The World According to Pederson: I'll Definitely Lose Some Friends For This

I've been thinking a lot lately about religion. Not the theological aspect of religion (though that does play a role), but the social aspect. I know I talked about this briefly in my last piece, but there's a lot I still need to unpack. I know this because I had this epiphany while sitting in church with my wife this past weekend, listening to a passionate youth pastor yell at the congregation (in a good way), while wiping gratuitous amounts of sweat off his forehead with a bath towel. He said a couple of things that really stuck with me. One of those things was that it's time to put the past away and move forward. The second of those things was that you either need to be up or getting up, because when you're down, the people in your life notice . . . especially your kids. This is important to me because I will gladly admit, right now, that I have a chip on shoulder, and it shows. I've always known this . . . but I've never attempted to process it because I didn't think it could be processed. I thought that this is just the way things are. The things causing the problems won't change, and I just have to deal with it. The problem with that thinking is that over the past year, this chip has evolved into a boulder, and every day, it gets heavier.

First of all, sermons can be difficult things to latch onto, as the words of a pastor can sometimes feel like the words of an author or musician. You hear the message that speaks to your heart and feels relevant to you, whether that's what they meant or not. It's the difference between wanting to rock n' roll all night and party every day or rock n' roll all night and part of every day. That being said, it's entirely possible that I've taken things out of context and ran a marathon with it. However, as it seems relevant to what I'm trying to say, we'll just go for a brief morning jog with it. I'm going to say the words that pastors, church employees, and enthusiastic congregations hate and fear . . . I have been hurt and let down by the church . . . again and again. I've been hurt and let down by the various religious organizations and the people within them that I have worked for or been connected to. Or perhaps hurt is putting it lightly. It's like a festering wound that never fully heals and occasionally tears itself back open just for fun. When I finally think it's healed, somebody shoves a cross-shaped dagger back into it and makes the pain feel fresh again. The worst part about feeling this way is that you can't talk about it, especially not within the church. Discussing it basically turns you into a spiritual leper in their eyes. They ostracize, isolate, and criticize you. How dare you question our actions! How dare you call our behavior into question! This is the work of the enemy! When you go to the source of the hurt, usually the people in power and/or the communities within these organizations, they often try to place the blame on you and seek to discredit you. This is why good and honest people stop going to church and completely isolate themselves from any sort of religious activities. Accountability can't be maintained when it's you against the herd. The word "accountability" in organized religion is like a swear word. It's like reminding your Christian mother that Amy Grant had an affair with Vince Gill when they turn on their favorite Christmas album during the holidays. Everybody makes "mistakes" and those "mistakes" only get called into question when it benefits an agenda.

Before I continue, I'll clear the air for a minute. I don't believe that all churches and religious organizations are bad. I love the church we go to now, and the people are fantastic. I know pastors who run churches where they never do things behind closed doors that they wouldn't do in front of the congregation. I have a friend who started a church in Orange County that has revived an interest in church in young people. There are leaders out there who are genuine and truly care for their flock. Even the churches that I've had trouble with have had some really great people in them. However, my experiences have, for lack of a better term, built this layer of stone around my heart that I've been trying to chisel away for years, but it feels like the more I chisel, the more the stone hardens. I'm fighting a spiritual disconnect that's a product of the very people I looked to to lead me closer to God.

I think part of it has to do with my upbringing. Don't get me wrong, my parents are amazing, and this isn't something they consciously did. However, I don't think people talk about how difficult it is for somebody raised in Christianity and brought up in the church to experience a powerful and consistent connection to God. Though I've felt and seen God working in my life and working through me to help other people, this is something I struggle with daily. I pray, and I wonder if God is listening. People like me, we've never had that artist in the ambulance moment. We never experience those life changing moments, whether its a brush with death or a complete turn around from some dark indulgence, that leads to experiencing some bright light or divine presence that will forever change us. There wasn't a specific thing that happened that moved our hearts, they just sort of marched in place since we were kids, because that's what they were trained to do. My spiritual origin story began in the '90s with some lady in a blue sweater with a wolf's face on it, telling me that if I wanted to go to heaven, I needed to ask Jesus into my heart then and there. Afterwards, she gave me goldfish and juice. I had no idea what that meant when I was a kid. I did it because I was told to, and I was told to every year that followed, because let's be honest . . . there's not a lot of variety in sermons for children. In the years that followed, I just went through the motions. I'd pray before meals. I'd pray before I went to bed. I would go to church on Sundays. I would try to be a good person, as much as my underdeveloped brain would allow. I followed the formulas . . . and I felt incredibly numb, because that's all it was . . . a formula. I remember my mom sending me to youth group when I was a teenager (mostly because I was clinically depressed and that's what she thought would heal me), and I hated every minute of it. I felt like an outsider, like I didn't belong there. It's not that I didn't try. I wanted to be like everybody else, but it felt like they had some sort of spiritual velcro or divine enthusiasm that I didn't. I felt like something was fundamentally wrong with me, and it sent me spiraling.

Another reason I struggle is because for the past ten years, I've been employed by churches and religious organizations in some capacity. I've seen behind the curtain. It was sort of like finding out that wrestling is fake. Behind the extravagant performances and seemingly warm smiles are organizations full of people who are flawed to various degrees, but use their positions to excuse and justify their behaviors. Mega churches are a prime example of this. They're full of pastors and spiritual leaders whose hubris builds cultures of manipulation, insecurity, and exclusion. They foster volunteer communities where they teach you not to love volunteers, but to make them feel loved so you can use them until they've got nothing left, at which point you discard and replace them. They do the same thing to employees, but they justify it by paying them pennies, and then telling them that they're doing this for the kingdom and not a paycheck. They build communities where your worship and loyalty to a pastor is not asked, but silently demanded, as God is seemingly placed second. These same pastors also boast about being theologically superior to the other mega church pastors out there, to the point where if they find out you've been to another church, they spread that information into the community until you're shunned and isolated. I remember specifically sitting in a meeting, where somebody recommended segregating church attendees based on how strong their faith in God was, and how often they attend service, like they were judging their qualifications for salvation. The moment you question these practices, they push you out. Smaller churches can be guilty of this too, because a majority of them want to become mega churches. Some of them have their hearts in the right place, but unfortunately, that's not true of all of them. That heart is easily corrupted. I have a friend who used to be a pastor who said, "There's no greater tragedy a church can commit than putting somebody up on a stage every Sunday and expect them to be the 'man'". The seeds of ego are like thorny weeds, difficult to manage and nearly impossible to uproot.

I remember my last dance with church employment very well. I was working for a smaller church, and I had just finished running tech for a young adult service. As hard as I tried, I never fit with any of the people I surrounded myself with. I didn't dress like an American Eagle employee. I didn't wear Fedoras or keep up with the latest Bethel or Elevation Worship albums. I didn't strive for the attention of the worship band and the twenty-somethings arguing the differences between Calvinism and Arminianism (more thoughts on that at a later date). I never acted like I was better than anybody. Most of all, I was honest. There was a young adult checklist, and I didn't mark any of the boxes. I didn't fit in, and I realized that I never would. I got in the car that night . . . and I cried. It was like after all the years of trying to "be Christian," the damn had finally broken. I had finally come apart. I was done with churches. I was done with "Christians". I was just done. If these churches and the people in them represented what it meant to be a Christian, I didn't want anything to do with it. I wasn't finished with God. I was just finished with the Christian label and its many negative connotations.

After teaching English and Digital Media at private schools for several years, I thought I was finished being stabbed by cross-shaped daggers. I was finally beginning to heal, but last year I was attacked so much and the wounds went so deep that it decayed my faith to a level that required (and still does) some serious mending. The person I worked for was a spiritual megalomaniac, whose insecurities had insecurities of their own. This person surrounded themselves with two other people, whose fanatic beliefs and jaded self-righteousness ripped apart an entire community. If you spoke out against them, they made it their personal goal to make sure you were punished in a way that they were satisfied with, and they would do it the in the name of God. They came after me so frequently that I was living with this constant fear and anxiety, wondering when I was finally going to be fired for whatever reason, because they wanted me gone. I was even referred to in an email as a "tool of the enemy" because I spoke out against them. When the metaphorical swamp was finally drained and they went elsewhere, the spiritual and emotional wounds they'd left everybody with seemed beyond measure. I don't think any of us had ever had the Bible weaponized and used against us like that.

I wish I could say these were isolated incidents. I wish that I could say my experiences are things that don't normally happen in churches and religious organizations, but things like this are, unfortunately, very common. This is why young people are distancing themselves from faith and leaving the church. In the past few years alone, the decline in church attendance around the country has been so drastic that organizations are actually publishing statistics on it. It's easy to blame it on politics and social issues, but I believe there's a bigger problem at the heart of it. A big part of this problem is the people in charge. In the words of the Alan Moore, "Who watches the watchmen?" A majority of these "leaders" use faith and God to bolster their own self importance. They try to scare you into submission by making you think that you're sinning against God because you're speaking out against their actions. The threat of Hell is a powerful tool against anybody lacking in theological knowledge, and fear is the scepter in which submission is attained.

Most of the time, people in these positions don't need any help making themselves look bad. How often do you look at the news and find high-profile pastors and leaders at the root of some controversy? Even the Pope is making headlines, these days, for placing the Catholic church in the middle of social and political issues. The other part of the problem lies elsewhere. At the heart of the modern church, there is something wrong. There are layers of hypocrisy, ego, and even idolatry that have corrupted the most beautiful gift that we have ever been given. You shouldn't have to check the boxes to gain access to salvation. You shouldn't have to give your loyalty to a being of flesh and blood in order to have a place to worship. You shouldn't have to compromise your heart in order to walk with other believers. There is a growing schism between God and organized religion that is ripping and tearing at our souls. Something has to give. Something has to change. If not, all you're doing is trading the world's tyranny for that of whichever church you're spending your Sundays at. Revival has to happen, because I know that I'm not the only person who sees these things and wishes they were different. The church has to change . . . because the impact it has the potential to make, can change everything.

I know . . . I need to put the past away. I need to stop letting those experiences jade my perception. I need to either be up or getting up, but the stone around my heart is thick, and I hope that one day there will be a great shattering. For now, however, I will call it like I see it. I will trust God, but I cannot trust the people who claim to speak for Him. I will also never do any of those things while wearing a fedora.