In most of our lives we have seen certain phrases turn into said by Christians turn from meaningful, to cliche, to hypocritical precursors to irrational condemnation and judgement.
This saddens me, because it makes it hard for us to simply express complex emotions and feelings that result from interacting directly with God, without also carrying unwanted connotations that the words by themselves do not have, and without sounding like one of the annoying characters in the movie “Saved”.
Because my parents did not do a good job of separating our family life from church life (which is very hard with both parents being pastors) I find that at some point I’ve moved a step past thinking of christian cliches as just cliches, or even precursors to condemnation and judgement, to an irrational level of fear and hatred. Those phrases started compiling into a list in the back of mind, and the list was labeled “Will never say”, and carried a sub-heading of “Said mostly by assholes who probably don’t actually know Jesus, and burnt-out, overworked, underpaid, super-smart pastors”.
The second half is because once a year we would go to “Annual Conference” where all the pastors in the Methodist church (in the conference) get together and go over anything that needs to be changed or voted on, and listen to speakers, and go to trainings and what-not. The people I met there, wore a sad look of tiredness that sat on top of an odd sparkle in their eyes of confidence and humility. It was also at those meetings that I saw pastors who didn’t look like that, they were the ones with the overly-confident smile, schmoozing instead of conversing. They were the ones who only talked to my family because they knew my giant-of-a-man Grandfather, and after he died, we didn’t speak with them much because my Dad was not as important as a figure as he was.
Today, I find this list to be a sad stumbling block for me. It is because no matter how right I was in assessing schmoozing pastors or congregants bent on getting their way instead of following Jesus, I find myself wanting to use those phrases now. Many of those statements like “My life has been ‘different’ ever since…” are now statements I cannot find alternate words for. Many of the people I once judged I know have to look back and ask myself if I judged them because of their actions, or my lenses.
Part of me is angry that the Christian-right has stolen these statements from me, part of me is sad. I feel like the vocabulary that most simply describes the range of feelings I have has been snatched out from under me leaving only weird-sounding Vineyard idioms, and overly-complex intellectual drudgery.
The truth is all language is inadequate to describe how I feel about my faith, and the power encounters I’ve had with God. I think he likes it that way, and that it is part of why we have so many languages. But, still I can’t help but feel at a loss when faced with the need to express myself.
So it would super suck to see something bad happen to such a smart, hard-working guy.
