Integrity in Community

I've had a couple conversations recently that really got me thinking again about the issue of how we relate to each other within the body of Christ (i.e. the church). Long story short, I ended up expressing a lot of my thoughts about it in a poem, so I'll start with that:


Euphemistic Eucharist

Howya doin’? What’s up?
Pretty good, not too much,
life goes on, praise the Lord,
the usual and such--

By pretty good I mean
my family’s a mess--
we fight, except not here:
in this house we just bless.

I’m saying in not much
my schedule is insane:
it’s filled with noise and stress
it hardly can contain--

Life just keeps on going,
and so I don’t have time
to let you see beneath
charade and pantomime.

To praise the Lord I smile
and just sing happy songs;
pain stays behind the mask
where it, of course, belongs--

The usual just means
I’d tell you I’m depressed
were I allowed to break
facades so nicely dressed

And such and such and on--
a thousand pointless things
I’d rather say than tell
you anything that stings.

Safe. But are we happy?
We smile; are we alive?
The one place where it seems
reality should thrive,

instead we hide away;
we put our pride above
our pain--how can we throw
our masks aside and love?

Because we need help and we need
to be saved and all of us are
pretty much the same kinds
of messed up so why not just be real?

Can you see here what I’m driving toward?
Maybe then we could really praise the Lord.


So, I realize that my poem is a bit caustic.  I'm just trying to honestly address a real issue, though, and the fact that it keeps on coming up among people I talk to lets me know I'm not the only one who feels it.  The issue, as you can probably guess from the poem, is that church (not just mine, or anyone else's specifically, but church in general-- the conversations I mentioned at the beginning were with people from three different ones) has a tendency to become a place of fakeness where people don't feel like they can come with their real problems, instead of what it should be: the place where they could safely be honest and receive healing.

3 questions come to my mind:  why does this happen, why is it so bad, and what can we do about it?

Let's break my OCD tendencies toward order and symmetry and start right in the middle with the second question.  I don't want to belabor the point that the phenomenon I'm talking about is bad news, but I want to start with what I see as the basic reasons why it is so harmful.

The first is that everyone has problems, and problems don't just go away.  Of course, drawing near to God is helpful in dealing with them.  God can supernaturally solve them whenever he wants to.  The problem comes when churches start teaching (or just believing, consciously or subconsciously), that this supernatural encounter with the healing Lord is only a one-on-one deal.  Now, I know that God has healed me at times without any help from anyone else--he's just that good.  However, the general model that he has laid out for us is something totally different.

"And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven.  Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." (James 5:15-16).  This is God's model for healing.  We get other believers involved, and they pray for us so that we will be healed.  Catch that?  James is letting us know that if we won't share our brokenness, both spiritual and physical, we won't access all the healing that we could because it comes through receiving prayer from each other!  So that's one reason why it's a crisis that we don't feel like we can be real in church-- where else will we find the righteous men who can pray powerful and effective prayers for our healing?


Another reason is that everyone has problems, and everyone knows this is true.  Even (or especially?) people who aren't Christians yet.  We might feel like being real with the stuff of our lives will scare unbelievers away, but I propose that the fakeness we choose instead is infinitely more frightening.  Everyone knows that people have problems.  Everyone knows that they themselves have problems!  So if you walk into a group of people where no one seems to have any, what do you think?  You think, I'll never fit in with these people.  So another reason this fear of dealing with real issues in church is a problem is because it is actually driving away the broken people who desperately need to receive healing by being prayed for (and who God wants to make into the powerful and effective prayers who will then help restore others!).

Finally, and potentially most seriously, being fake in church will hinder our worship.  We might think we can sneak in and deal with our problems alone with God and have ourselves fixed by the time we have to talk to anyone.  The problem there is that God is looking for worshipers who worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:23).  If we won't be real with God and with our family, we can't worship him in the way he desires.  This is serious stuff, and if you don't think so just read in Exodus and Leviticus about people who tried to worship God in unauthorized ways.  If we want his healing presence to be with us, we have to be willing to worship in the spiritual integrity God is seeking.  Otherwise, our thanksgiving (Greek: Eucharist) will amount to little more than empty words we use to avoid saying what we really mean.

So, why does it happen that we feel like all we can be at church is just fine and peachy-keen, etc.?

I think it probably comes down to fear, mostly.  Just because we all have problems and we know it doesn't mean we necessarily feel comfortable sharing them with people!  If our fear of being judged for the things that are still messed up about us trumps our desire to be healed from those things, we won't share, plain and simple.  If we have a history of being judged, that makes things worse of course, as does seeing other people be judged in places (like church) where they should be welcomed instead.  Put all those things together, and fear wins out a lot of times.

Also, I think there's a misunderstanding in the church of what the Bible really teaches about joy.  When it says to be joyful in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:16), is that the same as being happy all the time?  If the joy of the Lord is our strength (Nehemiah 8:10), and a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), are we weak Christians who don't have the Holy Spirit if we go through struggles and trials?

All of the answers are no, in case you're wondering.  No one is "too blessed to be stressed" either (although some might be in too much denial not to smile).  Joy is not the same thing as happiness, and godly joy is just as compatible with sorrow as with happiness.  Jesus himself wept (John 11:35), but he was given the oil of joy more than all his companions (Psalm 45:7).  He also got so stressed that he sweated blood (Luke 22:44).  So godly joy must be something different than unceasing happiness.  What if, instead, it's the ongoing security of knowing that eventually everything will work out for your good because it's all in the control of the all-powerful God who loves you?  Then you can feel the pain of loss and brokenness without losing hope, and when you are happy you can be happy for the right reasons.  That's the joy that will bring you strength.

One further note on why the problem of disingenuousness happens at church:  it kind of gets to be a vicious cycle.  No one wants to be the first person to do anything, so if no one is talking about any real stuff, it's that much harder for anyone to break the trend.

Which segues nicely into the last question: what can we do about this thing?

First, let me say that I'm no expert on this.  I'm actually more of an expert on being fake, to be quite honest.  All I know is that I deeply desire to be real, and I'm starting to learn what that means.  So how can we be the ones to step out and start being real in the one place in all the world where the truth should win out?  How can streetlights shine into darkness that has clouded the home of light?

The main thing I can see is that we have to start wanting more of God so desperately that we don't care about our own images.  We have to care more about what he thinks of us than what anyone else does.  This is what it means for him to be our Lord.  His opinion is the final word, and what he says goes, no matter what it makes us look like.  If we start believing that, maybe we can be the ones to step out and take the first risk.  We can't make anyone else be real, but we can show them they won't die if they try it!

Also, we have to confess and repent of our judgmental spirits.  This will allow us to bless other people who are real enough to be honest about their problems instead of comparing our own struggles to theirs to see how we stack up.  All judgment is comparison, and all comparison is irrelevant because God's love is infinite.  What if ours started looking more like his?

We also have to stop getting the truth backwards.  It's not that God is so good that his followers shouldn't have any problems; He's so good because welcomes us in spite of them!  He fixes them too, but for whatever reason he hasn't chosen to do it instantaneously in most cases.  We have to let him be who he is in this instead of making him into a false image of what we want him to be.

I'm sure there is much more to be said on this topic-- does anyone else have any ideas to share on how we can help?  I'll end with one I just thought of, which is actually the most important one: prayer.  I want to start asking God to change the problems I see instead of just worrying about them.  I want to talk less and pray more.

So-- God, change what you want to change.  Make us more like you.  Make your body whole.  Let us walk in integrity, bravery, and community.  Give us real relationships with real people, and let us worship you in Spirit and in truth.  Amen.