No Jesus, No Peace
Know Jesus, Know Peace
This maxim sat engraved in wood on my ex-father-in-law and mentor's desk. At the time, he served as the pastor for the United Methodist Church I attended. Being his daughter's love interest as well as one of several young men entering the ministry from his church, I often found myself sitting in his office and reading that little wooden sign in attempt to avoid direct eye contact. At the time it rang true for me, and I would use it in tons of sermons over the coming decade.
Many years later I found myself questioning the little sign's big message. Now I was the layman, working and living day-by-day in the secular world, my short stint in the ministry (and marriage to his daughter) a lifetime behind me. Like so many of my former parishioners, I now struggled with the simple tasks of making it to church each Sunday and staying faithful throughout the week. I wrestled with the same theological questions I once so glibly and confidently answered for them. Questions like:
- How do you know if you're saved?
- What about people who are faithful to other religions?
- What are the essential things you absolutely have to believe in order to get into heaven?
- What if you're wrong?
Also like so many others, I found myself often losing that struggle to stay in church. A pattern emerged in which my family and I would get all excited about church and start going every Sunday (or in our case Saturday night) for months, followed by periods of months or even years of ecclesiastical truancy. We would try new churches, get involved, join up, stop going, then do it all over again when the guilt became unbearable.
During one of the truancy periods (the last, it would turn out), a rather startling discovery finally broke through to my stubborn mind. This cycle of attendance and non-attendance suddenly made sense, as did my growing dread of "getting back in church". The awful truth?
Attending church played havoc with my mental and emotional well-being.
What? Yes. During the "off" periods, my life made sense. I fit in with my co-workers, slept well, functioned fine at work, and generally enjoyed some stability in my emotions. I had peace. Real peace. Not the kind of "peace" I hitherto had to meditate and work myself into. Not an emotional high or ecstasy or euphoria. Just a solid "normal" stability.
In contrast, regular church attendance worked up my emotions into a maelstrom of conflict and constant motion. No matter how active, there was always a nagging guilt that I should be doing more. I found myself constantly trying to attain a proper attitude of worship, then feeling foolish and uncomfortable afterwards. But most of all, the questions nagged at the back of my mind like a bored junior high kid.
I'm speaking now with 20/20 hindsight vision. At the time, I couldn't tell you why I felt uncomfortable, just that the more I thought about going back to church, the more my agitation and anxiety grew. Words do not exist that express the overwhelming sense of release I experienced when I finally decided (for the first time consciously and purposefully) not to go back to church. But one word comes close:
Peace.
I mark this new realization -- that church attendance robbed me of the peace it was supposed to provide -- as the sign on the exit ramp leading to my post-Christian life. Looking back, I realize this has been a life-long journey. The Genesis of my agnosticism lies in my early childhood. This peace that passes all mis-understanging was simply the beginning of my Exodus.
In my next post, I plan to delve more into the question of why church (and I as I later understood it, Christianity) caused such dis-ease. It all starts with a great guy named Pascal, and a famous wager he made...
