Sunday 4 October 2009

Reaching Out

I was born, like most people, into a religious system and given many assumptions I have spent my whole life sifting through, seeing what I want to keep, and what I can't, in good conscience, have anything further to do with.  I could make a chart.  I won't.  It's still a work in progress.

Some things, though: the assumption that was seeded all through the thinking in my little Plymouth Brethren group (like in almost every religious and irreligious group) was that we were "getting it right" in a way that no other group was.  We understood things better, and the way we went about our lives was more supportable by a larger number of scriptures (if not by the intent of the writers) than the approaches of the other Christians.  We admitted that those groups "certainly had those within them who Were The Lord's" but felt that they were getting it all a bit wrong and should listen to us.  

Plymouth Brethren groups are particularly shameless in defining themselves as a group that is getting stuff right that other groups are getting wrong.  Check out a random PB website.  Look at the helpful books and articles and essays you can get:

Is the One Man Pastor Scriptural? By Dave Binds, former denominational pastor.  What I Have Found Dave Binds' testimony concerning the New Testament pattern for the church. Is It Possible to Meet as a New Testament Church? By Gospel Booklet Press Choosing a Church or Gathered in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ?  A letter written by Jeff Fires to encourage a brother in Christ. My Reasons The reasons for Dino Sealand's resignation as Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Newcastle, PA., and from the Baptist Ministry. Headship and Headcovering in the Church By Tim Badborn Should Women Speak in the Church? By Robert E. Savings, Jr.

They might as well have titled them like this:

Why other churches having a One Man Pastor is not Scriptural! By Dave Binds, former denominational pastor who saw pastorship was wrong and selflessly gave it up to come gather with us and forever after be more correct.  What I Have Found Is that the Other Churches Are Doing Everything Wrong! Dave Binds' views concerning the New Testament pattern for the church that other groups are fucking up. We are Definitely Meeting as a New Testament Church, Unlike Most Groups! By Gospel Booklet Press Attending With Us Isn't Just "Choosing a Church," It is Being Gathered in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ! A letter written by Jeff Fires to encourage a brother in Christ to choose our group because it's right. My Reasons For Thinking Y'all Are Wrong! The reasons for Dino Sealand's resignation as Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Newcastle, PA., and from the Baptist Ministry, which he decided God thought was wrong. Why Other Churches Letting Women Have Authority, and Not Making Them Cover Their Heads is Wrong!  By Tim Badborn(an alleged man) who enjoys keeping women in their proper place Why Women Should Not Be Allowed To Speak in Church, Like They Are In Some Other Churches (Ours Aren't)! By Robert E. Savings, Jr. (another alleged man) who enjoys keeping women in their proper place

I believe, though I have changed the wording and authors' names but slightly, that I have kept the preoccupations and spirits (attitudes) intact.  It's not that I'm saying PB groups like this one are wrong (Heaven forfend!).  I am saying they define themselves, right out of the box, to complete strangers who might not know anything about the bible or Jesus or God, as people who aren't doing what the other Christian groups are, but instead are righter.  I think this attitude is immature.

Anyway, like most groups too (religious, irreligious and in other ways cultural) I knew that I'd be looked down on it if I "went out" to find friends and a wife, rather than "bring them in" to our circle of belief. 

Well, it didn't work out very well.  Most left, most "went outside" and then didn't reconnect with or "come back to" the people and approaches which had gotten them, in varying degrees of smug, stunted brokenness, to adulthood.  I wasn't content to "just leave" it.  I wanted to make sure I kept what I wanted to keep, and only lost what I wanted to lose.  

I also had a big problem with tossing out any attempts to reconcile, connect, re-evaluate or compromise with the people who were in a very real sense "my people."  I believed that throwing them out with the holy bathwater was something I could have nothing to do with.  I believed that having no loyalty or lasting concern and affection for each other was, in fact, my biggest problem with them to begin with, and that walking off into the ecclesiastical sunset with a different girl under my arm wouldn't fix a thing for anyone but me, and that too, I'd probably find myself needing to revisit the problem anyway.  

We have a way of finding ourselves not being able to really get away from the really real stuff from our childhoods.  We end up on the other side of it, doing the same bad stuff to today's children or those under our care or authority, or we end up doing things that are so mirror-image opposite that they might as well be us doing exactly the same thing.  Then we really  have to think and work on how to deal emotionally.

Many people I grew up with used careful techniques to keep this thinking and dealing away:

Some filled every waking moment with work, with busy, darting here and there activity that added up (from the perspective of even six months later) to little besides keeping them in a state of perpetual leaving to go somewhere else.  You could talk to them, but you were made all too aware of where you were keeping them from being, and how little time they had.  Ignorant shallowness maintained through over-commitment of time.

Others used a cult-like technique of filling their heads at all times with little mottos, slogans, jingles, aphorisms, poems and songs.  You couldn't talk to them.  You'd make a perfectly obvious comment, and they'd spit back something facile that someone else had come up with, as if thinking about stuff like that was a waste of time.  They hadn't even thought about the thought-substitutes themselves.  They were just using them as corks to jam in the faucet.  George Orwell called this "protective stupidity."

Others used alcohol whenever they got trapped alone with their thoughts and feelings.  I believe the strategy was two-fold: if they were drunk, then their brains wouldn't work properly, so the thoughts wouldn't flow properly.  Secondly, anything they thought that evening could be dismissed out of hand the next morning as "stuff they thought when they were drinking."  You could talk to them about meaningful stuff only when they were drunk and their brains didn't work right, and every epiphany or depth of understanding they reached faded in the morning light.

Others used drugs for a similar purpose.  Unlike the booze-hounds, they often claimed, however, that the drugs made them "think better" or "just 'get things' more" instead of seeing their brains as impaired while in that state.  True, all sorts of random, out-there, interesting thoughts flew into their minds while they were messed up, but these flew just as easily right back out again and were almost always lost.  You could talk to them, but although the state made them believe almost anything could be true, it at the same time made them feel that almost nothing was false, which kinda ruins any attempt at thinking.

Having children helped many others stave off thinking and dealing even more than over-involvement in partying or jobs.  Nothing takes your thinking time away like kids.

I didn't allow myself any of that or failed to really get into it.  I was far too lazy and disinterested in money and career to throw myself into those, and I wanted to be a teacher.  I wanted to be a teacher when there was a teacher glut going on, Mike Harris was doing odd things to Ontario and I just couldn't.  I had a series of jobs where I'd have to do things like sit on a couch all night long after having put some handicapped people to bed with their pills, or sit in front of a machine and press a button every five minutes or so.  It paid the bills, and usually kept me sitting up all night with nothing to do but think and no interruptions of any kind.

I waited until 21 to try alcohol outside of a Sunday morning service.  A couple of years later I noticed that I'd now reached an age where my peers were either cutting back on their partying due to maturity, or realizing that they were drinking (or smoking up or dropping hits) at home alone and at all times of the day and should really think about the sense in that.  It was too late to be a drunk 14 year old who'd gotten his hands on some of Dad's beer anyway.  (My Dad has never had any beer anyway.)

So, I approached thirty, having spent countless years of weeks of hours thinking and dealing.  Most people I knew were not doing much thinking, at least yet.  They viewed all of this with suspicion and distrust.  They assured me that I had to quit all this thinking and reach out and connect to other people more.  (I was, but like most people, I wanted to connect to other people who were doing what I was doing, and main thing people like me did was not go where there were rooms full of people.)  Many of them have contacted me since, and are showing signs of just starting, around 35 or 40 years old, to re-evaluate the thinking they grew up with, and which they have already engraved into their kids' souls.

My religious group had a couple of huge acrimonious split-ups caused by how they tended to do things (to check to see if you agreed, and if you didn't, to walk away from you ideologically and socially and pretend you were dead, kicking you out of the church group just to be safe).  Some of us thought a lot about this approach, but most people quickly put the thinking to rest with "We were right, they were wrong.  End of story.  End of discussion.  End of lesson."  This freed them up to do more kicking out without a pang of conscience or overmuch reflection on the worth of eliminating people rather than the problems which proved to be not limited to individuals.

Eventually they kicked me out for thinking.  (to be fair, my "thinking" involves discussing things with others, making parody versions of things I think don't make sense, like religious literature and hymns).  This really kick-started the thinking in a big way.  The Internet, and having a blog and a web page (and Facebook and Youtube) started to connect me to people of similar thinking.  It also forced people who, in their circles, can have people like me shut up or kicked out, to need to approach me and my thinking and that of my friends in forums and ways the Internet made suddenly egalitarian.  They could say they wished I was not allowed to write things, but they couldn't make me stop.  Now THAT made me need to think!

How much time should I be spending talking on the Internet, and what should I say and how should I treat people who are throwing iRocks at me, when I seemed to have this iShotgun in my hand now, so to speak?  Jesus is hard to know how to use as an example.  The iRock-throwers tend to insist Jesus would never stoop to name-calling (though he certainly did) and that he was always meek and kind and nice (though he certainly was not).  They insist that deconstructionist thinking (the sort of thinking that post-modernists engage in) is unhelpful, not constructive (see what's happening there?) and totally lacking in value or merit.

It was amazing hearing an mp3 of Tom Wright, the Archbishop of Durham, speaking at Harvard.   He said that what we think of as "traditional" 20th century thinking and approaches to truth are what the rest of the world would label "modernist" (mindless optimism about the system we live in and how we need only follow it and support it and protect it from Philistines and it will spit out cool thing after cool thing).  

He suggested that the rest of the world (in the 90s, quite audible in Kurt Cobain's voice) had moved from that into post-modernism ("Does this REALLY work?"  "Is all of this REALLY necessary?" "Is this perhaps more than a little ridiculous, once you think about it?" "Why not just say fuckit?"  "What's the use of anything?")  Post-modern thinking, Wright thought, questioned that mindless optimism about the system we have served thoughtlessly (actually, I think he said it "gave it a much-needed poke in the eye"), and the task of a Christian isn't to hide in outmoded modernist thought, nor to wallow uninspiredly in post-modern nihilism but to respond to what is happening in the mind of the world so we can show we HAVE something to say in response, rather than simply that we're not thinking about it.

For the last ten years, people have been saying that, for my own emotional health and growth, I need to "leave all that Plymouth Brethren stuff behind and get on with your life."  It struck me that for these past ten years since I was kicked out of my group for thinking and feeling things thought to be gratuitously unorthodox by the very old I have been reaching out trying to find other Christians outside tha' PB who won't crucify me if I act like Jesus in ways they're not used to.

The orthodox way to do what I'm attempting is simply to visit the local churches and try to integrate myself deeply and unthinkingly into one.  I'm trying something harder.  I'm shooting for something deeper.  I'm trying to relate to Christians as a whole, or failing that, one-by-one.  I'm trying to move outside my upbringing's narrowness, its willingness to coldly cut off all contact with people.  People, by the way, it is told by scripture to love and care for, and claiming this was necessary in order for them to protect and preserve their own position of correctness before God. (see what's happening there?  Incorrect actions to dodge any association with people thought guilty of incorrect beliefs or thoughts)

Here's the trouble I'm having: the local churches are full of people who left my group and haven't changed much, and other people an awful lot like them.  People not differenter enough to make this about expanding my horizons at all.  In other words, the conventional Christian approach to community and sharing doesn't work for me and they're telling me I have to make it work for me and that there is no other path to success open to me but through them and what they're doing.  I've heard that one before.  In tha' PB, actually.

The Internet is generally a cold, plastic, too-convenient, etiquette-free way of connecting to people. It can lead to MSN, to phone calls and sometimes even face-to-face meetings with people who turn out to be awesome or creepy, but who don't live near enough to become a regular part of one's yearly routine.  It's what I have right now, though.  I've "met" some extremely awesome people on it.  It's working.  I want to connect to locals more, but am having trouble.

People accuse me of looking for "a perfect group."  I'm not.  I just need one that doesn't fill me with disbelief, nausea and conscience-questions (now I guess I'm having to decide if I should try to connect to people I don't know whom I don't understand, and if I can connect in any depth.  This is uncomfortably like, or backwards to, people in my own group deciding not to continue to remain connected to people they know intimately and grew up with and are related and intermarried to.)  

As usual, I am told there is an orthodox way to do things and it doesn't work for me and I'm told I have to MAKE it work.  Going into a room at a given time once a week (Sunday morning) and listening to a guy try to pull me along his own path doesn't work for me.  It's too much about unthinking conformity and just as unthinking hate.  It's too much about stopping at nothing while standing for nothing, but just standing in opposition to whatever they can find to hate.  We're all infected with that.  I don't need more of it.  People in groups don't act well, and the larger the groups, the more anonymity, the more evil can hide, the more power is there to be abused and the more people are there to prey on.  I don't see even the slightest sign of the spirit in which it sounds like New Testament Christians hung out.  That's just not how I holy roll, I guess.

I am determined to meet people one (OK, maybe two) at a time.  I don't need to join anything.  I don't need to chair anything, mentor anything, or work in a facilitatory capacity on a committee of any kind.  I am determined to grow into a more mature, deep, effective, warm, loving person and I don't believe the path to that is systematic, formulaic or in any way one-size-fits-all or institutionalizable.  

Guess I'm on my own, mostly, then.  The rest of the Christian world seems devoted to polishing and remarketing, structuring and funding the modernist system they already follow, which system doesn't work for me.  Christ as a person works for me.  Christendom as a system works against everything He and I are trying to put together.

I don't have faith in the idea that somewhere, somehow, there is a group which isn't perfect, but would be a "good fit" for me.  Fitting into a group like a wad of hamburger shoved into a patty mold isn't my spiritual aspiration.  Looking into the eyes of friends and strangers alike and being able to deeply connect to and have conversations with them and "get" on a number of levels what is going on with them and sharing what I see and being able to take in and benefit from their perspective on me and what I'm up to and other stuff, and being able to agree on things and share similar reactions to stuff in common: That's what I live for.  That Jesus stuff that Jesus was able to do.  Because it's good stuff to be able to do, and good stuff that needs to be done.  I can't do that in a church.  I've tried.

There is this false dichotomy being thrust in my face.  You see, in case you don't know, there is this verse in the bible which says "forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is."  This verse is continually used to whack "church forsakers" like me in the snout with.  In a more modernly worded translation (and with more of the context) it says "let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another."  (some translations say "exhorting" which means "to urge strongly").  

I stand accused of not "meeting together" with Christians because I don't go to church Sunday morning.  You see, Christians and atheists alike (and anyone else for that matter) will all agree that we can recognize a Christian in one simple way: a Christian goes to church.  If they were asked "Can a person be a Christian and never go to church?" they'd probably be a bit confused at the idea.  They'd probably say "Well, if he's a REAL Christian acting like one, yeah, he'd go to church."  The first question one gets asked if one identifies as a Christian is always the same.  It isn't "In what way do you want to live like Jesus?"  It is invariably "What church do you go to?"  And if you don't go to one, that derails the whole conversation and it will no longer be about him, but will be about "Why not?"

When the average, unthinking and systematized, institutional Christian is in complete agreement on a subject with people who are far outside that system, either the point is inarguable, or something very interesting is going on.  They may have all missed exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

The false dichotomy can be worded like this: 

You have a choice.  You can either go to a church and thereby be connected to and involved in the dealings of The Christian Church, the Christian Community worldwide as represented in your area, or else you can stay home and have no significant connection or involvement at all, really, in the dealings of The Christian Church, the Christian Community worldwide as represented in your area.

Bullshit, I say.  (or, "not fit even for the dunghill" one could opine more in the language of scripture).  I know (because I've done it) that you can attend a church and have no involvement in or connection to the Church worldwide as represented in your community.  You can equally not join or attend a church and be a crucial, beneficial part of the lives of a large number of Christians.  (I know that because I'm doing it, with varying degrees of success.)

So, I'm at home this Sunday morning.  Writing this.  Listening to David Bazan and Thrice because Jerry said they were really good.  They are.  I'm sure my Christian fellows will do their usual things, and warn people not to read stuff like this, point out the complete lack of bible droppings (Hez 3:12) in it, describe it as anti-church and see it all as a plan to tempt young people away from church and into an eternal hell.  The other Christians who are more like me will either decide it's too long and not read it, or will read it and not tell me or anyone that they read it, because they're like that.

But, one thing I'm learning is that I reflexively flinch and prepare for the worst whenever dealing with Christians.  This is, of course, a reaction trained into me.  Wouldn't it be great if a couple of people showed me that I'm underestimating them?

6 comments:

paula said...

just read the whole thing. i think fellowshipping with christians (or people of any other persuasion) has always been far more interesting for me one on one, without having to wait for the excuse of an organization (religious or otherwise) to bring us together. if going to a church or bible study from time to time would help me to meet some people like that, great, but ultimately i feel like the real stuff happens informally without an agenda or a catechism of agreed upon doctrines.

Wikkid Person said...

that's what *I* think! (obviously)

But, to most Christians nowadays, two people doesn't count as "two or three" and coming/meeting/assembling together like that doesn't count as "coming/meeting/assembling together."

Wikkid Person said...

and way to go making me happily wrong!

paula said...

i've mulled over why group things are given so much respect, when i almost always find them more boring than very small group interactions. i end up feeling lonely in large groups. it seems like people hide a lot of their true feelings in large groups.

there's probably a reason why 2 or 3 is mentioned, not 20 or 30 or 200 or 300.

i kind of feel like get togethers or hang-outs or dinners or beers with people that happen because they genuinely want to hang out and talk, rather than because they have to go to church, are probably going to be more real, and i seem to find them more satisfying.

at church get togethers, lots of times when the bible study is over, people don't really want to talk about God/Jesus stuff, as much as just chat socially. where even when i'm hanging with non-christians, conversations can get into the intense life subjects more easily. (depending on the type of people you hang with, of course)

Anonymous said...

You and yours might well enjoy Googling "The Unoriginal John Darby," "Edward Irving is Unnerving," "Pretrib Rapture Diehards," "X-Raying Margaret," "Letter from Mrs. Billy Graham," "Thieves' Marketing," "Pretrib Rapture - Hidden Facts," and "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty." Thanks for your interesting blog. Sophie

Wikkid Person said...

Thanks. You wouldn't happen to be Dave MacPherson's wife, would you?