Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohio
For years I asked myself inwardly, "how could something so good become so bad." I watched "love for the saints" transmute into "zeal for a program." I watched the word of life become systematized doctrines.
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Ohio,
Couldn't the children of Israel have asked the same?
Look, we need to find a new way to look at our experiences in the church life. This good/bad dichotomy doesn't work. Actually, it's just another form of eating from the tree of knowledge, a binary way of looking at the world.
Instead I recommend looking at it from the "life" point of view. We had experiences, tons of them, some good, some bad, but all real, deep, textured human experiences which have enriched our souls no matter what we may think.
Igzy brought up the abuse scenario. It kind of applies. And so what do you do if you feel you suffered spiritual abuse in the church life? I say you allow that experience to enrich you ... in understanding how to forgive and forget, in developing empathy, in realizing that this whole human life isn't just a big Hallmark film, in developing callouses (good ones), in finding out how to deal with people you don't like, that is, really learning what love is. The bad experiences are like a June drought which can send the roots of the corn stalk deeper to protect it from the real droughts of July and August.
I know too much pain can kill you. And I'm definitely not opposed to ibuprofen. I don't justify the pain-givers. They need to be dealt with by the Lord. But if all we can do is step out of the game and lick our wounds, we will have missed truly golden experiences.
Titus Chu once said in answer to a question from a sister (I can't recall the question, just the answer) that we need to learn to look at things from a different angle. This is wonderful spiritual advice. That's my advice to LCers, present and former, who are looking back on the last thirty years of their lives wondering what just happened. Find a way to look at it from above it, not laterally. Transcend it. Spin it into gold.
The twelve spies who went ahead on the scout mission were blessed with forty years of real experience of the Lord. Still, ten of them could only see giants, could only see themselves as grasshoppers. Two looked at the situation entirely differently. I suspect they had a gleam of irony in their eyes as they said, "They are food for us." So too is our last number of years in the church life. It is food for us. Food for thought and food for action.
SC