I Don't Have a Problem With God, I Have a Problem With People Who Run Churches
I first said it 20 years ago, and little has happened since that would change my mind
Once upon a time I was a very active church member. I taught a Bible study for high school kids. I was taking training classes to be a church leader, while working full time, attending college part time and being married. I scheduled all of that around my church commitments.
And then I lost my mind.
The stress of an unhappy marriage, school, work and depression that was the result of childhood trauma created a mental breakdown that was impossible to hide from my fellow church members.
Shortly after this, I was no longer involved in the church.
About 20 years ago, I had dinner with an old friend from those days. The headline of this article is a quote from that conversation.
20 years on, and I feel pretty much the same way. I still don’t have a problem with the God that I studied and learned about, but I absolutely have a problem with almost anyone who runs a church, because, unfortunately, running a church in the US these days all too often requires quite a lot of ungodly practices.
At the time the issues were ones that I would come to recognize existed in a lot of churches.
A complete lack of understanding about mental health - My depression was not a lack of faith. Praying and attending more church events was not going to cure what was wrong with me. At the same time, skipping church events in order to take care of myself, by seeing a therapist, taking part in group therapy, and taking time to simply rest, became the excuse for church leaders to simply stop paying attention. I became just another person who left the church, and eventually I became a divorcée who left his wife behind in the process. I couldn’t help them grow their church, so I was simply left behind.
Self-righteousness - No, not the way you’re thinking, though certainly there is an attraction to being a church leader that is tightly tied to needing to feel that they are better than others. No, in the church today it’s also important to remind your followers about how much better they are than the rest of the world. How unique they are, how smart they are to join not just any church but your church. The “true” church.
The almighty dollar - This one actually shows up in two different ways. First, you have to appease the members who donate the most money to your church. Secondly, you also have to convince those same folks that this is the way to their own prosperity.
I plan to talk about all of these things over my time here. Church won’t be the only thing we talk about, obviously, but I’m going to mix it in because I think religion is a topic that requires some serious conversation. All too often we are easily led astray because we don’t have grown-up conversations about religion and the leaders we follow. We should, because some the things churches do currently are toxic.
Mental health issues are a real thing and should be taken seriously. People around you in your church right now are either struggling with their own mental health issues and even more are dealing with someone among their family and close relatives who has depression or some other issue. Dismissing these serious conditions by telling people to pray is not how you care for people. It’s not how you make people feel welcome in your church, it’s not how you show Godly love.
Imagine, if you will, that Jesus came upon the sick and instead of being with them, healing them, and living among them he told them to get their faith together and snap out of it? That’s not what we see in the gospels.
However, as bad as that was for me and many others, it’s the self-righteousness that really irks me, because it creates such a toxic environment. It becomes the point, rather than the truth. It’s the easy way to make church members feel good about themselves and their spirituality. Create some rules. Divide the world into people who follow those rules, and those who don’t. Make sure that the rules fall hardest on the people you never wanted in your church to start with.
This becomes the drug. This feels good, so we create more rules. We get involved in politics, telling people how they should vote, what they should believe, etc. We tell them that the righteous do this list of things, not the others. Usually that list includes a lot of things that sound a lot like a typical white suburban life. After all it’s the faithful that are rewarded with comfortable lives, right? It’s all health and wealth. You are in good with God and the proof is the comfortable lifestyle you have.
Those people without that privilege? Obviously there’s something wrong with them. God is punishing them with the consequences of their sin.
This is not what we see in the Bible. The gospels and Paul’s letters tell the exact opposite story. Following Jesus will result in an uncomfortable life, spent serving the people who we’d rather forget about.
When was the last time a mega-church leader told you that?
When was the last time a church leader told you that religion isn’t just a list of rules? They may not say those exact words, but there are always rules upon rules, and either rampant self-righteousness or rampant judgment. What there isn’t, is a lot of grace and love.
That’s a shameful way to represent the God who so loved the world that He gave His own Son….