I did not leave the Church, the Church left me.
Growing up in the conservative church I heard the message of grace preached from the pulpit and reiterated in the Sunday school classroom. The teachings of Jesus and the way he lived his life was held up as a standard to aspire to. Love, self-sacrifice, honesty, truthfulness, patience, kindness, gentleness, and empathy were promoted as traits and a way-of-life to embrace. Identifying fundamental Christian virtues in the lifestyle and actions of a leader, (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control) was seen as necessary when choosing those who we should follow.
I grew up believing, and expecting, that was the goal and agenda of those in leadership. Yes, my pastors and teachers were not perfect, but the assumption was that they strived to include these attributes and actions in their lives. This assumption was my baseline. It is what I looked for in my parents and those whose authority I was under. It gave me a reason to believe I was on the right path as I engaged in Christian community.
I do believe that this sort of life direction is God’s will for all God’s children.
The Bible, in the book of Matthew, exclaims that we will know them by their fruit. That a good tree will produce good fruit and that a bad tree will produce bad fruit. If someone exhibits the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control), they have demonstrated that they are followers of the Christian doctrine. If these attributes and actions are not exhibited, then that person is unworthy of a Christian leadership mantel. This I embraced as an obvious truth. Attempting to extol the fruits of the spirit was what brought me to my knees and what also raised me up in hope. I assumed those in my congregation felt the same way — that I was part of a community who all sought after the same thing. Jesus was my standard and my guide, and although I came up short, I was confident that those who I shared a pew with felt and believed as I did.
To identify and encourage the ripening of the fruits of the spirit in others is a unifying mandate from God. I try to align myself with those who feel as I do, seeking fellowship with those who encourage those attributes and actions in me.
This agenda of hope is illuminated through demonstrations of inclusion and kindness. Honesty and integrity are critically important for any real growth of the spirit. Being fearless in the pursuit of Christ, even when it is uncomfortable or risky, is necessary for any real spiritual growth.
Speaking the truth, even when it brings about conflict, was the example that followers of Jesus should embrace.
I still believe this to be true, even though the Church I grew up in, and trusted to promote theses ideals and attributes, apparently does not value them.
What the conservative Church promotes today is an agenda of exclusion and judgement. The focus has shifted off the fruits of the spirit and onto a mission of weeding out unrighteousness. Intolerance for those outside of a patched together Sudo-Christiaan morality has become the primary focus. Preaching division from the pulpit and identifying who the enemy is has pushed Jesus’s teachings of the “fruits of the spirit” into, at best, the footnotes of most sermons. Love, and acceptance of others is no longer promoted as a necessity. Inclusion of gay, lesbian, transgender, and queer (among others) is seen as anti-Christian. Fear has replaced tolerance. The Church acts with the belief that it has a duty to judge and condemn those Jesus had asked the Church to serve. “Who are my family?” asks Jesus, “Those who do the will of my father are my family.”
The conservative church is following corrupt and un-godly leaders who exhibit almost none of the fruits of the spirit. Yet, it holds up these leaders as men of God. It declares them to have a mandate from God to weed out undesirables and to build walls and hedges around those physical and emotional comforts they have appropriated for themselves.
Jesus encourages us to be selfless, yet they are self-centered.
Jesus demonstrates compassion for those outside the city walls, yet they lock the doors.
Jesus declares men, women and others to be valid and of equal value, yet they devalue and oppress women and vilify those outside the polarized gender norms.
Jesus teaches that those we follow should be someone who serves others, yet we elect leaders who are self-serving.
Jesus asks for us to encourage temperance and to promote kindness, yet they honor bullies without patience or self-control.
Jesus healed the sick and gave hope to the despondent, yet they turn their back on those who are inconvenient and unprotected.
Jesus reached out to the widows and women who struggled, yet they deny a women’s self-determination and devalue her contributions.
Jesus helped the homeless and hungry asking us to give freely, yet they give only scraps while hoarding their possessions in clenched fists. “If there is among you a poor man of your brethren…you shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your poor brother, but you shall open your hand wide to him and willingly lend him sufficient for his need, whatever he needs.”
Jesus gave as a clear agenda for what God sees as righteousness, yet they have strayed from that path declaring themselves already righteous.
These members in the conservative Christian church are the new Pharisees. Their agenda is not dissimilar to that of ultra-conservative Islamic fundamentalists.
They misuse the name of Jesus to promote a fear of hell and distrust of those who differ in the slightest from their idols of self-righteousness.
The runaway train of the conservative Church has derailed real spiritual growth. It’s a spiritual trainwreck. The Church has unwittingly made itself an adversary of God. Jesus declares, “Woe to you, religious-leaders, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Woe to you, church-leaders, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven, you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are supposed to enter to go in.”
With all these warnings and clear messages, how is that the conservative Church misses what is fundamentally important? How is it that they hold in high regard those who demonstrate none of the fruits of the spirit? Distrust has replaced inclusion. Hate has been repackaged as integrity and love. Those who bully, puff themselves up, and demand places of honor are given them and are declared to be there by the providence of God.
When Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem, he was oppressed by those leaders who have now passed their mantel to the conservative Church. Those Pharisees saw Jesus as the enemy because of his radical teachings of inclusion, value, love, self-sacrifice, and his questioning of religious leadership and their misdirected idea of righteousness. Those religious leaders eventually rejected the teachings of Jesus so much so that it resulted in his death. Today’s conservative religious leaders have defined for themselves what a righteous lifestyle looks like and so have oppressed and rejected anyone who does not follow their specific “righteous” model. This oppression is directed at the single parent, those who are childless, the divorced person (even those escaping abuse), women (especially those who God has called to leadership), the entire LGBTQ+ community (currently focused on the exclusion and oppression of trans people) and anyone else who does not “look” like them. They pick and choose who they will tolerate for inclusion offering a roadmap that they themselves don’t truly follow. Their Bibles have been edited with underlining, while they compile their list of “right and wrong.” They chose from a smorgasbord of scriptures only those verses they can easily stomach.
They have shunned the real meaning of grace which is what all of Jesus’s teachings point to; “Grace is the basis for the Christian faith. Grace cannot be earned; it is something that is freely given, it is undeserved favor. Grace is the bridge built for ALL our relationships with God.”
The primary focus is no longer on Spiritual fruit and encouraging real spiritual growth and awakenings. Instead, the conservative Church has become a cultural, social, and political entity that promotes a philosophy and ideology that seeks to preserve their traditional institutions, customs, values and the status-quo. Not so different from 2,000 years ago.