On (Not) Finding a Church - Part 5

This is Part 5 and the final installment of my series, “On (Not) Finding a Church.” Apologies for the long hiatus since I published Part 4 in May of 2023. Unforeseen life events caused a major delay in the publication of this installment. At the same time, those events have had a direct bearing on shaping it. If you need to catch up or want to refresh your memory, the previous installments are at the following links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. This installment will still make sense if you read it without having read the others, however.

This is what I'll remember most about dying
So many moments like ghosts
Slipping through my hands in vain
You were 80% angel
10% demon
The rest was hard to explain

- Over the Rhine¹

Unrequited Longing

If someone asked me to provide a recipe for happiness and mental health, I would not include fifty years of imperial rule and ethnic oppression, war, near-death experiences, extreme poverty, political instability, mass murder and mass arbitrary incarceration, or decades of martial law. No one would. Those things are incompatible with human flourishing. Yet my recent ancestors on both sides experienced these things in their collective lifetimes. It’s no wonder that despite my parents’ intentions to start their lives afresh, they carried the effects of all that accumulated trauma with them across the world from Taiwan to the United States, adding to it the trauma of emigration and chronic culture shock.

All that said, many aspects of my childhood were downright decent. The best part was growing up in a peaceful middle-class neighborhood in Houston, Texas filled with kids who played and went to school together. We enjoyed God knows how many hours of free, unsupervised recreation over the years, especially during the blazing hot summers. I remember riding our bikes everywhere, swimming at the neighborhood pool, rollerskating up and down our street, collecting insects, running through sprinklers, playing hide ‘n seek and cops ‘n robbers, tossing balls back and forth, and making paper-towel parachutes for our action figures. We skinned our knees and elbows, damaged a few teeth, got chased by a ferocious little Yorkshire terrier named Missy when she got out (she bit me once), and were occasionally stung by wasps. We negotiated over important matters like who would retrieve the soccer ball that was kicked over the fence into the yard of the one neighbor we didn’t know. You learn a lot about how the world works by observing that the person most willing to undertake the task isn’t always the person who kicked the ball over.

When I look back on all those days and years of free play, I consider it a kind of bliss.

But life at home was a different matter. I won’t go into much detail about it here, as I would need to write a book in order to adequately unpack a complex experience that involved the many things my parents did well (they did a lot of things well) and the many things they were unable to do well because of moderately severe mental illness and attachment issues. I plan to focus instead on some of the ways my home life impacted me, which is the relevant part for this series anyway.

There were definitely good and positive things about my home life. The hard part is that they coexisted with pathological dynamics that produced feelings of anxiety, hyper-vigilance, helplessness, self-doubt, and sensory-overload (from being exposed to frequent rage-filled screaming, sometimes in the middle of the night, although it was not usually directed at me). Despite how intense things were at times, I never felt like I could tell anyone about what was going on. Maybe it’s because there was an unspoken expectation not to bring shame on the family; but the fact is that even if I had felt free to share, I lacked the language and framework for articulating what was happening. The family interactions I observed in Little House on the Prairie, Bewitched, and Leave It to Beaver didn’t offer any clues. It wasn’t until I got my hands on the DSM-IV during my psychiatry rotation in PA school in my mid-20s that I began to make sense of things.

I felt very alone, even when I was surrounded by and having a great time with my friends. Throughout my formative years, I hoped against hope that the people I came into contact with at school and in my neighborhood would somehow realize that I was suffering. But they never did. If I were to choose a metaphor for what that was like, I’d say it was like living in a sound-proof room on the “seeing” side of a one-way mirror. I could only watch other people experience things like relational intimacy and a sense of belonging, while I felt invisible and unheard.

This longing is undoubtedly what’s behind a recurring frustration dream I’ve had since I was a kid. It always involves looking for something. Sometimes it’s a purse or a sweater or my keys. Other times it’s a specific person or the place I parked my car. The scenery keeps changing, which causes me to feel disoriented, and I never find the thing I’m looking for. Then I wake up.

I’m sure no one could have guessed how alone I felt. Because I was well socialized at school and through playing with neighborhood kids, I had decent relational skills. By the time I was in middle school, I had figured out how to channel most of my emotional energy into cultivating a fierce independence, high achievement, and overcommitment. It worked really well until my late 30s when I became a mom and my body started letting me know that it wouldn’t put up with the crazy pace anymore. Motherhood, coupled with the slower pace of life my body needed, put me back in touch with feelings of vulnerability I had long held at bay with busyness. Even though my husband was loving and attentive, the old specter—that deep childhood ache to be seen and embraced in community—returned.

I’ve only recently realized how much this re-animated vulnerability has affected the way I’ve shown up in faith communities for the last decade and a half and, related to that, the way I’ve responded to lapses in care and connection within them. When I first read Bonhoeffer’s assertion, “They are looking for some extraordinary experiences of community that were denied them elsewhere,” I responded with a lot of hostility because it hurt my pride. It’s easy to acknowledge abstractly and theoretically that I contribute to “the problem of church,” but it’s quite another thing to identify and face something specific. With a lot of help from the Holy Spirit, though, I was finally able to admit the truth: that I have long wanted and even expected the church to be the antidote to my lifelong feelings of loneliness and isolation.

I understand now why the pain has been so profound whenever “the church” or people in the church have fallen short of this expectation, and why the pain persists with such ferocity long after I have forgiven people. It’s not just disappointment I’ve had to process but a lifetime of grief totally unrelated to the church.

Rejecting the Sales Pitch

All that said, I should point out the fact that a lot of American churches, particularly of the Protestant variety, have a strong tendency to nurture false expectations about church. Sometimes it’s through the pastor or other member of the church staff, who Sunday after Sunday addresses the congregation as “fam” and talks up the amazing quality of the church’s fellowship from his/her elevated platform. It’s often followed by an appeal for the less involved to elevate their buy-in. “If you’re not doing X, then you are truly missing out!” Sometimes it’s through featured testimonies by congregants who have experienced exceptional care during a time of trial or whose lives totally turned around during their time at the church—as if the church, rather than God, were the main hero. “We just love this church. We don’t know where we’d be without it.” These examples mimic the strategies of corporate marketing campaigns.

• This church is a good product!

• This church will change your life! It worked for me.

• You NEED this product! Sign up now.

There were plenty of times when I was on the receiving end of this messaging, and because my need for belonging was so great, I was ready to believe all of it. And I did—to devastating effect. I was vulnerable to the implied guarantees in these sales pitches that if I joined/participated/volunteered, I would experience all the benefits of church membership (love, belonging, care, a big family) and none of the problems that plague all human communities (exclusion, dishonesty, conflict, betrayal).

I wrote a few years ago that the American milieu conditions us from a very young age to believe that the solution to whatever we think is missing in our lives is to buy (and consume) something that’s being marketed to us. It “trains us up” to be shoppers and consumers. Consumerism is about much more than the act of buying things, however. It’s a posture we assume based on the belief that we can meet legitimate human needs through the illegitimate practice of reducing people, places, and things — even God, church, and Christian discipleship — to acquirable and consumable commodities.

But the church is not a consumer product or service. It is a living, breathing, complex body of people formed by the Holy Spirit and marked by baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Rom. 6:3-14; 1 Cor. 12:13) — a body of people called to participate in Jesus’ crucifixion (Matt. 16:24-25; Luke 9:23-24; Gal. 5:24) for the life of the world (John 6:51), not just to believe in it. And certainly not to believe in it merely as some sort of prerequisite for “living your best life” now or for entry into a disembodied heaven. I have much more to say on this front, but that’s a subject for another time.

What complicates this whole discussion is that although Christ’s Church is a divine reality that is continually being formed by the Holy Spirit, the physical gatherings we call churches—the ones that form particular communities in particular places—are not immune to the “wheat and weeds” reality of this present world. That means that whether we like it or not, it’s pretty much guaranteed that in any church, we will encounter a mixture of good and evil, good fruit and bad, truth and lies, children of God and children of the devil, beloved shepherds, and wolves in sheep’s clothing. The proportions may differ from congregation to congregation, but the reality can’t be fully avoided.

Learning to Accept the Wheat & Weeds Reality of the Church

I’ve been camping out in the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) over the past year-and-a-half, meditating on and struggling with its implications. Here’s the full passage, including Jesus’ explanation of it, in the NET translation, which uses the word darnel for the weed that was historically found in grain fields:

He presented them with another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a person who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, an enemy came and sowed darnel among the wheat and went away. When the plants sprouted and produced grain, then the darnel also appeared. So the slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Then where did the darnel come from?’ He said, ‘An enemy has done this!’ So the slaves replied, ‘Do you want us to go and gather it?’ But he said, ‘No, since in gathering the darnel you may uproot the wheat along with it. Let both grow together until the harvest. At harvest time I will tell the reapers, “First collect the darnel and tie it in bundles to be burned, but then gather the wheat into my barn.”’”
…
And his disciples came to him saying, “Explain to us the parable of the darnel in the field.” He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world and the good seed are the people of the kingdom. The poisonous weeds are the people of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. As the poisonous weeds are collected and burned with fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather from his kingdom everything that causes sin as well as all lawbreakers. They will throw them into the fiery furnaces where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. The one who has ears had better listen!”

Left: young grass shoots in shared soil, roots already intertwined. Right: Wheat and darnel ears

Darnel has interesting properties. It’s toxic in that large enough doses of it can cause death; but throughout history people have incorporated it into bread and beer in small doses to “spike” it the way mischievous people might add vodka to a punch bowl or cannabis into a batch of brownies.² When darnel is young, it looks so much like wheat that the two are nearly indistinguishable. It’s not until the ear (i.e., the fruit) appears that it becomes easily identifiable as a weed. But by then, the root systems of the wheat and darnel are so intertwined that it would be impossible to remove the darnel without also damaging the root systems of the wheat. The best way to preserve the wheat crop in its entirety would be to allow the two to complete their life cycles alongside each other until it’s time to harvest the wheat.

During these past three years that we’ve been unchurched, I’ve been wrestling at a very deep level with how to reckon with the coexistence of good and evil within church spaces. Those who have followed my writing for a while know this is not theoretical for me. In the same spaces where I have witnessed beautifully changed lives, reconciliation between enemies, and so much good spiritual fruit, I’ve also witnessed overt racial bigotry, mistreatment of women and children, neglect of the vulnerable, deception, inappropriate excommunication, and narcissistic leadership. My response when I see the bad stuff is to scream, “IT SHOULDN’T BE THIS WAY!” And yet, there it is in Jesus’ parable: It WILL be this way.

James Montgomery Boice explained:³

as Jesus tells the story, He stresses what Satan is doing, and that [is] after Jesus has already sown His seed. The devil is mixing counterfeit Christians in among true Christians to hinder God’s work… The point is simply that the devil is going to bring forward people (whether in the church or out of it) so much like true Christians, yet not Christians, that even the servants of God will not be able to tell them apart. Consequently, although we want a pure church and will certainly exercise church discipline to the best of our ability in clear cases, we must not think that we will achieve our full desire in this age. Even in our exercise of valid church discipline we must be extremely careful not to discourage or damage some for whom Christ died.
…

If the devil is mixing in his people in among true Christians, then we should be alert to that fact. We should be on our guard not to be taken in, and we should not be surprised if the devil’s people show up in strange places… In 2 Corinthians Paul gives us such a warning, pointing out that “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” and that “it is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness” (2 Cor. 11:14-15). “Servants of righteousness” means “ministers.” Thus the old proverb, “When you look for the devil don’t forget to look in the pulpit.”

It finally hit me between the eyes. At a fundamental level, I don’t want to accept this reality. I want the church to be nothing but good in the here and now, a real sanctuary where I’m loved, protected, seen, and embraced—in all the ways I wasn’t when I was growing up. I don’t want it to be another place where I have to deal with children of the devil or children of God who act like the devil. The prospect depresses me.

That’s a longwinded way of confessing that I’ve been an idealist when it comes to the church—not out of naïveté but a place of deep childhood grief. But I am no longer a child. If there is any hope of me reconnecting with the church in a healthy, God-honoring way, then I will have to grow up and learn to accept the wheat-and-weeds reality of the church in this present age. I will need to own my grief and surrender it at the foot of the cross so that it will no longer own me.

Some Closing Thoughts

In recent years, the number of people grappling with some version of this issue feels epidemic. Fed up with abuses, many people have left their churches or denominations and settled in (or started) new ones. Some have given up on church completely. Others are determined to stay and reform their churches, hoping to purify them of corrupt leadership, corrupt practices, and corrupt theology. All this is happening at a time when cohesion in general is disintegrating. Today’s technology has brought about a rapid splintering of consensus, even on reality itself. It’s enabling rapid, unvetted amplification of purification efforts in just about every direction. What that means is that movements, groups, and individuals with different, sometimes directly oppositional understandings of corruption are concurrently pursuing their own versions of purification and approaching everyone not in their own camp as “weeds.” It’s all become extraordinarily anarchic, frenetic, and chaotic.

I don’t pretend to have any idea what to do about any of it. All I know is that Jesus’ parable admonishes us to pause and consider that people dear to Him could be unwittingly harmed, their spiritual potential truncated, whenever we take it upon ourselves to help God “pull weeds”—righteous intentions notwithstanding. It’s worth highlighting that we are not the ones appointed to reap or to gather all things that offend (in some translations “everything that causes sin”) or to sort people or to throw things in fire to be burned—not even at the end of the age. The angels have been appointed to do that.

We do well to remember that our line of sight is short because we’re finite. Our level of confidence should be proportionate to our limitations. As Abraham Heschel wrote, “There is no stigma in being a finite creature. Finitude is our excuse rather than our shame. We could not bear being infinite. There is a stigma in being reckless, in forgetting that we are finite, in behaving as if we were infinite.”⁴

1. from the song “What I’ll Remember Most” on the album Ohio

2. Laskow, Sarah. “Wheat’s Evil Twin Has Been Intoxicating Humans for Centuries.” Atlas Obscura. March 22, 2016. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/wheats-evil-twin-has-been-intoxicating-humans-for-centuries. Accessed on 3/19/2024.

3. Boice JM. (1983). The Parables of Jesus. Chicago: The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. Pages 23-24.

4. Heschel AJ. (1962). The Prophets. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. Page 341.