Chazz, I don't believe I've posted to your thread before -- interesting title.
Where is God...?
Short answer (just to get it out there): He is right there suffering right along with you.
Long answer: I truly understand a lot of where you're coming from. But as I read your words I hear the echo of a person I once was long, long ago. So much cynicism and contempt for the Church, professing an utter disdain for "Organized Religion".
I might be what you call one of those "lifers", having been born and raised in a family steeped in Christian faith. As such it was part of the culture I grew up with and thus part of the backdrop to which life's other experiences played out. I was born again at age thirteen after a very emotional revival, much to the surprise (interestingly) and delight of my parents.
But then soon after I entered college I became greatly disillusioned with "Organized Religion". The conservative values I had grown up with and continued to agree with came at odds with some of the political dealings at the top of my denomination. I was shocked to find out that my own church and its offerings were being (ab)used by the World Council of Churches to fund Marxist-Leninist revolutions in the Third World. I listened intently as my embarrassed local minister struggled to find word to explain the scandal at the top of the church hierarchy, that they had allowed the wolves into the fold, but seemed powerless to assure us they would be expelled. I had a falling out with religious institutions and became acutely cynical of evangelicals and other high-profile religious leaders.
But all the while I still held my faith in God. To this day I refuse to hold Him accountable for the sins of Man. I can believe in God, in His son Jesus Christ and in the Bible and easily reconcile that against the failures of mankind, even in the areas of religion.
I hear your own words of cynicism and my heart goes out to you. We are all sinners, Chazz, every last one of us. We all put Jesus on that cross, each and every one of us, including even the most pious of saints. And yet I sense you somehow expect so very much from the institutions of mankind, when they are all so fallible, even the religious ones. Yes, they are all accountable for any misdeeds and you can be sure they will all be held accountable, but not by you or me. Please don't let their shortcomings be a stumbling block to your own salvation.
I have learned to look upon each church, each group and subgroup of Christ's followers as we are to look upon individuals: by their own merits. Some are good, some not-so-good.
Since my long years of standing outside of the church, I have rejoined my church -- even my own denomination, amazingly to me. And you know who it was, ironically, who helped lead me out of the cold to again enjoy the full warmth of the Holy Spirit I find with others of like faith? None other than my W -- yes, my (now lost) STBXW. Do I blame God for her betrayal? No, she has her own free will and has exercised it, though for ill. I am thankful at the least that she did get me to atend church again, to regularly partake, as I like to put it, of the eternal waters of the spirit -- in fact, if there was nothing else, aside from my two S's, I would be eternally grateful to her for getting me back on track. But it is a sad, tragic irony.
I can say that I have been very fortunate to have attended some very special and wonderful churches since returning. Even so, I temper that with the realization that these are all mortal people here, even the minsters. The church I attend now is always working hard to extend the hand of generosity to those less fortunate, increasingly in locales around the world, and far from here. Here too, I know they really mean well, but I fear they are overextending themselves afar, when they may not really have their eye on tragedies in their own midst. How many in this one congregation are suffering threats to their families from divorce, substance abuse, financial troubles, wayward children and the like, while the church itself presses on with trying to manage and fund missions in distant countries?
But now of days I've learned to bear a bit of compassion for my church and for any such church. I don't really like it, but they're only human, after all, and thus prone to the same myopia we all suffer from, from time to time.
A favorite saying of mine now is that we all tend to forget that the Church is a hospital for sinners, not a country club for saints. We also tend to forget that the clergy are also patients in their own hospital.
