A frequently asked question

I did a staged reading of some short plays based on the saucier moments in the Old Testament. It was a delight to do, and I felt spurred to forward the church coordinator a copy of my first play, "In a Distant Country". This led, as many conversations inevitably do, to the question of why I left the church after completing a four year degree in Biblical Studies and three years of Seminary.

I get asked this often enough, that I figured I might as well post the answer here. It doesn't deal with the specific circumstances around my departure, but it explains, in my mind, why I continue to maintain my distance from the church I had dedicated so much of my young life to.

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Ah, yes. It's, as I'm sure you can guess, a popular inquiry and one that could fill an evening in discussion.

While there were personal aspects to the decision to change my vocation and move towards a broader theological perspective, there were also spiritual and intellectual ones as well, which are probably more vital.

Through my study of church history, I began to become more and more uncomfortable with the exclusivity of the messianic message, and less and less convinced that it was what Jesus had in mind. The rise of codified doctrine as the church moved out of a place of persecution and into one of power, and the radically different ways that the "one way" looked when viewed from different points in history/economy/race/class structure... all this presented me with a real problem. The vast majority of what we call Christianity has seemed to do mostly with maintaining power structure, contemporary moral codes, and social mores.

Much of this goes back to what, in my mind, has been the supplanting of the teachings of Jesus for the exhortations and governmental mindset of Paul. Paul's very authority was questioned repeatedly by those who actually walked with Jesus, and has been established by a particular form of circular logic: Paul's churches, which were attractive to wealthy "god-fearing" Gentiles who admired Judaism but didn't want to deal with being circumcised as adults or obey the dietary laws, grew and succeeded. Because these churches were successful, while others were not, the letters of the founder get exalted to the writ of the Holy Spirit.

Paul's conversion became the model of Christian faith (and the basis for the idea of being Born Again) starting with Augustine, continuing to make Paul and his perspective the normative one in the church. As time moves farther and farther from the source, Paul's ad hoc attempts to bring his fledgling churches under control become used over and over again to apply universal rules of behavior to the believing community. The vast majority of ills the world has suffered at the hands of the church have, in my mind, come from Paul's often misunderstood comments about women, his attempts to calm down unruly behavior, and his vitriolic defense of his authority from the skepticism and denouncements of the Apostles.

I have no issue with Jesus, but I do believe that he viewed himself and his mission as essentially Jewish in nature. He only dealt with gentiles when they forced themselves upon him and became an object lesson of the kind of faith and passion he was trying to inspire in his own people. My issue is with Paul, and the hellenization of a jewish spirituality that came to owe as much to Plato as it does to Moses and the prophets.

Again, there was much going on in my personal life as well when I made the actual split, but the concerns from a theological level had been developing for years.

I don't know if that qualifies as a story, but the more narrative part of this deals more with the circumstances that forced me to take a good hard look at myself, what I was doing, where I was going, and why. It tells why I stood back at that time, but this explains why I have remained on the outside, sympathetic to a compassionate theology and believing community, but separate from it.