Church Search: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quote #1

Part of my "Church search" series...

Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.

By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both.

A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves this dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together.

When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first the accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

--Dietrich Bohoeffer, Life Together

When I first saw this quote, I only saw part of it (and yes, there's even more than I've quoted here, so look it up if you want to read more). It started from almost the middle of the third paragraph: "Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community..." This and other things I read affected my concept of what church should be. As I've talked about before, I found it so tiring when pastors would come up with one idea after another of how to reach out to the community and hopefully grow the church. It seemed like there should be a better, simpler way--something that is better at welcoming people in various places in their faith and practice, yet manages to unite without insisting that people need to get with the program.

This is still what I hope for. That hasn't changed, at least not much.

But eventually I read a bigger chunk of this quote. I hadn't seen the first couple of paragraphs before. That turned my attention onto my own wishes for a church community. If I find a church that seems alright but doesn't quite match what I hope for, do I leave? Do I insist that the church change? Or as Bonhoeffer said, a church that doesn't meet my expectations could be exactly what I need.

There's a time to leave a church and a time to stay. I'm not trying to say people should always put up with whatever church they happen to be in. I'm not even going to try to lay out a set of rules for deciding whether to stay or go. Certainly, I think people should leave churches that are toxic environments, but how do you define a toxic environment? And I left a church that I don't consider a toxic environment.

But I will conclude this post by repeating myself because I can't come up with a better ending: a church that doesn't meet my expectations could be exactly what I need.

Church search: United church and liberal Christianity

Part of my "Church search" series...

One Sunday, we decided to visit a United Church. (The United Church is a Canadian denomination formed in 1925 by a merger between a few denominations including the Methodist Church and most of Canada's Presbyterian Church. I don't think there's an exact equivalent in other countries, although I'm sure there are similar churches. It's one of the largest and most liberal Protestant denominations in Canada.)

Visiting that church was my idea. We both come from the more conservative / evangelical side of Christianity (conservative in beliefs, not necessarily in worship style), and I wanted to understand and experience the liberal side of Christianity more. I consider myself somewhere between conservative and liberal. In my experience, conservative Christians are quick to dismiss liberal Christians as "not real Christians." I don't want to be quick to do that, so I wanted to see what these churches are like. I had been to United Churches before (for cousins' baptisms and that sort of thing), but not for years.

I'm not sure if Cathy was all that interested, but she came along. We walked in the church and found that some singing had already started, and I don't think we were late. Almost everyone there looked like they were over 60 years old. The minister might have been one of the youngest people there, probably in her 50s. But the place was packed. People say the United Church is in decline, but this church seems strong for now. However, with its demographics, it certainly will be in decline in the next decade or two unless something changes.

Cathy asked if I wanted to stay. I was hesitant, but I wanted to see what the actual service would be like.

The service that day had a theme of friendship, related to one of the lectionary readings that day, from the book of Ruth. Through the songs and sermon, I don't think I ever heard of Jesus referred to as anything more than a supreme example of friendship. It left me wondering, do they believe that Jesus was the son of God? Do they believe that in some sense Jesus has redeemed us and overcome death? (There are varying ideas among Christians on how Jesus redeems us and I don't want to be too picky about how they understand it, but I have a problem with throwing out the idea of redemption entirely.)

I realize there are people who call themselves Christians, and even some priests / ministers / pastors, who don't believe in God at all. Today I'm not interested in getting into a debate about whether they should be considered Christians or not. My point is that these people still find meaning in Christian practices and worship, even if they believe there's nothing supernatural behind it. While I don't want to disrespect what they find meaningful, personally I don't find much meaning in religious practice without some sort of belief behind it. I'm not talking about complete certainty--God knows I don't have complete certainty myself. This gets into what I mentioned in my previous post about the Anglican Church, rising above doubt.

I appreciate worship that gives me a sense of something greater than myself, greater than the people around me, greater than any human institution. Hearing reflections on friendship with some mentions of Jesus thrown in doesn't do that for me. As I said in that Anglican Church post, I can appreciate a church that can understand and appreciate doubt. That said, doubt can't be the last word. In what the church says and does, it needs to lift us up toward something greater, not sit at the lowest common denominator. This may not be easy to do, but in my experience, liturgical and evangelical churches tend do this better than mainline non-liturgical churches such as the United Church (and yes, my mainline experience is pretty limited). Evangelical churches on the other hand can be less understanding of doubt.

Maybe we visited that church on an off day. Maybe a lot of other United Churches are better at rising above doubt (and maybe have more varied demographics too). Maybe I just haven't been exposed to this form of faith enough to see the beauty in it. But I don't see myself practicing my faith in this way. We haven't been to a United Church again and have no plans to go again. I'd still like to understand liberal Christianity better, and I'm not sure where to look.

One more experience I'd like to share, this one from an Anglican Church:

The Anglican Church tends to vary between liberal and conservative beliefs, but it is one of the churches that many evangelicals would consider overly liberal, kind of like the United Church. A while back, the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton passed some sort of motion about wanting to bless same-sex civil marriages, although without considering them church marriages. That motion probably needed approval at the national level before it would have any effect on their practices, but still, most conservative Christians would consider the blessing of same-sex unions to be a bad thing. (I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this issue. Politically I'm in favour of allowing same-sex marriage, but in the church I'm not sure what should be done given differing interpretations of the Bible.)

The Sunday after this motion passed, I happened to visit an Anglican church. The priest talked about it, didn't really give his opinion, but he acknowledged it has been a contentious issue in the church for a number of years. But what stuck out to me is this: he said the recent decision was made with grace. And though the liturgy of that service, I always had a sense that this church honours Jesus as savior, redeemer, and Lord. Maybe they are overly liberal, I'm not sure, but they still give me a sense of a living faith in a real God.