Why? What started all of this?

Chris,

I didn’t have a problem with church because of what happened in my childhood. The disillusionment happened during my divorce. It was the way people responded to me, treated me and dealt with that tragedy in my life.  It was their advice, their rants and their arguments that caused me to draw the conclusion…….
”This….this system does not work!”  

I always say that it is like the old woman/young woman optical illusion picture. All my life I saw the young woman…..”This is beautiful! I love being a Christian!” When I heard people complain about the church like it was the ugly old woman I dismissed them. I ridiculed them in my heart. I ganged up on them with everyone else and said “Oh come on! You just need to forgive!”

I knew it was wrong to respond to a hurting person in a calloused way like that but I didn’t really know this person complaining to me that well…. I didn’t know the people they were talking about and I frankly because of my lack of attachment to them I didn’t care about their situation. In reality I guess I didn’t want to know either.

 Their story made me uncomfortable. Maybe I did know who they were talking about, and liked them. I didn’t want that nice picture destroyed. Or maybe what they said scared me. I didn’t have any clue how to respond to big ugly messy situations so I followed the crowd and leaned on passing judgment:

“Ah you must have done something to deserve this!”  

Or “I don’t believe you.”

Standing your ground using the “ignore button,” works really well. It doesn't take long for that negative grumpy person to disappear.  Now I didn’t have to think about it anymore. Slowly that nagging guilt in my gut would fade away. Now I could go on with my pursuit of a happy fun loving Christian life.  I was able to replace the background anxiety with the crowd’s trite solutions……

”Whatever! It is not my problem! They need to sort it out with God!”  

As time when on, and all of my attempts to repair my life was systematically undermined by my “Christian” friends I started seeing the old woman. I started to sound like those whiners I had dismissed. I started to rethink and rehash the past from a different perspective.  It was a déjà vu moment except now I was on the outside of the fence instead of one of the crowd on the inside of the fence........... 

In Christ always,

T