(Please
read Part 1 before continuing…)
In today's postmodern culture, everyone has "their truth", based on their feelings and perception and life experience, and I think those truths are worth validating and acknowledging. But I also believe that there is an absolute Truth, and that begins and ends with God the Father, the Creator. God is good, and God is love.
Since I was a child, I've known what the Truth was, and my faith in God has always been strong. For the better part of the last year, though, I was really confused as to what I believed, and whether or not it was real. The messages I'd been fed at church for months, years maybe, had been messing with my faith, my entire belief system. This has been incredibly painful, but I'm starting to feel grateful for it, because after experiencing all the searching and confusion and doubt, my faith is stronger than ever. Like bank tellers, who learn how to spot fake currency by studying what the real deal looks like, I began to recognize the counterfeit gospel my church was teaching when I compared it to the Word of God.
Since I was a child, I've known what the Truth was, and my faith in God has always been strong. For the better part of the last year, though, I was really confused as to what I believed, and whether or not it was real. The messages I'd been fed at church for months, years maybe, had been messing with my faith, my entire belief system. This has been incredibly painful, but I'm starting to feel grateful for it, because after experiencing all the searching and confusion and doubt, my faith is stronger than ever. Like bank tellers, who learn how to spot fake currency by studying what the real deal looks like, I began to recognize the counterfeit gospel my church was teaching when I compared it to the Word of God.
I believe
that Jesus is the Son of God, and that
He sacrificed His life on the cross, supernaturally paying the price for my
sin, before I was ever even born. Because of His gift, and because I choose to
believe it's true, I get to spend eternity with Him and God the Father. This
same gift is available to every single human on the planet. I think this is
incredibly Good News, and I am beyond grateful to have found solace and truth
and peace in my faith.
I also
believe that on this earth we have a very real enemy, named Satan. He is the father of lies, and he is incredibly skilled in the art of deception. His
mission is also clear and the Bible tells us that his only purpose is to destroy us. Not mess
with us or make us uncomfortable. But to steal, and kill, and destroy. The
spiritual realm is alive and active, where angels and demons are working day
and night to help us or harm us, respectively. Many of us walk around with no
knowledge of this at all, yet it’s there. I think that even if you don’t
consider yourself a religious person, you are likely aware of a spirituality within or
around you, and that there is something bigger than just us on this earth.
It's a common
tactic of this enemy of ours to make us misunderstand the heart and nature of
God. If we doubt the goodness and love of God then it’s really easy to start pointing
fingers and deciding we know better than He does, and we start looking
elsewhere for things that make us feel good. The enemy is constantly pointing
out all the ugliness in the world and blaming it on God (“If He’s a loving God,
then why would He allow…?”), when in fact it is caused by evil. God is love,
and as our heavenly Father and Creator of everything, He knows so much better
than we do. In the same way that I can see a much bigger picture than my
children are capable of seeing, and sometimes just need them to trust me when I
have to tell them “No”, God knows how our actions can have a ripple effect into
the future. And the future He’s looking at is eternity and all of humankind,
not just that of our individual lifetimes on this planet.
In having
to leave our church (and please understand that when I realized what was going
on, staying was simply no longer an option), one of the first things I felt, and
continue to battle, is shame. I truly believe this feeling is not from God and
He is not ashamed of me or angry at me for taking so long to hear His voice
again. I believe He's grateful I finally listened to His still, small voice,
and He is celebrating my return home. I've felt His presence so
tangibly in my life since we made the choice to leave. It's been a gift.
But
still, I've felt deeply ashamed.
I've talked to so many people who left our church before we did. Years before, even. Every person has a similar story to ours, and I've truly fought the temptation to beat myself up because I "should have" seen this all sooner. Things that I just started seeing have really been going on for years, but it’s been so subtle that if I noticed them at all, I justified them away, and allowed myself to continue to marinate in it all. And the longer you stay somewhere, the harder it is to leave. I keep thinking of the analogy of frogs boiling slowly in a pot of water, not realizing until it’s too late that they’re in danger. That’s what this has felt like for me.
I've talked to so many people who left our church before we did. Years before, even. Every person has a similar story to ours, and I've truly fought the temptation to beat myself up because I "should have" seen this all sooner. Things that I just started seeing have really been going on for years, but it’s been so subtle that if I noticed them at all, I justified them away, and allowed myself to continue to marinate in it all. And the longer you stay somewhere, the harder it is to leave. I keep thinking of the analogy of frogs boiling slowly in a pot of water, not realizing until it’s too late that they’re in danger. That’s what this has felt like for me.
A giant mistake I made is that I stopped making my faith journey
my own. I found a church I felt good in, found leadership I clicked with and
gave them my trust...and then I stopped doing my own homework. I stopped
researching the thought leaders whose ideas were being shared from my church
stage, and instead just trusted that they were right and in line with my
beliefs, since I trusted the leadership. I realize now how incredibly naive this was of me. I can remember so many times the
pastor encouraged us to do our own research and not take his word for it, yet I
did that very thing. It's tricky how someone telling you not to trust anyone,
can cause you to trust that person. Happens in the movies all the time. *sigh*
I also stopped
reading the Bible, I think partly out of laziness and partly out of arrogance,
assuming I just knew it because I'd been reading the Word my whole life. But I
started forgetting what it said, and
instead just agreed with what was shared by those I'd given my trust to. I
mean, if it sounded good and loving, it was probably right, because I believe
God is love. Right? I also realized recently that at some point, seeing
Scripture actually irritated me. There were several faith-based accounts I
followed on Instagram and Facebook, but a while back I unfollowed them because
their posts made me angry. (That should’ve been a red flag to me, too.)
It was
especially irritating to me when a woman I didn’t know very well started
messaging me on Facebook a couple months back, telling me she thought I was at
risk of being exposed to darkness because the leadership at my church had
veered away from the power of God’s Word and prayer. She suggested that we were
left vulnerable to
spiritual attack because the leadership failed to protect us (she knew this
from conversations she had with staff who admitted they didn’t pray together to
protect themselves and those of us in their congregation). Honestly, her Scriptures and her accusations
(that’s how they felt at the time) ticked me off, and I respectfully disagreed
with her. But they hit a nerve, and I began praying more fervently. (Now, I’m
incredibly grateful to this woman, and for those I’ve learned have been praying
for me for a long time.)
Reading the Bible again and praying specifically for clarity and truth were two of the things that helped me see clearly what's going on at Eastlake, and why I had to leave. My prayers were answered so quickly that it was as if God had just been waiting for me to ask, and then He dropped a giant truth bomb on me. It's felt a lot like waking up, except I woke up to a bad dream. In the Bible, it talks about scales falling off people's eyes...this describes my experience accurately.
Reading the Bible again and praying specifically for clarity and truth were two of the things that helped me see clearly what's going on at Eastlake, and why I had to leave. My prayers were answered so quickly that it was as if God had just been waiting for me to ask, and then He dropped a giant truth bomb on me. It's felt a lot like waking up, except I woke up to a bad dream. In the Bible, it talks about scales falling off people's eyes...this describes my experience accurately.
I keep going over things that have happened in the past few years, and one of
the biggest red flags was just a few months ago…
I've been reading
and re-reading texts from my pastor, from conversations we had a couple months
back when I told him I was trying to get to the point he's at, asking him for guidance
and help to back up his position. I wasn’t as at peace as he seemed to be
with his decisions, but I wanted to be. I wanted to keep on his path, a path I
was following, because that's what you do when you are a part of a church. You
follow the journey the leadership takes you on.
When I asked
him for the Scriptures he used that helped him come to his inclusion decision
(more on that tomorrow), he texted: "I don't need the Bibles approval or
Christians approval."
Honestly,
his words at the time didn’t alarm me outright. But now, it’s shocking to
understand that my pastor doesn’t believe he needs accountability or authority
over him from the Word of God, or from fellow Christian believers. So who
*does* he need to answer to? Don’t
we all answer to someone?
Waking up
to the reality of what's going on in the place I called home has been utterly
surreal. I've never been this close to something this dark, at least not that I
remember being aware of. It feels like I'm in a bad movie, and I keep having
these "I can't believe this is real life" moments. I've learned my
lesson - I hope - to no longer leave my walk with God in anyone else's hands.
It's a painful lesson to learn, and I hope to never repeat it.
Tomorrow, I talk about a shift that happened at Eastlake in 2015…
Xoxo.
