Episode 1 - Why Didn’t I Take the Blue Pill?

Waking up to disillusionment with the modern evangelical church.

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This podcast supports Tears of Eden, a community and resource for those in the aftermath of Spiritual Abuse. 

Why didn’t I take the blue pill? (Episode transcript)

In this episode, we’ll discuss the disillusionment—and often disappointment—that comes when you find out what’s really going on behind the curtain. The church should be a place of refuge and hope, but too frequently it’s a place of pain, dysfunctional power dynamics, gender abuse, and abuse in general. The church needs to do better, and I want to help it try. This Podcast is a step in that direction.

We’re kicking off with a doozy. But this isn’t the end of the conversation. We won’t solve every problem or answer every question. I hope we’ll find camaraderie in each other as we grow closer to the meaning of this illusive concept called Church.

My final class my final day in seminary was the day I presented my capstone project. It was titled “why didn’t I take the blue pill?” The reference came from the movie the matrix. Neo was given a choice between taking the red pill and learning what the matrix was. The blue pill would have sent him back to blissful ignorance. He decided to take the red pill and learned that he was living a false life, a life generated by computers.

He also discovered he was a part of destroying that false life, of bringing reality to millions of slumbering slaves.

There’s a scene where Neo wonders if maybe he should’ve taken the blue pill. Because what he discovers is horrific, and the life he used to live, while not free from its own struggles, was much easier then fighting artificial intelligence that used human blood for fuel.

After seminary, and after spending, at that time, four years working in ministry for a church, I realized that this institution that had often been a place of healing and family for me, was actually wrought with strife, complications, power dynamics, abuse you name it. After going through Seminary, I realize that there wasn’t a whole lot we could do to fix it. It was more of how do we manage it, how do we care for people in the midst of it.

We can’t just get rid of it.

And we can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.

My idealized version of the church, didn’t exist. And this was the profession I have chosen, the vocation I have dedicated my life to.

I continued on to another job at a church where I was again disappointed, I saw gender gaps In a place that I thought would be progressive in its treatment of women. I saw staff given a sub status to other congregants, they weren’t afforded the same discipleship and care that the rest of the congregation experienced. I left that organization in pain, in a little bit of the haze of disillusionment, And went directly into another church.

This next church also had its own dysfunction, but because of my experience before hand, I managed it a little better than maybe most people did. I didn’t have an expectation for the church to be perfect and I certainly didn’t have an expectation that I would have every one of my vocational needs met by the church. But over time I started to notice patterns that just seemed a little off, more than your average, everyday church dysfunction. For a time, I repeated to myself the line “every church is dysfunctional, every church is dysfunctional, every church is dysfunctional.” But after a while I realized I couldn’t say that anymore. Not in this case. It turned out that this church was full of some pretty nasty, gnarly, abusive habits.

Abusive tactics that were continually being covered up by leadership and elders. People who spoke out against it were silenced. And at some point, I realized that my questions were no longer being answered. That my voice was no longer being heard.

And I realized I too was being silenced.

I left that church and fell headlong into the most challenging season of my life yet with the church. I’ve struggled with the church before, I had never been in a place where I just didn’t want to go to church. Now, I found myself elated at the idea that Sunday mornings I could sleep in, go to brunch with my friends. Thought of being in a church service just was too painful.

The first several Sundays following my departure from this horrible church experience, I was doing everything I could just to keep it together as Tear slid down my face for the duration of the entire service of Whatever Church I visited.

I heard from friend after friend that this was normal. It took 3 to 4 months before you could attend church without crying. I heard this from friend after friend who had been through similar experiences before. I had so many friends who have been through similar experiences.

Why the hell do so many people have this kind of experience?

Meanwhile I was encountering articles and YouTube videos of pastors being caught in church scandals, embezzling money, sexually abusing women, bullying, and the list goes on.

What is going on in the church?

I didn’t have an answer to these questions so I did what any self-deprecating ministry worker having a crisis of faith and disillusionment with the modern institution of church would do: I started writing material for a podcast.

The idea for this podcast came while I was interviewing with a church for a pretty sweet job—at least it looked that way on the surface. It was a large church with a large, prominent ministry, and pretty great opportunities for growth and exercising the leadership and teaching gifts I’d here-to-fore been denied by my previous church contexts. On the surface it was a great job.

However, through the interview process, I discovered a pattern of disfunction with which I was familiar. I discovered every indication that the ministry was unhealthy and that the church itself was blind to its own present-day issues.

Knowing I’d recently exited a difficult situation, I wanted to make sure I was seeing things correctly, so I returned home from my visit to this church and recounted my observations to two pastor friends.

Both of these pastors advised me to run. Run hard in the other direction.

My therapist pointed out that my previous experiences had lent themselves to give me sharp discernment and the ability to see unhealthy patterns before taking a job. I’d learned to spot the dysfunction early, to ask the hard questions, and to know when something was off.

I responded to her observation that I wasn’t sure it was a good thing. When you find out how the sausage is made, you no longer want to eat sausage.

My discovery of this relentless mess in the modern day evangelical church was making me not want to eat the sausage anymore.

And I wonder once again, “Why didn’t I take the blue pill?”

I’ve worked in youth ministry for a number of years. When it comes to my students, I welcome doubt. I welcome questions. I welcome struggles and anger and lightening focus on contradictions and gaps in understanding. I never see the struggle to understand as a sign of spiritual delinquency. In fact, I worry more for my students who never ask questions, who blindly accept the authority of scripture and pastors without question. I worry more about the ones who can spout facts and memorize scripture, but who never cry over the hard things in life or ask God, why?

Maybe it’s because I was one of those teenagers who constantly suppressed my own questions, afraid if I asked them, if I followed those white rabbits, I’d find out I didn’t believe what I believed. And that was far scarier than ignorant bliss. But if I’d had someone tell me it was okay to ask questions, and not having the answers wasn’t wrong, I might have had an easier time. I might have experienced a greater understanding of God’s love.

I might have come closer to who God intended me to be, rather than my own construction of who I should be. Which was just an idealized version of self—one free of immorality, tattoos, and cigarettes.

So here we go, following this white rabbit of Church. We’re going to ask the hard questions, explore the tough subjects, and take a look at the things most of us don’t want to know exist. I don’t want to be afraid to acknowledge we’re doing something wrong. I don’t want to be afraid to say something’s off. I don’t want to be afraid to discover we’ve failed.

I want to acknowledge the one’s who’ve paved the way—the long history of clergy who loved and fought and bled. I want to acknowledge those who’ve been wounded by the church. Those still bleeding from wounds caused by shepherds who failed to shepherded. I know your pain more deeply than you realize, and I’m glad you’re here with me.

As we journey through later episodes, I am going to utilize the relationships I’ve been gifted with through the many cities I’ve lived in. I’ll bring on the people who’ve taught me so much about the church. I’ve learned so much from the people I’ve met, I can’t wait to bring them into the conversation.

To end, I’m going to share a portion of my Capstone, the one titled “Why didn’t I take the Blue Pill?” May 5, 2016

Why didn’t I take the blue pill?

Waking up in the Matrix after two years of seminary

Seminary. It’s like taking the red pill and realizing you’ve lived your life in the Matrix. Your eyes are opened to a whole new world of wonder. Beauty and light shining from all directions.  Suddenly you’re skipping through fields of poppies and laughing over your should at your friends as they gallivant with you. You flip your hair and laugh some more. How did you ever survive without the knowledge and experience you now have?

Hold the phone. That is not the story of the Matrix. In fact, you wonder if Keanu Reeves actually had a better life before he found out the truth. Before he found out that robots were programing him to think he had a certain life all the while sucking his life-blood while he slept in ignorant bliss. You find yourself wondering, like Keanu, if I could go back to that ignorant bliss of two, three, and four years ago, would I?

It’s a valid question. Before, you participated in church, loving the experience, wanting to be there every time the doors were opened. Sure, you experienced some hard things, some drama, some discrimination. Maybe a pastor neglected to follow through when you needed him or you got left off the email list for a women’s Bible study. But all in all, you loved the church and it was that love for the church and the people who make up this church that stirred your heart to attend seminary in the first place.

Then something began to happen. It takes you a couple years to realize it. The dawning realization hits you when someone asks you why you want to work in the church and suddenly you have trouble finding an answer. You’re stumped. Was this church always this broken? This difficult? This messy and dirty and agonizing? Did you always see the gap between what the church was intended to be and what it actually is? Did you always know what you believe this strongly and did you always have the vocabulary to articulate it?

The answer is no. Seminary did that to you. It’s seminary’s fault. Blame seminary for all it’s worth. You might as well. Because, no matter how long and hard you blame seminary (and rightly so), as one friend said to me today, “You can’t unknow what you now know.”

You can’t unknow the beauty and glory and dignity God intended for the church. You can’t unknow the mission of the church and the purpose it was meant for. You can’t unknow how community and life together are how we are created to grow in our knowledge of Christ.

You can’t unknow that the church will always battle influencing culture and being influenced by it. You can’t unknow that power and politics and policy have always, and will always, be in danger of destroying the message of the gospel.

You can’t unknow that no matter how much you know, the brokenness and pain will always be there. You can’t unknow that Jesus is truly the answer and no matter how much you know, it will never be a substitute. You can’t unknow that no matter how much you know, you will never really know anything.

But would you really take the blue pill? Would you really go back if you could? If you knew what you would know now would you trade it in?

            There is no way you could have prepared for this. Because you don’t know what don’t know until you no longer don’t know it.

            You knew that the lack of women in leadership in the church bothered you, but you didn’t know why.

            You knew that the lack of diversity of cultures in the church bothered you, but you could never explain it.

            You knew that the suppression of conversations about sex couldn’t be right, but you were at a loss of what an alternative might be. You never imagined the destructive repercussions the silence could lead to.

            You knew you loved the arts and that somehow the arts were important, but you didn’t know how to articulate this. You never could have guessed you’d see the value of art even more than you did. 

            And finally, you knew the Bible was important. You knew it was the word of God. You occasionally discovered encouraging things, but most of the time you were confused because you had no idea what you were doing when you read it.

            Now you know the Bible is a story about Jesus. A story about God and what he has done and what he is doing. You found out that you have a part to play in that story and somehow, the darkness and the brokenness in that story has some sort of purpose, even if you don’t know exactly what it is.

            You discovered a God who wasn’t as distant as you sometimes felt he was. You knew he was there, you just couldn’t explain how. You found out these things about the Holy Spirit and Jesus and God, and even though you still don’t understand the trinity, somehow you understand that what you don’t understand makes God more trustworthy, not less.

Past Sadness by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5024-past-sadness

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Thinking Music by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4522-thinking-music

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/