Posted by Helen on: 11.01.2006 /
(Note: this is from our blogs, not the local newspaper; I’m categorizing it with the newspaper dialog since relates to not going to church anymore)
Karen is a regular commenter on here, the eBay atheist blog and the discussion board. Karen used to be an evangelical Christian; now she’s an atheist.
Karen recently wrote about her last day at church (which was a little over a year ago) in a comment on the eBay atheist blog:
I’ll tell you why I remember the date of my last attendance so precisely.That first week in Sept. was a traumatic time, as I’m sure you remember. I shed a lot of tears while glued to the TV, watching helpless, stranded people agonize over their sick grandparents who couldn’t get their medicine and their hungry babies who had no formula. I was just overwhelmed by feelings of powerlessness and injustice.
We went to the “contemporary” service that weekend, which featured a praise band instead of the choir and tended to have a perpetually upbeat tone. I was really in a bad mood but I thought maybe there would be some contemplative moments that might help lift my spirits.
Unfortunately, that entire service included only a throwaway mention of the week’s events. I think someone threw in a “God help the poor people in the Gulf Coast” during one of the prayers, and that was it.
The rest went along just as always, with big smiles and lots of “Praise the Lords” and people lifting their hands in the air while singing songs like, “God is so goooooodddd …” and I just got madder and madder. When it was over, I turned to my husband and said, “That’s it. I can’t go here anymore,” and I explained how out-of-touch and insensitive all the happy talk felt and how much it offended me. He understood and let me off the hook from attending after that.
Comment by: Mike O
1I don’t mean this personal to Karen, everyting I say here is meant to be generalized.
I know there’s a lot that led up to this exciting climax (several years of questioning from the sounds of it). But this story by itself puts the church in a lose-lose situation. No matter what the church does, someone will be offended. If they spend too much time focusing on the hurricane, they risk offending people who prioritize local concerns higher. If they don’t, the risk offending those who prioritize national/international concerns higher. Or they risk offending those who see past the natural circumstances to the future, ongoing plans that God has for them, and so on and so on and so on.
The church can’t take every position on every issue every time so every person has every priority met.
Comment by: Pastor David
2Karen,
My deepest sympathy that your needs were ignored.
Comment by: Marty SB
3Karen – I empathize with what you experienced. I too would have wanted to be in an introspective, compassionate, caring place with others as we process the hurt of such a catastrophy as Katrina.
I have felt the same way when I have gone to memorial services of someone I knew and cared about – only to have it turn into primarily an opportunity for the minister to try to convert those attending – rather than sharing about the life of the person that I was missing.
I remember going to a wonderful Interfaith event right after 911 where we overflowed the largest church in town, people – including the Iman, spoke from a deep and hurting place – we cried and held one another. For me it was a very important and healing event.
Comment by: Julie Marie
4I think finding meaning in sufferring is a strong human need, and viewing sufferring as a transitory phase necessary for the greater accomplishment of God’s plan is one way to do it. Its fine when we are interpreting our own sufferring…but I have a gut problem when the sufferring of others is explained this way. I have seen the pious become profoundly insensitive when interpreting the sufferring of others.
I’ve been accused of putting too much emphasis on ‘works’ but I know I couldn’t sing about how good God is to meeeee post Katrina. Right now I can’t even think about how good God is to meeeee without wondering why me?
Comment by: Julie Marie
5oh…and I don’t mean to exclude myself from the ‘pious’ above. I have also intellectualized away other’s sufferring.
Comment by: Siamang
6You hit right on the nose my own reason for discarding my belief in reincarnation many years ago.
It felt morally wrong for me to either regard their suffering as a punishment for previous lives or a choice of lives they made. Rather, it seemed like rationalizations for suffering, and not a spur to alleviate suffering.
Comment by: Karen
7Mike O:
Of course not. No one would expect it to. But this thing was so big, and so upsetting, and so much in the news at that time. To not even seriously address it was truly shocking.
The lack of concern (or at least attention) exposed the church as being both insular and out-of-touch – two things I wasn’t able to support any longer.
Comment by: Karen
8Marty:
That sounds wonderful, Marty. I would have benefitted from something like that after 9/11, too.
Comment by: Mike O
9I didn’t mean to imply anything … I was just wipping out examples of how people could possibly be offended.
Comment by: Julie Marie
10right. if we’ve rationalized it we don’t have the internal discomfort about it that prompts us to get up off the couch and do something to help.
Comment by: Julie Marie
11Oh, I didn’t think you did, Mike…I’ve read enough of your posts now to know better. I was speaking generally, and should have made that clear.
Comment by: benjamin ady
12Julie Marie–your
is perfect and reminds me of Tevye: “I *know* we are the chosen people–but every once in a while, couldn’t you choose someone else?” (but I see now that possibly I misinterpreted what you said-ah well, the Tevye quote is still excellent).
Regarding rationalization of suffering–I am wondering–does doing that cause us to become a part of institutionalized evil? I went to a really kewl radio show about the devil on Monday night (you can listen here) and one of the guests was talking a little about how it doesn’t have to be about a personal supernatural evil per se–it can be institutionalized evil. This is something I’ve been thinking about since recently reading Tracy Kidders book about Dr. Paul Farmer (called Mountains Beyond Mountains), who is trying to create a preferential option for the poor. Dr. Farmer talks a lot about how the reason the poor are so miserable is related to world institutions which operate to keep us filthy rich and the rest of the world poor–institutionalized evil. All of which leads to my question. Can/is the church sometimes (often?) a part of institutionalized (systemic, endemic) evil?
Comment by: Helen
13Mike wrote:
Mike, I understand the point you’re making.
But I also empathize with Karen says because in the past I remember being at church services and feeling like what went on there was too far removed from the world I lived in.
Comment by: Siamang
14That’s a huge issue, Benjamin. I think it goes way beyond churches. I think all human institutions can fall prey to this systemic evil. Even ones which are run by good people can do things that if they were a person, we would call that person evil.
I think this has to be the next great step in mankind… we must learn how to reign in our societal Frankenstein monsters before they run away with us.
Comment by: NCxian
15I haven’t articulated this in quite this way myself, but I have through the years mulled over the notion that this systemic evil that we seem collectively to be capable of might be what underlies the theological notion of “human depravity”–not that we are personally and individually rotten, but that things fall apart for us. And as the radio speaker benjamin heard might have been alluding to, this might also lie behind the concepts of “Satan” and “powers and principalities” and all those things we read about in the Bible as the antithesis of God.
Not that these things are literally “people”, but that the writers sense of this systemic evil might be what manifests itself in these ways in their theology/metaphors.
Comment by: Kathleen
16Karen, do you think that if your church had handled the tragedy better, it would have assuaged your doubts/encouraged you to keep attending, or, since it seems like you were already dissatisfied, do you think it would have just taken you until the next week to get fed up?
I only ask because I’m pretty certain that it was 9/11 that spurred my family back to church, though not consciously. Looking back, before then we were the type who went to church on Sundays – as long as there was no soccer game conflicting and we hadn’t been out late the night before. It wasn’t immediate, but in the months that followed (which also contained several major/minor tragedies that touched us to varying degrees), we started going more regularly, making it more of a priority. This all happened individually, but I’d say that by 18 mos after 9/11 (which affected us personally), each one of us found that God was more important in his/her life.
I can’t say that there’s any specific way in which the subject was handled that caused this, but more of the standard, soul-searching desire for meaning in the wake of a tragedy.
Comment by: Julie Marie
17I examined and discarded reincarnation before embracing Christianity, so I’m a little suprised at myself for not recognizing that the rationalizations made it possible to not care, to distance myself, from others suffering.
I remember reading one story about a movie star who embraced all kinds of new agey stuff and quality of her existential ponderings. She saw a car burning on the side of teh road and – now really, she told this story on herself without a hint of embarrassment – wondered – how interesting. why did that person chose to die in a fire?
Oy Oy Oy
Comment by: Pastor David
18There is absolutely, as some here have poitned out, a difference between talking about suffering generally, and the suffering of a person.
I have my own understandings of suffering (theodicy) and I am perfectly willing to talk to myself about the reasons why things happen.
But that is not how I deal with individuals who are suffering. I invite them to feel as angry, sad, or upset as they need. When we talk about rationalizations for suffering (usually brought up by them), I let them know that even though they may intellectually have a “reason,” that doesn’t make it hurt any less.
And that’s the bottom line for me. You can come up with all the “reasons” in the world for suffering, but not one of them makes the pain any less real. I think it is high time churches start realizing that, and stop asking people to stop feeling pain once they are given a “reason.”
Comment by: Karen
19Kathleen wrote:
Oh, I was definitely well on my way out of that church, and religion in general, for that matter. I don’t blame that one service for changing anything larger in my thinking. If anything, if confirmed a lot of things I was already aware of. It was just the final straw in terms of my church attendance (at least at that church).
If they’d handled it better, I probably would have continued what I was doing at that time, which is attending occasionally with my husband, more for his sake than my own.
As for 9/11, it’s interesting that you had the reaction you did. It happened around when I was first really wrestling with fundamentalism and it had a big, big negative impact on my thinking.
Comment by: David H
20I don’t want to pry, but can I ask for a few more details regarding the interplay of that terrible event, your feelings about fundamentalism and your decision to walk away from church? Feel free to tell me to jump in a lake. I could use a bath anyway.
Comment by: Marty SB
21Pastor David wrote:
I totally agree. Put another way – you choose to lead by compassion and end with compassion – which, for me is being Christian is about.
Comment by: Meg
22Hey Karen! I’m a little late in this conversation, but its title caught my eye, and your comments about going to church after hurricane karina struck a chord for me. I was journalist on a missions ship in cote d’ivoire christmas eve 1999, and there was a military coup going on. i wanted to get out there and help, etc., but the leaders on our ship decided it was to be xmas as normal, so saccharine christmas carols were piped over the ship’s pa, to the constant rhythm of gunshots in the background.
also, ever since living in uganda, when i’m surrounded by wealth in west, where life goes on as if there aren’t children dying of diarrhoea and fever and dehydration and malnutrition and Tuberculosis and AIDS in poorer countries all around the world – all diseases and pathologies which can be easily cured – if only we in the greedy west would share our medical resources. and why don’t we? because greed and capitalism have institutionalised evil.
Like in your old church, where they were blissfully unaware of the suffering caused by hurricane katrina, the western world is happily humming its songs, not noticing that the systems which keep us living our lovely lives (like greedy pharmaceutical companies) are actually causing people in the third world to die unnecessarily.
Comment by: Karen
23David H.
:-) No problem, David H.
It’s actually rather a long story, longer than I have time to write out here. For now, I’ll just say my thinking went along 3 lines:
1)How truly different was the teaching I was getting from the mindset of the “martyrs for god” who flew into those buildings? Wasn’t I ready to “die for Christ”?
2)The randomness of life and cruelty of fate. One employee stopped on a whim to have his glasses checked in the WTC lobby and thus missed being obliterated by about 5 minutes. The old platitudes about “god’s will” and “god’s mysterious ways” started to sound awfully arrogant and callous (similar to the response to suffering discussed above).
3)A few “supernatural” explanations I heard survivors give (“an angel led me out of the building”) sounded pretty, but didn’t wash for me anymore. Why would god send an angel to lead one person out and let 3,000+ others die? Were they not worth saving too? Why not send an angel to the airport a few hours earlier and stop the terrorists from boarding the planes in the first place? It seemed too narrow and self-centered to me, and yet all-too-human a response, perhaps motivated by survivor’s guilt. But in the past, I would’ve accepted and celebrated those kinds of stories.
I could see how much my thinking was changing. I could probably put some more thought into this and write it up at the DB if you’d like in the future. Thanks for asking. :-)
Comment by: Karen
24Meg wrote:
Oh my goodness. How hideous must that’ve been?! I’m sorry you went through that. :-(
Were you on the mission ship that’s affiliated with YWAM? One of Keith Green’s favorite causes? (I don’t know if there is/was another mission ship, actually …). I remember that one well – and I think I even donated some funds for it, too. ;-)
Yup. There was an interesting NY Times story this week about how the U.S. aid for the Third World must come from domestic programs by law, which drives prices up and makes supply short. Our contributions around the world are very much about protections for U.S. workers and industries (not always a bad thing, necessarily) and less about getting as much aid to the needy and hurting as possible, as quickly as possible. Something to ponder.