SUFFERING FOR JESUS
When I speak with people about Christianity the one negative argument they almost always bring up is the church's love of suffering.
They have a point. Anyone who argues that the church does not love suffering looks like a fool, because our literature is full of bloody stories - it's part of our history.
For instance, the desert fathers went into the wilderness, lived in caves, denied themselves food, wore shirts made of animal hair and flogged their own backs and legs with whips. When they were finally exhausted, starved and crazed with pain, they began hallucinating; and finally, in a daze, they spoke mystically of Christ. Still today we hold them up as the ideal in terms of meditation.
In the past, some denominations forced people to confess their sins in front of the congregation. If the sin was sort of bad, like sassing one's parents, some people could squirm their way out of a public confession. But if the sin was considered horrid, such as insulting the pastor, then they had to stand in front of the worshiping community on Sunday morning and beg for forgiveness.
That was terrible punishment because most of the people who accepted this public humiliation were vulnerable already. Instead of accepting them as sorry sinners, the congregation heaped even more shame on their poor, battered souls.
Sometimes those methods get modified a bit and they spill over into youth groups where a person is shunned or ignored for religious reasons after a sin is confessed. Shunning is particularly brutal in some religious groups and sects that demand total obedience of the followers.
That's extreme but it's often accepted because of the church's passion for making people suffer.
These believers claim the universal truth in all this misery is that, if you can get through this intense suffering, you are indeed a true soldier of the cross.
Christianity can be a brutal religion when it turns bad. But good religion is another story.
What we seek is a religion that gets inside of us and builds up the gifts that God gave us. We don't want a religion that beats on us. We want a faith that drives us to goodness. We want joy and love in our lives. We don't want to suffer, we want to celebrate the world - the beautiful free world we discovered.
All over the world, people are looking at themselves not as raging forces to be controlled, but rather as sparks that could ignite new ideas and visions. Religion ought to be used carefully, because it is an instrument to shape life.
Clark D. Morphew
Posted For 4-24-02