Outside the church

It's been a few years since I left the employment of a church in circumstances that were undesirable. What I perceived as dishonesty and indifference shocked me and left me questioning assumptions I had made about the approach of people I worked with, shared bread and wine with and I thought loved and respected me.

A significant side effect of this was I could no longer gloss over aspects of that church's theology and assumed belief that I realised I simply didn't believe. Truth is I hadn't been aligned with the conservative evangelical thinking that pervaded the church for a long time, if ever.

Despite initial attempts to stay part of that church family it became clear I needed some space and time to grieve the loss of a community that never really existed, but I thought did... and frankly to get over the anger over how I and others were treated.

Getting a new job, stepping away from the church and taking a few years to slowly reflect on my faith has been difficult, often painful and a huge part of me would much have preferred everything just to stay as it was, but life moves on and so must I.

I went to work for a University and the first thing I noticed, looking back, was how small the church was. When I was in there, part of the staff team, "serving God's transformation of the north" it felt like I, like we were part of something. I really did start to believe we were within a subversive movement and that one day revival would come, with supernatural force, and our society would be transformed for the better. It felt like we were part of something big.

Truth is the church is small and getting smaller. That particular church has seen people leave faster than new people have joined, and the wider evangelical movement in the UK increasingly looks like a fringe group of crackpot fundamentalists in our increasingly secular society.

I also felt less stress... eventually. I moved to a new job with a steep learning curve and brought my good protestant work ethic and desire to do well, so pushed myself, yet this was far less stressful than the role I left behind.

I've subsequently spent a lot of time reading, thinking, listening to podcasts that challenge and inspire me, all in the name of trying to understand what I actually believe.

Some people are, by nature, very black and white about things. There's right and wrong, good and bad and nice roles into which people can be slotted. I think I've long been able to see the grey inbetween, even if I didn't always understand it, though I've found age brings a greater appreciation of how rarely the nice simple categories work.

Mostly I've concerned myself with Jesus.

Christianity is supposed to be centred around Jesus but interestingly not very much of the behaviour I've seen from Christians over the years (and I include myself in that) seems to reflect much of what Jesus actually taught.

Part of the problem is many, probably most people in churches don't have the first clue what Jesus’ teaching means. They don't understand his words and actions within the context of him living as a Jew under Roman occupation. The way in which the Bible is read and understood is so devoid of colour and life as to make it almost meaningless and it's often taken as as either a set of literal instructions or a historical document... of course it's neither.

At some indeterminate point I’ll probably take a subject and try to explain what I believe about it, at the time of writing, and why I think it's important to consider alternatives to the widely received churchy approach. I am probably wrong about everything, I am no scholar or theologian and I have not extensively studied the Greek... these will be personal musings. I'd love to hear your comments.