Bit of a rant today. (Aren’t they all?)
One evening during prayer—when people will pray, but if they want to, they can sing along with the worship leader—we were singing,
- Where the Spirit of the Lord is
- There is freedom
- I lift my hands to Jesus
- There is freedom
- There is freedom
Certain people in my church are fond of saying we have perfect freedom to worship God in this place. A little too fond of saying it. (What they really mean, I suspect, is they get to sing their favorite songs during the Sunday services.) That evening—partially, I admit, out of pure mischievousness—I decided to test the truth of that saying. I changed the next slide to
- I shake my butt for Jesus
- There is freedom
’Cause if we have freedom, and the Spirit leads, we can do that. Right?
I very quickly heard about it from the prayer leader. She was outraged. Mainly ’cause of the word “butt.” It wasn’t blasphemy, but it was at least lèse-majesté. Good thing I didn’t use the other word I was considering.
But… freedom! Don’t we have the freedom to shake what your mama done gave ya, for Jesus? Or to at least say so? Don’t we have perfect freedom to worship God?
No we don’t. Not in my church. Nor any church. People have hangups. We shouldn’t, but we do. And our hangups become our churches’ holdups. God is totally pleased with a diversity of worship expressions. We aren’t.
Things I can’t do in church.
I’ve been involved in a lot of churches in my four decades of Christianity, and each of them had their own hangups. The hypocritical ones especially.
Can’t confess. In high school, it wasn’t that we weren’t allowed to confess our problems and sins with one another. It’s just that whenever we did, we didn’t get forgiveness: We got consequences. If we told a member of the church, it’d gradually become gossip, and this would escalate into a meeting with the pastors where they’d deal with this problem… then assign acts of penance.
No I’m not kidding. I found my youth pastor wasn’t a confessor, but a narc, and the very last person to admit my struggles to. Share my sin, and he’d tell me, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come back to the youth group until you tell your mom what you just told me. And I want to hear it from her.”
As an adult, I still run into pastors who think a zero-tolerance policy is a way to stop sin. Not support. Not help. Not kindness which leads us to repentance.
And I still run into Christians who hear about one of the more commonplace sins and react, “Those people shouldn’t even be in church.” Um… where, then, are they gonna go for grace?
Well, not these churches. Unlike Jesus, they don’t do grace. They don’t love us that much.
Can’t be heterodox. Some years ago I taught a Book of Revelation class. (You wanna bring all the nuts out from under the rocks in your church? Teach an End Times class. Never talked about black helicopters so much in my life, and I know X-Files fanatics.)
They put up with me for a few weeks, as I taught on Jesus’s messages to the seven Asia-Minor churches. But once we got to the apocalypses, and the fact the secret rapture isn’t in the bible, they not only left the class, but requested the pastor shut it down. If it wasn’t Dispensationalist, they considered it heresy. ’Cause they love that secret rapture. “Suffer tribulation in this world? Heck no. I’ll fly away.”
If people love an idea, it doesn’t matter if it’s wrong. And we’ll often shoot the messenger for saying so—whether the messenger means to debunk it, or unwittingly (but rightly) says, “Let me double-check with the bible,” and finds there’s nothing to it. Again, it’s a grace thing: People don’t love us enough to hear us out. People don’t love God enough to make sure we understand him correctly—and we’re entirely sure we already understand him correctly. But we’re wrong.
Can’t be weird. Some churches love weird people. (And I love those churches.) Other churches can’t abide non-conformists. To them, we’re all supposed to conform to the image of Christ Jesus, and that includes the outward image. If the outward image doesn’t conform, it suggests the inner person is way worse.
Conform to which outward image? Well… depends on the pastor. Sometimes the pastor is the template the church uses, and woe to you when you’re too square a peg. Other times, the pastor kinda likes to be a maverick, but he’s the only one who gets away with it. (Or allows anyone to get away with it.) Hence nobody really knows what the template is, and constantly looks to leadership for hints.
An overzealous church will overdo it. I used to work for a ministry where the pastor in charge would say, “Well, it’s not my thing…” and the pastors beneath him would immediately rearrange everything to suit him. Even though he never ordered anyone to change anything—and never would unless it were a real problem. But the last pastor in charge was one of those passive-aggressive “My wish is your command, and you’re supposed to know that without my telling you” types. Thanks to such leaders, lots of Christians are gunshy, and try their darnedest to gratify those in charge, even when they honestly don’t care. Some pastors will get awfully spoiled by this sycophantic treatment… and get cross if ever they find it missing.
Otherwise we tend to figure anything we personally find off-putting, is verboten. So the standard is entirely based on a whitewashed version of our carnal desires and prejudices. Isn’t that a recipe for disaster.
The way we’re meant to be like Jesus is in character. We’re to exhibit fruit of the Spirit. We’re to practice holiness. Not dress alike, vote like, enjoy the same sports and teams, listen to the same radio stations, structure our marriages and households the very same way—nor even have spiritual traits in common. God created diversity and likes it, and expects to fill heaven with it. It’s not a devilish thing. Conformity is what hell looks like, and Jesus’s idea of harmony looks nothing like the devil’s idea of uniformity.
Can’t be poor. Not at all because churches hate the poor. Christians simply assume the poor is outside the church, not inside: They’re charity cases, not members. Unless we’ve made a point to minister to the poor, we don’t recognize they’re among us.
So we make our plans with the assumption everybody is financially comfortable. (Or, as Jesus defines this status, wealthy. ) We schedule conferences the poor can’t afford. Our Christian classes require tuition and books the poor can’t afford. We host luncheons and dinners and movies and concerts, and the “very affordable” cost nonetheless keeps the poor away. We have men’s retreats and women’s events and summer camps for the kids, which are only $50, or only $100, or only $300, with no fund-raisers to offset the expenses. And once the church gets really big, and we need a new building, we move to the suburbs or the edge of town… where the poor don’t live, and the buses don’t go.
The poor can’t keep up with this lifestyle. And this is interpreted as not keeping up with the church. Not being spiritual enough. Not willing to sacrifice. Not “investing in the Kingdom.” As if investiture in the Kingdom has anything to do with money.
Well… it does for the rich. In Acts, they used to sell their stuff and give it to the needy, and as a result they had no needy. But good luck finding wealthy Christians who do that anymore. We’re still trying to argue we’re not wealthy, ’cause a true rich person doesn’t have a mortgage and car payments… and other claptrap which excuses us from generosity.
Can’t touch politics. No, I’m not talking about political endorsements. Which churches have no business making. We have a King, and promoting any authority other than his, in his pulpit, is treason.
I’m talking about prayer for those in charge. Yeah, Christians are permitted to pray for our government leadership or President to make good choices, to seek God, to seek wisdom—or, for those people who doubt the President’s testimony, pray he repent and turn to Jesus. But we dare not publicly thank Jesus for anything the President did. (Assuming he did something right, of course.)
At nearly every church I’ve gone to—this is an anecdotal estimate, mind you—there’s an obvious majority which assumes their party is God’s party. This time around, the President happens to be in the opposition party. (In other words, to their minds, not God’s party.) They’re outraged by the very idea a Christian might accept him, much less approve of something he did. Mention his name, as my pastor dared to do last election year, and you’ll get booed. We don’t love our enemies. Especially our political foes.
Other years, when the President (or governor, or mayor, or presidential candidate, or whomever) is of their party, he’s held up as a noble servant of God, an Abraham Lincoln-like example of fortitude under pressure—particularly spiritual, ’cause they figure he’s “one of us,” and fighting dark forces as well as the other party (which, to them, is all the same thing). Even as their guy makes the very same mistakes all the other presidents made. Including Lincoln.
Outside church, I can pray as I like… and as the scriptures say, I pray for those in charge, whether I like ’em or not, whether we share political views or not. But the folks at my church are watching my Facebook activity. Some of ’em aren’t all that happy with me, and doubt my salvation.
Can’t mess with the music. Years ago my previous church hired a guitarist to be our music pastor. It caused a revolt.
That church was big into ’90s worship choruses. (To be fair, it was the 1990s.) The songs didn’t change, but now the music was guitar-led, not keyboard-led. There were guitar solos. The musicians moved around a lot more. They were permitted to wear jeans and T-shirts. There were foot pedals which made the guitars sound less familiar. It was just different enough to make people really uncomfortable, and insist we go back to the way things were.
There’s a trend in Evangelical churches to have two different services: One with “contemporary worship” (i.e. Christian pop) and one with “traditional worship” (i.e. hymns). Our church decided to do that, only our “traditional” set was late-’80s/early-’90s songs led with a keyboard, and our “contemporary” set was then-current mid-’90s songs led with guitars.
That’s how particular we Christians can get about our music. But when you’re insistent on a particular style of music, you’re bound to it. ’Tain’t freedom.
No, God is not a sadist, who demands we conform to a music style we loathe. Music pastors maybe; not God. He wants us to praise him joyfully, and this implies we actually enjoy the music same as he does. But there’s something seriously deficient about a person who has only one groove they can get into when it comes to music. Me, I like many kinds of music. (Heck, the music we worship to at my church isn’t even my favorite Christian music—I like gospel.) But what business do my personal preferences have in dictating how others must praise God? If we can all praise God with it—if we’re not so hard-hearted we can’t recognize its virtues despite it not fitting exactly with our tastes—it does the job. Blaming the style of music is really just blaming my own heart for being too small.
“Freedom in Christ.”
Most of the time, “freedom in Christ” is Christianese for “stop telling me what to do.” And when we talk about freedom of worship, we often mean freedom for us to do as we like. (Or, if we’ve been beaten down enough, freedom to do as we ought, however others have defined that for us.) But we don’t mean the freedom for others to do as they like. Them, we don’t care about.
It’s why, after you poll American Christians, you’ll find most of us are perfectly fine with the idea of suppressing Muslims, Mormons, Catholics, Fundamentalists, mainliners, and any group which deviates too far from where we’re comfortable.
It’s why, when Christians talk about freedom in Christ, we don’t really mean the freedom to follow Christ according to the dictates of our Spirit-led conscience. Oh, that definition is in there, just a little. But mostly we mean the freedom to do as we will, without other Christians rebuking or prohibiting us. Yet we still reserve the right to rebuke or prohibit others. “Freedom in Christ” is the freedom to pick at specks despite the beam in my eye.
But true freedom in Christ means, when the Spirit leads, I can shake my butt for Jesus. (Not that I want to; I’m just going back to my ridiculous example.) Thing is, because of all the Christians who insist on banning most forms of butt activity, the Spirit isn’t gonna permit me to unnecessarily offend people. Their hangups eventually hang me up: They’re not free, so I’m not free. I can’t dismiss weaker Christians. The church only matures as fast as they do.
The Spirit’s goal is for all of us to set all this extraneous junk aside. We need to cast off the multitude of things which bind us, and pursue God with all our hearts. We need to experience true freedom in Christ.
And I need to not be offended by all these back-dragging Christians who hinder my freedom. I gotta love ’em anyway, and go to church.