Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Disillusionment
Last week at Boar's Head Tavern, the iMonk put up a post that he described as
After I left my stint in full-time vocational ministry, there were only two conclusions available to me. Either it was all a lie and all really a front put up to garner power, control, money, all that conspiratorial garbage, or institutions that draw on the name of Christ are as corrupt and sinful, maybe even more so, than individuals are. I had simply too much genuine experience with Jesus Himself to rest long on the first possible conclusion and was forced to adopt the second.
I think there is an inevitablility to it. The more serious you take your faith, the more you move to the "inside," or leadership, of your particular institution. The further in you get, the more you discover how much is real and how very much is facade. The heartbreak can be overwhelming; a genuine crisis of faith is almost inevitable.
Is it any wonder that the emphasis on individualistic salvation and faith that marks the two great awakenings in America and the rise of evangelicalism came about? The question is, "Is that really the correct response?"
I don't think so. The heartbreak that results from discovering the feet of clay of institutional faith arises because we naturally and deeply want to work out our faith in a group setting. That urge is inate, a God-given drive to help us reach the state of deep faith and maturity that He desires for us. Institutions are necessary simply for managing a group setting, they are a mandatory tool. Individualistic faith clearly is not God's intention for us.
And so we are confronted with a dilemma - a deep desire, need, and mandate to participate in an institutions of faith, and the realization that those institutions are as false as they are true, as unfaithful as they are faithful.
It has ben said that "the church is the only army that leaves its wounded on the battlefield." There is truth in that cliche, but that is not the design of the church. The wounded to which it refers are often those of genuine faith, and they are often left behind because of the threat they pose to the power of the institution.
If your response to this dilemma is not to leave the institution, it may be to try and reform it. This too contains many pitfalls. Often it proves impossible resulting only in frustration. Other times, it can be successful, but the institutions devised to promote that success corrupts more rapidly than the institutions is seeks to reform, resulting in an ever downward spiral of dispair and disillusionment.
If you really care about God and His calling on your life, this is indeed a difficult place to stand. The desire to walk away from it all can be overwhelming.
What to do, what to do? That is the question I am asking in How To Be A Christian And Still Go To Church. The questions are still being formed, and the answers still being discovered. But an idea is coming to me - "reformation through personal mission." I have probably killed that idea by giving it such a buzzwordy label, I don't know. Maybe as we explore the idea we can come up with a better way to talk about it.
Cross-posted at How To Be A Christian And Still Go To Church
Related Tags: church, institutions, faith, corruption, Christianity, disillusionment, disappointment, heartbreak
Ten Myths and Ugly Facts of Entering Full-Time Vocational MinistryIt is one of those things that you read, the truth is self-evident, but the consequences are so horrible you want to ignore it and hope it will go away. The cynicism that Spenser capture in the post is, frankly, the genesis of my sporadic book/blog project How To Be A Christian And Still Go To Church.
After I left my stint in full-time vocational ministry, there were only two conclusions available to me. Either it was all a lie and all really a front put up to garner power, control, money, all that conspiratorial garbage, or institutions that draw on the name of Christ are as corrupt and sinful, maybe even more so, than individuals are. I had simply too much genuine experience with Jesus Himself to rest long on the first possible conclusion and was forced to adopt the second.
I think there is an inevitablility to it. The more serious you take your faith, the more you move to the "inside," or leadership, of your particular institution. The further in you get, the more you discover how much is real and how very much is facade. The heartbreak can be overwhelming; a genuine crisis of faith is almost inevitable.
Is it any wonder that the emphasis on individualistic salvation and faith that marks the two great awakenings in America and the rise of evangelicalism came about? The question is, "Is that really the correct response?"
I don't think so. The heartbreak that results from discovering the feet of clay of institutional faith arises because we naturally and deeply want to work out our faith in a group setting. That urge is inate, a God-given drive to help us reach the state of deep faith and maturity that He desires for us. Institutions are necessary simply for managing a group setting, they are a mandatory tool. Individualistic faith clearly is not God's intention for us.
And so we are confronted with a dilemma - a deep desire, need, and mandate to participate in an institutions of faith, and the realization that those institutions are as false as they are true, as unfaithful as they are faithful.
It has ben said that "the church is the only army that leaves its wounded on the battlefield." There is truth in that cliche, but that is not the design of the church. The wounded to which it refers are often those of genuine faith, and they are often left behind because of the threat they pose to the power of the institution.
If your response to this dilemma is not to leave the institution, it may be to try and reform it. This too contains many pitfalls. Often it proves impossible resulting only in frustration. Other times, it can be successful, but the institutions devised to promote that success corrupts more rapidly than the institutions is seeks to reform, resulting in an ever downward spiral of dispair and disillusionment.
If you really care about God and His calling on your life, this is indeed a difficult place to stand. The desire to walk away from it all can be overwhelming.
What to do, what to do? That is the question I am asking in How To Be A Christian And Still Go To Church. The questions are still being formed, and the answers still being discovered. But an idea is coming to me - "reformation through personal mission." I have probably killed that idea by giving it such a buzzwordy label, I don't know. Maybe as we explore the idea we can come up with a better way to talk about it.
Cross-posted at How To Be A Christian And Still Go To Church
Related Tags: church, institutions, faith, corruption, Christianity, disillusionment, disappointment, heartbreak
