Church Shouldn’t Be This Hard

Amen.

I have had a similar opinion for a while. Never as tidily presentable. This past summer it really hit me, in a spiritual/inspirational sort of way, my husband and I went to Europe while he was on business. Church’s dot the land scape, and private scapes everywhere. From glorious cathedrals to quaint solitary family chapels. I toured them like a hungry soul.

The final one I sat in was in Barcelona, Spain. It happened to be a St. Joan weekend. The town square was full of old people dancing their traditional dances, thecathedral looming behind them. A man with a cello sat playing Ave Maria. We went in to the service. There in front of us was full Catholic Mass. I watched in awe. We remained after the service, and were let into a prayer room. Not everyone could go in. It was sacred. A prayer that I did not plan spilled out of me – it was a Universal Prayer for all seekers of light, hope, direction. I felt an urge to pray that congregants would return to the faith of their origin, and that churches would teach the simple, vital, loving lessons of Christ.

Church shouldn’t be so hard.

I’ve got to be honest… while reading that I felt like the LDS church does a fairly good job of keeping a lot of the things mentioned in the article at bay. Seriously.

This is the part that spoke to me the most:

Church should be a safe place — safe to be oneself, safe to make one’s confession, safe to love whoever one feels called to love, safe to imagine more, safe to fail. Instead, church often is a dangerous place, where people feel guarded, self-protective, hemmed in by tradition and expectation, required to obey rules.

Everyone has a different perspective but my experience has shown that church does a bad job on all of the fronts mentioned in the quote.

Safe to be oneself – I’ve mentioned many times that I struggle with accepting myself. Right or wrong I constantly feel the pull to assimilate. Now that I’ve had a faith crisis I feel like I have to be extremely guarded lest I be relegated to the corner. I can’t be myself and have to exert a lot of energy in putting up my guard.

Safe to make one’s confession – Big strike. I think people put up a façade of righteousness while in church. I really see it as a problem since I think we rob ourselves of the opportunities that only come when we are more approachable. Do we really feel open to saying things like “I really struggle with this principle, what advice can you give me?” If we don’t feel open to say things like that where will the help come from? An environment like that can also cause someone that is struggling with something to think that they are alone in their struggles. If they feel like they are the only one then they won’t be able to turn to anyone for help. How many of us on this site were surprised when they came here and found that there were other people going through very similar struggles?

Safe to love whoever one feels called to love – 😆 There’s a whole system of assigned friends in the church. It feels unnatural and all kinds of guilt is associated with not fulfilling that duty. I understand the program and I can see the merit… but still.

Safe to imagine more – There’s no room for imagination because there’s one doctrine, there’s one policy, there’s a detailed handbook. Any organized religion, especially a worldwide church, almost require those sorts of things to flourish.

Safe to fail – There’s more opportunity to fail in the church. Most churches don’t assign responsibilities to the general membership, at least not at the same level as the LDS church. Failure is inevitable anyway. What do we do with failures to meet goals or magnify callings? At times leaders instill guilt… or maybe that’s my natural internal response… or a degree of both.

I agree with Nibbler:

While there absolutely are points in this article which I believe we need to improve in the LDS Church (especially the paragraph that is being excerpted the most so far), there are lots of points where I think the LDS Church does a really good job. Also, most of the critical points of historic weakness in the article are being addressed by our current leadership – or, at least, they are trying to address them. We still have a long way to go in some areas, but we are improving in other areas – and we are much better than most denominations in quite a few areas.

Recognizing the areas where the Church does well is important in the midst of a faith transition.