shell of humanity

I’ve been thinking of how I left the system lately. Many of you reading this have had the same experience. It seems the basic elements are the same.

We went to church, either raised in it or joined later in life, then through growth and exploration or just plain fatigue grew tired of the way “Christianity” operated. We seemed to see through the manipulation or greed or just saw the lack of similarities between the Jesus in the Bible and the Jesus we saw in the “church”. So with tears and fights and loss of friends we separated ourselves.

Now we find others on the outside of the walls and begun to cling to each other. We began to learn from each other and from God rather than a man or system. Thinking about the way most of us left the system got me thinking of similarities.

The way we left seems similar to someone growing up. A child is raised and does what the parents say. They grow older and start showing their independence. It may look like rebellion, but without this separation the child’s growth is stunted. How would it look to see a grown man still hanging on his mothers skirt at the store? Still having to have his food cut up? Still living at home? No job, no wife, no house of his own?

It starts with the man separating himself from the family system and becoming his own person. Without it he would be dysfunctional. This is how I’ve come to think of leaving the system. When we were young in the faith we needed parents to guide us. We needed to stay close. But as we grew we needed independence. We needed to become our own person. To our “parents” it looked like rebellion. To the leaders it looked like we were going against God, but what if we were simply becoming a

‘teenager”? What if we were experimenting with who we are? It may lead to mistakes. It may lead to consequences. It may lead to all sorts of bad things, but without those, how shallow would we be? If we never tried things, if we never ventured out, we would be shells of humanity. We wouldn’t have the human experience if we never made mistakes.

I think a lot of the people that leave have this moment of “rebellion” similar to kids that go off to college. They are on their own for the first time. They have no parents making the decisions, no one watching their every move.  They might eat pizza every day of the week. They may drink alcohol. They may have sex or do drugs. They may make mistakes, but the majority of people don’t stay like that forever. Some do, and that’s their decision, but most learn that you cant eat unhealthy forever, you can’t drink and do drugs forever, you cant have sex with whoever you want forever. Things balance out.

We as “heretics” or “free believers” leave the parental system of the church. We feel bad sleeping in on Sundays, but oh so good at the same time. It feels naughty. We may stop feeling guilty about enjoying sex, or swearing or drinking.  We may even sin but we KNOW we are forgiven. Some might call this
“abusing grace”. I see this as a transitional period. Not that you need to go back to feeling guilty about these things anymore. It will balance out. We become responsible independent adults.

We can spent time with our parents not as children, not as below them, but equals, as adults. Some of our  “parents” wanted us to be under them forever. Always learning and needing them.  This seems like a distorted relationship to me now. Always at home. Never leaving. Never growing. Never separating. I know now that I was just becoming an adult. Strangely enough, for me it was similar in timeline to actually becoming an adult. I’m still learning. I’m still making mistakes, and I’m still separating from “parents” and leaders. I don’t want to be a shell of humanity anymore.

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