Church Ball-n-Chain

Church politics has not been good to me.

I’m gazing back over the wreckage of my life seeking entrance into the ranks of professional ministry. It would be easy to oversimplify and note that God never intended me to succeed at that game. At the same time, I know with a certainty that I was supposed to try so that I could be touched and changed by a particular kind of failure. None of that absolves the people who used and abused me along the way.

It’s not as if I wasn’t up to the par of those I worked with, but that was never really the question. Most people who spend time in the conditioning process of church activities can find their place; it requires no phenomenal talents that your average Christian can’t summon. Mostly it’s a matter of conviction, from whatever source, that you should be doing that work. You can’t just shove the discussion aside with God-talk, but most do that because it justifies their relative success as humans measure such things: admiration, influence, and some measure of wealth. I came close to those things at various times and it kept me believing that somewhere around the next corner I would be established as one them.

One of the greatest single causes of repeated failure was this thing in my soul that would come rushing to the front at those critical junctures. Like any human, I can find myself moved to lie and deceive about things, but at those singular moments on some threshold, I would speak with grave honesty among people who had something to fear from such frankness. With typical social conditioning, you might suggest I was offering the wrong kind of truth, but I would counter that my heart demanded it. If it shattered the illusions of the moment, then I would insist that it was the hand of God revealing to me in that moment just how deluded the whole system was. It’s not a question of whether folks want to know, but a matter of throwing pearls to swine.

That is, the question wasn’t whether they were swine — we all are in one way or another — but whether people understood the value of what was offered. Operating in a system that makes no room for honesty, a system that is fragile at those points most in need of God’s moral redemption, was the real problem. I didn’t fit. At some point I realized that I could not fit, and the system was not going to change. The people involved were too deeply invested in that broken system where self-disclosure was “inappropriate.” They weren’t morally better, but were unable or unwilling to look in the mirror the same way I did and refused to make allowances for how it opened the doors to moral integrity. They couldn’t cross over with me.

In my own mind, I was trying to point out the miracles of redemption in my life. I was lifting up the glory of God, but all they received was the shock of having to recognize that I was just an ordinary man. The professional ministry was founded on the illusion that some of us were somehow a cut above the common rabble. We were supposed to be “holy” using a definition that was inherently unholy.

At this point, I gain nothing by condemning them. The tears have evaporated and I am here instead of there. But for once, I know where I am supposed to be, and my impulsive honesty is not a hindrance. Now I have new tears because I see that a lot of people I still care about are stuck in a meat-grinder that comes with the collapse of the world they failed to leave. But I still want them to see and escape and join me at whatever point they can, and salvage whatever is left of their souls. Yes, I know many will go down with the system. There is no joy in watching those who closed the door on me refuse my hand of rescue.

My humanity finds it rather odd to be in this position, where for once in my life, my impulses are correct and God grants me peace I cannot describe. Granted, this is the wrong place for a lot of other folks, but I still want them to have that peace. I forgive because it’s part of that peace and I can’t find whatever it is that breathes life into ungracious gloating. I’m still no better, just very fortunate, and it’s a fortune that’s available to anyone who wants it. I’ve found that Pearl of Great Price for which I long searched. Some of them are not ready, not able or willing, to shed that pigskin and see the value.

They are still trapped in church politics. But I’m still hoping some of them work it out before it’s too late. They were as much victims as I was and I sense that I was granted an early rescue for their sakes.