“I tried the whole church thing with an old girlfriend of mine. I went for a while but couldn’t really stand the people, I mean, all these people who showed up to church acting one way, then I see them during the week acting completely different. I can’t stand being around that. But, you know, I’ve read parts of the Bible, trying to wrap my head around the whole idea. I just kind of appreciate all religions really. It’s just not for me though.”
“I pretty much grew up in the church.” It was all I could muster after he threw the hypocrisy dagger. I really don’t have an argument for that one.
“Yeah, that usually seems to be the case.” Ouch. Truth hurts.
After that, we just kind of sat back and stared at the ocean in silence for a while. He had valid points and questions and experiences that I couldn’t argue with. He saw my entire upbringing inside the church walls from the outside and for exactly what it was; white washed and disappointing. And I’m just another church going chick who still goes to church because that’s what she grew up doing.
Shrug.
I appreciate my lifetime of church experience and having parents who paved the gospel road for me is absolutely incalculable. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It comes with its own unique set of battles to fight through, which I find myself constantly stumbling through and probably will for the rest of my life.
But sometimes I wish I could stand on the outside and look in. That is the perspective the church at large desperately needs to understand anyway.
I have, from infancy, known the intimate workings and interconnectedness of the Christian church. The good, the bad, the down right ugly; I have seen it all. I have been filled with hope and wonder and awe by this body, the bride of Christ. I have been hurt and disappointed and severely disillusioned by the very same hand.
It has left wounds that have healed calloused, that don’t allow for me to stand in defense when someone slanders the church, but instead I sit in silence because I know she is a broken body with many faults. And I too am in dislike and disgust of her many imperfections.
It is a strange thing to begin to love something so broken, so imperfect, something so much like myself. I have navigated to that perspective, the one from the outside looking in, and I see a beautiful mess. I see how God, in all his perfection, can look down on his misguided and disheveled bride, sigh and smile, gently guiding her along as he picks up the pieces.
The church is something I have hated and loved, battled for and against, ran from and longed for. It is difficult to decipher between God and the church when you grow up in the center of the chaos. It is so much easier when you can see clearly the difference, from which compassion will then grow.
This world is full of fragile, imperfect, broken, faulted human beings. Some of us have found the insane love and wildly undeserved mercy of a God who would do anything to reconcile himself to us. Some of us have not yet experienced that relationship. There in lies the only difference between the two. See, though we have Christ, we are still broken and imperfect. And so it is no wonder, no question, no surprise that a body made up of lackluster parts can be a hypocritical, chaotic mess.
It is when we think of ourselves as better, as somehow less messed up or faulted, that we begin to be something God never intended his bride to be. We become unattractive, repelling even.
But when we can step outside and see what we look like from that perspective; a bed head, smeared make-up, dirty clothed bride; we see ourselves for who we really are and truly understand the incredible love of God, who desires us desperately despite our ragged selves. Then, and only then, can we look from the inside outward and see that the world around us is no different, just that they too desperately need to experience the love that we so undeservedly receive over and over and over again.
And so I sat in silence, staring at the ocean, without rebuttal to his comments. I figured arguing was a useless effort. I choose instead to speak through my life and let him see for himself what it looks like for a church going hypocrite like me to be loved by a fiercely passionate God.
