The Hardest Bondage to Break

While many have tried just as hard, I reject the notion anyone tried any harder.
I went through all the same doorways as everyone else. I got my ticket punched at the all the right stops. There was an ugly taste in my mouth at some points, but most of my peers never seemed to notice. The few who did seemed to have gotten over it. It only got worse for me. I kept trying every possible option I was offered, but it just didn’t work.
Most recently I gave one last shot at something which seemed untainted by all the old rules, but that’s because the rules were simply not written in plain sight. It was worse than ever. The one thing I was trying to escape was more suffocating than I could imagine.
I’ve given up. I’m moving on, and I won’t be fooled again. I cannot follow Jesus Christ in any currently existing organized church.
While that implies there is something terribly wrong with all of them, that’s not the point. Churches have always been messed up, but the worst ones take themselves too seriously. By that I mean the folks inside the group who embrace the particular groupthink of their brand do not realize all organizations are fallen humanity organized. The organization cannot be sacred, because God is a Spirit. The communion in the Spirit is not the organization. Whatever it was He said about His Church was not a statement about human institutions. On this I am most at odds with Catholics and the various brands of Orthodox, and I make no apology for calling it a heresy. (But then, who the heck am I, right?) Yet I have found the same basic assumption in every church organization I’ve encountered. The higher up the organizational ladder they go, the more thoroughly have the people convinced themselves God isn’t seriously interested in the others.
And not a one of them allows the notion you can follow Christ outside their particular organization, let alone outside all of them together. That’s okay, because I don’t need their permission. Nor do I need their cooperation.
I can be friends with, and fellowship with, any believer who takes the notion they should fellowship with me. That will always happen, because there will always be people who are loosely attached, not yet ready to let go for whatever reason. You know what’s really crazy? Way, way too many of the folks who say they’ve made the same break as I have are still chained to the same debates which characterize those inside the buildings. I have yet to encounter a single other house church group which isn’t still intellectually bound to one denomination or another. It’s one thing to be aware of the debates, and to have a unique answer, but it’s another thing entirely to think all that stuff really matters. It doesn’t matter. But the people still matter, because God can work through anything He likes.
It’s not hostility on my part. But they won’t let me walk the path I must walk while working within any existing organization I can reach. The last few weeks have seen the last bridges burnt down, and I don’t even have any matches. Lots of fire for the mission calling within me, but I can’t possibly turn that off. If it burns something, that something was tinder looking for a spark, made of the wrong stuff. I’m willing to stay away from them all for their own sakes. There won’t be any engagement either way, neither as a call to reform nor an attack to dismantle; I’ll generally ignore them and hope they return the favor.
The hardest thing you’ll ever do is, in your mind, realize almost everything you’ve been told about a particular subject is a lie. It’s the same discovery which led me to break with the mainstream in so many other ways. If this is insanity, I’m happy with that, but don’t try to lock me up, because that will get you hurt. I won’t even have to do anything; I’ve seen that often enough. More than once I’ve walked away from something, leaving broken shards all over the ground because the framework came apart without me lifting a finger. It’s the saddest thing you’ll ever see to realize everyone claiming to work with Heaven insist on using straw and dirt to reach up into the sky. If you aren’t borne aloft by the force inherent in the thing itself, you can’t get there.
I gave it a fair shot, and I simply don’t belong there.