Disappointment with the Church

I’m exploring disappointment in this short series of posts. Disappointment is a universal experience and becomes fuel for discouragement and depression. In today’s post I’ll look at my disappointment with the Church. That’s a capital C Church, not a local church or a denomination or even the Church in America, though each of those may provoke in me their own versions of disappointment.

Disappointment with the Church is easy to come by. In fact, these days the Church is a bit of a straw man; easy to set up and knock down by stringing together her worst moments and highest profile hypocrisies. But even those with a gracious and forgiving spirit will find themselves experiencing grief, betrayal, wounding and disappointment with Christian communities.

Lord, Save Me …. From Your Followers

Can we begin by acknowledging that every family, every tribe, every community, institution or ideology has adherents that are bad actors? Especially large communities. With over 2 billion Christians, you’ve got to believe there are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of bad actors who identify with the Christian faith. I would not say that disappointment with these Christians isn’t valid. But neither would I, for instance, say that my encounters with bad actors who identify as Muslim, Socialist, LGBTQ+ or Pacifist means I should “cancel” the whole lot of them or disparage their entire community. We all experience offense and even personal harm from people who hold certain identities. Some may even attribute their offensive words or actions to their core identity. But a poor reflection is just that: An image that doesn’t reflect accurately the thing it professes. Nor should a person’s worst moment impugn everything in which they believe. So rather than focusing on individuals, let me talk about my disappointment with traits that I see in the larger Church.

Arrogance

Jesus himself said that he didn’t come for well-put-together people who exuded emotional intelligence and spiritual health, so we must concede that those of us drawn to Jesus do so in part because we’re messed up. The Church is, by design, a community of the broken. The first followers were uneducated, working-class stiffs with a sprinkling of sex-workers and mafia types (i.e. tax collectors). In the book of Revelation, the Apostle John delivers letters from Jesus containing scathing rebukes for specific churches. One could argue that Jesus himself experienced disappointment with the Church. So, I’m not surprised or disappointed by bad stuff happening in and through the Church. It’s that too often there is a spirit of arrogance and blindness to our sin. It is an attitude that says, “I’ve got all things spiritual, social and political figured out because of my faith, therefore I am an expert in morality in all sectors of the human experience.” This attitude shows up in culture wars with Christians proclaiming (sometimes with “godless,” bombastic rhetoric) what everyone needs to believe… or else.

I do believe in universal truth. I do have convictions about a great many things. And I see how easily I come by my arrogance. I just wish that I and my fellow brothers and sisters in the faith would leave a little space for other voices, and even the slim possibility that we don’t see every issue perfectly.

You notice I have included myself here. A Christian can’t be disappointed with “the Church” without including themselves in that disappointment. Be careful of those who talk about “those other Christians,” and pretend like they are free from any blame.

Insularity

There are things I admire about Old Order communities (Amish and Mennonite). I once visited a Mennonite community of 18 families. One child was born deaf, so when that kid went to school it made sense to them for the entire school to learn sign language. Families in this community don’t need health insurance or life insurance or car insurance because they act as insurance for one another. The cost of accidents, sickness and death is shared communally. But if Jesus called his followers to be IN the world but not OF the world, I find Old Order communities are neither IN nor OF the world. They’ve walled themselves off from meaningful relationships outside of their community. Me and my fellow believers approach cautiously non-Christians as if they carry a communicable disease from which we must protect ourselves. This is not how Jesus is portrayed in the Gospels. I am disappointed in the ways the I and my brothers and sisters insulate ourselves from the world and end up suffocating in a cocoon of our own making.

There is a necessary risk in connecting deeply to people who think and live differently. We cannot be IN the world as Jesus asked if we keep ourselves at arm’s length from those with radically different beliefs. Just how intimately should we involve ourselves with those who reject the things we hold dear is a fair question, but one I find the knee-jerk response to be a kind of aloofness.

Too Many Hills to Die Upon

This reality has become true for many in our bifurcated American political landscape, but it has been true of the Church for centuries. We hold our convictions deeply. I love that about myself and my brothers and sisters. But pretty soon everything becomes a hill to die on, or more to the point, a hill to kill on. A thousand years ago this was literally true between believers who took different perspectives on the nature of Christ (did he have two natures or one). Within and without the Church we have adopted so many non-negotiables that we are willing to break fellowship with believers or eviscerate people with their vitriol on so many issues. I don’t say Christians should be convictionless or indifferent about important issues. It’s just that we get mean-spirited about it. Add to this our arrogance and insularity and you have a trifecta that alienates us from our neighbors and even other believers. We disregard the image of God in those with whom we disagree.

Conclusion

I find it so easy to feel disappointment with the Church at large and with fellow believers in particular. I’m in that camp as well, so I’ll deal with disappointment with self in my next post. But I find it unhelpful to allow this disappointment to fester. If you are a follower of Jesus, like it or not, our Lover loves all those screw ups who disappoint or even wound us. And he holds a deep and passionate commitment to his broken, messed-up Church (See The Church May be a Whore but she’s my Mother). If you’re not a Christian or no longer a Christian, I would ask you to re-consider whether your disgruntlement with the Church ought to dictate how you understand the Christian faith or the person of Christ. A poor copy does not negate a perfect original.