Disclaimer*
The last note I wrote caused a stir so I will begin
this with saying this was my experience. My opinion. Not yours.
With that out of the way…I remember a friend telling
me something some time back that resonated with me. It stuck like Dunhill
smoke. He was going through some issues that eventually resulted in a
withdrawal from the usual Christian crowds and after Christians reached out to
him he said to me during a heart to heart that he was patient enough to go
through the motions because sooner or later “They will lose interest because
they don’t really care.” Sure enough, he stopped getting those “Are you Okay,
my brother?” texts.
Inside, I smirked…if my insides do smirk. I’m sure
my intestines smirk wryly every time I tell myself I will start doing
sit-ups…But I’m getting off track. 5 years ago I attended CRC for about a year.
I went through my own string of spiritual hurdles and stopped going to church…I
got a text from one of the cell leaders after skipping church one Sunday. “Hi
my brother. It’s ‘Name Withheld.’ Didn’t see you in church today. Hope to see
you soon.” I got a similar one the Sunday after and that was the last time I
ever heard from that person.
Fast-forward 5 years later and every other month I
get this from someone: “Hi, Andrew. Are you still saved? I see some of the
things you post on Facebook and they’re very disturbing.” I trained myself to
give a default answer. “We can sit down and talk about it sometime if you
really wanna know.”
To be precise, 0% have ever taken me up on that
offer. Of the many Christians who are ‘so called’ concerned about my salvation
and what I post on Facebook, zero have any interest in actually sitting down
with me to adequately voice their concern and/or hear my heart. This used to
bother me. For a long time I felt like a mere box Born Agains had to tick off
so they could pat themselves on the back when they prayed at night. Mathew
18:15, check! But then I actually thought about it. I thought about all the
people I had offered myself to, whether to talk to or simply be there for them
and I admitted to myself that not every single of my words of promise to care
rang true.
It takes a lot to care for someone. It’s easy to say
I will keep you in my prayers or some other platitude but caring is much
deeper. I know it because I have seen it. I have seen my mother take care of
someone on their death bed, night after night. There was no happy ending. No
patting herself on the back afterwards. It was draining. It was beautiful. It
was real.
Without being too vague you know that if you have
ever been a devout Christian and battled with unbelieve or aspects of the
church system you know it is one lonely path. How dare you struggle with your
faith? How dare you be not as spiritually strong as I project myself to be? It
is lonely. And if you are genuinely struggling with your faith, not straight up
leaving it (which I might address in a separate future note), you know that you
want to talk to someone. You want to be able to express to someone who says
they care and hear a different voice than your own warped, bleak thoughts. I
don’t of course just mean this with dealing with unbelief but when you’re
facing any dark moment in your life. When the sheep slowly starts to stray from
the flock. The only problem is, Christians wear this toxic coat of false
sympathy because that is what they think is expected of them. Go out into the
world, love people, give up your own desires, love your enemies. That’s their
mandate. I call it toxic because if you are not like my friend and I and have
not trained yourself to detect the bs, then you will, more often than not, be
drawn into something that will only eventually let you down.
Because between doing what you feel you’re mandated
to do and existing as a human being with your own biases, Born Again Christians
are just people after all. The truth is you don’t care and that’s OK. I mean,
you care in the general sense. You genuinely don’t want a person to be hurt or
not do well, but beyond that, the part that actually requires your invested
effort and maybe for a long period of time, no, you do not. And that’s fine
too.
I’m not picking on Christians. Let’s face it, there
has been a million BS articles pinning blame on Christians for things they’re
not responsible for (Really? You want to blame 18-year-old Johnny from Bible
Study for the Inquisitions?). I think most people don’t care, but most people
don’t feel like they’re literally the avatar of Jehovah’s kind deeds and care
on the face of the earth.
When someone says ‘How are you?’ you’re supposed to
respond with ‘I’m fine’ even if you’re not because saying how you really feel
can create awkward moments because no one really wants to hear that. The difference is for Christians this is like a job.
Meeting someone who obviously is going through something is not a situation
that can be ignored because whether they feel like it or not they hear a little
voice tell them they have to get involved because that’s what Christians do. But
because they are human beings, if it is not genuine, it won’t last long and
will only further hurt the person they think they are helping. I’m not saying I
haven’t met genuinely caring Christians, because I have met a bunch, but those
people generally cared about me, not just because they were a Christian or
because I was still part of the faith.
Look, you can’t fake care. For someone like me who
has seen so much fake care, I can easily pick it from someone’s eyes, their
tone, their voice. After a friend who lives in another country told me to open up
more and couldn’t find anyone I found myself telling a work colleague about
extremely personal things I am currently going through that I couldn’t bring
myself to fully reveal to anyone else (not counting my bro from outside the
country) because no one that is around regularly felt genuine. I could tell immediately
this person’s concern was real and perhaps because I had bottled in so much
pain for so long we ended up talking and the colleague told me about their own
struggles and it was a powerful moment.
Anyway, not caring isn’t an issue. You can’t realistically
avail yourself to 7 billion people. The issue is that, if you do not care
enough to want to get involved on a plane that’s not glorified platitudes, why
police people? Let’s get back to my Facebook analysts. Why does it matter if I
wrote ‘Shit’ or ‘Asshole’ somewhere if you cannot be bothered to actually
understand why I say those things? And if my answer to your ‘Are you still
saved question?’ was ‘No’, would that change anything?
Look at your life. I mean really look. Do you have
non-Christian friends? Are the ones there simply because you want them to
eventually be saved? Because if after four or five declined invites to visit
your church your interest in them wanes then maybe you’re not really their
friend.
Alas, we have gotten to this point…to the few people
that continuously ask if AK is still saved but won’t take the time to meet me
and talk to me about it, let’s get to it: I don’t know. I don’t really care.
Shock. Horror. Why the hell did I just read 1321 words from this heathen? I
don’t owe you the details…technically I don’t owe you anything but there you
go. I think God has a lot to do to prove that he cares on a personal level to
the same degree that his writers so eloquently wax in the Bible. So I think
he’s up there but really can’t be bothered with human affairs. If you have had
a different experience with him I’m happy and your experience is beautiful but
that is my experience.
Subsequently, and for a myriad of reasons involving
the institution itself I obviously don’t go to church even though I have had
beautiful experiences there that are nostalgic treasures for me…as well as ugly
ones.
So there you have it, but I don’t mind being unfriended or seen as a
devil as long as what you take from this is not the state of my faith but to be
a better person. Not a better Christian. A better person. If someone comes to
you to express an issue they are going through and you’re genuinely not
prepared to be there, don’t pretend like you do. And if you would like to, then
walk with them, because people matter, just like you do.
