UPDATE II: And now the announcement is that this thread means I believe all theology is equally true. See, I 1) shouldn’t be letting you people tell your stories at all. It’s rejoicing in sin. 2) I should be preaching to all of you because right belief is the answer to everything. 3) and then I should be rejoicing that you all never return to this site again. But at least I witnessed to you.
God forbid that we act like people actually matter. Lord, save us from having to listen to someone’s pain. Just SHUT UP and SHOW ME YOUR CONFESSION. Right?
I’m looking for stories; stories of how relationships were changed for the worse because of theology.
I want commenters to tell- briefly- their stories of how theology caused stress, conflict, change, separation and distance in relationships with spouses, family members, parents, friends, co-workers and/or fellow Christians.
I’m not interested in changes from Christian to atheist, etc. Or in announcing you were gay. I want to know how someone becoming Calvinist changed your relationship. How did someone’s charismatic practices cause rejection? How did your family change their treatment of you when you left the Baptist denomination and became Orthodox? How does a creationist treat a Christian co-worker who is an evolutionist? How did your move to or from Catholicism affect your marriage? Are there people who stopped speaking to you or started evangelizing you when you changed your theology or practice?
That’s the sort of stories I’m looking for. With 40% of Americans changing religions and many moving to and from various theological positions, there’s bound to be a lot of these. Share them. Briefly. In the comments.
The Internet Monk Archives 
Also I did not know Fatima tried to trump Scripture.
It shouldn’t; private revelations do not supersede General Revelation, and (if authenticated) are binding only on those receiving the private revelation. That is the official policy.
However, there are a LOT of “The REAL Third Secret of Fatima” fanboys out there. It’s one of the Catholic versions of Christian Conspiracy Theories, and shows lots of the dynamics of Conspiracy Theory obsession in general. Which is in itself the essence of Gnosticism — “The Secret Knowledge I And Only I Possess.”
Evangelicals flake out with End Time Prophecy, Catholics flake out with “Mary Channeling”.
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I am merely suggesting that for unity’s sake we want to dig more deeply theologically, not less deeply.
Pax Domini to all, no problem. 🙂
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Brigitte,
The main reason that Roman Catholicism plays such a large role in these stories is that the gap between the Evangelicals and the Catholics is one of the largest in America. If there were more Orthodox, there probably would just as many stories about them.
I do miss the friendships that I might have found as a Baptist, but I treasure the inner peace that I found there. There are many things that I regret about the divide. But, I will not reject the path that God has placed my feet upon.
Peace and God’s blessing upon you.
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No … not yet?
I think a large part of that is because they know that my wife and I’s relationships to our Protestant community is such a big part of her faith. She isn’t theologically opposed to the Catholic Church, but she never had any real faith until we started going to this certain Protestant church.
But acting in a leadership role there is one of the few subjects where I feel a tinge in my faith. I must remember to bring it up at Confession.
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Precisely.
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You’re thoughts are appreciated, but may be valued more on another thread. Let’s keep this a safe environment for opening up. It’s too easy to use these confessions as tinder for a flame war – and while I don’t think you intend to start one, it escalates all too easily. Peace.
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From reading the stories, it seems to me that the larger portion is from people who have joined or rejoined Roman Catholicism. While there is so much to appreciate in the church (I’ve attended Catholic school myself for six years), those of us outside of it just cannot deal with the extra-biblical things, not on our life.
We will NOT be able to find unity without being diligent about Bible study and theology. We can’t get around it. ” Theology ” is NOT a dirty word. “Theologian” is NOT a dirty word. I think i-monk is making a real contribution. Let’s have decent discussion, as we are. It is good.
And I just wanted to mention the Book of Concord, the Lutheran confessions again. Are there people who really don’t think it’s a great collection of documents (Bible based documents) ? Read the new “reader’s edition” from Concordia Publishing House.
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One of the things Christians like to use to disparage other religions such as Islam is to poitn out how people will get disowned and rejected if they leave Islam, whereas only Christians lvoe unconditionally.
Lots of people here have commented that they have been disowned and rejected for leaving a certain theology, so it appears we as Christians don’t have room to put down other religions since we do the same thing.
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…It’s very interesting to read the comments on a thread that is monitoring (my nice word) this comment thread.
Blog eisegesis? I want to say it makes me wonder what thread they’re reading, but I’m used to it by now.
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My grandmother was Catholic and my grandfather was Protestant. My grandfather forbid my grandmother from practicing her Catholicism. The theological dispute was so intense that my father decided at a young age to forgo organized religion and has never been baptized.
My wife’s family is Mormon. When we got married I was a fairly new Christian contemplating Catholicism and my wife was unsure what she believed. Given this diversity of opinion, finding a church to marry us was impossible. We ended up getting hitched by a justice of the peace.
Now I’m a protestant with a Catholic leaning spirituality (I still listen to EWTN podcasts). My wife is still unsure, but often falls back on Mormon theology. This isn’t the forum to go into the Christian/Mormon divide, so I’ll just say things are difficult. I really want to practice my Christianity with my wife, attend Church with my wife, and have a Christian marriage with my wife, but theologically that’s impossible. I have delayed joining a church in the hope we could find one together. Now I’m looking for one by myself.
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Have Catholics ever given you flak for maintaining your relationship with the Protestant church, especially sitting on their leadership team?
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I get the feeling I run with a different crowd than some others who have converted to Catholicism. My family has been supportive – my wife, my parents, and all my available siblings sat thru my 3-hour Confirmation during Easter Vigil! My wife understands and accepts my desire to baptize our baby, and never gives me any flak for any of my Catholic obligations. She has come along to some of our parish “Service Opportunities” and has always been respectful of the Church, even when she questions its traditions.
Also, I’m still close friends with everyone at our post-Evangelical “Emerging” church – which I still attend with my wife, though I don’t receive communion there. (She very rarely comes to Mass with me because she finds the liturgy boring) In fact, the Emerging pastor also came to my Confirmation! He has seemed nearly as excited as I am about the whole process – I think he enjoys having a Roman Catholic representative in the church discussions. What’s more, my wife and I maintained roles on the church Leadership team for a couple of years including my conversion. (I’m always the one calling for more liturgical or Traditional changes in the church. 😉
Every once in a while, some of my Protestant or Evangelical friends or family will press a hot theological button in my mind, but I try to make my own comments or discussion about my personal faith journey, and try not to preach or proselytize.
From the comments on this thread, I think I’ll stick to the rule of keeping my mouth largely shut for the first three years; which is coincidentally enough time to finish my bachelor’s in Pastoral Ministry from Newman University! For now I’ll be sure to check out JPII’s ‘That They May Be One’ … so thanks to all Catholics here for the tips!
Peace.
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Giovanni,
My priest – one of our catechists – stressed that exact message to us in that exact phraseology. “We are bound by the sacraments, but God is not.”
One of the concerns some of my family and friends expressed during my conversion was the belief they presumed in Catholicism that the Catholic Church is the only portal to Christ. At the time, I didn’t have a good answer to them, but now I’m glad to be able to tell them this Catholic view of ourselves and our relationship with God and with other Christians.
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Michelle,
Your story is moving. I recently converted to Catholicism with reluctant acceptance from my own parents. I told them very early – the day after I decided to convert. I could tell my dad wanted mostly to debate the theology while my mom took it with a quiet sadness. You can read my “Telling the Family” post for more detail: http://emergingcatholic.blogspot.com/2008/11/telling-family.html
My relationship with my parents has complicated in some ways, as was made clear by a recent trip we made together to attend the Catholic baptisms of my Catholic brother’s children. I think they try to be as supportive as possible, but “there are some things that just don’t transmit right”, as my brother described. Theology debates are hard when one side has assumed the role of teacher to student for 18 years, y’know? 😉
For me it has been important to let my parents know how grateful I am for my Evangelical upbringing – I was one of the most faithful and Scripturally-aware candidates in my RCIA class. And to explain to them that my conversion was not about refuting any of the faith of my childhood and upbringing, but about fulfilling that faith in my own way – the way of the Church.
Prayers, luck, and peace be with you.
-L
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Anna–yes and yes!! I am so glad that your siblings have been able to avoid some of the pain. Hugs to you, sister.
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Things don’t have to be articles of faith to be hurtful to others. Perhaps Fatima does not trump Scripture, but it can be elevated to Scripture’s level of authority and used as a litmus test for other Catholics’ loyalty or orthodoxy. There’s a big difference between doubting the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and the miracle of the sun at Fatima…
It happens on the opposite end of the spectrum, too. Some folks who were formed in the 60’s and 70’s really sour towards you when they find out you are not quite so eager for “Spirit of Vatican II”-style renewal, even if you have no association with traditionalists.
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I grew Baptist/Evangelical, even a little methodist in there for a while. While I was away at college my parents became covenantal/reformed/patriarchal. The covenantal and reformed aspects of their new studies eventually led me to the Anglican church, which stirred no warnings for them (exept the fact that they use crucifixes). But in the last couple of years my (now) husband and I have been seriously studying and considering the Catholic faith. I started a blog to kind of get out the ideas and things I’d been studying and hopefully get some positive input. Well, someone in my family found my blog and showed our parents – who are very anti-catholic. They have not once called to ask me about it, but have gone to my other siblings and talked to them (I had previously opened the subject with a few of my siblings because I wanted them to know where I was at as I had always had a very spiritually deep relationship with them). My parents have still never reached out to find out if I am just interested in the church or interested in joining the church… but for Christmas this last year, before I got on the plane, I was handed a card with the book “More Than A Carpenter’s Son” and the words “I hope you find Jesus this year and don’t get caught up in the trappings of religion.” Sadly, I went from being “the most spiritually mature of all the children” as a 19 year old to being the last in the bucket at 22.
While my faith was being drawn ever more more towards the authority of the church, my parents’ were becoming more towards the authority of the father. They essentially believe, now, that the father is basically God in family and that if my father tells me not to do something, I have to obey WITHOUT QUESTION. Respect necessarily equals obedience. They didn’t like my boyfriend (now husband) because he had different theological beliefs (namely, that he doesn’t belief the Father has that kind of authority throughout the child’s – specifically single daughter’s – life). We got married in June. Of my family of 9 only three of us were there, and my parents refused to come.
And it’s hard. The difference of beliefs is SO hard. The whole situation with my Dad is actually one of the major things that threw me into the steady arms of the Catholic Church. Daily I pray that I will only love my dad more and that there will be no anger or bitterness towards him. And I think that is the most important part of being hurt. Forgiveness. True, honest, continual forgiveness.
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I grew up in an extremely dispensational, fundamentalist church and part of what has led to their complete disassociation (and denouncing) of me has been my shift toward reformed theology, especially covenantal theology. Although I doubt they were thrilled about the whole five pointer thing either.
It’s given me better perspective on others with similar stories, esp. those whose stories involve rejection by reformed types, stories which are entirely too common.
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That’s really a bummer your MOPs group was like that. I coordinate a MOPs group at an evangelical church and I’m Orthodox. Talk about awkward! (It’s the church I grew up in, so they know me and trust me – and they can. I’m not out to convert everybody, although I will answer questions when asked.) And my devotionals tend to quote St. John Chrysostom, Mother Teresa, or reference traditional hymns. I’m kindof a “full meal deal!” LOL!
However, we have had women in the past who belonged to other denominations and I could tell they felt uncomfortable (I wasn’t the coordinator back then). I don’t think anyone ever said anything bad to them, but I think their way of talking about their spirituality (I think particularly of one woman who’s Catholic) was just so different that it was a divide that could not be bridged. Which is always too bad, because we have so much we can learn from each other.
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My personal experience is difficult to describe I was born and raised Catholic. At a very early age I pretty much believed everything that I was taught however at a certain point I decided that God was not important. When I was 9 I stopped going to Mass and instead I would take the money for the collection and go to the Arcade instead. I grew up a secular eventually in College Liberal person. I believed that abortion was indeed compassionate and though I thought about limits to it, I saw nothing wrong with it. I remember telling a friend of mine that an unborn baby was not a human being but a “potential” human being.
My relationship with my parents was never strained because of my lack of religion, though I did argue with them a lot about the Crusades and Inquisition and Mary Magdalene and how she was Jesus’ Wife and how Jesus was not God because he said he wasn’t. I was a cornucopia of heretical thought. Yet my relationship with my parents was never a bad one it was always very loving. They knew I would not go to Church yet they never forced me. Every once in a while my Mom would say things like “you should go to confession” and I would just say “aw come on Mom, not that again” and roll my eyes at her.
One of the favorite things my Mom liked to say was that one day I was going to wake up and see how much time I have wasted not going to Worship God I will regret it a great deal. I could not see at that time how that would ever happened.
It wasn’t until I was 25 that I for the first time discovered Protestant thought. And it was not the best introduction in the world, I do not think it represents the majority of Protestantism at least from what I have seen. Anyways I was working a driver for this company and I don’t know how but the topic of religion came up and somebody asked me what religion I was and I told them I was “Christian Catholic” then another driver who was there asked me, “well which one is it?” are you “Christian?” or are you “Catholic?” I was not really sure what he was asking so I told him “they are the same thing.” he said “no its not.” again I have no idea what he was trying to say. Then he said that he was an Evangelical Christian and that they did not believed the things Catholics believed to which I said, “that it was pretty much the same thing.” Once again he said that it wasn’t. I just dropped it at that point and never brought it up again.
Then there is my Wife but that is another story.
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I don’t think any of the things you mentioned are articles of Faith. Also I did not know Fatima tried to trump Scripture.
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Absolutely, for some reason I do have that problem as well. I don’t know how many more Catholics have the same problem but it is essential that we always remember that it is we who are bound to the Sacraments but not God. 1 Peter 3:15 Must always be in mind.
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Sounds like you grew up in the Catholic version of the aberrant family-compound, lkke the bordeline “Christian Taliban” cults Christian Monist and Adventures in Mercy describe, except with Tridentine Latin Mass instead of Kynge Jaymes 1611 Only.
My experience with the RCC is just the opposite; much of what you describe is what I swam the Tiber to escape. (Though one of my mentors in Catholicism DID get a little flaky, it never got that extreme.)
Stupid Catholic Tricks. A subset of Stupid Christian Tricks, which is itself a subset of Stupid People Tricks.
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Maybe 10 days or so ago, David Hayward at “Naked Pastor” posted back-to-back cartoons that speak to this. In the first, a guy with a ball & chain around his ankle labeled “My Theology” gropes as he tries to reach God but can’t make it. In the second, several guys have the same ball & chain with “My Theology” on their ankles, only this time, they are trying without sucess to reach out to one other. In both cases, one’s theology was a limiting factor, to state the obvious.
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Your story sounds a lot like mine…I’m guessing we were in the same cultish movement – big on “authority” and “standards”. I was 19 also when God showed me how much life there was outside the confines of our movement and how much truth in Scripture! I left legalism and found grace. I am the oldest of 12 children; I was called rebellious and went through a lot of pain, but ultimately, God used it for good in my life and in my family’s – it paved the way for my siblings upon reaching adulthood to also find different churches and not go through what I did; after several years out, my life showed that I was not crazy, or worldly, or rebellious.
God is faithful…all the time.
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My family is a Bible-based cult.
I moved out of home when I was 19. After years of depression, suicidal, exhausted, I decided if I was going to die anyway I might as well try to live.
That is the dramatic explanation but the real reason is that God called me out, and I went, without knowing where I was going–but He stirred life in me, and I obeyed. The brief answer to your query is that changing my theology and practices severed intimate relationship with most of my family. I was labeled rebellious, worldly, “not walking with the Lord”, the prodigal, a bad influence on my ten other brothers and sisters. I “stepped out from under the authority” and therefore am not obedient to God. They discussed, but never completely enforced, barring me from coming home to visit. And they will not allow me to do anything “special” with some of the younger brothers or sisters–our relationship is strictly controlled.
And yet the spiritual / emotional abuse, mind control, shame, etc were too much for me and I praise God for His salvation.
I love my parents deeply. Our relationship now is superficial, but we do communicate. I am grateful for this, for I know many women in my shoes, who have been completely exiled from their families. I am sad that things are the way they are, especially for the sake of my siblings, but I thank God that He has shown me who He is. For the first time, I know the true God and His grace.
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At one time I very much found myself among the Young, Restless, and Reformed. There was a camaraderie that was truly to be envied and a sense of peace that came with knowing others were believing and experiencing the same things you were.
However, when I found that those beliefs and experiences were empty at the bottom (yes, I know we can debate later), and jettisoned most of them for alternatives I found myself not only at odds with Calvinism, but also the other things that attended to it. I never cared for reading the ESV. In fact, I have a general dislike for the ESV Study Bible today only because it beloved by Calvinists! In trying to understand this embarrassing fact, I saw that it was related to the relationships that were formed over its theological commitments. While I am convinced that the ESV Study Bible is a valuable resource, I wouldn’t want one because I don’t want to fit into what I think it signifies. They say “truth unites… and divides” and that is basically how it works among the YR&R, and it is clear that I still share some of those attitudes no matter how irrational they might be. In other words, if you find yourself disagreeing then the camaraderie dissipates, friendships are strained if not altogether lost, and you are tempted to take up positions that put a thumb in the eye of your opponents.
The thing is, though, I never was theologically criticized like I was when I was in my pre YR&R days. The YR&R have an evangelistic zeal for those on the outside, but once you have been in and out, they will pretty much leave you alone (unless you poke the hive’s nest). In a way, it’s like being a Christian and losing your faith. Christians won’t interact with you the way they did before and mostly don’t want to.
I think some of this has to do with being a story of failure. Your movement will never highlight the stories of people struggling, failing or walking away. You might not even associate with the people who are no longer with us. This isn’t unique to theology either. It happens in politics all the time.
But if a friendship is formed on things other than theology it lasts. I still have a few YR&R friends that I enjoy good times with, but that is because our relationship is based on different things. We still share a common commitment to Christ and loving others as best we can. We don’t always agree, but agreement is neither necessary nor sufficient for camaraderie.
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at our current church, we have excellent theology and my soul is dying. or so it feels. i don’t have that same sense of community or experience of the body of Christ there. and i can’t help feeling like maybe i made a mistake — theology isn’t the answer. i miss loving people and loving Jesus.
Alissa: thanks for the post, the paragraph above haunts me; I hope GOD’s comfort finds you and gives you life. Thanks for the honesty, I think you speak for many (unfortunately). There ARE oasis in the ev. wilderness, may GOD direct you there.
Greg R
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Am a TE at a PCA church in a college town. I’ve brought a lot of young people into the Calvinist fold. Brought a lot of them into covenant theology and all that.
There’s one guy a few years back that I was talking to, really bright and loved the Lord but was a Baptist. We used to talk a lot and I really enjoyed his company. He was very gifted and I wanted him to join our church.
I pressed him on the baptism issue and he didn’t budge, but he was always friendly and loving with me. Eventually I thought it was pointless and gave up but I also gave up on him. He got the point and started attending a bible church or something somewhere else, he later moved away.
Through Facebook I still keep in touch with him and I see how gifted he is loving people and sharing Jesus.
But I feel like I’ve really missed something.
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I was just being facetious about the matter I just pray that the Holy Spirit leads us both to a mutual understanding of each other’s differences
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Yes He is the Way. Bless you, Alvin, your words are comforting to me at this difficult time.
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A lot of the comments sound like how denominationalism has changed relationships, even when theology might be behind a lot of it. I’ve seen a lot of that, but coincidentally have seen two relationships deteriorate and that directly due to theology. I’ll mercifully leave out the numerous times I’ve been mocked or even told that I’m not a Christian for believing in an old earth.
A couple in our small group at the nondenominational church recently left our small group and the church itself. The excuse was that they couldn’t serve in the ways they wanted to, but something else was at play. The husband would always steer small group conversations toward a theological debate, often talking about this book he just read by Jonathan Edwards or that sermon he just heard by John Piper. They ended up at an RCUS church, whose website is pretty clearly on the “you’re either with us theologically or you’re against us” side of things. They were great friends, but kept growing further and further away until they left. We talked about keeping in touch, but they live 40 miles away and without church in common, it just doesn’t work.
More frustratingly, my brother-in-law is in his third year at The Master’s College, John MacArthur’s college here in SoCal. He’s been a Christian for about four years and started at Azusa Pacific. We thought it would be great for him when he announced that he was transferring to Master’s and things started off well. Slowly but surely, though, his need to be right, to be holy, etc. has changed him into a person that is just hard to be around. (BTW, the post at https://internetmonk.com/archive/on-being-too-god-centered is PURE GOLD in understanding him these days.) I sometimes think he doesn’t understand the words that are coming out of his mouth on occasions; after recently breaking up with his girlfriend and learning that she (a Christian) was seeing a non-Christian he felt it was his duty to “quit being so gentle”. He confronted her (a red flag right there) alone (another red flag) and started berating her about her salvation. On another occasion, he and I were talking, along with my wife/his sister, about what we would say to someone if they only had one hour left. He said he would explain total depravity. My wife said she would tell the person how much Jesus loved them. When he scoffed, my wife said that she’s just interested in Scripture and asked her brother if he thought theology can communicate God’s love better than Scripture.
His response: “Why can’t it?”
We had to blink over that one for a while. I gave him a chance to recant, but he wouldn’t say that Scripture holds precedence in every way imaginable over theology. We… haven’t really talked deeply since, as every time we get started down that path, backs arch, arms cross, and the walls go up. It’s really sad, as this frenetic pursuit of … SOMETHING … has really soured him to us; I suspect we aren’t vocal enough or reformed enough or whatever and he’s concerned for us.
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Division is difficult, devatastingly. Yet somehow, I’ve really grown.
After my conversion to Catholicism six years ago, I was dynamically verbous. The advice to just shut up for three years would have been sweet music for my husband’s ears. Beneficial? Yes. Probable? Heck no. Yet, I feel I may be very close now (minus the dream last night that I was vigorously sharing my trinitarian faith with my Mormon friends, seriously).
Absence from the family at Sunday worship, still really sucks. Yet, husband recently sincerely communicated we focus on the great treasury of the faith with we share and upon re-reading some of JPII’s “That They May Be One” and letting it sink in, I’m listening.
In the end, as a Catholic Christian, I believe there is some sort of reparative suffering going on in the midst of all this pain in division for the greater unity of the body of Christ. May we be one, come Lord Jesus.
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My wife and I have really worked hard on this relationship (with her mother); we want it to grow, not diminish, and that means working through the uncomfortable stuff. If she feels as strongly on these issues as she did, she is not as vocal about it anymore.
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The pains of this type of “tension” prove inescapable even for your pastor; his son’s family converted to Orthodoxy. Doesn’t the divide just completely stink? Painful.
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Hello Scott:
I understand your story very much. Zeal at conversion can give rise to some very difficult scenarios and in my case, I made so many ridiculous mistakes and offenses, I blush to think of them even after many years. I would not want my own children to have the same sort of experience at least in part because many of my blunders were never ultimately reconciled.
The spiritual director you mentioned is wise. His advice is analagous to the spirit of Deut 24:5, I think.
Having said that, conversion is a real thing but the paradigm is negotiable, so to speak. In my context back then, the authenticity of one’s conversion was measured by the extent to which a person ‘witnessed’ to their family (and also total strangers) – why this may result in the perception (or reality) of condemnation of a family’s pre-existing Christian tradition was never explained. A lot of damage can be done by inadequate pastoralia in this regard especially among young people whose critical faculties are far from formed and who have an inherent need to feel accepted without the ability to think through a whole lot. But then, personal rejection was a mark of authenticity too!! It might never occur to a very young convert that the reactions they were getting from others were nothing more than the result of plain stupidity – I think this would apply to me.
Your post brought to mind a number of things I have tried to embody in my life and ministry subsequently. Might I respectfully offer a few things:
Young believers must be mentored (young in years or young in faith).
Mentors must be exceptionally mature Christians with broad and patient sympathies.
Recent or immature believers should not be given jobs that place them in sensitive situations where the public ministry of the church is represented.
Recent believers should be given the simple opportunity to actually learn the faith and begin to act out what they really are – disciples.
Thanks again for your post.
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Left Protestantism, went to the Catholics. Lost lots of friends, not out of malice, but “we don’t see you anymore, so we don’t think of you”. in the middle of losing my husband. though, did what i had to do and it looks like the kids are coming with. a huge wake-up to what being a Christian might mean to me. Didn’t see it as so hard, but that’s a statement on how shallow my faith was. So, there you go.
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sounds like you hurt her feelings
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thanks alissa.
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Or Bro Jed’s got a LOT of imitators out there.
(I first heard of Bro Jed secondhand from someone at Cal State Fullerton in the Eighties. I’m surprised he didn’t get punched out on a regular basis. However, getting punched out would just feed his Certainty that He Is God’s Anointed by claiming Persecution.)
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I haven’t dared broach my concerns with 6-day literal creationism yet.
Better not, Anon. Usually “Left Behind-style eschatology” is hard-linked to “6-day literal creationism” like conjoined twins. Even the guy that wrote Scandal of the Evangelical Mind pointed that out.
She also felt that friendships with non-believers should be cut off if they did not convert to Christianity in a ‘reasonable’ amount of time (a matter of months, usually).
Which means there’s a good chance she’ll write you off as a (literally) Lost Cause in the future. Of course, being a mother-in-law, she might then decide to Save her Son from your heathen clutches and sabotage your marriage.
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They boycotted the new baby’s baptism and a few years later, boycotted my son’s First Holy Communion. They’ll probably boycott his sisters’ First Communions coming up in the next few years.
And yet, plenty of Catholic grandparents long to attend such celebrations but their own children aren’t raising their children in the faith.
I hope they have a change of heart.
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When we were married, we were attending an Assemblies of God church. It’s a long story, but the brunt of it happened during the “Brownsville Revival.” We went to speak privately with our pastor with open Bibles on our laps, and he actually told us to close our Bibles because “the spirit is doing a new thing.”
I was on staff at church. My husband led worship and toured in a Christian rock band. Both of us worked with teen programs in the church. I had to quit my job. We gave up youth group and I resigned from teaching my beloved Sunday school class (jr. high kids). Eventually, we had the courage to leave. People treated us like back-sliders…refused to be our friends any more. The teens were lied to and told we had moved to another city. My husband’s band broke up — the bass player was our A/G pastor’s son and there was that whole unequally yoked thing.
We floundered for six years, trying to find a church. Visiting place after place. Almost joined the Missouri Synod Lutheran church. They wanted to hire my husband as youth director…until somebody found out that I used to be on staff at the A/G church. We were placed on chairs against a wall while six people (including the assistant pastor) fired question after question at me about speaking in tongues. In the end, I thought we had explained ourselves well enough that five people had the confidence in my husband’s ability to lead the youth program. The hold-out was the assistant pastor. That was the end of that job.
For a while, we were in a “refugee church.” Everybody there had escaped from one denomination or another. The pastor and his wife were ex-SBC. The deacon was ex-ELCA. I get the names all mixed up now, but I think the church was initially Evangelical Anglican…then that denomination split and our group went with the Episcopal Evangelicals…another split, and we were Anglican Evangelicals. See why I get them mixed up? It was seriously ridiculous. My husband played in another Christian band, this time of mixed denominations, and started a little recording studio in our basement.
Then we had a baby and found out that ex_[insert denomination here] Anglicans/Episcopalians apparently don’t like kids very much. It got to the point where we couldn’t bring our toddler son to church because people expected us to spank him for shouting “Amen” a second later than everybody else did at the end of a prayer. Or for singing a bit off from the melody of the hymn.
We started visiting churches and found out just how many shuffle the kids away during worship. Didn’t anybody believe in going to worship as a family? Even while the kids were tiny?
Eventually, we became Catholic. When that became common knowledge, evangelicals would no longer work in my husband’s studio. Some of our evangelical friends stopped talking to us…a few who truly loved us and cared for us sat us down for serious conversation, and I think they were able to see that we still love Jesus and we don’t worship Mary. Anyway, those few are still our friends.
My in-laws think we are going to hell and taking the kids with us. I got pregnant again right after we became Catholic, and the response to this happy news was a tight-lipped, “Just how Catholic are you going to be?” (Answer: “Really Catholic, thanks.”) They were mortified we announced our conversion in our annual Christmas letter. They boycotted the new baby’s baptism and a few years later, boycotted my son’s First Holy Communion. They’ll probably boycott his sisters’ First Communions coming up in the next few years.
My family wondered aloud how we could become Catholic and risk our son being molested by a priest. (“Thanks for that vote of confidence in our attitude about parental responsibility.”)
What else is there to do but to shrug one’s shoulders and keep following Jesus?
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Two experiences with a friend, lets call him J.
J is a Calvinist, but I met him at a Vineyardesque charasmatic church. No reason for him to assume that anyone attending that church would be a Calvinist. We both share a love for the outdoors and so a friendship began. Now I, as it happens was raised (as American say) in South Africa, and am old enough to remember that the apartheid state was a self proclaimed Calvinist state. Now of course that doesn’t make Calvinist guilty of apartheid, but one could also understand why I might not automatically assume that Calvinism is automatically and unquestionably more “biblical”. But that is exactly what I did, argue by assumption that Calvinism has superior claim of fidelity to scripture. This created a great deal of tension in our relationship because I expect any such claim to have an actual basis. (I have actually looked into the claims of Calvinism on my own and find them unconvincing, however the relationship issue was the assumption that Calvinism has some kind of claim to being automatically or demonstratively more biblical rather than being one position which sincere Christians might hold.)
J was also a strong believer in complementarianism, but we didn’t argue about this issue, instead it framed his entire world view in a way which caused conflict. My wife and I had moved to a strange city so that we could serve a missionary organisation. My wife worked full time for the missionary organisation, while I looked after a guest house for the missionary organisation. I was waiting on God to find out what He wanted me to do with my life. I am an A type person and it was really hard for me not to have a clear direction.
When I was at my most down J told me it was because I was “following my wife” (who earned more at that point). At that point I realised that my marriage was the greatest gift from God in my life, told J he had forfeited the right to speak into my life and that I no longer trusted him. From being close friends we became acquaintances.
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I grew up in an unchurched family, but came to Christ in an SBC church at a young age. Just having faith put me at odds with some of my family.
In college I became good friends with about a dozen people at our BSU who migrated to what would now be considered a Soverign Grace mindset. I stuck with the SBC, and now in their minds I am the enemy. Theologically speaking our differences are not huge, but my desire to stay in the SBC “brand” has created an atmosphere of derision, mockery, and contempt. To the extent that I have a difficult time being around these people who I once considered my closest friends.
Being a Driscoll sympathizing Calvinist in the SBC, I’ve gotten my fair share of dirty looks. But the SBC has been much kinder to me than others.
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I’ve stopped identifying myself as Catholic in women’s Bible studies because it makes others uncomfortable, especially newcomers.
And so, therefore, when I’m not invited to happenings outside Bible study, I know it’s because of me and not my religion.
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Well, IMonk, you definitely have a writing gift (or maybe it’s a thinking and articulating gift, with the writing being the end product.) I would hope there will be employment for you somewhere. I sure find your writing compelling.
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I was part of a Christian community for nearly 20 yrs. My role was a counselor/advisor/consultant and on several leadership teams. I began to raise concerns about embracing the mega-church/corporate model of “doing church” as they say, and found myself on the outside looking in. My concerns were not so much anti all of CEO-church but its ways and means in light of they way of Jesus. My encouragement was in giving staff (individually and corporately) more time for prayer, fellowship and worship together and in personal devotions during their day which was seen as becoming “Quaker” of all things.Part of this journey was a loss of reputation and identity that was not grounded in christlike humility and therefore profitable for me, tho painful. The end result however, was the loss of my friendships and place of ministry as I became a stranger in my own community.
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Another one. My mother-in-law was, for a time, concerned that I wasn’t ‘saved’ because I did not subscribe to a Left Behind-style eschatology. I haven’t dared broach my concerns with 6-day literal creationism yet. She also felt that friendships with non-believers should be cut off if they did not convert to Christianity in a ‘reasonable’ amount of time (a matter of months, usually).
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My parents raised me Catholic and I still practice my faith. That said, I no longer believe in homeschooling, blind obedience to parents (even from married adult children), geocentrism, young earth Creationism, Latin-Mass only rhetoric, homebirthing, conspiracy theories, or that Fatima or Medjugorje or some other private revelation trumps Scripture. Honestly, it feels like I’m not a member of their religion and they sometimes treat me as someone who has rejected the known truth. Needless to say, our relationship is fairly strained.
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I have a certain amount of respect for people who are willing to say, “I don’t know.”
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My story is different (haven’t posted it yet but I might) but I wanted to say that I empathize with the emotions in your post, alissa. I have most recently been part of a Calvinist community where people are very nice, very devoted to their theology but dare I say….they are a bit “cold”. I long to have friends and people who care about me and I care about them. So I just wanted to acknowledge your feelings… I get it…. even the nursing baby while typing thing 🙂
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When my wife and I dated and married, she was and is a low-church Anglican who would just as well be Baptist if they gave her wine and let her kneel. My family was not religious although my four grandparents were Catholic and I slowly converted over many years, although I did try to satisfy myself at a Baptist church and then an Anglican parish… No luck. I miss some aspects of those congregations, mostly the people, but I have not regretted converting.
The topic of religion can be touchy with my wife. She both admires, scorns and ridicules Catholicism. For instance, when we bathe our newborn, she might suggest with a big sarcastic grin that I anoint the baby’s head with oil, to which I happily comply, which says a lot about both of us. 🙂 She cannot talk about Confession and holy water without laughing. And did I mention a fondness for Pope jokes? I’d say we get by with a mixture of silence, humour, compromise and meekness.
It seems to work out better if I tell her plainly what I will and won’t do, and what I need to do to satisfy my conscience. For instance, I will financially support a Protestant missionary (and pray for them) but I wouldn’t go on a short-term Protestant mission or teach Sunday school. We also belong to a Protestant small “couples” group, which I have no problem with. Likewise, I am obligated to go to Mass every Sunday, so alternating Sundays just does not work for me. Likewise, she has no problem with infant baptism, Catholic education, coming to Mass occasionally, etc… Lots of thorny issues, lots of give-and-take, but we have managed to resolve many of them. It’s actually pretty peaceful right now.
Very interesting comments.
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I grew up with and am currently surrounded by Arminians. Through a lot of study and prayer, I’ve come to the conclusion that I definately fall on the Calvinist side of the theological spectrum and adhere to complementariansim. I certainly don’t feel as if either of those are hills to die on and yet all my friends and family want to pick fights and debate with me.
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Wow. I’m a Lutheran with close friends who are Catholic, Orthodox, evangelical protestant (SBC, then Evangelical Free). I’m stunned. Perhaps having had Catholic ancestors and an Orthodox cousin helped me, but I find myself relating to any of my friends with a true faith in Christ, and the differences have never caused friction. I respect their traditions, and we rarely debate the fine points, which may help. I even stifle myself when my Orthodox friend talks about the importance of a church being “canonical”, except for a one-time observation about the head of the Russian church. 🙂
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in a nutshell: i became a christian in college, started attending a church where people just loved me and let me be human and broken and normal, found a beautiful community of faith. a year later i decided i was a calvinist, started reading toooo much and decided that this church was too “emergent” or something, so i eventually phased myself out shortly before i graduated and moved away.
i am still friends with many of the people there, even though we don’t see each other except for 1 or 2 times a year.
once i moved, my husband and i picked a church because we “liked the theology.” it was reformed, etc. we still attend.
but in my heart if hearts i desperately miss that first church, even if i disagreed with the finer points of their theology and methodology of “doing church” simply because i had friends, i was learning how to live with and love other people, learning how to let myself accept grace and love from others. and, mostly, i just loved jesus there. in a really simple, not complicated way. i want so much just to sing and worshio my savior without picking apart the lyrics of every worship song and deconstructing everything and seeing it it matches up with what i have decided is “good” theology.
at our current church, we have excellent theology and my soul is dying. or so it feels. i don’t have that same sense of community or experience of the body of Christ there. and i can’t help feeling like maybe i made a mistake — theology isn’t the answer. i miss loving people and loving Jesus.
i don’t know if any of this made any sense. it’s hard to type and nurse a baby at the same time….
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I was raised in mainline Protestant churches by a mother raised in one of those denominations and a father who was a lapsed Catholic. In 7th grade, I was sent to Catholic school for the superior education and the moral foundation. In college, I was lost without the cocoon of a spiritually based environment and found friends who shared my values among the evangelicals on campus. I was never comfortable, however, with the worship or with all of the theology. This came to a head when I taught in a Christian school that was dominated by Charismatics and theologies like the prosperity gospel. When I got a job in a Catholic high school, it was like coming home. In April, I finally was baptized and confirmed Catholic and in June, I married a Catholic.
My conversion was accepted with great joy by my father who grew up in an Irish Catholic family, and my mother knows it is the right spiritual home for me. But some of my old friends from that evangelical world have been very difficult. The woman who was the maid of honor at my wedding seemed accepting of everything at first. She worked with me at the Christian school. But shortly after the wedding, we had lunch and she said something about me “already being saved” so being Catholic was okay for me, just a matter of “worship style”. Then she said something about me having “theological differences” with the Church. I explained that it is not about “worship style” and that I do not have theological differences with my Church and that I don’t really buy into the whole sinner’s prayer-get saved theology either.
I haven’t heard from her since.
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Great post, you are walking out a tough path, I’m praying for you. I’m still learning the “shut up” rule myself.
Greg R
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The campus preacher you describe brings “Bro.” Jed to mind.
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I must be lucky. Most of my family, friends, and acquaintances aren’t quick to pass harsh judgments on differing opinions, even if they differ greatly from theirs. Don’t get me wrong, there have been some debates (even heated one) on occasion, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a relationship-changer.
I’m pretty sure my bro-in-law is a YEC — and he knows I’m not. My good friend is a Calvinist, and I’m very much not, and we both respect each other.
Now, where there has ever been conflict, it’s generally been more with church leadership — and it had more to do with my intolerance than theirs. But even that was more actions and methodology than theology.
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Ironically, every one of these conflicts has at its root the Bible and a person’s / church’s / denomination’s understanding of it.
How does the Word of God produce such fruits? Acting through fallen humanity, of course, but what drives these different actions and behaviors and emotions? Sin? The Holy Spirit?
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I had grown up in evangelical churches but had never been to a pentecostal church till i got to college. They were different in that they would often talk about hearing from God and God telling them to do this or that. I wanted to hear from God too so I prayed alot and spent more time reading the bible and was very active in the felloship. I started hearing from God alot; which was exciting at first but eventually it got excessive and I wished that he would give me some peace. I didn’t want to hear those voices in my head any more.
Looking back, I think the pentecostal church was not the best choice for me. THerapist told me recently I have OCD, and I think my obsessiveness combined with my newfound ability to achieve spiritual ecstasy was not a good mix. I think it caused me to hear things in my head that weren’t from God but were my own imaginings. I made some very silly and regretable decisions based on these imaginings. Since then, the idea of God talking to me makes me feel queasy.
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Jo Ann,
Here’s a HUG for you. I just wish that I could do more.
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Well, you not only swam the Tiber but the Adriatic…
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IMonk, you not only physically resemble my writing partner (the burned-out country preacher), you even have a lot of the same problems he has. Not the wife-swam-the-Tiber one, but the church-lady monitoring of everything you say, the job-on-thin-ice one, being too old to start over in another church, and the future prospects of “over-educated WalMart greeter”.
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I think IMonk refers to this as the “Calvinist Cage Stage”, when they’re so On Fire With The TRUTH they’re better off locked in a cage where they can’t harm anybody.
My writing partner (a burned-out pastor in rural Pennsylvania) has frequent run-ins these days with what he calls “Hyper-Calvinists” — so far into Utter Predestination that to them even God is utterly restricted by Predestination. (Leading to what he calls “Socratic Atheism”, i.e. God is not God, Fate/Destiny/Predestination is. Or Calvin is.) This also gets mixed with Total Depravity worm theology, manifesting in Utter Glee that God Hath Predestined Them (never Me) to Hell. (He says original Calvinists taught Predestination unto Salvation, these guys are stuck on Predestination unto Damnation.)
He has to preach against that a LOT these days. I heard him teach against it at a Wed nite Bible Study last time I visited him.
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Scott,
I can relate to your story. About three years ago I experienced a strong reversion to Catholicism. I was a nominal Catholic who converted from Presbyterian in my early 20s. I’m afraid I wasn’t catechised properly – or maybe I was just too dense to understand what Catholicism was all about.
At any rate, once I fell truly in love with the Catholic Church, the sacraments, etc., and was so eager to share with everyone, especially my parents who are strong Presbyterians. In my enthusiasm, I was in danger of alienating my family. I quickly learned that I needed to keep my mouth shut and let God’s grace change ME so that any testimony to my faith should come from living my life in Christ.
This isn’t to say that I am not prepared to make a defense of my faith. But I’m mindful more and more that I must do so with “gentleness and respect” always (1 Peter 3:15) and in humility considering others as better than myself. (Philippians 2:3).
Your point about God’s grace not being bound by sacraments is so true. I have to remind myself that God loves my family and friends more than I ever will, and my job is simply to live as God has called me to.
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I was raised in an ultra-conservative IFB home – I wore long dresses, a head covering, no rock music, KJV-only, Quiverfull, etc. I was probably more devoted to legalism than even my parents, but as I entered adulthood I began to see how much of what I believed wasn’t in Scripture, my faith in Christ became real instead of works-based, and my theology changed from legalistic IFB to living, balanced charismatic. I thought that since I was an adult, my changes in theology were my own – not at all a form of “rebellion”, that it would be okay. Boy, was I wrong! I went through two very difficult years before being permitted to move away from my parents’ home (not allowed for adult women in the movement we were in), and subsequently with that, my mother left legalism as well, and I’ve had the joy of seeing some of my siblings find good, biblical churches where they can find Christ. My father and I will probably never agree on theology – he still holds to the “old ways”, but I have a great relationship with my parents today.
It was painful…but oh so worth it.
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I still get cornered by her father-in-law who gives me articles showing me the truth about Catholicism and wants to have private discussions with me about doctrine.
“The Truth(TM) about Catholicism(TM)” as in Nimrod, Semiramis, Tammuz, Mystery Babylon, Satanic Death Cookies, Pope as Antichrist, and Maria Monk? (At least the other Truthers — the 9/11 guys — come up with something original once in a while…)
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Currently my issue is with an old friend who became a Christian and has since joined what I call a “cult.†I don’t mean that in Walter Martin’s sense of a pseduo-Christian heresy; they’re not heretics. I mean that in the sociologist’s sense of a self-isolated group that professes strong devotion to the every whim of a certain pastor.
I believe the formal term for this is “Aberrant Christian Group”.
The Walter Martin definition of “cult” really messed up a lot of people like me in the Seventies who found themselves in similarly rigid and abusive groups. The Christian cult watchers of the period defined “cult” only by theology and doctrine a la Martin; Christian groups with orthodox theology (usually hardcore Evangelical) but cultic-abusive behavior slipped under their radar. Many of these abusive groups used their theological status (i.e. Proof We’re NOT A Cult) as a further weapon to abuse their congregations.
My blowup with the abusive group came in 1976 when (1) my widowed father remarried, My Christian Brethren (TM) did not approve and high-pressured me to “be discipled” at their “Compound”, and (2) I discovered Dungeons & Dragons and got to see one of the origins of the later Satanic Panic.
Since then, my main “Theology Changed Relationships” horror stories have to do with Uber-Culture Warriors and Young Earth Creationists. (Outside of specifically-Christian horror stories, I encountered something similar from my “Apple Akbar!” Mackinista ex-friends when I switched my home system from Mac to Windows PC. It aint’ just theology that gets the “Die, Heretic!” reactions.
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Wow !!
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Especially when to the “John Hagee style” neither Arabs or Israelis are people — only pieces to move about the End Time Prophecy gameboard.
That’s why I call Christian Zionism (TM) “Anti-Semitic Zionism”.
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So many of these comments make me sad and angry that I feel I should share my favorite story of theological differences.
A good friend of mine that I hadn’t had many real theological discussions with shared that he he was a pretty hard core Calvinist (obviously I am not). I shared that I could not agree with predestination. He said that I was obviously predestined not to believe in predestination and as a Calvinist he would just have to accept that. We laughed.
It’s become my standard answer anytime I’m asked my views on the subject. I enjoy the self-contradiction.
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I am trying to figure out how to feel after reading many of these comments. If the 4 basic feelings are mad, sad, glad, and afraid/fear, I’d elimate glad and keep the other 3. I’m sad about all the pain, much of it needless in my opinion, mad because of some of the “garbage,” in my opinion again, cited, and really afraid in ways that much of this continues in so many places. I am glad that God still works, Jesus saves, and the Holy Spirit transforms lives in spite of all this “stuff” happening. As I’ve noted here before, some humility would help in many of these “unhealthy” situations. “Lord, have mercy!”
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My husband and I were baby Christians when we left the United Methodist church. We didn’t know what our theology was but knew that we believed that we should baptize our babies and that the Bible was the word of God (not just stories told to explain the author’s environment as our pastor believed). Finding an Evangelical church that baptized infants proved difficult but we finally found a Lutheran church that believed the Bible was the word of God.
We were pretty happy for a couple months until I heard what the church believed during their Confirmation ceremony one Sunday morning. I knew that I didn’t agree with their view of infant baptism but by then we were members of the church and my husband didn’t want to leave (it was really traumatic for him leaving the Methodist church since we were members there and then leaving the Lutheran church soon after joining proved to be too much for him. I used to tease him that his Catholic roots were showing 🙂
Eventually, I realized I was Reformed and given the ability to teach the Bible (as was my husband). Over the years I mostly taught women who didn’t attend my church, I lead an outreach Bible study. But then I taught a class on Romans and opened it up to women at my church. One of the ladies didn’t like what I had to say, even though it was shared theology between Lutherans and Presbyterians, so she went to the pastor and complained. I explained to my pastor that she had problems with Lutheran theology but he said I shouldn’t teach Reformed theology at a Lutheran church and this message was reiterated to my husband by an elder of the church. I promised that I would state what I was teaching was my opinion and would also teach the party line but they felt that wouldn’t work because I was in a position that would influence women to accept my opinion. (BTW, I completely agree with what my pastor and elder did, I have no problem with them protecting their flock from what they considered bad theology).
This provided the push my husband needed to get us out of the church and into a Presbyterian church where I can just point to the Confessions when anyone gives me grief about what I’m teaching. I’ve never been happier but regret that we had to leave our church family over doctrine. I still miss them but I’m so glad I can teach the word of God (as I view it) and not have to edit it to please men (Galatians 1:10).
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troublemaker.
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My dad ascribes to what some term an “Identity Theology” which centers around the belief that Anglo-Saxon people are the “true” Lost Tribes of Israel, and that Jews are really fakers, possibly begotten by Satan himself through Cain. (This theology also overlaps with various and sundry conspiracy theories). After reading the entire New Testament and Romans in particular at the age of 18, I had my eyes opened to the sickness and evil (not to mention downright inaccuracies) of his racist belief system. It’s been a wedge between us ever since, as my refusal to agree with him is interpreted by him as disrespect. It’s one thing to disagree with loved ones on “nonessentials”; it’s another to have a loved one believe (and live out) something this wacko and sick in the name of Jesus.
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I was the member of a Southern Baptist church through high school and into college that styled itself after Willow Creek / Saddleback. I owe a lot to the church, particular to the youth minister and the adult volunteers who gave their time and money to afford us the opportunity to study our Bibles and forge friendships that last today despite distance and circumstance. However, during my first couple of years of college, I was introduced to reformed theology through our college ministry leader and I was surprised. I was surprised that no one had ever mentioned this before. I was surprised that I’d only ever heard a caricature of “unloving predestination” before. Furthermore, I was attending Bible college through a local seminary, and I became aware of the rich history of the Christian church and couldn’t believe I never knew this stuff. I didn’t fault my church, per se, because I was the product of many churches. Still, this was the church where I’d been 5 years, and I’d never been in any place so long before. I may have been in some very theologically minded, intentionally instructional churches before and never known about it. ; )
Anyways, as I grew and learned, I loved it. At the same time, I saw more starkly the strong anti-theological and educational bias of the pastor. He would caricature theological training as pointless and frivolous in sermons and in such a way convince the congregation that that’s exactly what it was. I had a close friend ask me at one point if I really was learning anything useful at all. At a Bible college. At a seminary. With godly men devoted to teaching the Scriptures and the history of our denomination, theology, and faith. Yikes! I was indeed learning, and I was making an honest attempt to be patient and never make my grievance about any particular point of theology (though obviously my new reformed-informed doctrine of salvation was at odds with the mega-church revivalistic style doctrine I was regularly encountered with). At one point, our church hosted new seminary students for a brunch and meet-and-greet, and the pastor again insulted their pursuit of a theological education from such a place. I also found myself increasingly alienated from ministry leaders I was involved with when I questioned things like wasteful spending on technological doodads and/or a new skate park behind the church as an effective way to minister to our community.
In one very painful moment, the legitimacy of my faith was called into question, as I “seemed to always question the things God was doing.” In this particular moment, I was presumed to have convinced one of the high schoolers he wasn’t in fact converted a second time, even though I hadn’t spoken to him. I cleared up the situation but never had reconciliation. There were more and more situations where I, granting my own imperfections and inability to deal with this situation “to the letter of correctness,” was ostracized to the point where I found my college minister (who had since been removed from the church) and asked him what to do. I didn’t want to abandon my friends or the members who had loved me through my early college years. I still had close friends that I loved and couldn’t stand to leave behind (remember, I was always moving around as a child). But at the same time, I wasn’t being ministered the gospel. And I mean the pervasive, build your life on this, it’s “what-we’re-all-about” gospel. I was encouraged at that time to find a church that regularly preached the gospel for the strengthening of my faith and ministry. And so I did, and I’ve found new freedom from sin, more intentional community, and a new depth to the Scriptures I didn’t know existed.
I’m still in regular contact with my friends. The pastor has since gone due to circumstances revolving around ethical issues. The youth pastor who cared for me through high school has returned and is leading the group back toward personal discipleship. And my friends have searched out good teaching and fellowship on their own, so that we’re practically eye-to-eye. And honestly, the folks that I was having such a hard time with are no longer around. The church has gone through a lot, and I still pray for it and its leaders. But the break I had with them was so painful, and the fellowship I experience now is so… not, that I can’t ever imagine leaving where I am to rejoin my friends (as much as I sometimes wish I could).
My split here wasn’t over Calvinism ruining my relationship. It was me being shown there’s more to Christianity than moralism, that the theology of the reformation is rich, biblical, and worth studying. It was over an overtly antagonistic position toward theological education, even as the theology preached from the pulpit was at times incomprehensible. It was over sin, by me or against me, that wasn’t dealt with with repentance and forgiveness (maybe an issue in practical theology?). It was the result of alienation and misunderstanding, and it might have just been that I was taking a first step away from the Majority Evangelicalism and wished it was a step I was taking with the church instead of from it. However, with a CEO -> Board style ministry leadership, this was not to be. I’ve found an imperfect, gospel cenetered church I call home, and it’s the only reason I still live where I live.
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I was an OP pasor for a number of years. Slowly changed my views on the ministry of the Holy Spirit and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Basically I guess I was becoming what today is called a “Reformed Charismatic”, but this was in the mid-80’s so I didn’t know what I was. I kept these views to myself, didn’t want to divide the church, while I knew my time in the denomination was probably drawing to a close. One Sunday, while preaching through a Psalm that had much instruction about praising God in worship, I ended the sermon and introduced the closing song with the suggestion that if anyone wanted to raise their hands, (as mentioned in the Psalm) while we sang, to do so. I did and a few others did. As I stood by the door shaking everyone’s hand while they left, an elder’s wife came by and instead of extending her hand looked at me and said, “you are repulsive, and what you did is repulsive to me”. I said, thanks……. and you have a great day. Later this woman wrote a letter to the presbytery asking that charges of “heterodoxy” be brought against me. ronh
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Don’t worry… I totally get it.
Thanks for not banning me, I appreciate that.
Peace.
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Thanks…
It’s a blessing someone is listening!!!
BTW I’m not a Mormon nor JW nor a Oneness Pentecostal, but I’m not worried about not being a Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant. Labels are the very thing that have hurt me and a lot of people in the body of Christ. No wonder Paul asked the church in Corinth to stop the labeling thing.
God bless you Matilda.
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It’s not a matter “inappropriate beliefs.” Do I ban atheists? Of course not.
But if we are having a discussion of baseball, and someone who believes there should be 4 strikes instead of 3 enters the discussion, the odds of moderation increase to the extent they press their point.
The most common moderation at this blog are people who say “this discussion shouldn’t be happening.” I deleted a friend’s comment saying that yesterday. Not a matter of beliefs. I’m moderating a discussion here.
Again, if I am having a discussion on “Evangelicals and sacraments,” and you show up with “there are no evangelicals” or “there are no sacraments,” it’s not a matter of beliefs, but a matter of how you conduct yourself in the discussion that will prevail. Is the leash shorter? Sure. But you’re still welcome.
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I was consistently held at arm’s length in the MOPS group I was part of for a year and a half. See, I’m Lutheran. It was clear I had to “prove” by my “fruits” that I was Really Saved despite my “dead” church membership and lack of a clear decision for Jesus.
Eventually, one of the women told me that I was different from all other Lutherans – that I had studied and “figured things out” and she was sure that I was saved, despite being, you know, Lutheran. But then, of course, the question hanging in the air is why, if I was Really Trully Saved, would I *stay* in a dead church? ::rolls eyes::
I ended up leaving that MOPS group when it became clear that the “devotions” were nothing more than those stupid forwarded inspirational emails read aloud to the group, but that’s another story. Had the women been less stand-offish, I might have stayed despite the dorky devotions, just for the social aspect and for the chance to get out of the house.
I don’t treat other Christians as provisional Christians, even if there’s great theological differences between us. God does the saving; who am I to be final arbiter?
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I totally understand your point, and I appreciate your response. But please kindly consider my point. If there are some people out there that don’t fit some theological views, don’t discard them as unfit for the love and grace of God that covers a multitude of shortcomings and CAN be manifested thru meaningful relationships between christians.
I’m not insisting I’m orthodox, ’cause clearly I’m not… from an historical point of view… but I believe that that doesn’t make me a non-christian. I’m not worried about not being of a particular denomination, actually I’ve managed to be part of an SBC church for almost all my life, but as you adequately put, things are changing in the evangelical landscape, and that’s why I decided to abandon my evangelical denomination and seek for brothers and sisters that insist in the LOVE of GOD and not theology as a means of real communion and relationships.
As for me, I understand that I have to keep my beliefs and arguments for myself if I join a discussion in your blog. Don’t want to upset anyone. I’m sorry if my comment was not appropriate.
Peace and Love
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Jonathan, you said “I felt as if I had always had the big picture deliberately hid from me. ”
I felt exactly the same way when I stumbled accross the depth of Christian literature that I never knew existed. For many years, I imagined the likes of Meyer to be the depth. Fortunately those days are gone, this morning I the pleasure of trying to wrap my mind around LeRon Shultz whilst on the underground! What a fantastic way to pass the time commuting,
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Umm… What I’m getting from Charlie is more of a “I don’t know” vibe. He says in his first post that he’s not saying he doesn’t believe Jesus isn’t the son of God or even that he’s denying his divinity – which the JW’s most emphatically do.
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“imonkaterians”
Cute, Jeff!
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I was born and raised Catholic. My family then left Catholicism for Evangelicalism when I was 10. When I was 35 I reverted to Catholicism. The initial shock of my becoming Catholic was intense. I was told that I was spiritually abusing my children, joining an apostate church, that bad things would begin happening to me as I would fall under God’s discipline, etc.
This was all terribly disheartening as I believed the Catholic Church was where I needed to be to follow Christ. And the joy (fullness) I felt at being a new Catholic naturally lead to my wanting my family and friends to convert – and too much zeal. This zeal had its own set of problems. My family felt assaulted, I imagine, to some degree. Then I heard an Orthodox convert relate some advice his spiritual director had given him on his conversion: Be silent about your faith for three years. I’ve tried following this advice; I am learning to be quiet. Three years is not enough for me, because I still do not love well enough (probably never will – I love better with my mouth shut). In my silence I’ve found that friends and family still loved us dearly, but often felt/feel awkward and even condemned by my conversion and conversation. They felt I’d removed myself from their spiritual intimacy, while I, all along, felt as if they had removed themselves from my spiritual intimacy.
God is love. I believe his grace is given to me in a special way in the sacraments of the Catholic Church, but his grace is not bound by them. He loved me as an Evangelical (and as a Fundamentalist, as a Dispensationalist, as a YECer) just as he loves me as a Catholic. I will always be learning this.
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The reasons for banning are in the FAQ, rule 10.
It has nothing to do with what you believe, and everything to do with whether your comment is appropriate for the post or appropriately presented. You failed in one or the other.
I make it clear that if the comment is consistently inappropriate, then it’s going to be deleted. A non-Trinitarian insisting they are an orthodox Christian is in exactly that position. Your position has been historically condemned and would prevent you from joining every Christian denomination I know except one.
It’s your decisiion, like our Mormon friends, to ignore history and orthodoxy and blame other Christians for not being generous. I’d appreciate it if you’d be realistic: non-trinitarianism puts you in the camp with Mormons and JW, not Catholics, Orthodox or Protestants.
This isn’t my fault. It’s your choice.
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Hi MIchael, long time reader but first time I’ve commented.
I married into a very tight brethren group, (not Exclusives or Londoners). This was somewhat of a shock, particularly the dispensational side of things. However, I settled down and we had children. My husband then came into contact with some fairly extreme pentecostal friends and his thinking swung violently in the opposite direction to what he had been brought up in.
I had been looking for a way out and we both left after being told we were going to Satan. I don’t like labels but could probably accept charismatic Anglican, still fairly evangelical, but I’ve moved “up the candle” as the saying goes.
He has continued to move further to extreme health and wealth stuff, hearing God audibly every morning at 3:00 am. It is then that he supposedly hears the most way out ideas that he believes God told him. He will influence all nations, will control multi-billion budget, eliminate poverty and hunger worldwide etc.
However, God also happened to tell him that when we were young, he (husband) did not know how to hear God at all. Consequently, I was not the one whom he was supposed to marry. God apparently did not regard us as married so husband could do as he liked and he did. Many times. Eventually God told him to tell me to get out. I asked what he had been doing to have children etc. Living in sin as the old saying goes? I was just told that while my logic sounded right, he believed all this rubbish. I pointed out verses and themes etc, to no avail.
We are now separated and divorce proceedings are happening. He doesn’t see why this has to happen, because he believes God has broken us up. He can’t see need to the state to have any role. He’s now apparently moved on into even whackier ideas and the church he attends has grown weirder as i hear on the grapevine from time to time.
Me? I’m enjoying fairly high Anglican liturgy with bells and smells, totally different to the small church I grew up in and am enjoying reading the patristic writings. He’s told me that God has told him I’m on the road to hell.
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“I can’t wait for the first time she hears me preach”
Oh dear, you sound like me 20 years ago.
I would wait as long as possible.
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*pentEcostal
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I became a Calvinist 5 years ago at 19, jumped full into the classic militant phase, and promptly made at least one friend cry. thru the years alienated plenty of people because I was RIGHT. a year ago this was revealed to me as idolatry.
word thing I ever saw…pentacostal holiness preacher came to campus to preach the gospel. after calling every sorority girl a whore, every guy in a pink shirt a faggot, and every masturbator hopelessly hellbound, he told an openly lost spectator that his dad was in hell because he committed suicide. the guy wept, and then slapped him, thank god.
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I forgot to add that a pastor was saying tonight how some people have blinders in their eyes and they can’t see the truth and how God wants to set us free of that spiritual blindness. He asked us to pray for someone in our own life who needs that. We all bow ours heads and begin to pray (in mild Pentecostal form). My fiancee’s mom happens to be sitting right behind us and while I’m praying I feel a hand set onto my shoulders. I stopped for a second and thought to myself ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ but sure enough it was her.
If I had to call myself something, I’d say an Emergent-Orthodox-Pentecostal. Pentecostal in prayer, Emergent in my more missional focus and somewhat post-modern way of thinking and Orthodox in my best efforts at practicing the Orthodox faith/tradition passed down through the centuries. Some might call me an OXYMORON, but that’s my life.
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It’s so ironic that I was just thinking today I must be the only one facing serious issues because of theology. It’s good to know that I’m not alone. Many of these stories have encouraged me.
I come from a non-Christian upbringing up until I was around 13 when I started going to an Assembly of God Church. I’ve been going there because it just seemed so right and for a few years it was (I’m in college now by the way). Anyway it all began to change (about 3 years ago) when I realized that the answers that the denomination had told me for many things about God, the Bible, hermeneutics, eschatology, soteriology, etc. didn’t work for me after I had read the Bible through a couple of times. I just couldn’t find where they were getting some of the stuff taught and preached. I began to realize that God is bigger than one denomination and the past century of the church. I gained an interest in early Christianity, the church fathers, the desert fathers on into people like St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas a Kempis, Martin Luther (he wasn’t like the guy I had always thought he was; he’s much better) and finally catching up with us in the 21st cent. Rob Bell, N.T. Wright, Scot McKnight. When reading in these many different areas, I felt as if I had always had the big picture deliberately hid from me. I still go for the most part to this same church and I am sometimes shunned because for one thing I don’t have it out for Obama, am not in any sense a prosperity gospel or word of faith kind of guy, and am just tired of everything in the Bible being super spiritualized when it is talked about or preached.
The next problem is that my fiancee’s mom who used to think the world of me when I was a good little Charismatic boy now doesn’t quite so. My fiancee is okay with my dissonance to a point (she honestly couldn’t care less about theology). She wouldn’t change a thing about me because she loves me for a who I am but I can’t say the same for her mother. Her mom and aunt actually have prayer meetings together for me because ‘the spirit of this world has blinded me so much’ because I don’t hate the President (here you either love him or hate him, no in between), I’m in between amillennialism and historic premillennialism leaning much more towards the former, and basically because I don’t enjoy the church I attend which they started attending around 3 years ago when and where I first met my fiancee. She always has Beth Moore, Joyce Meyers, Perry Stone, Paula White, Benny Hinn, Rod Parsley, Jentezen Franklin (whom I till recently liked), and many more on the t.v. or their book in hand. It drives me nuts how she always super-analyzes every situation as a demonic force behind it and we need to just tell the devil that we won’t be sick or he won’t take our blessings away!!!!! I’m just glad that I’m moving far away from her very soon. I’ll soon transfer colleges to become a missionary. I’m very much a missional guy and I kind of got that from my own studies (aside from what God put within me to be) than from my Christian background and from the people she would have me listen to.
I can’t wait for the first time she hears me preach. That will surely be interesting. From my opening quote from the Confessions to my realistic, down to earth reading of the Scriptures, to my finishing where we all partake in Eucharist and wonder how we are Christ’s body and how he asks us to be broken for humanity today. Not our entitlement to health, wealth and much more in this life but a promise of life in a new world where God has put everything back together.
Shalom
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I was married and divorced before I became a believer (she was an unbeliever, too… she left me) and my first church believed there was no divorce for any reason (and if a divorce occurred, the two would actually still be married in God’s eyes), and no remarriage for any reason, supposedly biblical. I later changed my view (which included my personal case) and my friends said they would not even attend any wedding of mine, as to do so would be to give approval to adultery, which of course no Christian could do.
Later on, I dated a Christian girl, and her parents (who held the same beliefs) banned me from their home when they found out about my previous divorce. But this actually led to the parents studying the issue out with their pastors, and they changed their views. We didn’t marry, but for other reasons.
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I’m sorry for your pain. It sounds like an extremely difficult situation to be in. Continue to hold your convictions but not as tightly as you hold your relationships.
I am currently involved in a church plant where there is a great diversity of theological views. However, most of the community believes in YEC, Dispensational Eschatology (Premillenialism), and although most aren’t KJV only, NRSV & TNIV are shunned.
I have yet to run into any serious problems (the pastor disagrees while accepting me). Yet there is often a bit of tension when I am pressed about my views. Reading the TNIV/NRSV while believing in Theistic Evolution and Partial-Preterism is not favored by the majority.
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In some christian circles they’re willing to welcome an atheist but not even consider speaking with a non-trinitarian.
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“We don’t know what w believe past Jesus is the only way.”
…add to that “and he really, truly, deeply, passionately loves me very very much,” and keep fighting. Your story inspires me.
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I’ve been blessed a LOT of times by reading to the iMonk; and I did this for almost a year without posting any comments, until one day a decided to participate in a post about the evangelical collapse. Suddenly, out of the blue I was banned because I suggested that I don’t believe in the trinitarian formula that we inherited from the “church fathers”.
I’ve been a christian since I was kid (raised in a christian family), I’ve learned theology since my teens and can recite it by heart, and not just one denominations but from a lot of other traditions; ’cause I believe that if we want to be able to have meaningful relationships with other christian brothers you have to be able to not upset them with stuff they don’t believe. (Romans 14)
I’ve seen how trinitarians are so proud about “being so certain” about God’s nature and how harsh and offensive they become with those of whom that feel that the trinitarian formula is a stretch from what is revealed in the Bible. But it seems to them that this part of theology had been settled long ago and that any one trying to understand it in a different way is an heretic. (or un-orthodox). I always asked my self: since when the agreement in the Nicean creed became the word of God? ’cause the way trinitarians defend their position until this very day is like they were defending the Bible (inerrant and infallible).
I’m not saying Jesus is not the Son of God, or that he is not God himself, but I don’t feel comfortable with the trinitarian formula.
My point is that Jesus said that we will know who are from him BY TEHIR FRUITS (not their theology)… Paul said that the fruit of the Spirit is LOVE, PATIENCE, etc…
I’ve not yet met a trinitarian that exhibits the fruit of the Spirit any time that someone even remotely implies that the trinitarian formula may not be as biblical as one can wish.
Please don’t ban me again!
Peace and Love.
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My wife and I do not discuss those issues on the net, by mutual agreement. As I said, folks are monitoring what I say.
The largest aspect of the crisis for me was that I can no longer serve in a typical SBC church. So when I leave my current assignment, I’ll be unable to go to another SBC church unless it’s very unusual, and I’m too old to start over in another church. So her move has major implications for me. That causes me severe theological bitterness.
See you at a Wal Mart near you. I’ll be the over educated greeter 🙂
I did write about this when it happened, but almost lost my job for doing so.
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Michael, I’ve hesitated to post on this thread since I don’t really know if my experience is really “on topic” or not. But I’ve decided to go ahead and comment for what it’s worth.
My whole life has been shaped by pluralism. My mother’s family, for instance, was raised Baptist, but none of the children remained that. One brother married a presbyterian woman and became presbyterian. Another married a Louisiana Catholic and became Roman Catholic. My mother? Let’s just say she explored many things, Christian (and a huge variety within this category) and not (also fairly broadly) before ending up a very serious and devout Roman Catholic fairly late in life. I have one cousin who married into a Jewish family and is at least participating in raising their children Jewish. (I don’t know if he actually converted or not.) Before a tragic story that I’m not going to go into, my brother and his then wife were on the cover of the SBC’s Home Life magazine some years ago. That’s immediate family just on my mother’s side. My father’s side of the family is no less complex.
Me? Growing up, I experimented with everything my mother did and more beside (especially of the non-Christian variety) until I was a teen. (I skipped out on the charismatic house church she led for some months when I was a teenager.) As a teen I actually tried to connect in a mountain SBC church until being a teen father and refusing to hide my daughter from sight got me kicked out. From the pulpit. I pretty much gave up on Christianity after that and focused on non-Christian spiritualities and religions. For a pretty long time. I won’t go into my first two marriages. Neither lasted and the second almost destroyed me. “Theology” or even religion was the least of my concerns.
When I married my current wife, she was a lapsed Roman Catholic and I was pretty adamantly not just non-Christian, but anti-Christian, though I hid that from her parents and the Lutheran pastor who married us. (In all honesty, that pastor was a huge contributing factor in my eventual reevaluation of Christianity, though I doubt he ever knew it.) Her parents were less than thrilled at my wife marrying a non-Catholic, though I think her mother warmed to me before she passed away. I know, after nearly two decades, her father has.
My friends are all over the religious map. Currently my two closest friends are an SBC minister and a “spiritual” atheist. (That’s his description of his perspective on life. Take it as you will.) My children? Quite a bit of variation there as well.
I recount all that to say that I’ve spent my entire life from my youngest years maintaining relationships in spite of spiritual, theological, and religious differences. It sometimes takes more work. You don’t get to assume much. And sometimes you offend when you didn’t mean to. If the person matters to you, you work through it.
It’s as simple and as difficult as that.
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Hey Michael,
Thanks for sharing this, If you don’t mind me asking, I wanted to ask you what was so devastating for you about your wife’s conversion to Catholicism? Was it the theology that you disagreed with, or that your wife would be attending another church, or the responses of other christians or what? have you written about this elsewhere?
Thanks
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I hope a lot of people who believe right theology is the answer are reading this discussion.
Email this to a few key theologizers on the net. It’s the dose of reality they’ve needed.
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When I married my wonderful bride, we were both relatively young and committed to Restoration Movement principles (credo-baptism only saves, communion every week, etc…) About four years ago I started asking lots of question that weren’t being answered by anyone in my church, or the evangelical movement as a whole, and decided to explore. The long and short is that I made a two-year pit-stop into high Church Lutheranism (LCMS), but eventually landed in the Orthodox Church. I’m here to stay.
Unfortunately for both of us, my wife has not shared my enthusiasm and it grinds on us daily. Here’s a laundry list of theological issues we struggle with:
1). The Liturgy. For an evangelical, this may not look like theology, but for Orthodox Christians one cannot separate worship from theology. We don’t view worship as a style, but as a timeless continuity with the Church of all ages. Our forms and practices are designed to keep us connected to that Church, while also fostering a sense of spirituality that is humble, Trinitarian centered, and introspective. My wife does not understand the liturgy, and isn’t sure why we can’t be a bit more modern. I can’t understand why anyone would prefer to innovate rather than participate in forms of worship that share a relationship with the early Church.
2). Infant baptism. When we were married, I was absolutely certain that infant baptism was an early innovation that had absolutely no Biblical support. Suffice it to say, I now reject the believers-only baptism model and see infant baptism implied all over the place in the Scriptures and Church history. My wife is willing to hear me out on this one, but she cried the night before my youngest son’s baptism just three weeks after his birth. She isn’t completely against it, but she still has difficulty seeing it when “there aren’t any examples of babies being baptized in the Bible.”
3). Sola Scriptura. I used to be a “chapter and verse” guy, but now almost all my references are marked by observations from Church Fathers. My wife gets this, but her paradigm is still largely shaped by a POV in which Scripture is read apart from any historical context. So, while she can in theory understand how it is helpful to read the Church Fathers, the conclusions that she often reaches are still firmly grounded in a solo/nuda Scriptura perspective.
4). Icons. This isn’t as much an issue as it used to be, but she is still embarrassed by my icon corner and would recoil in horror to see it in a central part of the house. She does understand the reasoning. I think she’d just be mortified to have a Protestant friend over.
5). Estrangement from Protestant Friends. We tried doing the “we’re still friends even though we’re different” thing with Protestant friends and it just didn’t work. We are friends, but we really don’t have much in common in our spirituality. I positively loathe praise and worship and they think liturgy is dead and boring. I quote Chrysostom and they talk about Beth Moore and Rick Warren. It’s just not the same.
I’m sure there’s more, but that’s what most stands out. In all, I am very blessed to have a wife who, while not entirely understanding the “hows” and “whys,” hasn’t put up a massive road block on everything. I’ve had the sense that she is slowly moving toward Orthodoxy, but it is very, very slow. I have learned to just shut up and let the Holy Spirit work. I tend to make a mess of things and she seems to embrace Orthodoxy a lot more when I don’t talk. 🙂
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I grew up in the Southern Baptist denomination. “Went forward” at a young age and was baptized. (Didn’t want to go to Hell!) Thought as I grew older that I had my “fire insurance”. Fell away in a huge way. Started going to Calvary Chapel. Thought I really understood things (spiritually) now. Went forward again. Baptized again. (This time it must be for real!) Fell away again. Way away! Came back to Calvary. Wondered if I should be baptized again. Pastor said not necessary. Been on antidepressants since I was 18. Calvary pastor told me there was no such thing as a chemical inbalance in the brain. Said if I continued to take my meds that I was no different than an alcoholic or “pothead”. Stopped meds, had to be hospitalized. Pastor told my husband to go get me out of the satanic psych hospital. Fulfilled pastor’s prophecy (sarcasm alert) and became alcoholic/pill-popper. Came back this time to a non-denominational church. Became very involved (worship) for nearly 10 years. Left church after becoming Calvinist. Tried to fit in somewhere. Never could. (Couldn’t measure up.) My husband is so miserable spiritually. (me too, I guess) Says he feels like he’s in no man’s land. We don’t know what we believe past Jesus is the only way. I’m 53 and exhausted. Very discouraged.
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I have a very good friend that insists on “winning” almost all theological discussions we enter into. It seems to me that every discussion is a debate. A debate must have somebody prevailing and it can’t be me. If he senses the discussion is not going his way he becomes angry and condescending- at which point I refuse to continue the discussion. I just drop it. Which really makes him more angry.
I find the best solution is to just try to avoid religious or theological discourse entirely. We go to same church- non-denominational evangelical. Our ideas are not very different.
I value our friendship above any theological differences.
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I wasn’t going to enter this discussion but when KBryan mentioned the reaction to his Amillenial viewpoint being harshly received, I sure could relate. This is a bit of ancient history but in my senior year in Southwest Baptist College, in the Eschatology class I was the lone Amillenialist in a large room full of Premillilenialists of many differant stripes. Each Eschatological point of view had one person to present that viewpoint to the class. Being the lone Amil, I was by default the guy to present that case. I was jeered, hooted at, laughed at, mocked and generally insulted. This also included the Prof. I have to tell you that after that I just had no sense of belonging to the same anything as those other 30-40 student.
I finally after many many years looked up the old Prof (now at a Seminary and retired) and emailed him and told him what I thought. I am glad I did. Yes, he remembered it too. I forgive him but he showed his real self on that day and I did not like what I saw. Still don’t. Still don’t care much for the students I shared the class with. This was in 77. The rawness is still there.
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I am an evangelical preacher with a son who is engaged to a Roman Catholic gal, and I’m trying to sort this out right now. My son and I have had fairly good discussions together about Roman Catholicism and Scripture, but there are some areas of evangelical theology he is questioning such as whether Christian believers are immediately enter heaven after death or if there is some kind of purgatory experience. I think that he has explored some other areas of Roman Catholic theology, but to my knowledge that is the one area that he is questioning. As far as I know he still holds to salvation by grace through faith, and trusts in Christ alone for salvation. But, my concern is that his theology may be further eroded by what I would consider false teaching, and what he would merely consider exploration of his faith and an increased understanding of where his fiance is coming from. So, that’s an area of tension for me. To be honest, at times, I ask myself if I’m an effective teacher or not. If my own son is questioning what I think of as basic biblical theology what about the rest of the people in my congregation? But, I also realize that people have different routes of faith exploraration, so I will try my best to keep the discussions open with my son, but I have to be very careful how I interact with and question him or he becomes defensive.
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My dad became a Catholic Mariology/Fatima/Faustina/miracle-nerd a couple of years ago, and its been pretty stressful for the rest of us who suddenly aren’t Catholic enough: i.e., we don’t think that Muslims are evil, don’t at this stage of life feel any particular inclination to go to Mass every morning, and don’t care to write checks towards anybody and everybody flying the chi ro on their mast.
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I left Roman Catholocism in college; I was already in the process when I met my husband-to-be, a non-sacramental evangelical. Telling my parents I could not in good conscience get married RC was one of the worst days of my life. At first my mother insisted that, since I wouldn’t be married in the Catholic church, I should get married by a justice of the peace. Thankfully, my parents worked through their disappointment, and our relationship bounced back and remained good until they died. They could see that I was trying to follow God, while my younger sister became a non-practicing Catholic.
My husband and I were NSEs all our married life. We have never really discussed theology in 32 years of marriage… I moved to a conservative PCUSA church 9 years ago during a stretch when he had to work Sundays. That church was too “liturgical” for him, and since the church hired a female pastor he has not even been in the building. He told me I was a blasphemer because I believed women could serve in any area. He regretted using the term once he realized it was not what he meant. But I clearly “did not believe the bible” anymore.
My husband began to attend an SBC church plant once he wasn’t working on Sundays. I visited a couple of times, but I was already in the process of re-evaluating everything but the Trinity and Jesus as the Second Person thereof, and I had passed the place where the Evangelical train reached the end of its tracks… It seemed so alien to me, although I’m very happy he found a place that makes sense and meaning for him. I have since gone on to become Orthodox. It’s been quite a blow for him; I’ve suggested your blog, imonk, as someone who is working through a similar situation, but he’s not interested- nothing personal… We’ve discussed it a little; he thinks I have found something similar to the “religion” of my childhood and I’ve done a sort of sentimental return to following a “system”, where the men wear dresses 🙂 I can’t feel insulted- I’m so deeply grounded and happy. It’s been good in that most of the time we’re being careful about intentionally showing love to one another, and at the same time it’s a real strain. Thank God all this happened after our children grew up and left home.
Dana
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I was traveling in India and came home to find girlfriend had aligned herself with a house-church community where the elders were responsible shepherds to help the members of their house find God’s will in everything from jobs, to use of money, to relationships. I was shocked and it threw us apart. Finally she left that group and we were back together but she was always bitter that our relationship made her leave a faith community that meant so much to her.
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Yes, there is much pain on this page,
but also something very endearing: evidence that people are willing to go through much to seek Christ in a way that is meaningful to them.
We certainly were created differently and there has to be, at some point in our lives, an effort to seek out our own faith with integrity. That may lead us in a direction that we had not expected. We may be surprised by where we find Him. Or where He finds us. 🙂
So don’t be upset by restlessness, a wanting more and more to know of God.
As Augustine said,
‘Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee’.
You will know you are ‘home’ when you experience the peace that is beyond all understanding.
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wow, do you think a raw nerve was touched here? Thanks Michael & all you imonkaterians for the cool community of believers. My wife grew up Catholic and walked away from it when she left home. I grew up in a marginally religious family, new england congregationalists. ( family sidenote : my fathers great uncle was Harry Emerson Fosdick, a giant on the faith landscape in the early-mid 1900’s, author of many books, and despised as a heretic by the fundamentalists of the time. He doesn’t read so heretical to me, though) My wife and I accepted Christ together kneeling at our couch with a very kind and wise old preacher from Maine. After 20 years in the faith, I was called into inner city ministry with the encouragement of my wife, starting a new work in the drug infested ghetto ( yeah, just picture a middle age white guy in an all black neighborhood trying to love people like Jesus did. ) It was awesome and really hard, but I finally found my passion. My wife drifted away from the ministry very quickly, even though she is more gifted than me. After six years in this ministry she was influenced by some women into Messianic Judaism, which is cool except that she became legalistic, and judgmental towards me. I was wrong to eat bacon, didn’t use the right names for God or Jesus, didn’t follow Torah right….We are now separated, hanging on by a thread. I quit the ministry, but still live here, they sell dope right behind my house. I still love God, read the word, am isolated from most people but trying to get healed up. I read Imonk.
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High school girlfriend was a Baptist who started crying one day because she thought I was going to hell, and then we’d be apart forever.
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Well, a number of formally warm relationships have cooled a bit since I moved from an SBC church that I had been attending for 17 years to an ELCA church at the first of this year. A story for another time…
There are three theological topics that have caused damaged or broken relationships in my life:
1) KJV Onlyism – I learned long ago — having attended Pensacola Christian School, a staunch KJV-Only institution — that debating with a KJV-Only advocate is the epitome of a Sisyphan task. I stay out of those conversations. My mother-in-law, bless her heart, wouldn’t let me stay out of one a few years ago when we were visiting at my wife’s aunt’s house. I was calm and tried to gently instruct; some on the other side got pretty emotional. I extracted myself from the debate as tactfully as possible, but the damage was done. I haven’t been welcomed as warmly in that house since.
2) Eschatology – Back in the mid-90’s, I was asked to substitute teach in my Sunday School class. I taught on the four major views on the millennium, giving the strengths and weaknesses of each view. Keep in mind that _Tribulation Force_, the second book in the _Left Behind_ series had just been released, as was the big topic of conversation at my church. After covering amillennialism in class, I allowed that it was the view I held. You ever seen a video of a school of piranha attacking a cow? It was something like that. Some members of the class were much cooler toward me after that. Even today when I share that I’m an Amillennialist, the first question I’m often asked it, “Don’t you believe the Bible?”
3) Evolution – The topic that’s caused me the most heartache. At PCS I was taught young-earth creationism, and I held that view until my early twenties. After much study of science and scripture, I found the evidence for Evolution to be overwhelming and not contrary to scripture. Further, deponent sayeth not. 🙂 I’ve learned to avoid bringing up the topic, but when it’s brought up, I will share my opinion. I can count on the fact that, when I share that I accept evolution, the very next words I’ll hear are, “Are you _sure_ you’re saved?” I was teaching a DT class on Revelation, and someone in the class opined that he didn’t see how anyone could accept evolution, and that only atheists believed in evolution. I replied that Christians hold differing views on the topic, from YEC to theistic evolution, and that I happened to be in the latter group. I then moved the discussion back to the proper topic for the class. Monday morning I got a call from the Associate Pastor wanting to set up a meeting. Seems a number of people from the class called him and complained about what I said. Next week, half of the usual attendees showed up for the class, and those absent never returned. Two people from that class wouldn’t meet my gaze in the hallways at church or speak to me after that.
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Raised Catholic but never met Jesus until after out of my parents’ house. They don’t understand my faith in Jesus because I’m, well, not quiet about it. Not that I’m ultra-politically active or anything like that. 🙂
Most recently have attended an evangelical (started late 19th century) church. Went to a men’s retreat (non-denominational, paraministry event) and learned about conversing with God and about the realities of spiritual warfare (not that there’s a foul spirit under every rock) and the role of the Holy Spirit, my mind, my heart, my flesh, God and angels in the Kingdom.
I listen to iMonk, Rob Bell, Greg Boyd, Erwin McManus, and Steve Brown. The pastor-friend I have that is still at the church we left refers to me as his “true blue post-modern friend”. He’s still in the evangelical paradigm and not really in a position to influence much change as his paycheck depends on his numbers.
But I enjoy our “friendship” – I don’t use the term as loosely as most – and see it as an opportunity to engage him in some conversation of sorts. With my new understand and deepening relationship with Christ on the journey I am on, I have few friends left.
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this is a great testimony. i will pray for you and i believe that even though your journey has been difficult, the Lord has been with you every step of the way. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. and your story embodies this.
alvin
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Wow, this is the first topic I have ever commented on, even though I have read this blog for 5 years. Ever since I saw that Purgatorio “You might be going hyper when…” and clicked “iMonk”. So, just thanks for the honesty that come about by walking with Jesus.
I grew up catholic, was an atheist, and then met Jesus through a charismatic church/ Messianic Jewish synagogue.
So, as I came into college and worked with Presybeterian / Reformed Baptist ministry, I found a great battle over spiritual gifts. I wept and danced during worship sessions, and they thought I was freaking nuts. At times, I regrettably have thought “They didn’t give me some opportunities to minister because of my spiritual convictions.” During college, I attended the So. Baptist church and became a full fledged member. Although I didn’t like the sermons (purpose driven and really devoid of Jesus), I still wanted to serve God as a missionary.
I applied for a position with the Baptist “Journeyman program”, wanting to spend two years on the field, and let people know about Jesus. We got into long discussions, applications, and all the way to the process. I had spent time really wrestling with my bible (which, aside, I have at this point become a Calvinist reading an NKJV), trying to work on Speaking in tongues. I realize its only for my personal prayer language, not in public. I agree to let go of drinking and smoking cigars for two years so I can go be a missionary. The interviewer asked about tongues, I tell them I won’t do it in public, but he basically said “Sorry, can’t do it. If that’s your conviction, we can’t wave it. No matter what you do.”
I was devastated. When they shot down the accountability amendment (about changing that 16 million number to reflect reality) at the next year’s convention, and instead passed down those requirements regarding alcohol and pastors, I quietly removed my application to SBTS and took my name off the membership rolls. It has taken years to work through that bitterness, if I’m honest.
I love my current Acts 29 church, because we just had a community group about predestination for two weeks, and we came down on different sides, with myself the only hardcore calvinist. And that was it. We realized where we stood, let it go, and decided to love Raleigh more as a diverse group. We really are an inter-denominational church. I love my southern baptist friends,and was blessed to meet people at Advance 09 that I can practice “long-term active repentance” by praying and partnering a local SoBap church so it can tell people about Jesus.
I just prayed for you guys, for sharing your hearts about all this mess. Thanks all of you guys from all stripes loving Jesus, despite sin and stupidity on Christian’s parts.
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Liberal anabaptist here that fell in love with a lovely AOG woman. Became best of friends but it ended when she decided our worldviews were too different and we would be unequally yoked. The final nail was when she expressed joy that people were being raised from the dead in Africa, and I’m afraid I didn’t respond very positively.
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Thank you for asking this question, Mr. Spencer. Thank you also for your kindness and charity towards other Christians that may not be of your same denomination. That is so rare and it gives me hope. I’ll be brief. I haven’t even read the comments before mine, but I’m sure there are many.
My husband and I are converting to the Roman Catholic Church (we are in the RCIA process now). There are no Catholics on either side of our respective families. We have been Protestant our entire lives, and for the last 3 years, truly loving GOD and seeking HIS will in for our lives. We never thought in a million years it would be to the Catholic Church. I was raised in a faith that was anti-Catholic and he was mainline Presbyterian in PA.
Many things converged at one time – and my husband and I both could not believe that we both arrived by different paths at the doors of the RCC. It’s nothing short of a miracle (or curse, as some family would say).
My husband’s brother is a stauch Reformed/Calvinist. He believes we have fallen into the sin of idolatry and apostasized. He said he would not stop loving us, but we know there is so much tension in the family, no one has gotten together since our announcement. My brother in law said, “You’ve read the Institutes and WCF (short and long) and studied the true faith – now, you’ve made your choice.”
My niece is a Christian and a devout follower of the teachings of Rev. John Macarthur (Grace To You). She just quotes scripture to me and she thinks we have become apostate. She is barely even acknowledging me on Facebook 🙂
In our small town in Southwest Virginia, it is almost as if we are dying of a terminal disease. We moved here over ten years ago to buy a well-known national insurance company’s agency and know almost everyone in our town and in the surrounding county.
Women that I attended church with and love dearly, literally start to cry in the middle of Walmart when they see me. They hug me and just say, “I’m praying”…and then walk away with tears in their eyes. My husband and I always say we need to check the obituaries everyday to see if we are “dead yet”. We joke, but, I’m afraid it is a serious feeling.
Our parish is 45 minutes away. They are the most loving and wonderful people. We are a very close group, even though we have a large congregation. In our area, to be RCC is to be “the whore of Babylon and a follower of the anti-christ”. Being persecuted brings us closer together.
Thank you for giving me and others a chance to “speak our mind”. You are very kind.
May the peace of Christ be with your spirit,
Teri
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I received Christ in college and basically attended evangelical-type of non-Penyecostal/non-Charismatic churches. After I had been a Christian for 12 years God “dragged” me into Jack Hayford’s Church on the Way (a Foursquare church-Pentecostal). I sure didn’t wish to be a Pentecostal but soon saw real truths in their theological position. Since Church on the Way was not a holiness–“you can lose your salvation if you blink wrong” church, I could get with it doctrinally. My parents, especially my father who came from staunch Presbyterians way back from the Scottish Second Reformation, were horrified and saddened. They didn’t reject me or anything but I learned just before my mother died (my father had died much earlier) that they both were heartsick over me joining a Pentecostal church. But, she said, she saw such growth in me that now she was happy that I had gone to that church. So, hang in there folks…..if your relatives/freinds see a good change in you, they just might relent.
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My friend told me that the church was Baptist in name only. I don’t know what my friend believes because she always clammed up when I asked specific questions.
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When I talked to the elders of my church about my joining an ecumenical, Charismatic community (not leaving the church to do so, mind you) one of them, without asking, said, “I had thought you were someone who was committed to Reformed theology, but I guess I was wrong.” It took a while to get over that from a relationship standpoint, because I was and am committed to the Reformed tradition and a good deal of Reformed theological emphasis (though not all).
I was just making a turn in my engagement with other people.
I’m pretty much over it now, but I think there is a huge war on now in terms of ecumenical engagement versus a revived emphasis upon theological markers and circling the wagons. Sad to see the latter progressing, in my opinion, though I am not “anti-intellectual” by any stretch of the imagination.
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I was raised as an “independent” Baptist. The first church I attended as an adult was “independent” Charismatic. I flirted with Catholicism after meeting some people (20 years ago) in the pro-life movement.
Then I went back to a (very popular group of churches founded in California in the sixties) where the leadership claimed “the authority of Moses” and preached that anyone criticizing them was in danger of being swallowed up by the ground.
Then I walked away from God for 15 years. I cannot begin to measure the pain or count the number of broken relationships. I’m now in a PCA Church and actually happy in Christ for the first time in my life. A prideful unwillingness to engage with others and to learn from others has utterly poisoned American Christianity. May God have mercy on us all.
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There is a lot of pain on this page.
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Coming from a charismatic background (and not completely renouncing it), for years I struggled with being treated as intellectually inferior by my high Calvinist friends. I got a lot of respect from them when it came to other disciplines, but theology? Being a moron was the only possible explanation. Now that we are all 5+ years out of college, married with mortgages and several young children, this irksome distinction is pretty much gone (thankfully).
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Larry: I know a lot of people who are at a point on the journey where a number of the doctrines they grew up with are suddenly open to negotiation. I think part of the reason involves the church culture we all grew up with.
However, I would urge you to make a list of the things you still hold to; the things where you and your wife would have agreement; the things about God and Jesus you would consider the non-negotiables. Show the list to your wife, and say, “This is what I’m beginning with.”
Then reconstruct everything else from that foundation and see if the pieces of the puzzle fit; if your individual doctrines can form a workable theology, the way puzzle pieces form a complete picture.
Even if the finished picture has some holes or some incomplete corners — and, if they’re honest, everyone has a few of those — what you have at the end will be something you can take ownership of, and you can continue to do ‘renovations’ as the need arises.
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I have been studying the Catholic Church, and my family found out via my blog which I had mainly started to get some dialogue. I have never strayed from the faith my parents raised me with, and even just three years prior (as a 19 year old) my dad claimed of me “You are the most spiritually mature of all my children; even more than me.” At Christmas last year, before I stepped on the plane, my step-mom gave me a letter with a copy of “More Than A Carpenter’s Son” saying inside “I hope this year you truly find Jesus and don’t give into the trappings of religion.” I felt a good amount of belittlement and separation there. The thing, though, that makes me most sad is that they are not willing to ask me about it. They talk to everyone else in my family about it, but not me. Not even to ask if I am considering becoming Catholic or just studying its beliefs. My brother’s also believe that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon from Revelation and is only sustained by the powers of the devil for its part in the “end times.” No one has been harsh, but I know that if I do cross that river, responses won’t be kindly for the most part.
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I don’t even know how to get started with this.
We’ll start with the fact that the atheist/Christian divide has repeatedly and painfully intruded into the family. Impossible to even imagine progress.
A minister of music at a church I served totally changed his treatment of me when I preached about John 14:6. He believed non-Christians were saved if they sincerely practiced their religion and considered me a fundamentalist for disagreeing.
In my current place of service, relationships have changed 1) since my wife became a Catholic and 2) in regard to the fact I am not a Ham/Hovind creationist. I was actually confronted about 2) by a co-worker last year and it has deeply affected a relationship. 1) has had MAJOR implications, but I can’t write about them.
Theological opinions I express at IM constantly come up with some co-workers. I never talk about them unless specifically asked, but some good people are in constant state of agitation over something I’ve said. I’m monitored in everything I write by several people.
I’ve been subject to the continuing discussion of my employment discussed in reference to Calvinism, even though I am not a Calvinist, haven’t been since 06, and the place is crawling with Calvinists. I was called in because I once preached on I Thess 1:6, basically saying God loves you.
A church I used to serve has turned on me completely over Calvinism, even though I’m not a Calvinist and wasn’t when I was there.
When I began my second round of stated supply preaching in a PC(USA) church in the county, the Baptist church I am a member of removed me as a Sunday School teacher. In a vote in a business meeting! (I now attend there most Sundays, and the guy who led the charge acts like it never happened.) The pastor at that time went on a vendetta against me saying I was a Presbyterian. This church had been using Baptist pulpit supplies from our ministry for 30 years, including previous administrators. But somehow the fact that I was doing it was controversial.
My wife’s conversion to Catholicism was the most devastating event in my life. It almost destroyed my faith. I’ll never be the same. The response of other Christians to what we went through was a stunning revelation of what matters to church folk.
The fact that I am not caught up in the Fox News/Anti-Obama universe is a current issue with co-workers, but that’s not really theology.
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Wow! I guess I lead charmed life with my family and friends. Perhaps it comes from a family that started out with a mix of religions (Fa is Jewish, Ma is Baptist). We attended here and there as children. After the folks split up, I lived with Fa. When in high school, I converted to Catholicism. It did not, at the time, affect my relationship with anyone in the family (other than some Pentecostal aunts who I barely knew). General view was, well, if you’re happy there, that’s fine. About 5 or so years ago I converted to Judaism. Again, no one in my family even blinked. It didn’t disturb my Catholic husband one iota (mind you, he’s not been to Mass for anything other than a special occasion for a decade or more).
I do think my relationship with Fa has been rekindled as I talk to him a lot more especially for advice and tips on practical Jewish living. He’s thrilled that his granddaughter will be reared in his faith.
None of my friendships were affected, but then my friendships don’t really involve issues of faith anyway. We’re friends because we share a common interest in electronics, or nature or running or whatever. While I do think one’s religion should affect one’s actions and ethics, I’m not of the opinion that it should be the entire focus of one’s life such that a conversation that doesn’t veer off into matters of faith is the exception and not the rule.
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Raised Baptist by my parents, sent to Christian schools by my family, worked at a Bible bookstore at their insistence. However, my still-Christian parents are surprised and now bristle that a) I work in full-time ministry and b) that I am a missionary in Western Europe. The Theology issue? That I’m being “too pushy” in my faith (they don’t believe in the Great Commission) and that I’m “taking my faith too seriously” (in their impression of American Christianity, I should be pursuing fame, success, money, and material goods). The result? They have pulled away almost completely; give it another 1-2 years and I will most likely never hear from them again.
Incidentally, when we were fundraising as missionaries at various churches, I actually had people in the church that their pastor had allowed us to speak at approach us and honestly say, “I don’t believe God would send any Christian out of America, His chosen country.” Since we were raised SBC but not sent by the IMB, many of our SBC friends were put off that we were fundraising, as if IMB was the only valid way to go into missions.
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To those whose parents have caused hurt. To be fair, when you raise a child in what you think is the true religion, true christianity – and invest the time in such, it is remarkably difficult to see them change to another church. It stands, in a way, in judgement against the parents, their church, and often their whole family line – almost as if the children are saying the parents have been living a lie.
I look at my three year old daughter and pray she will remain Christian and hopefully in the church of her parents. Its scary, and I can see how it would hurt parents really bad, even causing some to lash out.
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This also happened – rejection by other Christians – to me, my wife, and my Mother-in Law, all of which switched from Pentecostalism to the Lutheran Church. For some we have gone to paganism, dead ritual, we are dead. Others just scratch their heads.
Worse yet try to talk real serious theology and people get extremely frustrated, they usually throw up their hands and say well I just believe in Scripture – as if thats not what we have been talking about. Or , “we don’t need all these divisions we all just believe in Jesus.”
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I no longer can talk to my calvinist friend about anything closely related to theology. It can never be a discussion with him. There is no room for it. Whenever we even begin to talk about church or any sort of theology I walk away feeling beat down & judged. The weird thing is I don’t even think he realizes what he is doing to my heart. So lately I just quickly find ways to change subjects. But it makes me not even want to be around him. Its tough
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When I walked away from Dispensationalism -with its view of the people of God, its eschatology, its hermeneutic, and all the rest – I was told by a couple people that denying that type of theology made my beliefs heretical. Not ‘you should reconsider’, not ‘well I think there are good reasons to hold dispensational views’, nope, heretical.
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I’m surprised more people haven’t brought up re-baptism. For Methodists, it’s very hurtful and problematic when someone in the family is baptized a second time; for example, as they join a Baptist church.
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1) I was attending a Bible Church when I came to faith, and was baptized by the pastor of the Bible Church. Later, I could no longer hold to Dispensationalism, which causes a slight rift between me and my Uncle. Additionally, I cannot join most Bible churches as a member or a minister because I do not hold to Dispensationalism. Now that I am a Baptist, my baptism in a Bible Church causes some problems for others who think I need to be baptized again, in a baptist church – an act I refuse to do because my theology of baptism is that it is a one-time act in response to Christ, not a hoop for membership.
2) Two of my friends were baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church a year ago. The greatest tension comes out of the fact that my friends and I share the same background – non-protestant, evangelical Baptistic churches. However, their theology is focused more on the Orthodox Church, namely that to be a full Christian you need to be part of this church. Their baptism supports this, since they had already had believer baptism and were now baptized into the church. The unspoken, possibly even unconscious, implication of their baptism is that there was something lacking in their first baptism, and therefore something lacking in mine. I don’t view their joining the church as a conversion, THEY WERE ALREADY CHRISTIANS! They hold that view as well, but, theologically, believe that you need to be a part of the Orthodox Church to experience the Christian life to the fullest. We remain friends, but have to leave discussions of theology or the church out.
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My step-dad was raised Catholic, but was attending a four square church when he married my mom. It was really awkward when he rediscovered his Catholicism after he married my mom. We went to mass for first service, then we went to Sunday school at our Evangelical Presbyterian church. I then went to college and began attending a Calvinistic Southern Baptist church. I think my mom still secretly wants to be Missouri-synod Lutheran like she was raised but she still takes my little brother to the Presbyterian church. My sisters are at a fairly emergent community church and really resent the months where we went to Catholic mass.
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According to my family, I should say.
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I was raised oneness pentecostal, and am now Roman Catholic. Said simply, I am now going to hell for idolatry and many other holy crimes. The end.
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My best friend’s wife was incredibly rude to my pastor because she (the pastor) is a woman. It was at my father-in-law’s funeral, and I was shocked that even there theological differences would get in the way of basic human civility.
Back when I more or less thought all Christians were brainwashed, cruel hypocrites, I wouldn’t let my daughter go with my brother-in-law and his family to their church events. I know it hurt their feelings, but I didn’t want my kid ‘brainwashed’ by any of their beliefs. And their agenda did include evangelism and conversion.
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“I suppose I should have kept the growth I was experiencing to myself, but I couldn’t help including what I considered to be helpful quotes in the signature line of my emails.”
Bad idea. I’ve found the time to share challenging ideas is when people ask to hear what your are thinking, and not when you want them to know what you’re thinking.
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I was raised Catholic and when I left the church (I’m Presbyterian) my parents and rest of my family sort of freaked. My mother came to me and brought a bunch of Catholic Answers material. To this day (that was about 10 years ago) my wife and I are the odd ones out at family get togethers. My mom (a very devout Catholic) buys Catholic gifts for everyone on Christmas (like rosaries, books on the saints, statues etc) but awkwardly only gives us secular gifts. My Dad will randomly mix into conversation how the Catholic church is the only true church.
But we are all getting through it ok. They still love me and I still love them.
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Well, my wife’s uncle took several years to decide that I was saved. He kept asking me any of several questions to see whether I really was a Christian or not.
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Left one church after the pastor (who had no seminary training) started teaching that our bodies weren’t saved yet, even if we were, and that our (corrupt) bodies were the locus for and cause of all human sin. In other words, he was taking one giant step toward dualism. I approached him privately to let him know that this was not a healthy or scriptural theological view of the human person, and to delineate the sorts of things it could lead to. He simply didn’t want to hear it. We went back and forth for some time, but he wouldn’t budge (he never could explain how the view he was promulgating fit with Romans 12:1 and other passages, etc.). I still have friends who go to that church and we still talk, but not generally about theology. I know seminary training varies, but it’s experiences like this that make me still recommend it.
Within my own family, there is a definite, though not hostile, divide between the reformed/calvinist/socially conservatives and the not-so-taken-with-calvinism/socially moderate to liberals.
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When I moved away from Christianity towards deism/unitarianism, my family and those among my friends who were believers in Christianity were for the most part sad and concerned, but largely supportive of me. As I begin to find myself moving towards a theology which is more inclusive of Christianity, I find a lot of my friends and family who are not Christian to feel a sense of betrayal. But all of this seems pretty slight, overall- I try very hard to embrace the notion that my path is just my own, and the general rules of the game (kindness, forgiveness, humilty, love, openness, willingness to share etc) apply regardless of what theology I have- so I am hoping that as long as I keep and grow in those principles of right relationship, my relationships with my loved ones will not suffer. I suspect my relationships with strangers will always be subject to some tension when our beliefs don’t align.
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sure
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My sister is no longer Catholic and indeed, she is married to a Church of Ireland minister. My relationship with my sister hasn’t been broken, but the potential for breaking is there. Frankly, to avoid the stress, I keep my mouth shut about matters of theology. As in, I say nothing and avoid any discussions of religion or our two traditions.
It’s not a case of blaming my brother-in-law for causing her to fall away or anything like that; the story is packed with irony. My sister actually tested her vocation in the local convent and went as far as making her temporary vows (that is, she went through postulancy and the novitiate and started on the three year period of temporary vows before taking final vows). She left and eventually ended up as a house parent in a Steiner School/Residential Centre in the North of Ireland, where she met my (future) brother-in-law. So blame the Anthroposophists! 😉
Early on, I made some jokes about the Protestant versus Catholic versions of the Bible to my sister (as jokes, purely, and not as stealth-evangelising) and she related them to him, and I felt that they made him uncomfortable or could be perceived as criticism, which made *me* uncomfortable, so I kept my mouth shut from then on in. Matters were not helped by my father becoming increasingly devout in his old age and, for example, regaling my brother-in-law with tales of Eucharistic miracles gleaned from watching EWTN 🙂
But yes – even in what we refer to him as: she (and he) would say he’s a priest in the Church of Ireland. I have a completely different notion of what a priest is, and would refer to him as a minister or a vicar or a rector (he is now the incumbent of a new parish, so he’s the rector of the church there).
The irony is that he has a High Church, or Anglo-Catholic, or however you want to describe it, tendency, which probably makes for *more* tension than if he were Low Church. His views on the Eucharist would be more sacramental, which bang right up against my views. Again, this is something I haven’t discussed because I don’t want it to degenerate into an arguement and break off all contact with my sister; but if push came to shove, while he might consider that he celebrates Mass, I don’t. See the potential for a real screaming row there? 😦
Again, the irony is that if my sister were still Catholic, I’d still probably be disagreeing with her. My mother became more liberal later in life, and she and my sister agreed better on things, while I’m extremely conservative in some matters. For example, my mother was more or less appalled that Cardinal Ratzinger had become Pope, while I was happy enough; I’d have loved to see Cardinal Arinze elected, but I had no objections to der Panzerkardinal 🙂
And to make things even more fun, my brother-in-law, as I said, comes from the North of Ireland, from a small town that was in an Orange heartland. When interviewing for his latest move, he had one interview in the North and, as my sister put it, “When we went there, you could see the Orange Hall on the left, the church in the middle, and the police station on the right. So we were just as happy he didn’t get it.”
If I regard him as Protestant, his potential parishioners would regard him with equal suspicion for having married (1) a Southerner (2) a Catholic Southerner (never mind that she’s ex-Catholic) (3) his children have Irish names! (named after Irish Celtic saints Fiachra and Éanna) (4) sacramentalist tendencies just prove creeping Romanism and Gaelicism – next thing he’ll be preaching the Pope and drinking the Devil’s Buttermilk in public!
So yeah – a lot of potential grief there.
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Actually I agree with Barb that in most of these stories, it is flawed character rather than theology that is the culprit — the idea that what we believe, know, and say is more important than how we live.
Michael mentioned in his latest podcast a pastor friend of his who was forced out of his church for no reason at all.
About two years ago I witnessed something like this, and the people involved are entirely on the same page theologically — its just that some folks (leaders and followers both) are not very good at living their theology (and are in denial of that fact). And to support their chosen course of action they engaged in lying, gossip, and manipulation.
Character, not theology.
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I mean, my first guess was “Baptist in name only”, but since you say “I have no idea what they believe” how could it mean that — how would you know?
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What’s “BINO” ???
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A friendship almost shattered when my friend discovered I was not a YEC. After an evening of tense discussion we luckily decided our friendship was more important. But we never spoke about creationism/evolution again, and when my friend says something like: ‘It’s proven the speed of light is not constant because there are bumps in the red-shift’, I’ll look the other way instead of engaging.
All of my family have left our home church (plymouth brethren, closed). My parents became members of a pretty openly charismatic church. Three of my brothers are baptist or attend other evangelical churches. One brother does not attend church nor professes faith in God any more. And I do attend a pretty large evangelical church, but am recently rethinking what church means (institution or reality?). I’m more and more leaning to the ‘organical church view’ (Frank Viola, Wayne Jacobson).
This leads to some strain in my relationship with my parents. Their church is not sectarian, but their theology is really ‘covering’ based: the authority of the pastor is very important, especially to my mother. She views the great sin of the plymouth brethren that there was no pastor over the congregation. She tells me I have to stay in a church, and accept the authority of a pastor or else I will surely go astray in my walk as a christian. On other subjects we agree, but this is hard for me. I do wonder how she will react should I leave my large, institutional church and seek fellowship in a smaller circle. One of the things that keeps me going to church is this, even though I know that ‘who looks back when he’s at the plow, is not worthy of the kingdom’.
Johan
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I was weak in the Christian faith of my childhood. I tried to get my atheist husband to believe in Christ. My attempts to practice Christianity had failed by 2004.
As I was not strong on my own,I turned and followed my husband into materialism/atheism/nihilsim. I permitted my husband to take my daughters to “Sunday School” at a “non-creedal” Unitarian Church. I abdicated my children’s spiritual lives to my husband. I had become a “freethinker”, a.k.a., “nothing.”
Through the Unitarian Church I became aquainted with New Age followers. My husband and I started to follow New Age thought. Energy healers and yogis became our advisors and healers; our gurus. They told us how special and gifted we were. Clarivoyant, in fact.
Within two years my marriage was destroyed. (I admit the marriage was flawed begin with.) My husband has gone on in two short years to become a “teacher” and “leader” in a New Age intentional community. To these people he presents a facade of “love and light.” Privately he treats me like dirt. I am facing a divorce trial next week against powerful lawyers paid for by his Fortune 500 company.
We have 2 children ages 8 and 12.
After picking up the pieces of my destroyed life and family, I walked away from the New Age when I saw that their teachings didn’t hang together logically. I started to read Greek philosophy and it led me to the Bible. I returned to the Catholic church. I started reading the Bible to my kids. My oldest daughter responded to the teaching of Christ as if this was the Truth, even while I was still wavering. It was stunning to see the faith of this child.
I am a devout Catholic now and have few friends. The community I live in is urban and liberal. The old neighbors and “friends” are all secular, atheist or New Age. Even friends who stood by me are fading into the background because I no longer can relate to someone who believes in hedonism as a way of life. I haven’t told them off or anything, I’ve just gradually let go.
Since my 12 year old has become a *self-professed* Christian Catholic, my husband has accused her of becoming brainwashed. He will not permit her to attend Mass on Sundays when she is with him. Instead he forces her to attend Unitarian Sunday School where most of the children are atheist or agnostic and these views are heavily espoused. My daughter complains bitterly to me.
I’ve made many mistakes and following New Age was just one of many. All this talk of “spirituality” without religion. What does it mean? For me it meant thinking I had a foundation without checking to see what exactly it was. Truthfully, when I finally looked I found “nothing under my feet.” I am sorry about the breakup of my marriage, but I would rather be a single mom-led Christian family, than live in the emotional and philosophical desert that was my husband, our marriage and our family.
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When my brother converted to Judaism, that caused a big strain. Even though he tries to be respectful of his Christian family members and we try to be respectful of him (even to the point of planning stuff around the Sabbaths and keeping some kosher food on hand), there’s a horrible truth where in a spiritual sense we’re no longer brothers. The most important things to me can’t be shared with him in the same way anymore. And vice versa. We can still have open religious dialogue. But we can’t relate on a family-level spirituality anymore.
Plus, his hostility toward Christ is pretty obvious, even when we’re having civil discussion. And honestly, I’ve got a certain amount of hostility toward rabbinic Judaism because I’ve seen too many people seduced away from Christ by its simple live-the-checklist-of-commandments legalism. My hostility should probably be toward the churches and church leaders that gave these folks a legalistic approach to Christianity to in the first place. After all, it’s not like Judaism being legalistic hasn’t been the established norm since the 1st century or earlier. And it’s not like Judaism went looking for converts. Judaism doesn’t really do that. But when family is envolved, it’s kind of hard to keep an objective perspective at times.
My folks think his hostility toward Christ is evidence that he’s not 100% at peace with Judaism’s faith claims and that Jesus is still working on him. I don’t know. That’s above my pay grade. All I know is that I hate the barrier that’s between us because of those major theological differences.
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Very simple. The day I became a Biblical Unitarian and renounced the Doctrine of the Trinity. Try it if you want to live the life of a refugee.
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I won’t tell you to wall-off people of other persuasions, but I hope you will stay in the Word. nuff said.
IM, you can delete this if it’s inappropriate.
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Theology has definitely caused a decrease in the number of topics that some of my long term women friends and I can talk about.
One whom I met when I was still a good Southern Baptist, and we clicked right away. But, as my journey has cause my theology to expand and to include ideas that I previously rejected. Her journey has been the opposite, she seems much narrower in ideas such as 6 24 hour days of creation, dispensationalism.
So, on those issues, and frequently on things that might get us in that neighborhood, we just don’t talk.
We still have a pretty good friendship, under the circumstances ( being 3 time zones apart helps).
On the positive side, my journey has helped me be more open to my cousins who have rejected the church all together. (The openness goes both ways, but I let them take the lead in the conversation. We all have scars from evangelical over zealousness.)
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My wife was raised in the Christian Reformed Church. She was “re-baptized” just before we were married. Needless to say, that did not go over well.
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I live in the same community I grew up in. I’ve known my best friend, Y., and her family since I was a kid. Y.’s family, charismatic Protestants, were loving and affectionate, with the kind of Christian family that made me wish I lived with them instead of with my own secular, dysfunctional home. Her parents provided me a refuge of love and joy, and I spent many happy after-school hours at her house. It was her influence that led me to come to know Jesus in college. I ended up becoming a Catholic, and my best friend was very supportive, with never a bad word to say about Catholic doctrine or practice. Her family, and her husband-to-be’s family, were both influential at their church, and both families invited me often to prayer gatherings and church services, but Y. never showed a trace of disappointment that I didn’t join her church.
Then a few years after we graduated from college, both of us married, Y. suddenly became bizarrely hostile to my Catholicism, asking the kind of “How does *that* thing square with the Bible?” question that I associated with evangelizing cranks. I tried to explain as best I could, but soon came to dread her frequent requests to meet and talk about faith.
One day she shared with me that she had become interested in Catholicism, and that was the reason for the interrogations. I knew there had been a lot of tensions and unhappiness in her church, and that she and others had been thinking of leaving, but I was completely blindsided; I’d really thought until then that she had suddenly become convinced that *I* had to be made to see the unscripturality of Catholicism. I agreed to sponsor her through RCIA, and she is today joyfully happy as a Catholic.
But the whole thing was frankly miserable for me. Her parents, when I would run into them, were distantly polite, and clearly felt they had reared a serpent in their bosoms. Several other members of her Church, friends of hers, followed her into Catholicism (a few went to Orthodoxy), and I discovered I’d gained the reputation as “The woman who converted Y. to Rome.” Friends of hers who had once shown me great kindness at their church now sarcastically congratulated me and told me how happy I must be at having made such a catch. I still get cornered by her father-in-law who gives me articles showing me the truth about Catholicism and wants to have private discussions with me about doctrine.
I’m glad she’s happy, and I love her dearly, but there’s many a day still when part of me wishes to God she’d stayed a Protestant.
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I have a bunch of these stories. Unfortunately, quite a few of them have had to do with me deciding that I was right, they were wrong, and the love of God in this case couldn’t overcome their wrongness. (Nowadays, the argument swings the other direction—I’m being too loving, or too forgiving, or too accepting of heretics, simply because I think seeing the fruit of the Spirit in a person’s life trumps whether they have all their theological ducks in a row.)
Currently my issue is with an old friend who became a Christian and has since joined what I call a “cult.” I don’t mean that in Walter Martin’s sense of a pseduo-Christian heresy; they’re not heretics. I mean that in the sociologist’s sense of a self-isolated group that professes strong devotion to the every whim of a certain pastor. It’s basically a church where “but Pastor says” is their excuse for any odd theology… and the odd behaviors that stem from it.
Because I have dared to point out that occasional things Pastor says aren’t entirely consistent with things Jesus teaches, or general scriptural principles, he doesn’t feel he can speak with me. What I’m doing isn’t constructive criticism, or encouraging scriptural accountability; it’s “sowing discord.”
If your theology lets you believe your pastor is infallible, I think discord would be reasonably coming from the Holy Spirit. But that’s just me.
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Oh my! Where to begin??
For so long, I was the one who’s cock-suredness led to argument and separation, and I supported leadership who used issues of theology and authority to “discipline” the wayward.
But a few years back I began a journey down the path of grace and increasing willingness to acknowledge my own brokenness. Along the way, I have been tremendously helped by a variety of writers and thinkers, and by formerly “out-of-bounds” practices such as listening and healing prayer, and counseling. I also came to a place where I could no longer accept the Penal Substitution view of the atonement, favoring instead a Christus Victor understanding.
I suppose I should have kept the growth I was experiencing to myself, but I couldn’t help including what I considered to be helpful quotes in the signature line of my emails. Several months ago, a relatvie (by marriage) took issue with the source of one of those quotes, insisting that I should disavow the author. I gave a mild defense, and indicated that I would continue to support and promote that book and author. The reply was even more heated, and pointed to several “heresies” that had been discovered in the author’s writings. I replied that I didn’t consider those to be heresies, and shared a couple of other ideas I had besides. Big mistake! The next response was through the roof, and it was apparent that the conversation was going nowhere, so I wrote back that it was clear that we disagreed, that maybe I was wrong in my views, but that I valued the relationship more than a theological position. “Could we agree to disagree?”
It’s been six weeks, and there’s been no response. Seems I need to call this person up and offer to meet for coffee sometime, since we’re only less than an hour away from one another. Will he be willing to reciprocate? Has he just written me off as a heretic?
Many years ago, I heard the following poem by Edwin Markham, liked it, and filed it away. Only in these recent months has it actually become my own story:
He drew a circle that shut me out;
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win;
We drew a circle that took him in.
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I was raised in a non-religious household, but came to Christ at a fundamentalist summer camp when I was about 12. My parents and I had very difficult shouting matches about religion for the next few years, with me telling them that there was such a thing as Absolute Truth and if they did not sign up for it they were going to hell.
I married fairly young. My wife and I were both conservative evangelicals. We have been married almost 30 years, and I am seriously questioning everything from the existence of a personal God on up. My theology is getting more liberal by the day, as are my political views. My wife, on the other hand, remains a 6-day-creationist, Rush-Limbaugh-loving, King-James-favoring Christian.
We used to agree on everything. Now, if we talk about religion or politics, not only will we disagree but there is a very good chance that the conversation will turn ugly. This has put a great strain on our marriage. I wish we could disagree respectfully and amicably, but it seems that for every healthy conversation we have a blow-up.
My wife says she feels afraid for me, and also feels all alone. She says I have allowed myself to be influenced by the wrong people. I see my journey as a search for the truth and I can no longer wall myself off from people of other persuasions. I, too, feel alone and wish I could at least have someone close to me to discuss these things with. In addition to my wife, nearly all of my good friends are evangelicals and almost without exception they are unwilling to discuss the issues on their merits. To them, it’s all about my prideful spirit, my being under attack by Satan, etc..
How ironic: As an adolescent I put my parents through hell because of my conservative theology and now, just at the time my own children are adolescents, my liberal theology is putting my marriage through hell.
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Dear Michael,
A question: can the story be about something that started out poorly and ended with a reconcilation of sorts?
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I saw a small group fall apart at another church when the conversation became dominated by Calvinism. I was on the Calvinist side at the time, back when I thought it was the only answer to the semi-pelagianism that I had experienced in my life up to that point. Hind sight, it was a pointless argument.
I saw a another small group at a Lutheran church fall apart when the conversation became dominated by dispensationalism. I was on the Lutheran side, while the “lifer” Lutherans were into the LeHaye-style end times dispensationalism. After a while, there just were better things to do than face that every week. I guess I should have shrugged it off.
I think in both cases, I turned bad church experiences from my past into thelological lines in the sand that I was not going back across to experience the same things again, even if it meant walking away from fellowship. But my past experiences had nothing to do with where the other group members were at the time, or where the group was going. It was a slippery slope fallacy.
Arguing theology can easily become a substitute for living ones faith. There’s a safety in it. It becomes almost like an armor that will stop people from hurting you. It prevents you from taking risks with people. Sounds pretty messed up. I think I’m getting better at listening to differing opinions of others, even when those opinions touch raw nerves in my past. I’m sure some of my opinions touch raw nerves in other people.
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Sorry, didn’t really highlight the theology of that last one, but the common thread is that I don’t buy a theology that involves pastors holding a dictatorial-like power over their congregants, nor one that holds lay leaders over their volunteers, nor one that holds one nation-state over others.
If that’s the gospel, I’d really rather have no part in it.
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Oh yeah, I wasn’t on board when the pastor of my old church started power tripping, stealing materials from another church, dictating every aspect of the service, etc…he severed ties to local congregations in favor of American ‘oversight’ with a fringe denomination, and later we discovered he had been in an affair for years…he’s still at the church.
Another pastor I disappeared from as quickly as possible was milking the church for luxury goods/vacations (and wondering why the church financials weren’t quite matching up…tax free vacations and the like on the church credit card….). And I’m sorry, but I have little patience for self-appointed experts in all areas of life who have done nothing but preach pablum for 20 years. This guy is not the final authority on science, history, theology, psychology or sociology, but many in his congregation treated him as such….I couldn’t voice anything in opposition without it being perceived as a personal attack, so I just left quietly.
At a prominent bible college in Australia I’ve got dozens of anecdotes from my own life and my friends’ of people who are 2 and 3-tiers down from the main leaders, and rather than trying to follow the Spirit, they attempt to emulate the behaviors of the leaders sans heart change. The result was arrogance and a force that drove anyone that wasn’t a ‘true believer’ far, far away.
Finally, a pastor at a local megachurch in the States, when I asked him about their 4th of July extravaganza, explained that why the pastors understood that Americanism isn’t Christianity, the congregation wouldn’t and there were some areas in which the church must capitulate to culture.
Bulls–t.
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When my wife’s parents left Catholicism they were cut off from some of their family (namely my wife’s great-grandparents) for years…it’s only been in the last few years that they will have anything to do with us.
Similarly I’ve got some horror stories regarding another person close to us who eats up the John Hagee style ‘death to Arabs/Muslims’ mantra and vindicates anything done by the Israeli nation-state. As someone who grew up amongst Arab Muslims & Christians in the Middle East, this perspective is absolutely sickening to me, and it makes things quite tense sometimes.
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My wife & I are missionaries supported through donations from others. One of our biggest donors, who happened to be a family member, found that I would not publicly denouncing the whole emerging church conversation as heretical. The result was a full withdrawal of their financial support and an almost complete shunning of us socially. While sad & painful (especially in respect to lost relationship), it was their money to do with as they please. It left us in a very rough place for some time, but God provided.
Peace,
Jamie
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Cute. 😉
I’ll elaborate on one of the lost friendships. One friend of mine goes to a “Baptist” church that is BINO. They’re actually just a generic Christian church with an interest in supporting missionaries. I have no idea what they believe, because my friend wouldn’t tell me. However, this friend was, as a teenager, pulled out of school, forced into homeschooling, head-coverings, ankle-length skirt wearing, homechurch with several other families. It was one of those patriarchal power-trip things where everyone fears and obeys the fathers. This went on for several years until she ran off and got married. Her parents eventually came out of that cultish setting and are normal evangelicals now. But my friend is still recovering from this. And, as the pendulum swings, she has taken the opposite extreme. She has gone as far as to say that the bible doesn’t teach women to submit to men. I showed her with a Greek lexicon that it says “be subject to”. She disagreed and showed me every manner of obscure website with terrible exegesis and lies to defend her position. She virtually crosses out words in her bible that she doesn’t like and replaces them with what her itching years want to hear. I and another friend both told her that she was wrong. After this, it was all downhill. She stopped talking to me, so I told her “goodbye”. I couldn’t take the silent treatment anymore and I needed closure.
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Persecuted Lutherans get an extra 10% off at New Reformation Press. 🙂
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I was introduced to Hank Hanegraaf and the Bible Answer Man broadcast by a friend. As I began to learn good theology for the first time, I began to challenge the vague spirituality of my evangelical and charismatic friends. This caused strain in all of my Christian friendships. I eventually gathered new friends who were into theology and apologetics. They led me into Calvinism which led me into despair. I eventually became Lutheran and rejected (semi) Pelagian “decision theology”. I’m frustrated by people’s willingness to defend Joel Osteen, Rick Warren & Rob Bell (and similar teachers). Obviously, I also believe in baptismal regeneration and the sacramental union in the Lord’s Supper. I believe that the Holy Spirit works through the Word, and it’s just zooming around zapping people randomly. All of this has put a huge strain on my friendships, and I’ve lost several friends over it. I’ve been persecuted by unbelievers before, but only since becoming Lutheran have I been persecuted and rejected by other Christians.
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At the end of my time in High School, our family attended a Baptist Church in Vienna, VA. They were quite wrapped up in what my father calls “service to the saints”, despite my father’s ongoing drive toward discipleship and witnessing. It burned him so badly that by the time he left, my mother forbade him to ever be a deacon again. He’s only just started teaching again within recent years.
I had left even earlier, because the youth group refused to engage in bible study, because “nobody was ready for it yet”, and my increasing impression was that what was being preached didn’t match what the word actually said.
After years of searching and trying and stumbling, I’ve been reading a lot of authors like Bell, Wright, Manning, and it’s quite changed how I see Christianity. As a result, I have to be extremely careful in conversation with my father for fear of offending him, as everything with him is about salvation and bible study, with social justice being a dangerous slippery slope that only leads to pride and away from God.
I was at a birthday party a year or two ago, and there were three people there from a local evangelical church. I mentioned that I had been reading Rob Bell, and I spent the next 45 minutes being grilled by these guys about how Bell was a heretic and Driscoll was the Gospel. It was an extremely hostile time, but I surprised them because I wasn’t interested in arguing, but only discussing what Bell was actually talking about, and how the words we use are very important.
I had an extremely brilliant friend in college who dropped out of the Baptist Church entirely because, at least in Ohio, there was nowhere for an intelligent woman to serve.
I have other friends from the same college (Cedarville, in OH) who dropped out of the church for years over unloving attitudes and a lack of intellectual honesty, especially with regards to political parties. They’re just now, after about 10 years, trying to get back in.
For many, many reasons, I have to try very hard not t be bitter about the church. It’s quite difficult. I do find that the only places I can find to actually have honest conversations with other Christians, if they aren’t pastors, is online. Which severely limits my opportunity for fellowship. If you always have to watch your mouth, then to some degree, you’re always teaching.
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Going to a Spurgeon-like Calvinistic Baptist church that doesn’t believe in altar calls. All of my friends go to Baptist or Pentecostal churches, and we got into strong conversations about how someone was not a Christian unless he could point to that singular conversion experience where he walked the aisle. One friend even questioned my salvation.
I also got involved with a multi-faith Bible study that had a large number of Orthodox believers. These Orthodox folks had all been evangelicals but left and converted because of the lack of holiness, sacramentalism (just like your last post), and overall the lack of mystery and honor given to God. They had left because of a perceived depth of theology in the Orthodox church.
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Moderator Note: This post’s commentary request is quite simple. Anything else will be deleted. I will allow sub-commentary on the stories, but I’m not going to allow the worn out “you shouldn’t be having this discussion” comment.
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Short story is we dared to disagree with the “Apostle” and we were assured we would not be welcome if we talked to anyone about this. The whole – do not touch God’s anointed – and threats of our demise if we left their covering rang in our ears as we left. Shunning was practiced and in a day we lost all but two friends – who later also left. Our friendships did not change, they were eradicated.
But here is the kicker Michael…You could certainly say we left over a theological issue(s) but in reality we had to part with this man and his wife because of character – not theology. The character issues of pride, desire for power and control, the inability to tell the truth when it made them look bad and such were the real issues. Theology truly had nothing to do with it and I don’t believe it ever really does. If two humble, teachable men/women have Love in their hearts I don’t believe anything can separate them. But when it becomes more important to one or the other to agree with MY theology instead of loving each other – relationships end.
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I left the United Methodist Church when I was eighteen or so, not because I was young and wanted freedom from my folks’ religion, but because the UMC was not teaching me anything, and if I wanted to minister in the UMC, well, I could, after four years of college and four years of graduate school. By then, I figured I no longer would care about church.
I asked the Lord into my heart when I was fifteen or so at a charismatic Foursquare Gospel Church, but I stayed at my parents’ UMC, too. I joined a charismatic Presbyterian mission church after I left the UMC. Pretty much, my folks and I went our separate ways spiritually. My mother dropped out of the UMC for a time. My father dropped out permanently. But my mother is a dyed-in-the-wool United Methodist. I go to her church sometimes, but I can count on two hands the number of times she has come to the churches I have attended. She doesn’t believe in most charismatic dealings. End of story.
Which I dig. But considering the state of the UMC, and what I know she does believe about the Gospel, I keep telling her: Ma, you’ll be happier in a Bible-believing Baptist church!
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Oh. my. yes. One BIG example in my life came at a time when i was dealing with some serious relationship issues in my own life. i am a strong continuationist (life experience has left me with no choice in the matter), and the way I was dealing with these problems, whilst never UNbiblical, did not fit the particular grid of these people. When I said I was seeking to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading, I was condemned for not listening to them first (because they, apparently, had more “biblical” wisdom), and they were my leaders (suddenly self-appointed) and who was I to think god would speak to me rather than them? (Since my bible says God can speak through donkeys and what have you, I never did understand that point). In the end, after many painful months of this, including one occasion when I was harangued till 2am, I left that church, and have never regretted it. They had read Jay Adams and decided they were “Competent to Counsel”, I chose to go to a professional christian counsellor, who had some experience in the issues I was dealing with (they did not believe that their ignorance of those issues was any hindrance, because “you know how unbiblical psychology is.” When i said i had obtained the gift of tongues, I was virtually called a liar. In the end, beneath our divisions on the “charismatic” issue, I came to see we had a deeper theological divide. We actually had a different understanding of the character of God. They believed in a God who so hated our sin that we had to be constantly paranoid about certain behaviours (yet oddly, only certain ones) I believed, and still do, ina god I can never pleasein and of myself, because there is no moment when I have totally loved him with my whole being, or fully loved my neighbour as myself. Yet He forgives me lavishly. Ten years later, some of those wounds are still healing.
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I’ve got two of these, one that’s largely in the past and one that’s on-going.
First, when Jesus smacked me upside the head and I became a disciple of his my family was freaked out. To them religion was to be polite, quite, and limited in scope. My sudden immersion into all things Christian created a lot of stress – some of which was my own fault. This has a happy ending, though, because even though my family still doesn’t share my understanding on the call to discipleship, they have come to appreciate the spiritual gifts I have and as the Holy Spirit has matured me I’ve been able to develop a much more gracious and thankful attitude for the blessings of my family. So that stress was good stress in the long-run.
Second, the fact that I don’t listen to Christian radio, listen to Christian music, or tune in to every Christian trend causes me a lot of stress with Evangelicalsâ„¢ – who keep trying to drop names on me hoping that I’ll perk up and eventually “prove” that I’m not a dreaded liberal. It’s tiresome. Usually I just say, “Look, that’s my cup of tea, OK?” Sometimes, when people regurgitate the party line in a way that reveals a complete lack of critical reflection (most recently when someone was spouting off on how God has raised America up because of our righteous dependance on him) – I have to draw the line and say, “Enough, and here’s why.” I’ve stopped going to the local Christian book store for this very reason, it drives me nuts. Is this a bad stress? It certainly can be. Yet, there’s times where I wonder if it’s not stress created by the prophetic impulse. I’ve also found that the relationships that have been strained to the breaking point through this stress (to the point of people leaving the congregation I pastor) have a way of being strengthened in the long-run because people learned to respect the fact that I’ve been honest, and open with them out of a desire to draw them more deeply into the faith. It’s not pretty, and sometimes I wish I could unthinkingly be the happy Evangelicalâ„¢ who touts the party line on everything – but I’m not, and I’ve come to accept the stress it causes.
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