15 Reasons Why I Left the Church - Reason #4

Rachel Held Evans – 15 reasons I left the church – Age 27 left the church – now 30

4. I left the church because sometimes it felt like a cult, or a country club, and I wasn’t sure which was worse. 

One of the worst feelings we experience is being out of balance.  You know that feeling when you are high on a latter and somehow your weight shifts and your not sure whether to cling to the ladder or to the building.  In the moment of panic you are not sure which is your best options. 

I believe Rachel's reason #4 brings up two areas the church has this unique balancing act.  They are decisions of balance that cause us to either hold on to the ladder or to the building.  When we mess up the balance of these issues we will fall and crash to the ground. 

The church sometimes feels like a cult because we get out of balance with our call to repentance.  On the one hand we are called to influence the world with the power of the Good News.  It is a Biblical and God call on our lives to call people to repent in order to find a connection with Jesus.  But we can get so focused on repentance that we fail to allow the Holy Spirit to be the one that calls people to repentance.  We recently had a para-church organization give a presentation at our church.  I appreciate this group because of the work they do and that all donations go 100% to the cause.  The presentation was normal until a final video clip was shown. The video used the story of a teenage tragedy to try and motivate us to give to the cause.  For me it crossed the line from motivational to guilt pressuring people to give to the cause.  Sometimes we are so passionate about the cause that we fail to see that we cross the lines of what our role is and what the role of the Holy Spirit.  We tip towards the cult feel when we pressure and use too much guilt to get people to conform to our way of understanding God.  In many churches there is a "believe it my way or no way" mentality. 

Of course to balance that reality we must not become just a social group.  A group of people with common interest who are all Facebook friends and church friends.  We long for community and unity in the church so we promote the concept of fellowship.  We all have the need in our life to be loved and accepted.  So it is easy for church to only fill those needs in our lives and we come and go to every Sunday and the highlight of our day is talking to our good friend Joe/Jane about our last outing concerning our favorite hobby. 

By the power of the Holy Spirit the church must be a place where God's Spirit has room and opportunity to convict people of sin - but not be a close minded society.  By the power of the Holy Spirit we need unity with a great love for people outside the community. 

Live in balance! 

15 Reasons Why I Left the Church - Reason Three

Rachel Held Evans - Left the church at 27 - still gone at age 30

I left the church because my questions were seen as liabilities.

Faith - to be sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1
Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith - Hebrews 10:22

With our focus on assurance in the Bible it is easy to fear people who have questions.  It is easy to develop an atmosphere that questions are really a lack of faith.  The biggest problem with that is that we develop a culture of I must hide my real questions about God and the Bible.  I must act only a certain way and may only ask certain questions.  I must put on my smile at church and "fake it" like I have all the answers.

I believe that you can be certain of God and have great faith, but still have unanswered questions.  That God gives us permission to have time to question, lament (nice Biblical term for complaining about my bad circumstances), and grieve like we are actually still humans.  God is not afraid of our questions, so we can't be afraid of each other's questions.  If God's ways are far beyond my ways than I will naturally have questions for God and His ways.  Ultimately God will either answer my questions or give me a peace about my lack of understanding.

I believe unquestioning faith is shallow faith.  As people question and wrestle with God, we find answers that help develop deep and grounded faith.  If we are unwilling to spend the time to ask the difficult questions we may find our faith is lacking when we face the darkest days or the brightest days of our lives.  Both the trials and blessing days will test your faith.

We need to make sure we never react in such a way as to communicate to others - "wow, that is a dumb question."
We need to learn to ask questions that will help people to open up and share their deep questions about God and life.
We need to be open about sharing our own questions about the Bible, God and the church.