Angst and All…I Still Come
Back in the late eighties as leaders in our church, my parents were assigned to visit those on the sick and shut-in list the first Sunday of the month. These were members who found themselves incapable of actively participating in the life of the church, usually for some variety of issues related to health or age. They would travel across town to visit an elderly couple, both who were home-bound and without children or family in the area. My father would serve them communion and chat with them while my mom used Sea Breeze, an astringent product, to wash the wife’s fully greyed head of hair. These types of beautiful exchanges remind me of how the body of Christ can and should work to embrace one another in genuine, mature Christian community, from birth to old age.
Many years later that lovely couple were trapped in a house fire. While the circumstances of how life ended for them are awful, I have always felt bit of peace knowing that they died together.
Death is hard to process, always, for it reflects life lived in a broken world packed with broken people whose minds and bodies are constantly deteriorating in some way. And that loss often ignites the obsession, even a fascination you might say, we have with whatever seems perfect or ideal. I know that assessment well because it corresponds with my own emotional state sometimes. It is easy to find yourself having become a refugee of Christian community. You feel displaced and yet familiar at the same time, all while longing for deeper, mutual connections of love and service minus crazy extremes, or other disagreeable behavior. Some of what you hope to establish or reclaim is good and attainable, but it can also be like searching for a unicorn or a needle in a haystack. Its elusiveness is incredibly disappointing, and honestly some of what does finally show up will not be what you desire in every season on this side of heaven.
Even in returning to in-person worship in a local church body as I have, looking to rebound from the pandemic years all of us hope are now in life’s rear-view mirror, the persistent scandals on big and small stages (i.e., Ravi Zacharias, Hillsong, etc.), one after another after another, the divisiveness of dysfunctional doctrine, and the resolve some of my spiritual brothers and sisters have to cling to idols instead of Jesus has me leery and weary like never before.
As a cynic at-heart whose flesh has been known to rebel against the life rooted in truth that Jesus died to give me, being shaken by events or specific crises is not alien to my spiritual profile. The world is full of sinners, and I readily admit along with Paul that I, first and foremost, “am the worst” (1 Timothy 1:15).
Knowing what to do and doing what you are called to do are not the same. I have often learned this the hard way, at times kicking and screaming, and acting a fool. In these stretches of grief, God has not always necessarily answered my questions or addressed situations how I felt it would be best, but each dark episode has further facilitated me experiencing God in a new way or an old way that I needed to revisit, to comprehend more about His character, and frankly to grow-up a little more both emotionally and spiritually than I would if left alone.
Even so, with all that I see going on and have experienced my tolerance for toxic positivity, as the smokescreen that it is to nullify truth and normalize ungodly actions, to fund cheap grace has left the building. In the backdrop of having been taken aback by the pandemic like everyone else, it has been tough to keep showing up well in familiar places where I feel estranged, unwelcome, misunderstood, or like some kind of exiled ragamuffin. It is as if I failed to read the product disclaimer, in its usual fine print, which has contributed to aspects of my delinquency, promoting a withdrawn apathy or state of distressed sepsis to develop. A lot of it manifests in ways that aren’t obvious to others except those nearest me, but internally often enough I am yelling, “Please, keep your distance.”
This is not about flippantly criticizing specific congregations or levying complaints against any one individual so much as not mincing words in being honest about the reoccurring, needless foolishness among Christians that keeps hurting people, and therefore being an undeniable trigger that leads many to walk away from God or His people. This is a confession of someone, who remains a Christian in Christian community, opting to express her tangled web of passion and pain rather than settling for an unhealthy state of denial, consuming a buffet of dreadfully despairing desserts. Though my heart does ache, I am not going to walk away. I simply crave a sense of belonging among the remnant of saints, as imperfect as we are, back in the house of the Lord, who will take the Gospel and their transformation by its power the Holy Spirit provides seriously. That’s it.
Like Jacob (Genesis 32:22-32), I am in an uneven wrestling match with God, trying to rebuke and part ways with the lie of self-reliance and address the tactical righteousness I sometimes feel when pointing fingers at whoever triggers my pain or the pain of others.
The Word of God, not to mention my own experiences as well, reminds me that along with everyone else, I am born into humankind’s corrupted lineage. I cannot force the timetable of my healing. It is an intense rehabilitation process that oscillates from cursing and pounding my fists in resistance to soberly accepting that ultimate, perfect victory over injustice is reserved for the Lord in his triumphant return.
So, here I am, holding tightly to what Psalm 119:153-154 declares: “Behold my affliction and deliver me; For I do not forget Your law. Plead my cause and redeem me; according to Your word, give me life.”