How I thought I lost my faith…and why I am thinking of making it official!

Note: I actually wrote this about 4 months ago. At that point, I wasn't ready to post this.  Now I am.  And, I've come to a conclusion and will be posting that soon. Until then, read on...

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I’m not sure I’m ready to go in depth about how I lost my faith. That is still a pretty touchy issue with me. Though I had some significant faith experiences in my teens and 20’s, I think now I can fairly say that my faith wasn’t very deep. Otherwise, why would I feel like I just wanted to ditch it? So, before I have to think too deeply about why I lost my faith, let me just cut to the chase and tell you why I’ve been debating about leaving it.

For the past 3½ years, I have been contemplating withdrawing my membership from my current church. This church, while I didn’t grow up in it, felt like home in many respects. Despite the fact that it felt huge and somewhat snooty, I liked it. I developed wonderful relationships with the children that I taught in Sunday School. I developed relationships with some of the older ladies that I led in Bible study. I was frequently called upon to read scripture, or help out with this or that type of thing. I had good relationships with the pastors. People liked me.

After the relationship that changed my life…I slowly began to distance myself from my church. I still taught Sunday School (and if I was there now, I’d still be teaching…it was the kids…I loved the kids! They loved me. And I loved making things interesting and new and exciting for them!). But things changed. Things changed even more drastically after the event that changed my life. Many of my relationships at church changed. After all these life changing things, I thought about writing a letter which would essentially say, screw you. It was after a public “confession” of sorts that I really had it in me to do it. But something kept me from composing a letter and withdrawing my membership. Even after no one offered to bring me meals after the birth of my first child (wait, that’s not true, no group from my church offered, no Sunday school class offered, but three or four individuals from that church did). Even after I was no longer invited to read scripture, I still couldn’t bring myself to write the letter. So, it's three years later and I’ve still been thinking about it. So why haven’t I done it? Let me count the reasons:

1) I still want to be on the email list to get bulletins and prayer updates

2) I’m afraid that it will somehow erase the impact that I had on the children that I taught in Sunday School. I know this isn’t true. But I feel like it.

3) I’m afraid

Hmmm. Is that all?

Maybe everyone else at that church has totally forgotten about this.  The reality is, if I ever (and I really doubt I ever will) move back to that particular Menno-bubble, I will not go to that church. I would want to go somewhere, but I don’t think I could, in good conscience, take myself and my child there as full-bonafide members. Hmmm…I think to myself, then do it! Withdraw!

“But,” I retort! “What if I want to get some sort of Mennonite job? They always need to make sure you’re a member of a Mennonite church.”

“Do you really want to work in a Mennonite institution anymore?”

“No, probably not, unless it’s Ten Thousand Villages, that’s different.”

“Fine, but I don’t think you need to be a member of a Mennonite church to work for Ten Thousand Villages.”

“True.”

The enormously ironic point of this whole thing is that when I was in high school, I delayed my baptism because I did not want to become a member of my then-home congregation. There was nothing wrong with the congregation. In fact, it was a wonderful congregation. I don’t know if it was partly adolescence, or the sense that I wasn’t going to be there my whole life (so why become a member if I wasn’t going to be there?). I just knew that there was nothing in the bible about having to become a member of a church as a result of baptism. (Let’s not get started on how baptism as John the Baptist and Jesus did it, was simply for the forgiveness of sins…something we should probably do yearly, not just once in our life.) After a year or two of struggle, I finally said, “Well, I want to follow Jesus. And I want my faith community to know that I am making a commitment to follow Jesus. So if that means I have to become a member of this church, then so be it.”

What’s ironic is that now I find myself at the same question, and even the same reasoning, but leaning the other way. I mean, I did this whole faith thing because something inside me told me, or rather believed, that Jesus, that God, was – IS – real. Jesus is a person to be reckoned with…a person worth studying, questioning and even emulating. However, over the past 3 years, I am not sure what to do with Jesus! I know God is with me, sometimes…but that is my logic (history… a kind of “institutional knowledge” that God was there 20 and 15 and 10 and even 5 years ago, God surely has to be here with me now) and the occasional serendipitous occurrence that tells me God is still somehow involving Godself in my life. Basically what I’m getting at is that church is now getting in the way of my relationship with God…my desire to have anything to do with, let alone faithfully follow, Jesus. At least, that’s what I think. Who knows, it could be that I’ve just been away from church for so long that my faith is slowly corroding. But I think it’s more that I assume my church felt like I was being “unfaithful” to it (by doing the unimaginable in an unimaginable relationship), I also feel like they were unfaithful to me. Jesus said to welcome back the sinner and I felt like I got stoned. What Jesus does and says is sometimes quite a bit different from what happens inside the church. And maybe this was the shove I needed to experience and follow Jesus outside of the confines of my denomination.

I have no idea if and when I will be in proximity to a Mennonite church again. If I find one that I want to be a part of, I will. My best support, spiritual and otherwise, in my new home half way across the world are in fact Mennonites! I don’t think I will carry this baggage with me all my life. If I find another, non-Mennonite church that I want to be a part of…well that would be good too. I’ll leave that for the future. My point is I was born and raised and chose the Mennonite faith . . . but it’s not serving me well. And I’m not serving it. Either I’m being a slave to it, or it’s being a slave to me. So, if I embarked on this journey to serve Jesus…why not ditch the baggage and serve or at least attempt to follow Jesus.

And this brings me back to my opening. In all honesty, I’m not really ready to leave my faith, now, am I? I do in fact want to find it again. I’ve told my dear mentor/spiritual director/amazingly wise and Jesus-like woman, that if I had to choose a Biblical analogy for my life right now, it would be of the Israelites wandering around in the desert. You know those 40 years post-exodus, post-slavery (hmm...), pre-paradise. They were learning to follow God all over again: away from the confines of everything that they knew, away from everything that was safe, comfortable and familiar. Moses was essentially setting up a new set of membership guidelines. The most basic of which could ensure a fairly sane and just life.

Lately, I often feel like I’m in that desert, wandering: around the same parts of this stinky underdeveloped city half-way around the world, dreaming of the day when I won’t have to look at cement walls and trash and mangy dogs, when I can be independent and drive myself to the mountains for a hike, when I can talk to people and understand what everyone around me is saying. I sometimes feel like I’m living on manna…the same foods day in and day out, dreaming of the day that I’ll be able to eat ice cream out of a box (and not get sick). I miss my former life. Like the Israelites, I have the same desires for aspects of my former life and “culture of origin”. It looks so much better than this! But maybe God is doing something with me here. I’m not sure what and I sure hope it doesn’t take 40 years.