For over 35 years, I went to church every week — twice a week. I was hooked on the promises of prosperity, protection, and peace that were fed to me in bite-sized morsels of biblical goodness from the lofty heights of the pulpit down to the common folk in the crowd. I loved the bells and smells. My spirit would soar during a rousing chorus of congregational hymn-singing. I even came to tolerate the terrible instant coffee, stale cookies, and mindless small talk at the end of church services. It felt like I was part of something important, something bigger than my own small story — an honorable cause that might make a difference in the world.
So, I threw myself wholeheartedly into the noble task of building the church. I became super-involved. I gave. I volunteered. I sacrificed. I poured myself out. And, for a while, things were great.
However, the closer I moved to the inner workings of the organized church, the more troubled I became by the glaring hypocrisies inherent in the system. Power, money, politics, and maintaining the status quo at all costs seemed to be the real driving forces behind the institutionalized church. Personal and spiritual transformation was only desirable in a person to the point immediately before they began to question the systems and structures of the church. I went beyond that point, and I paid a high price.
I became a church refugee.
Four years ago, I gave it all up — the organized church, that is — not my faith in Christ. I went cold turkey into the dark world of working out my own spirituality rather than outsourcing it to an institution. I quit church, and now I’m closer to God.
Don’t get me wrong. There are many wonderful people in the church — people who I love. Often these nice, well-meaning people cannot understand how I could call myself a Christian without being committed to an organized church. Into this space, they volunteered well-meaning comments that were intended to be helpful. Their heart may have been in the right place, but their counsel was, in reality, a kind of judgment veiled as friendly advice.
So, to all those concerned church-going Christians out there, let me give you some friendly advice in the other direction. Here are some things that you should quit saying to church refugees like me.
“But my Church is different”
Often, when you describe the problems that you’ve had with the church to a well-meaning, church-going Christian, they insist that the problems that you’ve experienced are unique to your particular congregation. They deny or minimize the problems in the entire system. They refuse to admit that the modern, Western Church is surely nothing like what Jesus had in mind. Rather, they reduce the problem down to a localized issue that relates only to your particular experience of church.
To say, “But my church is different,” is really to say, “Your experience of church is an anomaly — completely at odds with the average experience of church.” However, the fact that around three and a half thousand believers walk away from the Christian church every single day, should be evidence enough that the system is very broken. It is not just me and my congregation with the issue.
“Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater”
This statement is generally made when the person saying it considers your walking away from the church the first step into complete non-belief. The “Baby” in this statement presumably refers to Jesus.
Here’s the thing. I haven’t thrown out the Baby. I’ve picked up the Baby into my arms, and I’ve thrown out the bath. It turns out Jesus shouldn’t and couldn’t be held in such a small and restrictive container anyway.
I discovered something wonderful when I left the church behind. God can be found almost everywhere. There is a little verse in the book of Ephesians which declares that God is over all and through all, and in all. Now that I have de-cluttered my spiritual life but ditching my religious obligation to the institution, this has become my daily reality. The church does not have a monopoly on the sacred. The sacred is all around us and able to be freely accessed by all. It cannot be contained by walls or baths!
“I’ll pray for you”
I have no objection to people praying for me. In fact, I welcome it. However, when you insert this throw-away line into a conversation where you’re trying to convince someone of the error of their ways, what you are really saying is this: “I hope God shows you exactly how wrong you are soon!”
If you’re going to pray for someone, fine. Why do you need to make an announcement about it? When you end a conversation with this statement, it really makes me doubt your sincerity. What the church refugee hears is this: “I don’t care about your problems, and I want to exit this conversation.”
“You just need to forgive”
Would you ask a battered wife to go back to her abusive husband?
I didn’t think so.
Well, that’s how I feel about the institutionalized church. Spiritual abuse is real and, sadly, all too common in the church. People are often surprised when I tell them about my post-traumatic stress disorder, arising from my experiences with the church. Surely PTSD is quite rightly reserved for war veterans and those who have had near-death experiences. In that respect, I feel some sense of guilt and embarrassment for carrying around the same condition because of my mistreatment at the hands of the ‘people of God.’
To say, “You just need to forgive,” is a flippant and thoughtless remark that absolves the institution of responsibility for the real and genuine hurt that they have inflicted upon many people.
For the record, I intend to forgive. I believe that this is what Jesus would want me to do. However, this is a journey of months and years — not something that will be achieved in a moment, with a simple suggestion.
“But Hebrews 10:25 says…”
People who want to convince you that going to a church is a must for Christians often come at you with the “Hebrews 10:25” argument.’ Hebrews 10:25 says, “Do not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing.”
The thing is, I have no intention of not meeting together with other Christians. I’m just not doing it in a church system anymore. The Bible never mentions a building called ‘Church,’ anyway. Never. In fact, the Bible never speaks of the church in those terms. The buildings came later when the state got hold of the church under Roman Emperor Constantine in 312 AD.
On the other hand, Jesus said where two or three are gathered, He is present. Two or three — not 40 or 150, or 6,000. Not in an auditorium with a speaker, a band, and dozens of rows of chairs. When Jesus spoke about the church, he was talking about people. People are the building blocks of a church, not bricks and mortar.
There are many expressions of the church, but when you used the “Hebrews 10:25” argument, you are actually saying, “There is only one true way to do church, and it happens to be the way I do it.”
“You need to work through your bitterness”
Accusing someone of bitterness, in Christian circles, is all too often used as a tool to silence someone who is being critical — regardless of the reasonableness of the critique. The leaders of my former church have told many people that I am angry and bitter. What they are really saying is that they believe, and would like others to believe, that I am incapable of viewing the situation “correctly,” that I am a bit naive and even crazy in my thinking, and that I lack the capacity for love and grace. It’s much easier to dismiss everyone who has a problem with the church as being a bitter person than to engage with the difficult task of confronting the issues with the church system.
The church world through my eyes
You wouldn’t offer to take a recovering alcoholic out for a few drinks at your favorite club, would you? So, stop trying to convince me to go back to the institutionalized church. Believe me, when I tell you, I wanted the church to be everything that it promised it would be. But it’s not, and I’m hurting.
Still, every now and again, I long for the comfort of the hard wooden pew, the weak coffee and stale cookies, the bells and smells, the bite-sized morsels of biblical goodness, and a rousing chorus of congregational hymn singing. But I can’t go there. Not yet.
My name is Dan, and I’m a church refugee.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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Beautifully said. How did your church spiritually abuse you? I experienced emotional abuse in the church, but that bad treatment did not affect me spiritually.