When it comes to church, do you ever feel like you are on the outside looking in?

2/23      Barry, 43

Being an outsider looking in is how I came to see Barry, who has basically “deconstructed” from the strong beliefs and close fellowship he felt as part of the church he attended in his teens.  Now he is at a point of disbelief in any sort of afterlife or that God exists, although he still sees value in Christianity for its ability to provide people with meaning and moral direction.

I wondered about Barry’s journey from faith, and it seems to have digressed through a series of stages beginning with an unusual affair he’d had as a teen with a married woman of the church, the resulting informal shunning he’d experienced, the lack of life coaching or any sort of follow-up by the church, going off to college and the self-reflection brought about by the hard questions he’d faced there, and the re-construction of a new set of beliefs ever since.

Barry said he had first come to faith as a teen attending a Christian music festival with the church youth group, and from there he was totally invested in the church, teaching Sunday School and involved in other ministries.  It sounded like the effect of the deconstructing stages above caused him to step back and look at church and his own involvement in it with a critical and self-reflective eye, and he didn’t really like what he saw.

I compared his experience to being “on the outside looking in”, like we might experience when we merely watch people doing church online rather than being caught up in the experience, or when we bring a skeptical friend to church and begin to see it through their eyes, rather than our own.

I would say these critical and self-reflective experiences aren’t necessarily bad but are pretty much inevitable, and because they are unavoidable we need to be ready for them when they happen.  Basing our faith and church commitment on emotional experiences or even social connections shouldn’t be the foundation of our faith, because it will sooner or later crumble through the seasons of our journey.

So what should be the foundation of our faith?  I’m sure there are many ways to look at it, but one answer I see in the Bible is when Jesus spoke to His disciples after He had sent them out into ministry and they basically came back on a spiritual high.  “The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”

These disciples were caught up in the moment, excited over the spiritual power God had demonstrated through them, with little time for critical analysis or self-reflection.  Jesus affirmed God’s power, but gave them sobering advice: “However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

When it comes down to it, whether God chooses to perform great exploits through us or not, or whether He chooses to keep them going for a short time or throughout our life, in the final analysis we are simply blessed to be called children of God.  Our identity isn’t based on our emotions, our fellowship, or our spiritual success, but on the word of God and it’s assurance of our adoption into His family.

And, in light of the great swings of success and failure we may experience in life, that’s a truth that regularly deserves our critical analysis and self-reflection, that we may always have a solid foundation in our faith.

Thanks Barry, for an open, honest, and interesting conversation we all can learn from! It is at https://youtu.be/DtkbjeoYWKc on my YouTube channel.