Faith of Our Fathers
Okay, but what about your faith?
A few years ago, I experienced one of those father-daughter talks that touched me deeply. I was so proud of where my daughter was and, more importantly, who my daughter was. She had taken some giant leaps in self-awareness, and I realized that whenever and wherever she could, she would pass on the wisdom from her life into the lives of others.
Christina, my super awesome daughter who teaches at Louisiana State University or LSU (Geaux Tigers!), went through a difficult time when she was in her junior year of high school. She watched her father wrestle with his Christian faith. Believe me, it was a wrestling match for the ages! If you are familiar with Jacob and his wrestling match with God that left him with a permanent limp, you’ve got the picture. And yes, I do limp.
The details aren’t important. Another (and they are frequent) church fight. The pastor (that would be me) gets caught up in it. The river of human foibles and group think/mob mentality easily sweeps the pastor off his feet and all he can do is go with the flow. In other words, he’s helpless; he can’t fight the current. His authority and leadership as pastor is extinguished by that current.
Christina watched this unfold at church. You might could say, she had a front row seat. She heard the rumors, the harsh words. She saw the way church members who for eight years followed the leadership of her father and the church staff, turn and launch a full frontal assault on the integrity of both the pastor and his staff.
But she saw something else as well.
She saw her father at home, in private.
It was no secret that her father was considering abandoning his Christian faith. He almost did. He came very close. (That’s a story for another time, if I ever get the guts to tell it.)
All these things led Christina to begin asking some questions about her faith. In time, the two of us sat down together and she shared her story with me.
It’s been over a decade now, but I asked Christina if she would share with you a little bit of her struggle and where she is now.
She graciously agreed. Here’s her story . . .
The other day I was talking to a friend of mine who installs high end appliances. She loves telling stories from her work, especially things she overhears from homeowners while she’s installing their dishwashers (it’s amazing how people ignore manual workers like they’re invisible).
Last week, she was putting in a range hood while the owner and two of her friends were chatting in the next room. One of the women had to duck out early, and the moment she left, the other two embroiled themselves in gossip about the departed woman’s divorce — how her husband cheated on her, how she ignored it for years, how her children are now caught up in the scandal. According to my friend the talk was… um… less than charitable. “Crows feasting” was the metaphor she used, I think. The talk hit home for her because she recently went through a nasty divorce herself.
“Oh…” She added as an afterthought. “Did I mention they’d been meeting for Bible study?”
“Of course.” I snorted. “Only Christians could be so cruel to each other.”
I immediately regretted the comment. I’d like to think I cringed, if only inwardly. I know cruelty isn’t particular to Christians, that humans can be cruel to each other regardless of religion. I know my comment was unfair to true followers of Jesus who work hard to emulate his kindness and compassion.
What surprised me was how automatic the response was. My brain didn’t process the words until they were already out of my mouth, leaving me befuddled. Where did that come from?
I know the answer to that question. I have a dark history with the church, but I like to think I’ve grown past it and learned to be fair-minded. After the conversation with my friend, I realize I’m not as “over it” as I thought I was, that a part of me is still bitter about what happened in my adolescence. I still have a lot to do when it comes to making peace with my experiences growing up in the Baptist church.
When I say I grew up in the church, I mean that literally. My dad’s a pastor, so my formative years were spent there as much as at school or home. I watched him in the pulpit every Sunday morning and evening and spent Wednesday nights in Bible study with kids my own age. During summers, Dad would sometimes take me and my siblings to work which was our FAVORITE because the three-story building was practically empty and we got the run of the place. Church was home as much as home was, a meeting ground for family and play, for good food and friends. It was a place where I felt comfortable and safe, a place that nurtured my individuality as much as my spirituality.
But that changed starting somewhere in early adolescence. It’s difficult to pinpoint a specific event, but if I had to choose, I’d say it started when my dad picked me up from band practice one day and handed me a letter. I read it silently and remember being confused even though I understood the words. It was an official announcement of the dismissal of our youth pastor. I remember thinking, “Mr. Joe? Fired? But why?”
That’s when I got my first glimpse of the dirty underbelly of church socials and youth retreats… church politics. It had been there all along; I was just too young to see it. In the weeks after the pastor’s dismissal, I heard stories of the things that had been going on behind the scenes, stories that sometimes seemed too fantastic to be true. Are adults really that petty?
Yes. Yes, they are (And as it turns out, there were very good reasons for firing Mr. Joe). After that, I started to see things more clearly, not just the things going on in front of me but things in the past too. This is mostly because my dad became more open with me as I got older. He told me about his early experience getting voted out of a church because it was growing so rapidly the old members felt they were losing control. He told me how the teenagers stood on their pews when his dismissal was announced, mirroring the final scene of Dead Poet’s Society released that year. He told me about squabbles in his current church too, how some members didn’t like guitars being played during worship or the pop culture references he made during sermons. These things seemed trivial but I soon learned trivial disputes can cause serious rifts in church leadership. The battles over “rock music” in worship were bitter with some abandoning their positions or the church altogether as a result.
I don’t regret that my dad told me these things. I would have found out on my own anyways, and if I had, I would have felt angry and betrayed. Instead, dad’s opening up about his struggles in church politics strengthened our relationship, not just for me and my dad but the whole family. My sister and brother were privy to the same conversations, and we learned together that the people who seem the Godliest are often anything but. I’m not sure why dad started opening up like this, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because he wanted us to know that, yes, sometimes Christians don’t behave as they should, but that doesn’t mean Christianity is bad. I think it broke his heart to see Christians preach the Word of God while also doing and saying horrible things, and he wanted us to recognize that this bad behavior is the very opposite of how Jesus taught us to be.
If not for my dad’s honesty, I would most likely be estranged from him now and utterly unashamed in condemning Christians en masse. Because of him, I see nuance and complexity where I would have seen black and white, and I’m grateful for that. But the undeniable truth is that becoming aware of hypocrisy and in-fighting in the church transformed it into a very different place for me. What was once home away from home became a battlefield. When I walked through the doors, I needed to be aware of enemies all around, a church elder who could overhear me use a curse word then report to all who would listen that the pastor’s daughter has a filthy mouth. The older I got, the more I couldn’t escape the fact that me and my siblings were representatives of my dad, whether we liked it or not, and what we did, said, and wore could cause him worlds of trouble in some of his battles with church leaders. My sister’s choice of dress raised eyebrows on Sunday morning. My brother’s boyish gloating over football rivalries earned scowls (Sometimes worse. Once a deacon twenty years his elder shoved him angrily because my brother made a snarky comment about the Gators beating the Bulldogs).
By the time I hit senior year of high school, I went to church as little as my dad would allow (and he allowed a lot, maybe too much. The absence of his children in church service could be just as damning as our presence). I didn’t want to be in a place that felt unsafe, where I was surrounded by judges ready to condemn me and my father for the slightest thing. I didn’t want to hear unkind remarks about the length of my sister’s skirt or rumors about my dad’s affair with his secretary (whoever started that one was clearly unaware of how codependent my parents are).
It’s sad now to think about my childhood in the church, what a nurturing environment it had been. I remember hearing the story of Jesus’ famous defense of the adulterous woman and how my Bible teacher artfully turned it into a lesson about the ways we’re all guilty of bullying. I remember crafting a name plate in Sunday school and one of the church ladies suggesting I call myself “creative Christina.” I have so many memories that are part of how I became who I am today, interactions that contributed to my sense of identity and morality. Those early days in the church helped me develop kindness, self-awareness, and generosity, traits I continue to nurture to this day.
Maybe that’s where my lingering bitterness towards Christians comes from. Maybe a part of me is angry that they took something special and twisted it into something dark. Now, I think back on these memories and I wonder, was my bible teacher one of the people spreading rumors about my dad? Did the lady who said I was creative sneer at my sister’s choice of dress when we grew older? Those precious memories are tainted by what came after them, experiences that instilled resident suspicion that any Christians I encounter are secretly just as petty and just as mean as those who made my dad’s life hell growing up.
But this assumption is unfair. I’m an English teacher now, and in my six years of teaching, I’ve learned how a few bad eggs can warp your perception of the lot. I often talk with teachers about how we walk out of class at the end of the day inwardly railing about the two to three slackers, yet rarely think about our brightest, most creative students. If we’re not careful, if we let ourselves get consumed in thoughts about the “bad ones,” then before we know it, we start seeing ALL of our students that way, assuming the worst of them. This is dangerous, in the classroom and in life.
Most of my interactions with Christians these days are with my students. Because religion isn’t the focus of my classroom, I often get to know my students well before I ever learn about their affiliation. There’s one student from a couple of years ago who stands out. She threw herself into our class service-learning project with what I can only describe as religious fervor, demonstrating astounding empathy and compassion. It wasn’t until the final month of class that I learned she was a deeply devoted Catholic. My first reaction was surprise — how did this girl grow up in the church and become so kind? — but I immediately caught my bias. The truth is that every day I encounter Christians who are living proof that not everyone who follows Jesus is as cruel and vindictive as some of the Christians I grew up with. They’re a living balm to that bitterness inside me, and they don’t know it, but every time I interact with them, they help me heal.
Maybe the church lady who told me I was creative was just as compassionate as my student. Maybe all the faces that seemed warped looking back are just the product of my mind judging the whole by a few bad eggs. These are the things I try to think about when I hear stories like the one my friend told me of Christians gleefully ripping each other apart. I conjure images of the good-hearted Christians I know — my father, my mother, my students — and I try not to let bad experiences overshadow the fact growing up around followers of Jesus had as much positive impact on my life as negative. Christians were the first ones to teach me about forgiveness and love, who showed me what generosity of spirit looks like. A Christian helped me recognize my selfish tendencies. A Christian was the first one to tell me it’s okay to be different.
I can only hope that as the years progress, I’ll have more experiences that help heal old wounds and appreciate what I gained growing up in the church. I hope the bitterness inside me will die down so I don’t utter uncharitable things about Christians or automatically assume the worst of them. I hope one day I can reread the gospel and honor the fact that though I haven’t set foot in a church in years, I’ve still accepted Jesus in my heart. As my dad would say, no amount of hypocrisy or bad behavior can undermine the power of Jesus and his message. I don’t have to be a Christian to respect the simple purity of “love your neighbor as yourself” or “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” The message lives inside me, put there by Christians who truly love the Word of God, and there’s nothing that can snuff it out.
