 by Randy Walker
I am an agnostic who was born and raised in a very strict Christian fundamentalist environment. God was portrayed as a demanding enforcer who lashes-out and destroys if His demands are not met. People were viewed as evil beings that should not breathe God's air unless he gives them the right to do so. Ever heard the expression, "not fit to tote guts to a bear"? I did, as a child when it was orated from the pulpit during a sermon. The preacher was referring to people in general.
The central religious premise was "fear," fear of God, fear of life, fear of other people, fear of Satan, fear of....one's self. Everything other than going to church and reading the Bible was- or had the potential to be sin. We had no television set in our house for years because TV's were called evil, of the devil, and if you had one in your home, you were in danger of hell fire! The only music approved for listening was performed in- or condoned by the church. Certain hairstyles and makeup were sure to provoke the wrath of God on anyone who wore them. In my mind, God was a capricious being who watched everyone, relentlessly, and pounced at the first shadow of a transgression. I did not hear about love or a loving God until I was an adolescent.
By that time, I had grown weary of the confining environment I had endured as a child; it felt like a boa constrictor around my torso, squeezing the very life from me that it claimed to preserve and save. Instead of feeling liberated, and more importantly, supported and safe, I was full of fear, anxiety, and anger. I became an angry teenager and eventually an angry and confused young man. This anger carried over into my adult life, and I was the cause of misery for those I loved the most. Unfortunately, my pent-up anger led me to places I should never had seen, much less been a part of. I have been violent, and I have received violence. I've heard the wails from the depths of an insane mind and witnessed the violence of the criminally insane. I have been to the brink of suicide more than once in my life. It can be said that I have been to the abyss, where I looked into it, and even placed my head inside it, and lived to tell about it. While I have faced my demons (figuratively speaking) and I am at peace with myself, these events have left me with "baggage" that cannot be unloaded...only lightened, and then to a limited degree. A positive outcome is that I am now a more empathetic and compassionate person than my loved ones or I ever dreamed I could be.
 I'm rewriting the old African-American spiritual “Down By the Riverside.” (Don't worry. It's Okay. I'm a minister). My new version goes something like this: Gonna lay down my robe and stole Down by the Riverside Down by the Riverside Down by the Riverside Gonna lay down my robe and stole Down by the Riverside Ain't goin' to church no more. Yep! That's it. This minister is walking away from church – well, for three months. I've gone to church my whole life. Haven't missed more than two Sundays in a row in..., um, I actually don't think I've even missed more than two Sunday's in a row - ever. Not even in college. As a matter of fact, while a lot of my High School youth group friends were spreading the wings of their new found freedom in college by not going to church, I was part of a traveling worship team that helped lead worship at churches all over the state. (I know, I'm a geek. Okay, a church geek. OKAY! A church nerd – of course, back then with the popularity of dc Talk, I just thought of myself as a Jesus Freak. In a lot of ways I still am – the more things change...). A few years ago I started this blog. It began as a way for me to say things that sometimes didn't feel safe or pastoral (or wise?) to say in church. (How sad is that, ministers not feeling like it's alright to say things that they actually believe in church? And I say “ministers” because there's a whole lot of them that feel that way. If you go to church, yours probably feels that way at least a little bit). From the very beginning of thegodarticle.com, I've written about the many challenges the church is facing (and frequently ignoring): Can the Church Catch Up?, Keep Your Eye on the Ball, Set Adrift on a Myth, Growing Church Organically, At the Speed of Grace, and a few others. I've come to see that, for all the good the church does for others, it is turning a blind eye to itself. Clearly, this isn't true of all churches but the Church as a whole is predominantly being eaten up by a variety of cancerous issues. At this point, it seems to me, those issues are not only built into the system, but are so central to the system that those who are a part of it find it very difficult to either acknowledge the issues or do anything about them if they do manage to acknowledge them.
 “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” For Dickens, those lines are meant to set the stage for a novel that takes place during the difficult times of the French Revolution. It is also a novel that struggles with the social injustices that come along with war and the pursuit of power. It is sort of a call to arms for the characters that will be called upon to live out another of the book's themes – self-sacrifice. It also can be argued that the opening line is an inverted foreshadowing for one of the predominate themes of the book – resurrection.
Now, from what I just told you, you should be able to deduce two things rather quickly. 1) My first undergraduate degree, indeed, was in English (yes, I am a book geek) and 2) in his themes of social justice, resurrection and self-sacrifice, Dickens is clearly flirting with topics near and dear to the heart of the New Testament.
That is where the Spirit of God drives us, toward lives focused on social justice, metaphorical resurrections and, when even necessary, self-sacrifice. But increasingly, that is not the case in many traditional churches in the U.S.
Part of our problem is that we have attempted to domesticate the Spirit of God. The very ruah (breath of God). The wild winds that ignited the flames of creation as they whipped recklessly over the face of chaos – in the beginning; God's essential nature described in Deuteronomy as a devouring fire; the radiant and elusive Spirit that gave the revelation of Jesus' messiahship at his baptism; the Spirit Jesus himself would describe to Nicodemus as being mysterious and unpredictable like the wind; the winds that rushed into an upper room ripping the windows open, resting as a flame on the disciple's shoulders, causing them to speak in tongues and be looked upon as if they were drunk; that Spirit scares us because we can't control it. So, we have attempted to domesticate God’s Spirit – much like the common dog. We tried to tame it, teach it to curl up beside our hearths and be obedient. We want to quantify it, objectify it, demystify it - train it, contain it and constrain it. Like our children, we want it stop being so wild and uncontrollable. We want it to lose its propensity to form something new out of a world in which we feel comfortable.
The Spirit however is unruly. It is apt to doing a “new thing,” to bringing about a change on God's people and on the world which God created. Should we really expect anything less out of the Spirit of God – not the God we created in our image, but the God that said, “behold, I am about to do a new thing,” the God who used chaos to form this world, the God who did the unthinkable and became human flesh, the God who overcame death itself...should we really expect the Spirit of that God to be docile, domesticated and dormant? In churches throughout the U.S., we seem to.
Churches throughout the U.S. must ask themselves, which Spirit do we follow? The one we, as a society, have created out of our own needs? The one that allows us to trust in ourselves? The one that plays nice and gives us warm fuzzies? Or are we ready to celebrate the Spirit of the biblical text? One who is willing to grapple with chaos. One that is unruly, unexpected, unconventional and unconcerned with what we want or how things have always been done. Which one do we truly celebrate?
 Change is a given. You don't have to like it, but you have no choice but to acknowledge it. Being alive means changing. To be just a little bit morbid, even in death our bodies change as they decompose. Like I said, change is a given.
Inexplicably, churches have come to think they don't have to change. The world around them changes at an ever quickening pace as technology changes our ability to travel, communicate and gather information, and the Church clings to the past believing that if we just believe hard enough we can make the reality of change go away. But we can't. Change is a given.
The Church's general resistance to change is really odd if you think about it. God was (and is) always about to do a new thing. From Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to David, to the prophets, to Jesus, the disciples and Paul, the people of God are always experiencing God moving them from one state of being to another. The way it was done (the old life) is gone and the new way (the new life) has begun, and those are just the most obvious Bible stories. Add to that the fact that the history of the church is also littered with constant change. It truly is inexplicable that we think we don't have to change.
So, how did we get to this place of such a staunch resistance to change? We forgot that Jesus was a radical redeemer. You see, as a colleague once reminded the congregation where I serve, Jesus never met anyone he didn't ask to change.
If you don't think you need to change, you haven't met Jesus. He never met anyone he didn't ask to change. Now, while change comes in all forms (some change is small, some is big), it isn't all that surprising to see in scripture that Jesus was typically interested in the big changes. The kind that challenged the status quo and flipped our whole way of seeing something upside down. He was a radical reformer. A reformer in that he asked us to change, radical in that it often required a paradigm shift to become the person Jesus said God was calling you to be.
Are Churches radical reformers? Do we ask the people we meet to change? Radically? Better yet, are we willing to change radically? And don't think that we are talking about change for the sake of change here. That would just be mean and short-sighted. We are talking about change that engages fully with the reality that change is inevitable.
In that, the Church must also recognize that it has been clinging to the past for so long that it lost sight of the communities in which God planted them. The Church must acknowledge that as it clung so desperately to how things have “always” been done, it lost it's ability to hold onto a God who moves about in a tent (2 Samuel 7:5) and is always about to do a new thing.
If we can recognize that, then we can also see that in order to catch back up with the community in which God has planted us, it is going to take a radical change. Not change for change's sake, but change for God's sake. It is not about changing what we believe about God, rather, it is about trying desperately to live into it! It would feel better, it would feel safer, to move slowly, methodically and only in places that cause the least stress, but that's not the kind of change Jesus asked of those who met him.
Have we truly met Jesus? Do we hear his call to radical reform? Are we willing to let loose of our past and let the Spirit move us as the Spirit will?
It is time for the Church to change at the speed of grace.
 Good and gracious God,
Today, like the rest of the world,
when I woke I wrapped myself in myths.
They are comfortable and warming in what can seem like such a cold world.
Yes, they are old and worn but they are familiar
and even the most fashion forward find comfort in this thread-worn garb.
They tell me that while it may not be fair
that 1600 children die from hunger everyday,
I can do nothing about it.
They silence my own judgment of myself
when I put a quarter in the cup of a homeless man
as I walk on by the lack in his life
to live into the abundance of mine.
They tell me that the rich shall inherit the Earth,
and that they will be beneficent rulers.
The myths that I wear tell me
that giving to the rich is better than giving to those in need,
so we as a nation heap blessings upon the rich
expecting 'trickle down' to make it rain on those of us below.
Yet, we remain drenched in our inability
to pay the rent,
pay for college,
save for the future...
at times, even believe we have much of a future.
So, today, like the rest of the world, when I woke I wrapped myself in myths.
They are comfortable and warming in what can seem like such a cold world.
Yes, they are old and worn but they are familiar
and even the most fashion forward find comfort in this thread-worn garb.
They tell me that violence, while abhorrent,
is inescapable, a part of the reality of life -
that violence is the path we must travel to find peace.
Religion reinforces this myth of Redemptive Suffering
suggesting that suffering builds character,
that you, O God, won't give us more than we can handle,
ignoring the realities of the families who have survived
the loss of loved ones through violent acts:
War, Domestic Violence, Gang Violence, suicide.
Even in the names we use,
we see how we believe this myth:
The world calls one of humanity's most violent acts
The Holocaust, which means 'sacrifice by fire,'
Suggesting that there might be something good
or even of God in it.
Those whose lives it destroyed call it
Ha Shoa – the calamity.
So, I wrap myself in myths.
They are comfortable and warming in what can seem like such a cold world.
Yes, they are old and worn but they are familiar
and even the most fashion forward find comfort in this thread-worn garb.
They tell me that the least of these deserve what they get,
that “But for the grace of God, there go I,”
believing that somehow God's grace falls more abundantly on me.
They tell me that I must shut off who God created me to be
and live into the image the world expects of me
because who I am on the inside won't be accepted on the outside.
They tell me that some are created more equal in God's eyes
and don't deserve the same rights as the rest of us
that they should be punished for being their own unique reflection of their Creator.
Loving God,
take from me this earthly garb,
for not only are they old and thread-worn...
but they reek.
They stink of the stench of power, money and greed.
They have the foul odor of prestige, self-importance and control.
They fill my nostrils with an offensive aroma
that smacks of a history of abuse, belittlement and pain.
They exude with the suffering they let me ignore.
They ooze with the memories of the blood that has been lost.
They smell to high heaven and point to my complicity
in the lies of this world.
Redeeming God,
take these Robes of Myth from me
and let me walk naked through this world if I must,
but I wish to walk through it blindly no longer.
I wish to breathe in the brilliance of creation
and leave behind the stinking myths of humanity.
Help me, my God.
Free me, my God.
Help us, O God.
Free us.
Amen.
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