The Miserable Keep Trying Harder...?

In the age of Google, memory is a curse.

Well, memory and a disorganized set of bookshelves in four different rooms.  I remember a story told by Frederick Buechner about a famous minister, one whose name now escapes me (I did mention memory, didn't I?).  The book the story was in escapes me, too; and my books are not organized or categorized or otherwise searchable.  And I've gotten rid of so many, and forgotten I don't have them, and am surprised at the ones I still do have, and then surprised an age later when I don't, that it's all a muddle.  This pastor was famous in his day, and associated, again if memory serves, with Riverside Church in New York City.  Buechner tells the story of the day he had to face his congregation, it having been revealed he, like them, was all too human and that he, probably like many of them, had succumbed to the temptations of the flesh.  In short, his affair to a woman not his wife, had been revealed.  And now what?

I wanted to use that story to open these comments on this story (who knew Christian Post would be such a source for commentary?), to set in a rather personal scale (not my personal scale!) how difficult it is to be a pastor; how it is harder than you can imagine.  Not because pastors should be allowed to be adulterers, or moral humbugs, but because pastors in churches (v. pastors who ARE churches, like Joel Osteen or most of the "evangelicals" on Trump's "council" of same) walk a tightrope.  The position imposes a huge amount of responsibility with almost no authority.  The pastor from the Buechner anecdote whose name I can't now remember (and won't slander by guessing wrong) found that out.  So did Dave Gass, a pastor you've probably never heard of before now.

I'm speaking here of Protestantism, which is to say non-Catholic Christian congregations.  For a priest, it can be a different matter (depending on the denomination.  I've seen Episcopal priests treated like used kleenex.  Then again, Espicopalians are Protestants.).  I served a small church in a tiny rural Illinois town where the "big" church was a Catholic one, with a school attached.  Reportedly the priest there scolded his flock one day in no uncertain terms about not enrolling their children in the dying school attached to the church.  The problem was probably demographics more than anything, but the priest apparently unleashed on them in ways usually considered counter-productive to stewardship and asking people for help.  Then again RC priests give up everything to be priests, and the institution takes care of them wholly (let's leave out scandals involving predatory priests a moment, please).  They have a certain protection from reprisal if they scold a congregation, especially if they have the bishop's backing.

I never had the backing of my "bishop."  Oh, one was a good egg; the rest were worthless, but I'm not here to rehash my complaints.  Besides, I was largely responsible for the failures of my ministry; blaming others is not the road to redemption.

I bring up failure in ministry because I want to challenge Dave Gass a bit; not judge, just challenge.  My primary interest in this article started without how Raw Story headlined it, highlighting this quote:  "Church people are shitty."  It is, as I've (probably) said before, a comment many a pastor would/could make about his/her congregation at some point, and the reason so few "preacher's kids" follow Daddy into ministry (it's rarer than hen's teeth):  they've seen the show from off stage, they want nothing to do with it.  One example stands for all:  when I moved from Chicago to Houston, after a year in a pulpit there (a church since closed, best I can determine.  I had a knack for picking failing churches, which is a responsibility I take, but it also points to the quality of congregations I served), I had my first meeting with a committee after a night service (Advent?  Must have been.)  As I left the small chapel to settle in the anteroom, my wife and then 5 year old daughter left with me.  She clutched my hand and wanted to stay with me.  My more discerning wife explained my daughter wanted to protect me from what was to come.  She had already learned what church could be like, though that expectation wouldn't come true there for another 2 years.

I won't rehash why it is hard to be a pastor, mostly because it is self-pitying and not the point here.  Let Dave Gass speak for himself:

“After 40 years of being a devout follower, 20 of those being an evangelical pastor, I am walking away from faith. Even though this has been a massive bomb drop in my life, it has been decades in the making,” he began in the thread before moving on to compare Scripture to Greek mythology.

“When I was in 8th grade and I was reading Greek mythology, it dawned on me how much of the supernatural interactions between the deity of the bible and mankind sounded like ancient mythology. That seed of doubt never went away,” he said.

He explained how he was raised in a “hyper-fundamentalist” Christian home where Christianity “didn’t work. The promises were empty. The answers were lies.”

Even so, he grew up to be a devout Christian who rarely missed church or failed to study Scripture.

“I was fully devoted to studying the scriptures. I think I missed maybe 12 Sundays in 40 years. I had completely memorized 18 books of the bible and was reading through the bible for the 24th time when I walked away,” he wrote.*

There's more at the article; you can read the rest.  Here's the part Raw Story picked up on:

“… The entire system is rife with abuse. And not just from the top down, sure there are abusive church leaders, but church leaders are abused by their congregants as well. Church people are just sh*tty to each other,” he continued. “I spent my entire life serving, loving, and trying to help people in my congregations. And the lies, betrayal, and slander I have received at the hands of church people left wounds that may never heal.”

The "devout follower" leads directly to this revelation:  that church is not the place he imagined it to be.  Without addressing Mr. Gass personally, that is, without critiquing him or his choices or beliefs, I would use his despair, his sense of the failure of faith, to distinguish faith as will from faith as trust.  It is, I think, an important distinction.  (On the personal matter of Mr. Gass, one comment at the article points out it appears he had no spiritual mentor to help him through this crisis.  I think that's the best way to address him; but the questions his situation raises can be addressed by any of us, without judging his actions.)

Faith as will is what Gass is describing here.  Basically, if he wishes hard enough, wills strong enough, what he wills, will happen.  Pardon the pop culture comparison, but at the end of "Infinity War" the villain Thanos ruminates that it takes those with the strongest wills to do what needs to be done (he seeks to restore balance to the universe by wiping out half of all life in the galaxy, before life itself exploits all resources and wipes itself out.  Wotta guy!).  That's faith as will; Thanos doesn't know what will happen when he gets his way; he can only imagine the gratitude of the universe when he's done.  He's quite convinced that will come to him, that he will earn a reward for his struggles and losses.

How many of us don't?  How many of us don't imagine a down-payment now will result in rewards later?   God is Cosmic Santa Claus:  if we are really, really good, we'll wake up with all the toys magically present under the tree.  Of course, we don't know what "good" means, but if we go through the motions....  Here, I have to say, Mr. Gass forgot Jesus' teachings that even if you look at a woman with desire in your heart, you have committed adultery.  It's not enough to act right, or even think right, or even do right, if you think you are earning rewards in this life and the next.  That is faith as euphemism for will.  You will it, it happens, your will is rewarded.

Interestingly, the only reward Thanos receives is a brutal beheading.  The universe is not grateful; the universe is mickle in its wroth.  You do not stand at the center of the universe.  The universe is not waiting for you to fulfill your destiny (Thanos says, twice IIRC in "Endgame:"  "I am inevitable."  But, of course, he isn't.) so it can reward you.  The purpose of life is not to be a rules-keeper, or to "play the game" by the right set of rules.  That caricature of Judaism handed down to Christians by the struggles between Jewish factions in the early centuries of the Common Era has become the reality of Christianity for far too many people, and it does as much damage now as Jesus said it was doing damage then.  And faith as will is the strongest, I would say the most pernicious, expression of it.

Faith as trust is not about will at all, but about kenosis.  It is about emptying, it is about trusting.  Again, the words of Jesus:

"That's why I tell you:  don't fret about life--what you're going to eat--or about you body--what you're going to wear.  Remember, there is more to living than food and clothing.  Think about the crows:  they don't plant or harvest, they don't have storerooms or barns.  Yet God feeds them.  You're worth a lot more than the birds!  Can any of you add an hour to life by fretting about it?  So if you can't do little things like that, why worry about the rest?  Think about how the lilies grow:  they don't slave and they never spin.  Yet let me tell you, even Solomon at the height of his flory was never decked out like one of these.  If God dresses up the grass in the field, which is here today and tomorrow is tossed into an oven, it is surely more likely (God cares for you), you who don't take anything for granted!....Indeed, you are to seek (God's) domain, and these things will come to you as a bonus."

Luke 12:22b-28, 31, SV

Of course, try teaching that to a congregation.  Your reward may well be "lies, betrayal and slander" which will leave "wounds that may never heal."  Well, unless you trust God and treat the wounds as lessons in faithfulness, rather than consequences of failure of will.

I didn't say this would be easy.  And do I say this because I have learned these lessons, and am an exemplary of wisdom?  Hardly.  I haven't learned this lesson yet; not in my heart, in my bones.  I know it; but I also don't know it.  I believe; as the centurion said to Jesus; help thou my unbelief.

Kenosis is about powerlessness; will is about power.  One is the way of God; one is the way of the world.

The saddest part of this story is that now it is "he said/he said."  The deacon of the church points out Mr. Gass's failures as a moral exemplar.  The deacon of the church presumes he is in the seat of judgment, and must protect the church against its former pastor's complaints.  The pastor complains that everyone let him down, that all he was taught to accept was false, and that nothing he did is his fault. He judges ghosts and specters, rather than blame his congregation.  He barely accepts responsibility, and the deacon, speaking for the church, makes sure all responsibility for this crisis is on the former pastor.  "Religion is responsibility, or it is nothing at all," Derrida rightly noted.  There's a lesson in that, as well.

I think I understand the confusion of Mr. Gass.  He expected his faith to transform his will, or at least to put his will into effect in the world, to his benefit.  I used to think Christianity must at least be transformative:  if it didn't change the world, it would at least change me, or those I taught it to in the ways that seemed most likely to provoke transformation.  Yeah, it was my will that would be done, especially if it was properly aligned with God's will.  Magical thinking, where "magic" is simply the imposition of your will on the world by non-physical means.  I no longer understand Christianity so magically, nor even consider the metaphysical must necessarily impact the physical (which means the former is also not eliminated from consideration because it cannot be felt by the latter).    I see it now more as a guide.  And a guide is only helpful if you follow it.  Like most men, I grew up thinking I don't need no steenken' directions!

I'm still prone to think that, even though I know I'm wrong.


*and no, I'm not interested in the quasi-atheist bits about Greek mythology.  I had seminary professors who would agree, going so far as to point out the miracles ascribed to Jesus were uniformly, up to and including resurrection, ascribed to other historical as well as fictional personages.  Nothing unique there, IOW.  They were still believers, just not believers in the doctrines Mr. Gass apparently found wanting.