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".
NoCode... some further reflections on another part of your reply....
In my experience, groups of people working on a common goal or for a common purpose run the risk of deviation from their intended purpose. Often, where the perpetuation of the organization itself (I will refer to descriptively as "the machine") begins to overtake the simple carrying out of the original intended purpose.
Issues of money, prestige, and pride are common elements that seem to be waiting to take root and begin the overtaking. Whether the group of people are organized to be a company, team, volounteer group, family, church, or any other collection of people with a common purpose, all seem to be suseptible to this type of variance.... dare we even use the word "corruption"?
Is this not the case with many churches. Interestingly, I was sharing with my current wife a short while ago, my experiences as a young Christian being a new believer and member of an exciting new church. The church was headed by a volounteer pastor who made his living in his non-pastoral career. This was a man of impecable integrity with talents galore. With a heart to reach and serve people. He supported the church financially from his outside earnings. Church meetings were in a rented auditorium. Members all pitched in and set up for Sunday and mid week meetings. Home group meetings sprung up all over our area. And the church grew amazingly.
We had a close kinship with each other and there was a level of simple honesty in our church group. Many people were reached and lives became better by applying what we all learned together.
Now fast forward 20 years. The pastor is now on salary... as is his wife and some of his now adult kids and their spouses. While non family members are asked to volounteer to serve doing similar jobs for free that the pastors family is paid to do. The building purchased mainly by donations of the faithful members is titled to the pastor. The pastor has a TV show that consumes a large portion of the donation and tithe budget. The pastor and his family are frequently away at speaking engagements internationally.
Multitudes of competent and sincere believers have gone through the church. The progression usually is showing up, getting involved, finding that the Pastor has full control of everything and makes decisions often in favour of his family, feel discouraged, often get used for their talents, then leave.
Many of the early married couple members are now divorced. Many kids of the early generations are not living Christian lives and have deviated to drugs. There are numerous pregnancies out of marriage and single parenthood. There are affairs and betrayals of every description. Self serving business people market shamelessly within the congregation. One ripped a bunch of the members off in an investment scam and is serving at least 10 years.
My point is not to criticize. For I am one of the now-divorced members and a recovering drug and alcohol addict. Which I did not start even using drugs/booze until the past few years.
So what are my points?
Well first off... organizations of people seem to be poised to eventually become corrupt and deviate from their original intended purpose.
If the organized north american church is supposed to be God's people who study and live in the keys to the universe and life, how is it then that we are indistinguishable from any other collection of people in our culture by virtue of our tendancy toward corruption? Shouldnt we be just a little bit better? I am not looking for perfection here. I just see very little distinction.
Christians are not alone... please do not think I am just picking on us. If the movie "X" on famed Muslim social revolutionary, Malcolm X is an accurate portrayaly, their organization suffered the same type of corruption. What about other religious groups? I dont think any are imune.. Yet we claim to have some sorts of higher understandings?
So again, if religious organizations have a connection to God, how is it that we become corrupt indistinguishably from other organizations? No different than a government or any other grouping of people. Corruption almost always sets in. I do not mean the incidious evil corruption. I simply mean diversion from original purpose and issues of pride, power, fame, and/or money overtake or intertwine in the organzation.
To me, these organizations cease ot be relevant and effective in their intended purpose because they become distracted or preoccupied with issues of pride or perpetuation of the machine.
I want to know God better. I want to connect with God. I want to know Jesus on the level that I once felt I did. I too had a born again experience. It was early in my adult life in the most unlikely of circumstances and it was an experience that I could not and still can not deny.
Compare this simple closeness to the complex quagmire of a modern church, and thus you have my dilema. I felt my initial experience with God drew me to fellowship with likeminded people. Yet my many experiences with likeminded people always have ended up in corrupt organizations.
My search and longing is for something different. Surely there must be. Perhaps "something different" describes the early beginnings of movements like The Alpha Course a few years ago, or the Vineyard Church in the 70s, or the Pentecostal church at the turn of the century or the Lutheran Church hundreds of years ago.
And my relevance to this Divorce community is that my church experience where it once helped build strong marriages... in the end could not help those of us whose marriages fell apart. So what happened? Where did we miss it?
I guess I am saying I am disappointed. I guess I am feeling foolish for being a part of a church that taught families how to be strong.... only to end up living in what feels like the most striking contradiction to what I once lived and believed. And yes, I guess I dont trust the people I once did and that is always a tough thing to come to grips with.
I want to know God and be in community with other believers without going down the corruption pathway. I am affraid to buy into someone else's self serving agenda disguised as "ministry".
This is the paradox... we need community... we need fellowship... but our organizations of people so frequently self destruct. An not usually quickly. Usually slowly and painfully. Like the frog in the pot of hot water.
Ok.... this has gone on and on and on. But in doing so, I am becoming clearer in my own understanding of the issue I wrestle with. I want fellowship but I do not trust it. I want God but feel challenges in being in his community.
I am not affraid of this stage of my life. I feel I am seeking as honestly as possible and in doing so, there really is nothing to fear. But I am uncomfortable, uneasy, dissatisfied.
