Letter to a True Believer

I thought you guys might be interested in this letter I sent to an old boyfriend of mine who is now a pastor of a conservative church. * * * Dear Gerard, It was good to be able to talk with you again after so much time, and I'm only sorry we didn't spend more time talking about what your life is like now. Doug asked me afterwards what you were up to, and all I could tell him was, "I'm sorry, we didn't discuss that – we were busy trying to figure out whether 1 Peter excludes the historic episcopate." I had the feeling afterwards that my tone left something to be desired; I didn't mean to suggest (if this is how it came across) that I wasn't happy you'd found a faith community that was right for you. Certainly, after all that you suffered at [your liberal seminary], I can see that it would be a relief to find a haven from its errors. What worried me was not what you said, but how you said it. Certainly I am as aware as you are of the dangers of the liberal Christian smugness, the certainty that they alone know the True Faith, and that anyone who holds a more literal view of the Bible than they do is a Heretic. What worried me is that you seemed not to be aware that conservatives can fall into the exact same pattern of smug self-righteousness. I'm in a different position than you. Though you may have duties to the wider community around you, your immediate charge is to your particular flock, the people who have chosen to follow Christ. I, on the other hand, am surrounded mainly by people who have left Christianity. Some have done so because they found a faith that they were more drawn toward, some are agnostics and atheists who continue to have friendly feelings toward Christianity, and some are agnostics and atheists who loathe Christianity with vehemence. It took me a while to understand the last group. Having grown up with mainly pleasant experiences in the Church, I had never, during my agnostic years as a teenager, hated the Church – I had simply thought it was wrong. These nontheists, though, are filled with anger toward the Church, anger which often spills over to the people who call themselves Christians. It took me a while to realize that their anger was not in the least bit irrational – they had every reason to hate Christianity. These are people who, as children, were told that God hated them – or rather, that God hated people who had the sexual feelings that they did. They lay awake at night filled with nightmares of the demons who, they were told, filled people like themselves. They listened to Christians speak fervently about how people like themselves should be castrated and executed and even murdered. Their parents, sensing that their sexual feelings variated from the norm, beat them in the name of Christ. So here they are, the people who know God only as the God of Vengeance, the God who hates sinners and burns eternally in hell anyone who has the misfortune to be born with sexual feelings that are different from other people's – and into this world of pain and suffering comes a conservative Christian. He smiles at everyone here and says, "If you don't accept Jesus as your personal savior, you will burn in hell. Repent, and be saved." And what happens at that point is that the nontheists turn to me in fury and say, "See? See what sort of God you worship?" The preacher, who hoped to bring God to them, has succeeded all too well. Looking at him, these survivors of spiritual abuse see the God who ordered the slaughter of men and women and the rape of children. The God whose bears tore apart the children who mocked the bald-headed prophet. The God who decided that the tenth-century Hindu who never heard the name of Christ should suffer in the flames till the end of time. What they do not see is Jesus. I've learned from experience that it does no good to say, "There's another side of Christianity." How can one say that to a survivor of the Inquisition? All he knows is the side of Christianity he has seen – all he knows are the wounds that still ache after many years. To de-emphasize what he experienced is to increase his pain. So I will turn first to the conservative Christian, still smiling in what he believes is love, and I will say to him: "Matthew 12.22-37: The Pharisees criticize Jesus for casting out demons. Matthew 15.1-20: The Pharisees criticize Jesus' disciples for eating with hands defiled. Matthew 22.15-22: The Herodians ask Jesus whether they should pay taxes. Matthew 23.1-35: Woe to the scribes and the Pharisees." Usually, alas, he doesn't get what I'm saying – he doesn't realize that I'm quoting to him the passages in which Jesus speaks most severely to sinners, and that the people Jesus is addressing in these passages are all upright, orthodox believers who have shown hard-heartedness toward people who in some way deviated from the rules of their faith. So then I turn to the maimed nontheists, waiting for me to defend the preacher's conduct, and what I instead say is, "Jesus would have empathized. He had to put up with people like that as well." And I show them this passage: "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 'God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted." "Every one who exalts himself will be humbled." Those are frightening words for a Christian, yet Jesus repeats them over and over, telling of the "righteous" who were certain that they would gain the Kingdom of Heaven because they were true believers, and who were convinced that the prostitutes and the tax collectors and the non-believers would go to hell. And Jesus looked at them straight in the face and said, "Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. . . . I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth." "Oh, well," says the preacher, smugly certain of his salvation. "He was only talking about the Jews. What he said has nothing to do with me." And he goes off to wound more prostitutes and tax collectors and non-believers. So you see, my concern is not just with the nontheists who have been so severely wounded by Pharisaism, and who continue to be wounded by self-righteous talk from Christians. My concerns is also with the souls of the Christians who talk this way. I listen to them talk, I see them inflict their wounds, and I feel a chill down my back as I hear Jesus say to the damned, "Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me. . . . Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me." Clergymen, alas, do not often get to hear about their failures. Their failures leave the church and never come back, and the clergymen are no wiser than they were before. So let me tell you – as I wish I could have told the ministers who were the real culprits in this story – the results of Pharisaism. One day you will stand in the pulpit and quote Paul as saying, "For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error. . . . Though they know God's decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them." And you will say with great certainty, "We who believe in the Bible know the truth of what is being said here, and we know that there is no uncertainty in how to interpret it." And a group of young men in your congregation, who have failed to listen sufficiently to the biblical passages on mercy, will say, "Gays deserve to die." And they will go and murder the next gay they meet. One day you will stand in the pulpit and quote Jesus saying, "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea." And you will say with great certainty, "We who believe in the Bible know the truth of what is being said here, and we know that there is no uncertainty in how to interpret it." And a sixteen-year-old boy in your congregation, who has been struggling with a sexual attraction to young boys, and who has heard this particular verse quoted over and over in articles about pedophiles, will say despairingly to himself, "It's no good – I'm damned to hell anyway. There's nothing I can do to save myself." And he will kill himself. Gerard, when I told my friends and family several years ago that you were using soap operas and death metal songs as a way to speak to the youth in your Sunday School, they all laughed; none of them recognized, as I did, what you were doing in reaching out to young people where they were, affirming the goodness in the non-Christian culture rather than dwelling on its problematic aspects, understanding the pain the young people underwent that caused them to turn toward non-Christian culture. I'd hate to see you lose your gift for Christlike works. Love, Heather Heather [E-mail]   [Home Page]