Dirty Pastors

Living in my area and being Reformed is like living in a small town where most all the cops are dirty. Just sayin'

Legalism & Pharisees

The interesting thing about Jesus' life and ministry is He didn't have a lot bad to say. There wasn't condemnation and curse, like in the law of the Old Testament. But when He got ticked, it was usually at the religious leaders of the day. The Pharisees (the main leaders mentioned in the NT) thought they were pretty awesome. They spent their lives in Scripture, had their theology "perfect," and looked down on the rest of the peons. Jesus wasn't impressed. He called them names, even. Mean names. He said bad things about them. He threw their money changers out of the temple in a rather violent manner.

This gives me a lot to think about.

1) I'm fairly certain I have spent the vast majority of my adult life sitting under the teaching of Pharisees. Now, of course, they would claim they weren't. They would proudly point to the fact that they make sure NOT to practice keeping the law.

As an aside: If I was an astute or intelligent person, the first time I heard them rail against the law I would have asked if the fact I shouldn't worry about keeping the law meant I could cheat on my husband and kill others. I mean, if I can't truly keep the law perfectly, those would be the ones I'd want to break. They are definitely the most enjoyable by and beneficial to me. :D

Anyway...

2) They believe their theology is perfect. Really, honestly, they believe they have it right and everyone else is an idiot.

3) Re: the term "idiot." They really feel a sense of superiority. One only has to spend all of 5 minutes in their presence as they casually insult the "apostate" preachers like Billy Graham, Chuck Smith, and, well, anyone else, even within their own denominations, who do not agree with them completely. (See "aside" above for one reason it took me so long to figure it out.)

There are darker and, imo, more sinister aspects that, if I remember, I will write about later. I think this is enough for now.

Elder Meetings

OK, a little humor...

What goes on in an elder meeting after the people deemed unfit to attend your church at a previous elder meeting leave? Seriously. Do people high five each other? Do they pat each other on the back? Do they congratulate the elder who leveled the most vicious attack against the people and say, "Wow, you were vicious like Jesus!"

Just wondering. :D

The Cardinal Rule

...of Calvinist churches in my area is "Say whatever you want about evangelicals, but don't ever say anything bad about other Calvinist churches, unless, of course, we think they are leaning too far towards evangelicalism."

I broke that rule this week. Publicly. On Facebook. For all my friends from our old church to see.

I don't think it went over too well.

As I looked at the few posts I've written so far, I saw that originally I hadn't wanted to say anything publicly about this. But the more I realize just what a horrible thing these churches are doing, the more I think maybe it's worth shaking things up a bit.

However, I realize that I can say what I want without getting snippy...like them.

I might make my next controversial post about the dance my kids will be participating in on Easter morning. No, not liturgical dance (honestly, I really am just not into it). Real, rock music video style dancing. It's gonna be great. Not the response to my post, the dance. My kids have danced for years, but never to music dedicated to glorifying God. It's great to see them dancing for Him.

Anyway, my goal is to actually learn how to deal with this entire situation without going back to my former self of piggish pride. That sort of attitude is promoted in the Calvinist churches in our area. Our new church believes that people respond to kindness more readily than vicious sarcasm. I know, who would think?

You Become What You Hate

As I worked through my fruitless search yesterday for someone like me, someone who has left the Reformed church but is still a Calvinist, I found a whole lot of ex-Calvinists. I noticed they all had one thing in common, they sounded just like all the ex-Evangelicals around here.  Angry. Hateful. Bitter.

They are angry at their Calvinist pastors for supposedly misleading them. They are hateful to anyone who still embraces Calvinism. They are bitter for the "wasted" years they spent as Calvinists.  I shuddered. It was like listening to all the "ex-Baptists" around here talk about their former lives as Evangelicals. They hate people like Chuck Smith so much they've run him into the ground in our area and have cut off any possible communication between Calvinists and their families in Calvary Chapel. Angry ex-Evangelicals are what truly pushed Calvin out of CC Bible College. The bitterness they espouse from the pulpit, from the radio, etc., became so noxious that it helped no one, but drove a wedge between parties.

They all look like each other. A warning, to me. of what I have the potential to become. Will I be a hater or will I realize that the people in these churches just simply are as deceived as I was? It's hard when you keep hearing your friends bag on Evangelicals as if they are all the same. I'm so tired of reading their FB statuses that are puffed up with pride, lacking any sort of care for their brothers and sisters in Christ whom they accuse of either being deluded or being deceivers. Or, sadly, inferring that because those people don't believe the same as we, they are not even saved.

God have mercy on us for what we have allowed ourselves to become.

Under Their Thumb

So I've been thinking a lot about why I feel like I must be the only person in the blogosphere (sp?) who has anything negative to say about Reformed churches in my area. As I've thought about people who have left our churches that we've attended over the past 20-ish years I realize they were mostly told the same thing..."You cannot speak of this to anyone." Using biblical texts that supposedly support their position Reformed churches silence opposition. It's hard, of course, to get anyone to tell you what they say to them, but I will tell you what I was told, coz, well, I suppose I'm stupid that way.

When one of our issues was finally dealt with I was reprimanded for talking to other people about the problem. Forget that I brought it up with an elder AND with a pastor. Not enough. Anyway, I can imagine what goes on in other meetings where the people are most likely threatened with a bad mark on their record if they breath a word of it. There have been some people who, if you ask, are not as silent and I might try to interview them at some future point but most of my close friends who left have said they weren't allowed to say anything.  And so the disease continues and spreads and eventually more people are pushed out of the church.

I wonder, if one were to do, say, a personality assessment of those of us who have left, if one sort of personality is more likely to say something than another. What about personal history. I have a history of abuse. My parents were abusive and I have a fairly typical "abusee" mentality. I think it's how I tolerated things that bothered me in the Reformed church for so long.

But I have another part of me, my natural personality, that has a strong sense of justice. This sense is often suppressed when I am in an abusive relationship, for obvious reasons. Eventually something snaps and I walk...no, more like I run...away...quickly. However, I notice even now, like most abused people, I am inexorably drawn back toward it. If not for my children, I would probably have returned, or at least considered it more than for a fleeting moment.

All that said, I will do a more thorough search of the internet to see if there might be others out there who are as disgusted as I am and are willing to put their reputation on the line as a result.  It's not an easy thing. Hell hath no fury like a neo-Calvinist who has been called out. (Hence the anonymity of this blog. Seriously.)

The End of the Worship Wars

...For me, at least.

I grew up in the church. I've spent approximately 43 years worth of Sundays rising early while my friends slept in. Dressing up while my friends got into their swimsuits or other Sunday activity clothes. Driving to church while my friends went off to the mall. Singing praise to Christ while my friends indulged in football.

I point this out because it is those of us around this age, who grew up from birth, in the church, that seem to have become the most involved in the "worship wars." We seem to be the ones who have the biggest stake, so we think. On this side of things I have to wonder why.

Who decided that simply because a song was written after we were born it can't be worthy of use during a church service? Who decided that the electric guitar was demeaning to the worship of God, but the organ, easily the most obnoxious instrument on the planet, brought glory to God?

When we left the Reformed church it was difficult to attend the "contemporary" service at the Baptist church. While I knew some of the songs from listening to Christian radio (I know, *gasp*), the style of worship was never one I had been comfortable with. It was fine for a concert, I thought, but not for a church service.

As we've been there for several months now, and thought back to all the problems with the Reformed churches we've attended over the past 2 decades, we've come to the conclusion that the music is not the most important thing. And last night, for me at least, sealed it.

Last night I took my oldest to a special event at church. It was supposed to be for young people but there were a lot of middle aged folks there too (mostly parents, I assume). As the music began, even louder than at the contemporary service, and the words we were to sing flashed on the screen, it began to dawn on me that to think God was not being glorified simply because a guitar and drums were being used instead of an organ or a piano would be pretty conceited.

The words were incredibly worshipful and, while I can't speak to the heart of each individual worshiper, I'm sure that as many people were praising God from their heart in that congregation as could be in a hymn singing, organ listening, congregation.

The worship wars have divided the young and the old for far too many years. The desire to hold onto the past is not a sign of orthodoxy, it's simply a sign of stubbornness.  While I probably will not switch to the 11:11 service (where they play louder music) over this, I don't have a problem with the church reaching the young through the means of their own style of music. There is an old adage in business, "lead, follow, or get out of the way." I think it's time for us to admit that by insisting on archaic worship practices (which, btw, I love--well, except the organ) we are "in the way." Yes, the gospel is enough, but, no, worship doesn't need to bore people to tears.