Sunday Scribblings #42: Idea

“I have an idea. Why don’t you quit work­ing so hard for the church? Your tal­ent and efforts are not appre­ci­ated. Why don’t you think about your­self for a change, start tak­ing care of your­self a lit­tle bit? You work too hard all week to come home and do all the work you do for that organization.

In fact, why do you even want to con­tinue to be a mem­ber there? They are big­oted, narrow-minded, resis­tant to change and your view­points do not line up with theirs. Worse, the pas­tor has not stood up and done ‘the right thing’ and is never going to. That con­gre­ga­tion is his lit­tle king­dom and he enjoys rul­ing over it. You are just going to con­tinue to be frus­trated and hurt.”

The voice of God, imparted to me by the Holy Spirit, over and over dur­ing the past weeks until I sim­ply could no longer ignore the mes­sage. It gave me an unmis­tak­ably clear idea about what I had to do:

“Do not give what is holy to dogs; and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will tram­ple them under foot and turn and maul you.” (Matthew 7:6)

When some­one vets an idea with which I dis­agree on moral, eth­i­cal, legal, and human­is­tic grounds, I can­not stand silent. It is not my nature. I couldn’t live with myself if I did. Nor will I tol­er­ate being played, manip­u­lated, maneu­vered. It can hap­pen to me once. But not twice.

So when you find your­self say­ing (in part) the fol­low­ing words to your for­mer pas­tor, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the idea of mak­ing that per­son your for­mer pas­tor had to trans­formed fomr just an idea into real­ity:

“Big­Bob has been watch­ing me strug­gle … for too many years and try­ing to con­vince me to quit, but I am the kind of per­son who doesn’t quit because I always thought that there was good work to be done. I also believed that the inten­tions and spir­its of those involved were true, sin­cere, and kind-hearted. But I saw on Tues­day night — clearly, unequiv­o­cally, and with no room for debate — that my will­ing­ness to give the ben­e­fit of the doubt over and over and over was just going to con­tinue to make me frus­trated and mis­er­able. I could no longer do it after the Holy Spirit smacked me in the face as surely as if it had stood right in front of me and pounded a 2’x4’ over my head. It has been telling me for many months to stop cast­ing my pearls before swine. And I have done just that.

… [W]e know the truth. You know what you did and I know what you did, and so will a lot of other peo­ple even­tu­ally, so you can spin it all you want, but the truth has set me free and will con­tinue to do so. I was warned by a num­ber of folks, but I didn’t lis­ten because I didn’t believe the things I was told. I tried to see the good. But, ulti­mately, [you have] no integrity to ‘call[ ] into ques­tion.’ You played me ‘like a bass fid­dle.’ Bravo! Applause! Applause! Nicely done! You are a mas­ter manip­u­la­tor and I truly stand in awe of your abil­ity to maneu­ver things and get your way. In the end, you got what you wanted — you always do — and [ ] Church is truly, as I was warned by a large num­ber of folks, not God’s church, but [yours]. Your fief­dom is intact. So you won’t miss me, my tal­ent, or my money and you sure won’t miss my unwill­ing­ness to be your pup­pet, rubber-stamping your every move just like the remain­der of your Church Council.

[T]hings started out ok, but ulti­mately you have dis­ap­pointed me far too many times by being unwill­ing to stand up for what is right, good, decent, and hon­or­able for you to con­tinue to be my pas­tor. You can attempt to deflect by dump­ing on me, label­ing me. That’s ok. Have fun with that. But I knew Tues­day night that I could never again sit in the pew and have you preach to me.”

I sum­moned all of my energy to strive for a “win-win” res­o­lu­tion for all con­cerned, while the pas­tor shrewdly and devi­ously manip­u­lated the sit­u­a­tion, sab­o­tag­ing my efforts. In the end, you just have to finally get the idea that bang­ing your head against the wall won’t change any­thing and cer­tainly won’t bring you per­sonal ful­fill­ment or hap­pi­ness. I have no regrets about my words or actions. I did my best and am at peace know­ing that. My only regret is that I was so stub­bornly deter­mined to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear that I didn’t extri­cate myself from that toxic con­gre­ga­tion much sooner because I wasted a lot of time, energy and tal­ent that I could have directed to other endeavors.

But here’s the most excit­ing idea I’ve had in awhile: I left not just that con­gre­ga­tion. I have left orga­nized reli­gion in any form. Instead of con­tin­u­ing to give thou­sands of hours of free ser­vice to any insti­tu­tional church, I am going to explore and pur­sue activ­i­ties and ven­tures that bring me plea­sure, sat­is­fac­tion, and per­sonal spir­i­tual growth.

I have an idea that all of this hap­pened because God has some­thing won­der­ful in store for me. A new adven­ture has begun. It started with my sleep­ing until 10:00 a.m. on this beau­ti­ful but extremely cold Sun­day morn­ing and being able to spend some quiet time alone with the Lord, hav­ing my own lit­tle time of wor­ship which was infi­nitely more sat­is­fy­ing than any cor­po­rate wor­ship ser­vice I have ever attended. And dur­ing that time, the Holy Spirit gave this verse to me:

For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for wel­fare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jere­miah 29:11)

So I am secure with the idea that every­thing has and is going to con­tinue to work out just fine so long as I strive to be open and obe­di­ent to what the Holy Spirit con­veys to me.

Sunday Scribblings #42: Idea

http://www.jhsiess.com/2007/01/14/sunday-scribblings-42-idea/