his sacraments.

Nothing seems important enough to get me too down after that.

Thank you for this, and all the time you’ve put into discussing similar issues; this is truly helpful to me, as a person who has been tormented over the last few years by the “truth claims” of the RCC.