Christian in an absolute pickle here

[springysofa]

Some really terrible things have happened on the domestic front (my kids) and I seem to have descended into a seething mass of resentment, anger, unforgiveness, despair - etc. All the etcs.

Although I believe totally, I can't see the point of anything that goes on in the church. I don't know what they're doing, feel a genuine confusion when they're doing what, to me, looks weird, irrelevant, bewildering. I find christians just too weird for words and can barely stand to spend time with them.

I go to a very big church and I have grave concerns about the running of the church - nothing new there if I'm honest - but I feel the deepest resentment and outrage towards this particular church. They are of the 'overcomers' persuasion and have no time for the broken-hearted. I also find them desperately middle class and smug and I feel entirely out of step with most things that go on. There is a big clique at the core of the church and it sometimes feels that we're all watching a party we're not invited to.

I have approached the pastor about my awful situation and the bottom line is that he doesn't want to know. The pastoral leader (what a joke!) is only interested in success and fame, from what I can see - someone like me with my broken heart is bad for the image and she just doesn't want to know; and has been very scathing towards me personally. She points me to a high-profile case where a member of the congregation lost a child in a senseless accident (made national headlines) and chides me that the mother has 'moved on' and is 'an overcomer', clearly stating that if she can do it then so should I. Although I don't know the mother personally, therefore can't comment on her journey towards some sense of peace, I feel seething hatred towards a culture that blames the victim.

I'm not the easiest customer. I am hurting soooo much. I don't know where to go, where I can find some basic common sense, from people who don't use God to avoid the sometimes gruesome realities of life.

I don't want to hate them but at the moment I could gun them down, frankly.

The real deal housegroup was not in the church I could mow down ie the current (or recent ) church. It was the toff church.

I've had strange experiences in the past too. On one occasion in a housegroup the pastor and his wife offered to pray for me. They sort of grabbed hold of me and during the prayer commanded that I speak in tongues . I was so shocked I just made up a load of gobbledygook and I never went back after that.
I have nothing against spiritual gifts but the bible is quite specific about someone interpreting etc.
There's a book called I'm Not Supposed to Feel Like This which is about feeling depressed or overwhelmed when as Christians we often feel guilty about it. We can beat ourselves up bbecause we think we should feel happy all the time and the reality is far from that.

Sound like you need to shop around a bit til you find a church you are comfortable with.

The bottom line is I'm frightened of churches and frightened of Christians.

And that OP is the bottom line.

You are frightened of churches and Christians. I think that you should avoid them. Your church is hurting you. That's not how it should be. Being around Christians males you feel worse than you are. That's not how it should be.

But that's how it is. So I agree with the other posters who think you would be best leaving your church.

What is it you want from a church OP? Where else can you get it!

I hope this doesn't sound too 'woo', but I've more often found God outside of a church than inside. And I've felt closer to God in praying with one close friend than with a multitude in a cathedral.

I agree with others that you should leave the church you currently attend, but I'd add that I think you need to find God's love for you within yourself, and not seek it in a church congregation. A church is made up of people, after all, and people are fallible. We can always find fault in them. No church will ever be perfect.

I am more than assured of God's love for me. We are social beings and need love and communion with fellow human beings. I don't have this with the church and that is a grief.

The "overcoming" stuff sounds dreadful and doesn't sound to be doing you any good. I agree with intheround, there's nothing wrong with trying a different church each week until something "clicks" and you feel comfortable.

The whole overcoming thing makes me so angry, actually. I've come across it a few times, mainly from people who don't think I am holy enough because I have not been healed of a lifelong chronic debilitating illness. I've been told I don't have enough faith, should 'claim my healing' and even given a list of bible verses I am supposed to speak out loud morning and night, and if I do so I will be well.

Now I believe God heals, and have experienced it in different ways, and seen some amazing things happen. But it doesn't always happen, and the overcoming crowd don't like this, they can't make it fit into their tiny little box, and so they blame the sufferers. We are not claiming the victory, we are not overcoming.

It makes me so sad, actually. I find God most deeply present in some of my deepest suffering. In the depth of the pain there is God, with me, beside me, weeping with me. God is not telling me to name it and claim it, then walking away disgusted when I don't. God is simply in it with me.

And with you, Springy. God is in the brokenheartedness. He is close to the broken in spirit. These churches can come close to a toxic denial of what the reality of Christ's suffering on the cross has achieved.

But they are not all like that.

You could see if there are any local Anglican 'fresh expressions' churches. These are generally churches which look to reach those which'inherited' church don't, and often have a completely different way of looking at things (I work as part of one) - and in my experience start from a much more honest and real pplace. You could also look at the writings of people like Shane Claiborne, the whole New Monastic movement and emerging church, which is absolutely poles apart from this whole 'overcoming' movement.

Greenbelt would be good to. I go to New Wine, which is actually lovely and much more honest and full of integrity than might be expected of a largely evangelical gathering. They speak God's love into lives and transformation, rather than forcing people to take hold of something they just cannot.

I hope you are ok today, Springy, and will add you to my prayer list.

Still thinking about you springy but didn't understand your clue as to where you are.?

It is interesting that you say others have said you are a difficult person as you question things. I am like that also but i don't understand why. I just am who i am and i can't help it! God made us in his image and although we need to work on our character, fundamentally we should all be accepted for who we are and it is very soul destroying when looking for acceptance and help and friendship and finding none.

Did you go to church yesterday ? Have you made a decision what to do? X

Hi springy was thinking about you on Sunday. I hope that whatever you did, you felt God with you.

I was coming on to suggest Fresh Expressions but I see that MHD has beaten me to it! I think I get your location reference and if I'm right there are definitely some good FE in your area. If you google it you will come up with several.

Let us know how you're getting on.

If I've understood your reference, I know a lovely lady anglican vicar in that area if you would like me to put you in touch. She is so totally polar opposite to that kind of 'overcoming' theology you couldn't get further apart... :)

Still horrified by the overcoming.

There was a great radio play once called something like sister Mary Ignatius answers your questions. And on it she said,

" does God always answer your prayers? Yes, he always does, but sometimes he says no. "

Makes me laugh, but so true. He said no to Jesus, she He asked for the cup to pass from him. And the suffering Jesus went through was as important,maybe more important, than the miracles, as leading to the resurrection and salvation.

Still confused but if others can come up with suggestions, great.

Lighting candles in my mind for you.

Hello Springy. I'm so sorry to hear that you've been going through such a rough time lately. I'll begin by admitting I'm quite probably atheist. Went to a CofE church until my teenage years (mainly for the choir singing) and panicked and left when I began confirmation classes! I don't have any problem with religion - just that faith has never really 'hit' me, nor has been something I've ever wished to explore.

However, through school and later, through environmental activism stuff, have always known many Quaker people and always found them to be so kind, understanding, accepting and non-cliquey. I know that their worship does not form a rigid pattern, nor do they follow a strict belief system - faith is very much a personal thing. Why don't you give your local meeting house a try?

I really hope things improve for you.

I have a LOT of problems with religion, Signora!

thanks for great support and suggestions. The storm seems to have passed (for now!) and I will look in greater detail at this thread. Once again, thank you very much for considered responses - it has been liberating to get it out in all its gore, and to be heard and not judged. I've been away for a while and that has blown the cobwebs away a bit (especially as it was sea air blowing them away). I didn't go to church on sunday and I am getting used to not going to that church. I don't know what's ahead.

though I do feel in the middle of a very dark place. While I was away I heard of the suicide of the daughter of a friend. The appalling thing is that exactly a week before the same happened with another friend's daughter. They didn't know one another and were not connected in any way. Both of them late teens/early 20s. Too awful for words. Please pray for these mothers and their families.

I know this (above) isn't about me, but dark and menacing seems to be on the fringes of a great deal of what I am experiencing at present, the landscape of my life. I genuinely don't think it's a good idea for a christian to be alone, which is why I have soldiered on in these awful places. Though it may sound like it, I don't think I am experiencing a MH crisis.

Apart from I am very sad.

I am also wondering what prayer is for. I can't ask God to be merciful because he is extravagently merciful, it is his entire nature. It just seems an insult to ask for mercy - would my child ask me for mercy? If they did, I'd be horrified. Though, to be fair, I did when the awful thing happened with my kids - in fact it was all I could say for some time: 'Have mercy on me!' Contradicting myself again.

What I find very difficult to handle is the religious nature of any relationship I may have with God. I find it stultifying, deeply unsettling. It is one of the reasons I feel very confused and unsettled when I'm in eg a prayer group and people are almost reading out a list of what they want him to do. I get the have not/ask not thing but it seems pointless to ask sometimes. It's got to the point where I am speechless when I 'talk' to God. I genuinely don't know what to say. Apart from complain, which is ok imo. More than ok. If it's a relationship and I am deeply disgruntled, it's where I'm at, no point pretending or being weird (aka religious).

I think I find it unsettling because it's a 'works' theme ie 'if we pray enough, he will hear, [we will have earned it]'. Like he's on holiday somewhere and the radio frequency is patchy (or that you have to go on and on to get his attention. Unjust judge?). He's not on holiday (despite what the CofE think of summer), the radio frequency isn't patchy, he hears first time. So what's the point of going on?

I don't like the fear base of a lot of prayers. As though he is a capricious shit who couldn't care and you have to beg him. Terrible and completely opposite to his nature imo.

(perhaps it's me who is the religious one and I want to get past it)

Plus I prayed my head off for the second girl who killed herself (I didn't know the first girl and her mother isn't a believer). HOw does prayer work, then? This girl had battled with anorexia and her mother was in constant fear her daughter was going to die of it. So we prayed - a LOT. That was a few years ago - the mother intentionally dropped off the radar ie we stopped praying together. Do you have to pray continually? (unjust judge!). Did he answer and his answer was 'no I won't do all I can to stop her killing herself, I won't shore her up by any means/people/orgs' etc. She went through all that, got a great deal of treatment. Then she killed herself. It's too awful!

So yes I did have a prayer partner! For about 6 months we prayed regularly for our kids, nothing else.

(wonders if I'm going to be called a liar here, too, as my account appears unstable)

The woman I prayed with, the woman whose daughter has killed herself , was very floaty - in that she wanted to be caught up in a kind of second heaven, and was beating a path to any signs and wonders - literally travelling around the country to places that had a reputation for instant things - miracles. (I have a friend who lives in Glastonbury and she told me of a trend in women there in eg their 40s+, who sound very similar to this woman but the Glastonbury women are chasing new age signs and wonders.) She wasn't very good with reality or anything gutsy. She wanted to be beamed up and that was all - she wanted her daughter to be somehow caught up in a cloud of loveliness?

It was why she eventually distanced herself because I wasn't playing ball with that. If I were being generous (which I struggle to be) I could say we weren't compatible prayer partners.

I have another friend who regularly travels to Australia to a ministry there that sees signs and wonders. I can't be going along with this. I don't see why someone has to go to Australia (or America, Africa...) to see God doing amazing things (I say 'have' another friend but in fact it's 'had' because she cut me off because I was questioning this ministry - which seems to consist of a woman shouting so much she is permanently hoarse, apart from other alarming and questionable things). I appreciate that people are desperate and they'll chase wacky unusual things, signs and wonders, I appreciate that - people chased Jesus throughout his ministry. I am desperate re my kids. I can't see that trawling across the planet will bring a solution.

But am I supposed to be? NOt necessarily chasing across the planet, but techniques of some kind I'm supposed to be employing? A recipe for success. I generally think not. (As it is I am stupefied.)

springy I don't think that there is a recipe for success, and nor do I think that we need to be going off chasing the latest things.

Re prayer, I don't think anyone has the answers. For me the most helpful thing is to take the example of the Psalms where you get David going through every possible emotion and just expressing them all to God. And knowing He's there even when we don't have the words, just there with us in it.

great words, million. This is at route where I'm coming from and your words are a great comfort to me.

I wonder if someone is desperate... REALLY desperate. If my friend had it hanging over her for years and years that herr daughter could finally succumb to the vicious grip of this vile disease and, this time, she wouldn't make it. It would be an exquisite torture, no? For YEARS. No wonder she was off with the fairies. And now the very worst has happened. Too, too awful.

I suppose I can't ultimately work out what is happening in the deepest place with other people, only me (haha - vaguely). God knows, that's the important thing.

And he knows what he is doing! I have no idea why this savage thing has happened with my two friends' daughters, just as I have no idea what has really been happening with me. I really don't know.

Perhaps I've been trying to get things from God. Which is possibly the very root of religion ie what are we doing it for if it's not to get something?

"Perhaps I've been trying to get things from God. Which is possibly the very root of religion ie what are we doing it for if it's not to get something?"

You may have a point there, Springy.
This is not meant in any way as a criticism but I do believe that we must worship God for Himself, not to 'get anything out of it'.

Maybe it is the losing of our life to gain it, that great Christian paradox.

I don't know. Over the past two weeks I have found so much love in so many unexpected quarters.
I do pray that may be your experience too.

So do I, Dutch [believe that we 'must' worship God for himself]. Which is all very well in theory. But I believe we can't (I also find 'must' a weird word tbh). We are hard-wired, if you like, to do things to get a reward. eg the old altruism debate argues a similar premise.

Unless we are 'born again of the spirit' we can't. It is opening ourselves up to that spirit and Jesus living in us, all that jazz, that we are able to experience anything of God.
That's what the 'must' is about, there is no other way.

God can break through that hard wiring, (for which another word might be 'original sin'?). Feel on very shaky ground here, no desire to say anything that hurts.

Of course it is, technically, 'original sin'. Which gives us a lot of jip (sp) [understatement]. imo it's wanting to please God (if you like) that changes dramatically when the transition takes place. But I don't think we can actually do it ie put God first. We are hard-wired to put ourselves first. Which is where God comes in, frankly (you can't 'crucify' yourself: always a hand free). But you can want to be pleasing to God. Which is the best you can do imo (in fact the only thing you can do).

Which is another debate! What is pleasing God? You'd think, if religion has anything to say about it (and it does, sadly), that it's being 'good'. I'm not saying we should be 'bad' (and what is bad?) but 'good' usually involves meek and mild/other cheek etc. Emptying yourself...

I wonder if we actually ask God what it is he actually wants, not career off doing what we think he wants. We assume a lot I think.