The Journey Away From Mainstream...

A quote of a quote from a blog I've been reading...

“Andrew Jones describes four areas people move through while undergoing a paradigm shift: first is the old paradigm, the old mental map or way of seeing things. Over time, it becomes increasingly cramped and feels more like prison than freedom. In area two, there's a high degree of frustration and reaction. An individual in this phase turns against the old paradigm and can't stop talking about how wrong, inhumane, or unsupportable it is. In area three, people gradually turn from deconstructing the past to constructing the future and begin the hard work of designing a new paradigm to take the place of the old one. This is a time of creative exhilaration, challenge, and perhaps anxiety: because the discovery of a new paradigm that will be superior to the old is by no means assured and because the wrath of the defenders of the old is likely to be unleashed on those who dare propose an alternative. If the creation of a new paradigm succeeds, people move into area four, where a new era develops and expands freedom and possibilities."

If I am honest, I don't know how I've ended up at this point. I didn't seek it out, I didn't intentionally seek to, as they see it, rebel. I went on holiday, isolated from my usual Church environment, and found amazing, crazy things start to happen. I was reading "Frequently Avoided Questions" by Chuck Smith Jr. and Matt Whitlock and found myself agreeing with a large proportion of what they said. This book was striking a chord in me that I didn't even realise existed. It validated and gave a lucid voice to all those niggling questions that had circled in the back of my mind since I had become a Christian almost 3 years earlier, questions I had quarantined there because my thinking was so overwhelmingly not in the majority. I clapped and smiled my way puzzledly through those first two and a half years wondering why I had lost the intimacy with God I so desparately craved. I suppose such a drastic change was always inevitable.

I came back from that summer interlude completely changed, but also sensing that all but a handful of people around me would understand the changes that had taken place in me. Thankfully my mother was completely supportive of my decision, and to be frank, I think her spiritual intelligence and refusal to unecessarily follow the crowd informed my decision. Back home things were not so rosy. I had instinctively held my silence, fearing the worst and finding myself unable to articulate this massive paradigm shift that had taken place: my initial paradigm had freshly crumbled and I had no idea where I stood in relation to anything. After a couple of months my flatmate confronted me about why I was not attending church and I fumbled through a response that didn't nearly do justice to my current position. Later that evening I sat down and wrote her an email articulating exactly what had happened to me that past summer and the change that had been wrought in me. I was by no means making excuses for myself (as I had when she had first spoken to me), and though I knew she would be unlikely to understand, I felt it necessary to make it clear that I had not and was not "falling off the deep end theologically," or "turning away from God, or away from the Bible, or at least away from the Body of Christ," as Heidi Daniels so wonderfully describes it.

Not long after this I uncoincidentally received a seemingly inoffensive email from a counselling pastor at our church (in whose office my flatmate had recently been employed) casually enquiring about where I was at and asking me how my art course was going, all polite catch-up, touch-base sort of talk. Without wanting to seem rude, I honestly wonder how stupid they must have thought I was to potentially think I would not see right through that email. A few days after receiving the email my flatmate said, "I should have told you, I was really worried about you so I spoke to _____ about what was going on." Needless to say I was not wholly impressed. After speaking to my mum, I had found out that this pastor had emailed her about my situation, to which my mum had emphatically replied that she had every confidence in me spiritually and as a person.

I decided to cut the crap and confront the issue and wrote back to this pastor, telling them exactly what I had told my flatmate, by now not expecting understanding, nor seeking any form of validation. However, I was still hurt when I read their reply which openly questioned my decision, calling it "dangerous, whether you think it is or not," and saying that "anyway, your college requires you to be regularly attending church." (I attend a Christian Arts college)

The irony so far was that I bore no malice towards my church community when I left it. I had not been spiritually abused, and compared to a lot of Pentecostal/Charismatic churches I had experienced this one was refreshingly honest and real to a certain point. It was just a simple case of a round peg in a square hole: I had grown out of their structure and was seeking something different.

As I mentioned earlier, I attend a Christian Arts college, and it is there, and also in my household with my other Christian flatmates that I find I experience community in the truest sense of the word: we experience God together, share our ups and downs, our frailties and joys, we read, pray and delve deeply into scripture to find Gods true heart. I have given up trying to explain this to my friends from my former church community because sadly, every time they see me I am reminded subtly that I "need to be going to church." I know they mean well, but it's so disappointing to realise that they simply cannot think outside the box and accept that there are different ways of living out God's community.

Surprisingly, I found understanding from the person I least expected to: my seemingly triumphalist flatmate. We were talking one night, and when I brought up my self-imposed exile from mainstream Church, she had said that she had been wanting to ask me about why I had seemingly 'dropped out' of Church life. When I told her of my desire to experience real community, and not just the bums-on-seats Church model that is so widely and unquestioningly accepted as the only valid expression of Christian community, she leaned forward enthusiastically, saying, "Yes, yes! So many people forget that community is about people, not tradition!"

In the past 10 months I have read a plethora of material, but mostly blogs which recount stories which are surprisingly similar to mine. And above all I have admired the humility,grace and integrity with which these people have told their stories and recounted their experiences. And I use these words in their truest sense. It makes me feel like such a slacker to be honest; in a lot of areas I find I have spiritually let myself go, and it saddens me that I've lost that edge and passion and integrity, like Paul said in Romans, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." And so I have ended up hating myself for what I do, and finding myself more afraid of confronting my mistakes, being less honest with myself about where I'm at.

But I've hit that wall, that point of enough is enough. I've felt like ditching this whole shebang, and come back from the edge realising that I need to take hold of my life, to make it my own and stop drifting with the current and accepting whatever flotsam flows my way. This goes for my spiritual life as well, time to cut the crap and crack out the broken and contrite heart for real this time: I can see that every time I give in to ungodly behaviour I am simply devaluing my position in God, I am saying "I am not worthy to be your daughter, I am not worthy of eternity with you God," and that is the biggest load of nonsense ever! Thankfully I've recently found out about a great group of seemingly likeminded people who get together literally around the corner from where I live, so the future is wide open...