Are You Angry at the Church?

I wanted to know why the people in my life—those who had listened to my stories about depression, those who had seen me struggle to prove myself to others, those who had observed my judgmentalism and critical spirit—never said anything.

While my advanced ability to cover up my inner life was one of the reasons for this reality, I also quickly saw that there was another problem. I had learned to perform according to the rules of the church. I knew how to do the church game. And I was good at it. And the church system rewarded me for it.

So yes, I was angry. This caused me to question things about the traditional church.

At first, I made sweeping judgments and experienced a “pendulum swing.” I wanted nothing to do with the traditional church. I questioned everything, from why do we have buildings to why do we have sermons. I wanted to know things like why preachers had to wear suits, why preachers are all male, why we spent so much money and energy on religious programs that only religious people wanted.

But most of all, I wanted to know why all the Christians that I had shared life with did not see what I was missing in my life. Was I really that good of a cover-up artist? Or was there something else missing?

And as I asked these questions, I heard through the grapevine that old friends who were entrenched in the traditional church were asking all kinds of questions like: What’s wrong with Scott? Of course, none of them actually took the time to call me up. That added fuel to my anger, and I had to get over that, too.

As I looked at Scriptures, my questions drove me beyond my anger, and I began to see a call to a shared life in Christ, as opposed to the individualistically-driven Christianity that has been so common. Bonhoeffer called it Life Together. Aelred of Rievaulx called it Spiritual Friendship. The Apostle Paul refers to it as a life done according to the “one anothers.”