When I used to attend a regular Sunday morning church service, I was often asked by many well-meaning people, “How are you?”
But I got the feeling that most of the time, they were not all that interested in the answer. So, regardless of how I was really feeling, I would inevitably answer, “Good thanks! How about you?” to which they invariably responded cheerily, “Great thanks!”
It makes me wonder, though, is anybody at church not great? If they were, would they even own up?
If you believe the statistics, the city to which my former church belongs, has a disproportionate amount of lonely and hurting people. The Deputy Mayor of my city, in an address delivered to various church leaders, had this to say:
Furthermore, 21% of the families in my hometown are sole parent families, and there are over 17 000 adults who have been through a separation or divorce. People from 130 different nations are represented in my city — many are refugees who have fled various humanitarian crises, natural disasters, and the atrocities of war. In the last ten years, reported child abuse cases have increased by 123%, with over 8000 recorded cases in my state.
Obviously, there are hurting and broken people out there in the community, but everyone in my church seems just fine.
Or are they?
The last place you’d want to be real
Sometimes I get the feeling that the church is the last place you would want to own up to your own pain, hurt, brokenness, and sin. We love to remind each other that, “We are more than conquerors,” sing hymns like, “Joy is the flag flown high from the castle of my heart,” wave our tambourines, and celebrate our ‘glorious victory in Christ’
But when it comes to sharing our hurts and struggles — even our doubts or sins — we are less forthcoming, often for good reason. Christians sometimes have a terrible habit of looking down with righteous indignation at the couple whose marriage is on the rocks, at the young adult having a faith crisis, at the depressed or mentally ill, the unemployed, and even the lost.
Sometimes, I think our attitude is not all that different from Job’s friends in the Bible, who were convinced that Job must have greatly offended God to have earned such suffering.
And you certainly wouldn’t want to share about any kind of ‘sin’ you might be struggling with, either. We are left to wrestle with our moral dilemmas alone, even though if we actually sat down and talked about our struggles with each other, we would probably laugh at our lack of originality. Still, we pretend that we are good.
Then there is the constant threat of people talking about your business, to others around the church, under the guise of pastoral concern — of course. I remember sitting through church staff meetings where the senior pastor would talk about who was having marriage problems, and I thought to myself, “Do I really need to know this?”
It just doesn’t feel like a safe place to be vulnerable.
Is there space in our church for someone to say, “I’m not okay?”
I’m not so sure there is.
Walter Brueggemann identifies those who find themselves struggling with sickness, debt, persecution, inequality, sin, injustice — any kind of struggle really — as being in a stage of disorientation. Brueggemann suggests that those who are in a stage of orientation — where everything is neatly ordered and going according to plan — are often quick to judge those in a state of disorientation, believing that the disoriented either deserve the suffering they are going through or have, in fact, caused them through their own lack of faith.
There’s an irony in this, though.
The Bible is written by disoriented people
It turns out that a fair chunk of the Bible — that Christians love so much — contains scripture written by disorientated people. Many of the psalms take the form of laments, where the psalmist cries out to God “out of the depths,” which is where a disorientated person finds themselves.
Yes, the largest part of the largest book of the Bible — the book of Psalms — is filled with people saying, “Why me!?” And, by the way, Jesus loved to quote from the Psalms.
But when it comes to the best Biblical example of the kinds of thoughts and feelings that a person goes through when feeling disoriented, look no further than the book of Lamentations.
Now, this is a seriously depressing read. In fact, I would advise you not to tackle this misery-fest when you’re having a bad day.
Having sat in church for 35 years, I can honestly say that I have never heard anyone preach a sermon on Lamentations, apart from the few verses in Chapter 3, which we find spiritually palatable and uplifting:
That part is nice, isn’t it?
As for the rest of Lamentations, we don’t want to hear it. It’s depressing. It’s pessimistic. It’s downright difficult to digest. No one is selling greeting cards with verses from Lamentations on them. It’s that bad. Quite frankly, it challenges our view of what God is like, and most of us don’t want to be challenged.
The rest of Lamentations greets us with images of God walling someone in, shutting out their prayer, dragging them from the path and mauling them like a bear, making them a target for His arrows, and sating them with gall! I don’t want to hear this! Give me a sermon on Romans 8:28 and remind me again that “all things work together for my good.”
The author of Lamentations, Jeremiah, has obviously had his world turned upside down and inside out. He writes his lament sometime after 587 B.C., from the shattered and charred remains of Jerusalem — a once-proud city and the dwelling place of God that had been besieged and destroyed by the Babylonian Empire. He has likely seen some of his friends and family dragged off to Babylon — even killed. He has pleaded with the Jews for many years to repent and turn back to Yahweh but to no avail. Jeremiah is completely disorientated. Lamentations is Jeremiah’s attempt at processing his pain.
The church is full of Jeremiahs
Are there people who attend churches who, like Jeremiah, have had their worlds turned upside down and inside out? Are there people in a stage of disorientation? Well, there must be.
So, it begs the question, what can we do to comfort and support these people? What changes do we need to make to provide ministry and understanding to the broken and hurting? Here are a few ideas:
Transform our theology of suffering
Firstly, churches need an entirely new way of thinking about suffering. We must provide teaching from the pulpit that dispels the mindset held by Job’s friends, and indeed, many Christians today: That is the mindset that says, “Well, this suffering person must have pissed God off somehow,” or “this person is reaping what they sowed.”
Bad things happen to us all. Living a pain-free life is NOT a symptom of being blessed by Jesus. Far from it. Jesus promised, “In this world, you will have trouble,” so we must approach suffering people with nothing but the kind of compassion we ourselves would hope to receive in our own time of pain.
Often we look for reasons why certain things happen to certain people. We look for something or someone to blame. But, if we wish to help disorientated people, we must not judge them or heap blame or guilt on them.
Create a safe place to grieve
The church should be a place where people can ‘be real,’ rather than having to put on a brave face. A culture change is required. We want the church to be a place where someone can say, “Actually, I’m not okay!”
That ain’t going to happen until Christians find a better way to respond. Sure, we do not all have to be counselors, but if we at least knew what to say or do when confronted with a hurting person, that would be a start. Christian catchphrases and random Bible verses taken out of context often do more harm than good. I’m so passionate about this; I’ve written down a whole bunch of good things and bad things to say to a hurting person in another recent article.
I remember a young man telling me one day, quite out of the blue, about his struggle with same-sex attraction — the cardinal sin in many churches. I’m ashamed to admit that I kind of just stood there gaping at him like a fish, at a loss for words. If only I had been equipped and resourced to help this young man, or at the very least offer an encouraging word. He had poured out his heart to me, and I was stumped.
I wish I had said, “You’re fine, just the way you are!”
But back then, I didn’t know any better.
Regrets.
Dispense with toxic positivity
I don’t know about you, but I find people who are always hyper-positive a little bit sickening. I don’t connect with them. I don’t trust them because I don’t believe a person can be happy all the time. It belies the reality of life.
Yet, the church seems to major in positivity. Every service starts and ends with an uplifting and joyful song that stirs us to praise. Every sermon has a happy ending. Rarely are we left with unanswered questions or the discomfort of mystery. We only talk about grief as something we left behind when we accepted Jesus. We only talk about death if a glorious resurrection follows it.
The thing is, there is bound to be someone in the congregation who feels like Jeremiah in the ruins of his city or David being hotly pursued by Saul. It’s about being authentic. Wouldn’t the Lord rather us be honest with him rather than putting on a show for our fellow believers? Perhaps it’s time to reintroduce styles of worship that include laments appropriately and sensitively. Let’s talk a bit more about pain in church.
Speak with our actions
Finally, when people are in a stage of disorientation, we should meet practical needs as much as we can — from making meals, mowing lawns, and babysitting to just being a listening ear.
I’m so sick and tired of people merely praying for others in distress instead of opening their homes, hearts, and wallets to help people physically. By all means, pray, but don’t stop there. Do something. Romans 12:10 -13, which talks about love, sums it up nicely:
God’s response to suffering is delivered by people
Disorientation is part of life. At some point, almost everyone will experience some crisis that thrusts them headlong into a state of disorientation. Sadly, many people at this time give up on their faith in God, believing that if God were really, truly good, then he would not allow this suffering to happen.
But the presence of God can be found in the midst of suffering. The thing is, it’s almost always delivered by people who will put their hands up and choose to respond in loving, compassionate, and non-judgmental ways.
Until that is the default modus operandi of the church, why would anyone expose their broken heart to the potential for even more pain at the hands of “God’s People?”
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This post was previously published on Backyard Church.
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