Coming Clean, volume 3

I look at the traffic statistics on this blog, and I realize that I don't have to worry that much about offending people. Not many are reading.

Lonely 1
When I look back over the decades in my former church, the dominant emotion is loneliness, on three levels. The obvious one is personal and immediate: in social terms, the church is all about women, children, and teenagers, so my age group is pretty much forgotten. Men's only legitimate social interaction is with their wives. Of course, that also means that families are isolated from one another too. One gets the idea that plain old fun is a problem unless it's sort of a bait. Youth groups have fun so the kids will show up and listen to the program. The Alpha Group has fun so newcomer families will want to stick with the church.

Lonely 2
I think the image of the ecclesiastical Marlboro Man somehow hooks up with several other themes. Yes, men are supposed to be strong, and not need help. So many of the church leaders are somehow involved in psychological counseling professions that the ethics of those professions leak over into the church—and it's really unethical for a counselor to initiate contact with a client, so when bad things happen to a church member, the leaders wait hopefully for the member to make an appointment. And ultimately, it's all about Sunday worship. If the group can do well at singing and dancing, the griefs of one individual don't count that much. Whatever the causes, over the last decade or so, when family and business troubles weighed me down, when family members died, when I was just tired and worn, I always knew I had to work it all out on my own.

Lonely 3
John, the last surviving Apostle, apparently died in about 100 AD. This new manifestation of the church started in about 1970. During the gap, nothing happened. At least that's the attitude I keep running into. Wisdom from ancient writers is useless and so are expressions of worship. It's all very lonely to be part of a church that's shipwrecked and afflicted by amnesia.

The loneliness eventually just overwhelmed me. I wasn't suicidal, but I needed a church connection that didn't continually whisper, "You're all alone, you know."