"I'm On The Inside..."

I believe that one of the things God has been leading a bunch of us into, is the value of human connection.  The "love" stuff in the bible.  Connection.  Openness.  Relationship.  Understanding.  Identification.

   I've decided that what Jesus did was meet people, show that he "got" them and then moved on, leaving them feeling understood and not rejected or repulsive to him.  And later he was eventually able to say hard-to-hear things to people he'd met, like Peter and Judas.  No doubt the connection they'd established with him meant they took it pretty seriously. No doubt the word then stung like it never would have, if it had merely come from a distant, civil but casual religious acquaintance from town.  Someone else at synagogue, whom they knew only slightly, and never really "got." Relation before exhortation.  Connection before correction.

  I've decided that, if we think it's our "job" to take positions against things, and to withdraw support from people, that if that's to "work," to do anything good at all, we have to have first forged some kind of connection that's then, painfully, being lessened or broken.  Before we find we need to take a step back.  Otherwise, we're not really doing anything but trying to look better and separate. (Also, it means that person's never coming back.  What would have drawn them back isn't us thinking we're being right.  It would have been the fact that we "got" and had formed a connection, first.)

Connections

And I've been making connections lately.  Well, it's more accurate to say they are being made.  They are forming naturally, as if by magic.  With people around, like Howard the pizza guy, and with any number of people from my past.  Kids I taught years ago, with odd questions, wanting to confess things and not be judged.  It's cool.  I've talked to people I grew up with who are doing odd kinds of blends of Christianity and Buddhism, people who've become atheists, all denominations of agnostics, ex-Sikhs, ex-Orthodox Jews, and people who used to run churches.  People like that.  Sometimes they're a bit weird and that's okay.  We don't agree on everything, of course, but we get each other.  Really easily.  Almost immediately. There is a casual, warm, open connection. We're not necessarily friends.  Sometimes the connections only last for one or two deep, warm conversations, and then lives are gotten on with.
  I imagine Jesus did that with people. I imagine they felt like he liked them.  I really doubt that his face was blank, and I equally doubt his posture was dramatic and show-offy when he healed people.  I imagine he looked into their faces, with an expression on his.  Even if they were wrong about something.  Even if they were sinners.
   So, with most people around me lately, there is some point of connection, and we appreciate each other and think each other belongs in the world, and we don't need to wish the other person far away from us, out of our immediate circles, and instead we wish them the best and are willing to listen or help out.  We're all "us."  We don't need anyone to be "them."

Disconnections

  But there're two areas in which I feel like I make no headway: relatives, and people who think of themselves as "in" the Brethren while thinking of me as "out." 

    Both together?  Now that's a double-whammy.  A Christian is not without acceptance, save among his own relatives and church homies.  I get persecution only, really, from my own birth culture.  Try to do or say anything around Brethren Christians, and I get "But is not this that guy who writes horrible stuff on the Internet which I have never read?  The son of the gym teacher?"
  Try to put anything on the Internet with the relatives I have?  "Michael never did learn to shut up.  And he really needs to, because he doesn't know anything."  One of the very last things a close relative said to me before he died was "You need to shut your mouth about the bible. You don't know a damn thing about it."  And all the living ones seem more than willing to wait in line to tell me he was right.  I can relate to everyone but my own relations.

  And a whole lot of Brethren folk don't believe I, being "out,"  should get to talk about Brethren stuff at all. Because they imagine I'm "out."  Outsiders don't get to comment.  They're not "in," making the sacrifices, suffering along with the rest and proving their commitment.  And they need me and people like me to not only shut up, but fade out of their awareness entirely. Comfortably.  Conveniently.  Lest we have to deal and try to connect.  Lest we have to try to "get" each other.
  They want me, in fact, to identify myself as something other than Brethren now, and forget about them/us.  Forget about my roots. Forget who I am.  They need me to accept in the present, how they're going to be treating me in the future, for what I did in the past. (available for your perusal in a newly computer-cleaned up version here) They will never forget anything I did in the past and they want me to stop looking for forgiveness and reconciliation in future.
   They really don't "get" me, so they attribute malice.  If I'm simply not willing to commit to really, truly being properly "in" (to something that doesn't exist and isn't real), then why am I bothering people I grew up with over something so trivial as Christian, human connection, reconciliation and mending of fences?  How much sick pleasure do I take in causing discomfort for others?
  And I'm confusing to talk to.  "Okay, that's it.  What you're saying on Facebook is confusing me again.  That's why I stopped talking to you and unfriended you last time, actually. I know you're trying to do something bad, but I can't figure out exactly what, or why you're trying to do it."
  Brethren like that don't "get" me.  Not like atheists who value reconciliation and human connection do, anyway.

  Thing is, I retain a lot of beliefs from my Brethren upbringing, to put it mildly.  Most of my beliefs come from there.  Chief among them is the deep-seated conviction that there is no meaning to the idea of a "church," really.  A church with a membership list and rules to follow and people who really think they can actually kick you "out" of the Lord's Table.
   So, I believe, as I was raised to believe, that a town with twenty separate "churches" is doing it wrong.  That it's dumb.   That there's nothing like it seen in scripture, because it's a travesty.  We're one, and God sees that, but we aren't living that, because we don't care what the bible says, and prefer to do things our own way.
  We prefer to ensure there are very solemn, traditional, bureaucratic human systems in place, with committees and oversight, and conferences and retreats and mission statements and logos and letterhead and policies and procedures and positively everything needed to make a yuppie orgasm. Corporately. Value-added synergy for the whole virtual team, moving forward, at this point in time, folks.
  After all, what's a human system, without a pecking order, without titles and conditional status and acceptance that one can be stripped of, should one engage in that most Jesus-like of activities: rocking the boat.  How many churches have an official boat-rocker and nay-sayer?  Only the Catholics once employed what they once called a "devil's advocate," to keep debates two-sided and honest.  Which sounds pretty smart, actually.

"Out" of What?

Thing is?  I no longer believe that any Brethren group has the power to put me "out" from the Lord's Table.  (No Brethren group that I ever knew, is still actually a group nowadays, anyway.  Every one got exploded into disagreeing, rapidly-shrinking bits, all desperate to be taken seriously. Chickens who don't realize their Head's been cut off, and still running around in fear, waiting to bleed out entirely.)
   I still self-identify very much as Brethren in my roots.  I believe what we teach, but I think most of us don't mean it, is all.  Not if you look at many of our lives.  We don't intend to follow the "love" stuff in the bible at all.  Too scary.  We're picking and choosing what to live, and we don't choose to live that connection stuff.  Too busy not doing a whole lot of things to take time to do things. To busy not dealing with most Christians to deal scripturally and beneficially with Christians.
  All this puts me in an awkward position.  Is it okay to just do it back?  To "deal by not dealing" in return?  Someone told me the other day on Facebook that he just views his uncommunicative, snotty Brethren relatives as if they were Mormons or something.  Not mainstream enough for him to be able to deal with. So far from acting like how he thinks Christians should act that he just doesn't think of them as Christians, and doesn't try to interact with them as if they were.  He said this made things simple.  He said maybe that was an awful attitude. I told him it sure was.  Just doing it back doesn't fix anything.

   I want to connect to any Brethren people around.  But if we talk, they say "us" and they don't mean me.  (They say "you" when they mean me.)  Because they imagine I'm not part of any "us."  I think that's quite contrary to scripture.  They say "You hate us" and I say "I don't hate us," which seems to be off-script, as far as they're concerned.  I'm supposed to say "I don't hate you." They think I hate "us" because I don't agree with how "we" do a number of things. But I'm not supposed to talk about it.  (Because I'm "out."  I'm not supposed to include myself in "us."  I'm one of "them.")

   Trouble is, I'm not out.  Not of the Lord's Table.  Not of the Church.  Not of anything I see as meaningful.  I'm not even out of fellowship, in practical terms.  Brethren people often will eat with me and hang out.  Will email and Facebook so long as I don't bring up anything biblical or Christian very often.  They just don't let me worship my God with them in the manner set forth by our Lord.  Because they won't do what the bible says, so that means we can't do what the bible says.  

Trying To Do Love, Bible Style

So, I want to treat Brethren people like my homies (because they are), just like I treat Greg and Peter and Keith and Paul and James like my homies, because we all went to school together. In the case of Greg and Paul, we attended Brethren meetings and youth group activities also.
   Now, Peter and Paul and James are thought of as "out," as far as their assemblies are concerned, and so we can relate.  Things like that?  They really tend to connect people and draw them together.
  But people like Ken and Geoff and Thomas think of themselves as still "in," and think of me as "out" now, so there is always this reserve.  This distaste.  This barrier.  Like if I was Princess Diana, and I suddenly tried to hug the Queen.  (Before I died, obviously.  But after the divorce.  I'm not zombie Princess Diana trying to hug the Queen and bite her crown.) 

   They don't want to admit it, but the fact is, my homies who think of themselves as "in" don't really want me around.  Not really.  Not nearby.  They imagine that I'm "out" of something and that means me going away.  Finding somewhere else to be.  Because they don't like me.  Don't "get" me.  That's why I'm thought of as "out."  And they're not willing to do a single "love" scripture regarding anyone who is anything like me.  And people like me are legion now.  A myriad of us have been created, much against our will.
   I'm trying to make that "they" a "we" and have "us" accept one another, somehow, someday. And I'm quite certain that shutting up and going away won't ever make that happen. I'm just as certain of that as I am certain that what Christ really wants is unity from us.  Now.  No more of this claiming we are correct, when we're not willing to connect.  No more of this claiming we need to judge, when we didn't "get" that person before we judged them and now have every intention of throwing up our hands forever afterward regarding them, instead of reconnecting and restoring.
   For many, it's also terribly troubling to have someone be "out," as far as the Brethren paperwork goes, but see them still walking around, smiling, being blessed by God, being well spoken of by other Christians, and getting happier all the time.  God's not supposed to bless people who "needed to be put out" because they'd "wandered away from Him." Simultaneously, the more this blessing happens to some of us, the less likely our Brethren groups would then ever be to one day decide we're not "out" anymore.  It makes them look wrong, and there's nothing more upsetting to them.
  (Obviously, I don't want back "in."  I don't believe there is an "in."  I think we need to stop imagining there is an "in."  And I'm sick of being treated like I'm "out" by people who believe in their own mythic powers to put us "out" from the Lord's Table.  And I'm not going away.)
  So these "in" guys among us don't know what to do with us "out" guys.  They can't "process" the situation, nor us.  I am (many of us are) a stumbling stone, a rock of offence, put right in their dubious, loveless path through darkness by a loving God who insists we turn from this path, and jolly well reach out to each other, halting our progress away from that turned-backs path.  Some of us seem to be designed to function as obstacles to progressing down that path, like a big piece of Lego left in the carpet by and encountered in the middle of the night when the lights are out.
  We make it hard to walk away from us, some of us.  We keep turning up here and there.  Online and off.  So those of us who are trying to walk away from some of us ("to be faithful and obedient to the bible") have to actually pretend we don't exist.  Have to actually not look when we're in the same room.  So as to not deal with us in any meaningful or scriptural way.  They do what they can to preserve their own lack of growth and insight. Because those are required, if they are to continue on down that path away from the rest of us.

Double-Whammy

For me, Brethren family members are a real problem.  Like the others in their group, they are hell-bent on treating us all as "out."  As "other."  As "them," never again to be "us."  Kayso.  Guess what?  Just nope.  I am you.  I am us.  I am into this up to my eyeballs, and I always have been and I'm always going to be.  It's in my genes and I drank the Koolaid right alongside you all for two decades.  The good and the bad.  Can you deal with that? I know you're scared you'll get spanked by Big Brother if you let me worship our saviour with you on Sunday, so you probably never will, and you know a whole  lot of people can't respect that irrational, fearful, hateful exclusion, but can we get around that a bit?

   I've been trying to get people who are "out" of the Brethren to talk to me about the difficulties they face in dealing with their "in" families.  Because I'm curious.  It's a big topic.
   People are sharing the realities of it, the being treated as 'other,' the being treated like we've "gone away," or like we betrayed everyone or something.  Like we mutinied.  These "out" Brethren can tell us stories about seeing "in" Brethren people discussing the bible, and these worthies then suddenly snapping the bible shut, and their mouths as well, when the "out" Christian family member approaches, suddenly pretending to have been talking about hockey, gardening, or the weather.  People are sharing how they tried to discuss with a family member a thought from the bible, and had that person's face go all weird, and had that person change the subject, or get sharp and sour and hurl some kind of passive-aggressive veiled criticism, or robotically quote the thoughts of someone long dead, just as if that was connecting.  As if it were relating.  Participating.  "Who are YOU to be talking about the bible?!  You don't even know where to be on Sunday morning. You don't even come to meeting anymore! You're walking a path of rebellion and self will."
   I know people whose parents have, years later, never stopped urging them to give up the self-will and rebellion that is the very Christian liberty which Christ died to give them.
  Stories like this are what I'm getting from these guys.  Mostly in PM.  I'm simply not getting any stories about Brethren families who view their own kids as "gone" (as "left" as "wandered off" as "departed from God's Centre" as "out") and yet who also manage to really connect with them.  You know?  As well as, say, the guy at the grocery store, or the mailman seems to be able to.  Doesn't seem to happen.
 Parents of gay kids seem to deal better with their "out" kids than Brethren parents generally do with the shame and disappointment of theirs.  It's the One Correct Christian Group heresy up to its old evil tricks again. It never stops screwing us over, even if we don't believe it.

  I see this situation as one of parents being given the choice to pull their kids in close and hold them to their hearts, or else to disassociate, toss them into the fires of pious idolatry, to buy the family some status by being seen to obediently jettison/sacrifice the kids.  "Your church group or your kids? Us or them?"
   And parents don't always do terribly well at choosing their kids over the family's reputation and status, the stories relate.  Even when things like rape are involved.  "Are you going to continue on in a path of rebellion against God, getting food for your spirit and soul and learning to walk in love and authenticity, openness, trust and honesty, or are you going to admit you were wrong to pursue all of that, and ask us if you can come back in, once you stop all of that?"

   Someone asked me yesterday if this thing that had just happened to her, where the kid gets tossed under the train by her parents when the assembly is displeased (when rape was involved), is "traditional" among Brethren.
 "Child sacrifice?  Quite traditional in this and other cultures, yes," I replied.

   I'm not "out" of anything.  Not even patience.