I dislike the smell of Babel in the morning, Part III: in their own words
The following is copied and pasted from the blog of a dear friend, who is 17. He gave me permission to link to it, but I decided to copy and paste, removing some of the names.
"I feel inadequate. In church. I feel out of place and unwanted. I'm not good enough. James 2:1-10 no longer gives me peace. It no longer makes me feel like I can be the bigger man, and push on past my insecurity. It's worn and useless to me.
"Here ya go vultures. I have never been a part of a Christian home. Why did I have long hair? Not because I'm a fag, and not because I'm a hippie. Because my friends liked it. Many of them knew me by it- the way I could hide my eyes behind it and look like a psycho killer seemed to be the only charisma I had- it seemed to thrill them. I was once told that I had the serial killer look going on, and it was awesome. I person told me it looked awesome. So, why not have longer hair? It got me the attention that my fat body and ugly face pushed away from the people os the world.
"And now there are preachers out there who say all boys with long hair are queers. Not as in, unusual. As in, homosexual. As in, flakes. As in, fags.
"Recently, I changed my hairstyle. Apparently, I now have a more manlike haircut. Meaning, my old was more feminine. Did I get my hairstyle out of a queer magazine? No. I got it from my older brother, you pompous piece of jerkface.
"Tonight, my church laughed at me. The guest preacher mocked me. They laughed. He was on a roll about people being excited in church (kicked off by M_____) and he was talking about people who don't get excited enough. He walked over by me, leaned down, and said 'You look enthusiastic.' in that oh-so-sarcastic way. Everyone laughed. Then he proceeded to inform me someday the Holy Spirit will grab hold of me and I'll get excited.
"Congratulations, I think I'm in the process of selling this bitter piece of coal that is my heart to Satan. Hope you sleep well.
"I have never been in a Christian home. Do you know how inadequate you feel when you don't know how to set a table right? You have to be instructed, at the age of 17, how to do some simple task? And how dumb you feel for crying because you didn't know? And it cuts deeper because nobody understands how you don't know to do these simple tasks, like doing the dishes, or vacuuming. It's like I'm a freak.
"I have been told that a man needs to be a real man. Rugged, but sensitive to the Lord's commands. Ahem. 'A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city...' Well, preachers who are in-your-face and mean back themselves up with Psalm 119:165. Well, by assuming everyone you talk to loves God's law, then you also assume that none of them need to be preached at. You cannot preach that a male isn't a man and back it up with this verse, all you're doing is saying they aren't a man, but love God's law?
"Take the better road and don't say offensive things.
"Dear IFB preachers of America, I'm growing weary of the pain and insecurity. I grow weary of your "Bible-based" preaching, and I'm sick of felling like an outcast in my own church.
"Want me to shut up about it? I will. Just keep pushing, and I'll never speak a word inside an IFB church again. I'll pinky promise ya."
Every time I try to put this issue behind me, something else happens.
"I feel inadequate. In church. I feel out of place and unwanted. I'm not good enough. James 2:1-10 no longer gives me peace. It no longer makes me feel like I can be the bigger man, and push on past my insecurity. It's worn and useless to me.
"Here ya go vultures. I have never been a part of a Christian home. Why did I have long hair? Not because I'm a fag, and not because I'm a hippie. Because my friends liked it. Many of them knew me by it- the way I could hide my eyes behind it and look like a psycho killer seemed to be the only charisma I had- it seemed to thrill them. I was once told that I had the serial killer look going on, and it was awesome. I person told me it looked awesome. So, why not have longer hair? It got me the attention that my fat body and ugly face pushed away from the people os the world.
"And now there are preachers out there who say all boys with long hair are queers. Not as in, unusual. As in, homosexual. As in, flakes. As in, fags.
"Recently, I changed my hairstyle. Apparently, I now have a more manlike haircut. Meaning, my old was more feminine. Did I get my hairstyle out of a queer magazine? No. I got it from my older brother, you pompous piece of jerkface.
"Tonight, my church laughed at me. The guest preacher mocked me. They laughed. He was on a roll about people being excited in church (kicked off by M_____) and he was talking about people who don't get excited enough. He walked over by me, leaned down, and said 'You look enthusiastic.' in that oh-so-sarcastic way. Everyone laughed. Then he proceeded to inform me someday the Holy Spirit will grab hold of me and I'll get excited.
"Congratulations, I think I'm in the process of selling this bitter piece of coal that is my heart to Satan. Hope you sleep well.
"I have never been in a Christian home. Do you know how inadequate you feel when you don't know how to set a table right? You have to be instructed, at the age of 17, how to do some simple task? And how dumb you feel for crying because you didn't know? And it cuts deeper because nobody understands how you don't know to do these simple tasks, like doing the dishes, or vacuuming. It's like I'm a freak.
"I have been told that a man needs to be a real man. Rugged, but sensitive to the Lord's commands. Ahem. 'A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city...' Well, preachers who are in-your-face and mean back themselves up with Psalm 119:165. Well, by assuming everyone you talk to loves God's law, then you also assume that none of them need to be preached at. You cannot preach that a male isn't a man and back it up with this verse, all you're doing is saying they aren't a man, but love God's law?
"Take the better road and don't say offensive things.
"Dear IFB preachers of America, I'm growing weary of the pain and insecurity. I grow weary of your "Bible-based" preaching, and I'm sick of felling like an outcast in my own church.
"Want me to shut up about it? I will. Just keep pushing, and I'll never speak a word inside an IFB church again. I'll pinky promise ya."
Every time I try to put this issue behind me, something else happens.
posted by pastor mike at 4:04 PM
4 Comments:
Interesting post. I have a few questions, perhaps I will just email them. Somewhere along the line I think we lost control of the idea that we don't need to be mean to hate sin. Preach the truth, speak it in love. Sometimes love hurts and that is also something that needs to be taught to our young people.
Mike,
As requested, I commented on the original post. You might want to check it out so you know what I'm saying. :-)
Seth
Mike,
I love your blog because you talk about ministry to real people and with a substance that is missing in too many blogs and in too many discussions.
The situation your friend describes is way too familiar to me and, in my opinion, goes beyond generational differences. I can paint the same scenario for you but with "respectable" issues, theological high places, "godly" men who chasten.
The truth of the matter is, there are just too many guys who believe they are "called out" for ministry when in reality they are power hungry men, little men who don't know what it means to be true servants. They should meet up with S_____, from your Missouri trip if they want to know what it looks like to be a servant. The truth is, they would never be able to see past this woman's lifestyle to learn anything from her. What could SHE teach THEM? S_____ probably never even heard of Calvin's Institutes.
I was once in a potluck line in church where a little boy spilled his soup all over my foot, the hot stuff splashing up my leg. I was sorry for the little guy and caught a look of total distain on his dad's face, a look that was actually controlled anger. I quickly wiped up the mess, patted the boy's head and said something to relieve his embarrassment. The dad went on as though nothing had happened, said nothing to me, didn't stop to clean up his own child's mess...it was "woman's work" I am certain. This man was an elder in my church, a "leader" who couldn't be gracious enough to ease his son's pain or a servant leader enough to help me.
Now translate that attitude into a situation where you have a teenager who is struggling with the issues of life, the little or the big issues. The result is the blog post you shared today.
Mike,
Thanks so much for the copy and paste. The stuff he said really hurts. Not so much the complaints and accusations, but the attitude and the bitterness that has been stoked is what really hits home. Despite growing up in the model Christian home, the sentiments of this young man closely reflect my feelings as a youth. "You pompous piece of jerkface" makes complete sense to me. Why, as followers of Jesus Christ, beneficiaries of incredible grace, do we feel that we have been given license to hate, ridicule, divide, destroy, humiliate etc. anybody that does not fit or follow our IFB cultural norms? Where is the love of Christ in our lives? Do we not understand our position before Christ? Do we not understand what life in Christ actually looks like? Does the gospel of Jesus Christ consist of nothing more than salvation?
Many Christians are consumed with handing out as many "get into heaven for free" tickets as possible. If you believe and don't run, they will then tell you that since you took the free ticket, you should read only the KJV, not wear pants if you are a woman, cut your hair if you are a man, listen only to the particular style of Southern Gospel that is approved by our church, attend "church" services three time weekly, and for sure, you must be there Thursday night to help hand out more free tickets. Oh yeah, don't forget to get on a bus route. That will keep you "on track for God", whatever that means. If you don't follow theses rules, we don't know what to do next. We don't know much Bible beyond the Romans Road and a few "thou shalt not's" so we can't really follow God's plan - we don't have any idea what discipleship is. Therefore the only thing that we can do to get you to fall in line is to subject you to hateful manipulations, hoping that we can scorn you into becoming an independent fundamental, premelinial, separated, KJV preachin', sin killin', "Christ exalting" pompous piece of jerkface Baptist.
Why do we think that this looks like Christ? I honestly do not understand. We - I use that term loosely - don't even know Christ. We don't know His heart. We don't know His love. We don't know His grace and mercy, His longsuffering, His forgiveness. We don't know His peace, His joy. Oh yeah, we know all about that stuff. But how many of us live each day in constant awareness of our Christ. I would say very few of us, otherwise, this situation, and thousands of others just like it, would not exist. We are so caught up in ourselves, so prideful, that a "life in Christ" has become nothing more than a list of our rules + a free, non refundable one way pass. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to discount salvation by grace through faith in any way. But the New Testament contains much about how Christ should look in our lives, and we choose to either ignore it or manipulate it with other out-of-context verses so that we don't have to change our standards that were handed down to us by many great men who went before us. And then when another "follower" doesn't pan out, we shake our heads in bewilderment, cry out in desperation for God to do something, and satiate our consciences by proclaiming that the end times must surely be upon us.
What a bunch of crap. How many lives our we going to destroy in the name of Christ?
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