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 Contradictions between Church,
Religion, and Jesus
Summary:
Institutions and Jesus' message of compassion have lived in tension ever since he preached his message. An encounter with a mentor I've named Poetry Man.
Excerpt from Straight Into Gay America:
“The problem with this conversation is I’m an ordained pastor.”
“But you’re a human being, too. And you’re a writer. It’s not about your story being the truth. It’s about being faithful to the story you have.”
“For a pastor, though, it’s about having the truth, at least for Lutheran pastors. The Lutheran church only ordained me after I repeated their long list of ‘I believes.’”
He pours steaming water over the leaves, and the tea begins to color in the pot. I tell Poetry Man, “I remember one time at seminary I argued if we all believed we could see a little green elf-man in the corner of the classroom, and if we all worshiped that elf, that would be our God. My professor got really agitated in his disagreement with me.
“Another time a teacher read a story to us by a retired pastor, how for many years he had no longer believed what he preached, but he kept coming back each Sunday to speak his words, because they were the belief of the community. The teacher described this as a beautiful sacrifice, the poignancy of living in a community bigger than ourselves. I remember thinking it was pretty pathetic, losing his voice. I wondered how this pastor’s experience relates to all the depression among clergy. Now, though, I guess I’m in similar shoes. I quit preaching, except when I’m alone on my unicycle.”
Poetry Man checks the tea, asking, “What are you afraid of?”
“Destroying someone else’s belief, the things they hang on to so they can keep hanging on. I told you about some of the people I buried. Pastors spend a lot of time helping build safe spaces for people in crisis.”
“What about the prophets?”
“That was where I got my energy, but either I’m not good at the prophetic part, or the church isn’t good about accepting prophets.”
“What could you say that would destroy someone’s faith?”
“Depends on the person. Some people need a literal Bible. Some people need Jesus to be “the only way.” Some need church to be a cozy social club. Others need heaven to be a physical forty acres, somewhere in the sky. And some need an afterlife. I’m okay with everything ending in compost. I’m okay with being surprised—or not surprised.”
“Where do your questions come from?” Poetry Man has poured our tea. Instead of heading for the living room sofa, as we always do, he pulls back a chair from the big rectangular kitchen table. I do the same, sitting down, facing him across the oak surface.
“I told you about Nome. Before that, though, the first time I bicycled across the country, the Grand Canyon was on my route. After I arrived I attended an open air rim-side worship service. The preacher gave a sermon about a lighthouse, and how the light was like Jesus, a beacon in the storm of life. He never mentioned the Grand Canyon, even with us sitting on the rim, right there, looking at all the colors and the contours, and all those millions of years of earth’s labors. I’d already been thinking about these things, but my sense of Jesus changed forever that day. Two-thousand-years-old and we say Jesus is Lord of the universe? Two-thousand years is nothing. Doesn’t it seem a bit presumptuous, even if you’re not looking straight into the Grand Canyon?
“From the canyon I bicycled east onto the Navajo Nation and then through Hopi Land. They have their own stories about how the universe came to be. How are we going to match our mythology and our science and survive these next hundred years? Some scientists now calculate humans have just a fifty-fifty chance of surviving this next century.
“What are we talking about when we say Jesus answers prayer? What does it mean to have a spiritual life? This is why I’m reluctant to use God language.
“Do you pray?” Poetry Man asks.
“Yeah. And I pray to Jesus. Every morning. Isn’t that strange, for being as language-scared as I am? On the unicycle tour I’d lay still for ten or fifteen minutes every morning, before I got up, thinking about the day ahead, praying for Anne and the kids and the whole wide world. It’s what I’m used to. It’s how I ask my questions, how I face uncertainties.”
“Sounds to me like you believe in God.”
“Maybe you like that term more than I do. What do you mean by God? I feel like we’re always saying way more than we know. I’m tired of arguing about God, pushing against the definitions of the church I’ve been part of, working the questions I have for where religion is headed. I have no idea what prayer means, except that I’m hoping for a better connection to the life I’m living. I have no idea what Jesus as God means, but I love that guy Jesus as a human being. I really love that guy. He was the outsider who lived on compassion as long as he could, until the insiders killed him. And he seems like he was okay with his fate.
Poetry man has uncorked me. My feelings pour out.
“Compassion. If you read the stories about who he hung out with and what he did, that’s what Jesus was about. If there’s a message from God that makes sense to me, it’s compassion. If the Bible shows anything else to me, it’s that institutions hardly ever want to risk compassion. Compassion threatens order, the constant battle between keeping old rules and letting grace break those rules.
“Some people fight their battle inside the church. Jesus did it from the outside. Maybe I rolled my dice last summer, and rode a thousand miles to see if I could follow compassion from outside the system.
“You see why I quit preaching?” I conclude, “It’s hard to do that work in church.”
Poetry Man lets my words settle, then replies, “Lars, It’s hard to do that work anywhere, inside of church, or outside. Remember how you told me you wanted to be a reporter on this trip? Thought you had an easy way out?
“It’s not about whether you’re a pastor or not a pastor. It’s not about being inside the church or outside the church. It’s like you said yourself; it’s about following a story about a guy that only survives for three years, once he starts living his own story. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a pastor or a poet, it’s damn hard to tell that story, and when you do, most people don’t want to hear that story. We don’t really want to hear how death and life are so close to each other, how hope and failure make love every chance they get. Maybe that’s why we talk about God so much—using God talk to avoid real life, because we’re so scared of that story. We don’t want Jesus’ life to end up being our own.” |
