The Stepford Fantasy
Welcome to Part 3 of “My DTR with the Church”. As per usual, if anything strikes a nerve or if this just got you thinking, I’d love to chat with you!
We can all identify with Goldilocks. You know, the girl that was caught breaking and entering the home of the three bears? I can't believe I just wrote that sentence. What I'm saying, though, is that we want perfection. We look for it in almost every aspect of our lives, including finding - and staying - at a church. Like Miss Fairytale Felony over there, we want things to be just right.
We want our churches to be perfectly suitable in our eyes. The building will be the perfect blend of traditional and modern, combining stained glass windows and black modernism with an overabundance of pallets and burlap for decoration. The lead pastor will be hip and cool and highly Instagrammable, yet speak profound depth only found after years of advanced Theological education. The pastoral staff at the church will produce outstanding quality productions for services, kids ministry, and youth services while still having time to visit the sick and the elderly. And their families will be perfectly well behaved at all times. The preaching will be attractional yet biblically profound, with historical context and word studies. Of course, it will be delivered with relevant modern illustrations without being too "worldly." Oh! The sermons will also be the right balance of not-judgy and convicting. The church service will only be about an hour long, and people will always get to leave church in time for lunch. Don't forget the music. It will be just the right volume, with a full choir and modern instrumentations. The song selection will incorporate hymns and theologically correct concepts while having catchy tunes and beats that remind you of the latest Justin Bieber song. The people will be very welcoming and gracious to all, and there will be no fights or strifes. The congregation members love volunteering for ministry and never flakes out; the pastoral staff always knows how to encourage, manage, and care for their volunteers. There will be no gossipers in the church. The church will be committed to frequent prayer and fasting, while also hosting a lot of potlucks. There will never be an annoying rambunctious unaccompanied minor loose in the sanctuary. There will always be parking in the parking lot close to the doors.
This church does not exist.
Have you ever watched the 2004 movie, "Stepford Wives"? The one starring Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Glenn Close... Oh wow! Everyone who's everyone is in that movie. I think I was in high school when I stumbled across that movie. When I first watched it, I just thought it was weird, but I've watched it again several times over the years. The film is based on a satirical novel by Ira Levin that centers around Joanna Eberhart, a successful business executive, wife, and young mother. She had a bit of a breakdown and moved to a new, seemingly perfect neighborhood. She suspects the submissive housewives in her new idyllic Connecticut neighborhood may be robots created by their husbands. I'm going to spoil the movie ending for you. (I'm not sorry. It's been seventeen years. If you wanted to watch it, you had time.) It turns out that the husbands did turn their wives into perfect robots, and the mastermind was the wife of the top guy there. Her husband was a robot. He was the perfect husband. She created him because she wanted life to be perfect and beautiful. To be less... ugly. This was her explanation:
I was the world's foremost brain surgeon and genetic engineer. I had top-secret contracts with the Pentagon, Apple and Mattel. I was driven. Exhausted. Until late one night, I came home to find... Mike... with Patricia. My brilliant... blond... 21-year-old research assistant. It was all so... ... ugly. [Continues in a disconnectedly happy voice] Then early the next morning, as I gazed across the breakfast table at their lifeless bodies, I thought... "What have I done?" But more importantly... what could I do to make the world more beautiful?
Why is it that we want perfection so much? Is it so that we can feel safer? A way to protect ourselves from the ugliness of life?
A couple of weeks ago, my best friend went to a church service and came back commenting, "Today I realize the church is the people. Weird."
Yes. Weird.
I grew up going to Sunday school, and I learned a song involving folding my hands, wiggling my fingers, and singing that the church is the people. We talk about it all the time, but we don't really let the truth sink in that the church is the people, with all that that entails. The glory and the heartbreak of humanity.
People are messy.
And if people are messy, churches - made out of people - are messy. Churches and their leaders can, and will, hurt you. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It's the truth.
I've been hurt by the church. So often that if I dwell on my three decades of relationship with the church and point out all the times I've been hurt by it, it would look like a toxic relationship. I grew up a Pastor’s Kid, and I have emotional scars to prove it. The fact that I’m female and have a very… unique… personality has been used against me before. I have been ostracized by church leaders. I have lost friends in church. I have worked in toxic church environments. I’m not going to go into details, but I have enough church scars to write a best seller. (I might actually do that.) At some point, I hated Christians. It was a confusing time because, at that time, I was interning at a church and studying to be a pastor. I graduated with my ministry degree, burnt out, hurt, and bitter. I wanted nothing to do with God, but then I had a bit of a come-to-Jesus moment. The church is the people, and people are messy. The church is the people. The church isn't God.
So why did I equate church and my complicated relationship with it to God? Why was it that I blamed God for something a bunch of imperfect, messy people did to me?
Then I felt like I was slapped in the face. I had another less-than-comfortable realization. I am part of the church. I have been part of different churches for three decades. I'm a messy, imperfect person. Even if I come into a perfect church (which doesn't exist), my existence in it renders it imperfect. Messy.
While I have been hurt by the church, I have hurt people as I maneuver work and life. While church people have said things to me or about me that hurt me, I've said things that have hurt people. I've done things that I can never undo. I've been callous and unthinking. I've made church uncomfortable for people. I can't point fingers at the church without pointing the same finger at myself.
If I'm being honest, I don't know what I'm recommending at this point. Boycotting the church entirely? Staying? I don't know. All I know is that churches are messy. And that God isn't the church. Apart from that, I don't really know what to do with this.
Ok. There's, I guess, one thing that I'm dwelling on a lot. There's this exchange from "Stepford Wives" that got my attention.
"[The men found out that Walter never made his wife into a robot]
Walter: She's not a robot. She never was. I couldn't do it.
Mike: Why not?
Walter: Because she's not a science project. Because I didn't marry something from RadioShack.
Mike: That's a shame."
Maybe I should think of church less like I am a consumer at a store, asking for the best and most perfect product for me. (30-day guarantee or your money back!) Maybe I should shatter my Stepford church fantasy. Instead, perhaps I should start looking at churches like a big group receiving refugees in the middle of winter. It's chaotic and overwhelming. Everyone’s sick and hurting and starving. Everyone brings baggage enough to fill several cargo planes. Even the ones in charge are refugees themselves, trying to figure out how to love in a harsh and unforgiving world. Oh this community that is the church. It is so overwhelming, but it’s also very real. It’s supposed to be a place where our humanity and all its messiness is accepted and cared for and celebrated. Not sterile and distant, it’s a bunch of people desperately huddled together for warmth. I think, just maybe, I can have a little more grace amid an imperfect hodgepodge that is the church as I sit down and get warm.