This is a personal diary. You might even consider it a prayer of sorts.
I was raised as a Missouri Synod Lutheran. For those of you unfamiliar with Lutherans in general, the Missouri Synod is the most hard core, fundamental branch of the Lutheran churches in America. The most doctrinaire, the most severe in the tone of the sermons that are preached each Sunday, the most rigid in terms of the practice of their rituals and liturgies. Or at least they were when I was growing up. I haven’t been to a Missouri Synod church in years.
The predominant message of the church that I attended as a child was the drumbeat on the story of man’s (and woman’s) original sin, a sin we were born with, an irradicable stain that condemned us to eternal punishment. It was a message of how worthless in the eyes of God we all were, how depraved and ungrateful, how wretched. And how merciful God was to even think of offering us salvation in the form of his son, Jesus, who was sacrificed so we wouldn’t have to endure the horrors of hell fire and damnation for all eternity.
In short, we swam in a constant river of guilt and shame. Even one careless thought, one sinful back-sliding moment, might lead us down the path to degradation and abandonment by a loving God come Judgement Day. How fortunate we were to have the gift of Jesus’salvation, and how perverted we would be should we ever deny that gift. We were to lead a life of devotion to God and family and any failure was on our head.
Yet, though that was the predominant tone, it is impossible for any Church to avoid the teachings and the parables of Jesus which are found in the Gospels. The ones that call for forgiveness, and for tolerance of others, for loving one’s enemies and taking care of one’s neighbor. Amid all the guilt, somehow I clung to that message as a survivor clings to a life rafts after his ship has sunk.
Over time, I became more and more aware of the hypocrisy of the adult members of my church. How spiteful and mean spirited their gossiping was, and how quick they were to spread ugly rumors about others. How they bragged about cheating someone at a business deal during the week, yet piously prayed aloud at Church during Sunday. How Church elders schemed to get rid of our Pastor behind his back because of his history of alcoholism. How they drove off another Pastor because of his divorce.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that I became very cynical about my religion. As I moved into my twenties and thirties, I turned my face from the church of my youth, sick of the hypocrisy I saw there. Yet, every Christmas I still attended services somewhere, still sang the Christmas hymns as fervently as all the others. Was it nostalgia? Perhaps. Christmas had always been the best part of my year as a child. The presents to be received, the food to be eaten, and the finding gifts for others so that someone I cared about might smile or laugh with unabated joy upon tearing off the wrapping paper.
And the church at Christmas reflected my mood. The songs were joyous ones. The sermons were less about sin and guilt, and fear of Satan, and more about taking care of those whom we loved, and those less fortunate than our own loved ones. There were church sponsored food drives, and clothing drives and (most importantly to my mind) toy drives, where each of us kids were urged to contribute new toys (or our old favorites) so that even the poorest children would have something under their tree, something shiny and colorful, tied up in a bow just for them.
The overriding theme was one of love; love for all peoples, no matter the differences among them, no matter if they attended a different church or no church at all. It was the one time of the year the church I grew up in really practiced the Christian spirit of tolerance and love, of compassion and forgiveness.
So perhaps it was that emotion I was seeking each Christmas, even as I stopped going to church at any other time of the year. I wanted to recall the message I had read in the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, messages of redemption for both the the giver and receiver through the act of compassion, through the act of love. That is still a message that resonates with me, a message that Jesus brought to all of us, and a message still out there to be discovered even though it be buried among all the perversion and exploitation and twisting of his teachings which is going on even as we speak.
Today, my family will join a gathering at my brother-in-law’s house where there will be food to eat, songs to be sung accompanied by the piano playing of my ten year old daughter, and gifts exchanged. Children will run and jump and act crazily happy. Parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles will smile and take into their own hearts this happiness that we witness, and smile and laugh in return.
Later this afternoon we will attend my sister-in-law’s church for a Christmas Eve mass where once again I can relive the best parts of my religious experience as a child. I will forget about the silly, ginned up “War on Christmas” and the hatred that fills the hearts of so many who call themselves Christians these days, and I will meditate on the true meaning of this, most wonderful holiday. One I offer to you now, the same message the angels purportedly sang to the shepherds as descibed in the Gospel of Luke:
On Earth, Peace, Goodwill to All.
That’s beautiful, Steven D. Even though I no longer consider myself a Christian, there will always be a part of me that longs for the songs and ceremony and the goodwill that surrounds Christmas Eve services.
Peace and Goodwill to you and your family.
Another LCMS survivor here…what drove me from the fold was the practice of “closed Communion”, meaning that the only people who could receive Communion were Missouri Synod Lutherans. After visiting churches with several friends and being fully welcomed, it bothered me that my friends could not partake at the Lord’s Table at my church; it’s like inviting friends to visit, then having them sit and watch while your family eats dinner in front of them.
I think it was that “us vs. them”, black/white terminology that attracted my mother to the church and kept her there for life. I attended the church of my childhood one last time this past January, for my mother’s funeral. The pastor was different, and gave a good sermon; he’d become quite familiar with my mother’s failings, but handled them well. Couldn’t really judge if there were any changes in theology over the years, but somehow I doubt it.
I didn’t have the “crisis of faith” that you seemed to have — perhaps because I was aware of my own human frailties at a very young age, and was able to allow others their own as well. I’ve held onto Jesus’ line that “people who are sick don’t need a doctor” — going to church doesn’t make you perfect, but it allows you to see your imperfections and to learn how to deal with them.
Blessings and peace to you and yours this holiday season, Steven… 🙂
[I’ve heard, though, that the Wisconsin Synod Lutherans are even more conservative and doctrinaire than the LCMS…never having experienced that denomination, I cannot verify that.]
Our synod is the same as the day Martin Luther got pissed at the Catholics. In fact, I grew up in a church that did the 8 o’clock service in German. There is something nice about being a member of a church that has not changed. Yes, we get our gossipers, wife beaters, and back-biters, but I think that is just the way people are.
Being the “almost Catholic” branch, our faith is still wrapped around the traditional concepts of love one another and taking care of the poor. We have our fundy bible thumpers, but most steer of them and their fear-driven hate.
Don’t go to church much nowadays, but it is nice to know it is there. And for heaven’s sake, if you don’t like your church, find a different one. Don’t know about where you live, but you can’t spit in any direction without hitting one.
Great one Steve. I really appreciate all of your stuff.
I was brought up in the American Lutheran Church…the liberal folks I guess, and I also discovered at about the age of reason what a cesspool of hypocrisy a church was. I can remember thinking at about age 11 or so, “why don’t these people put into practice on Monday through Saturday what they celebrate on Sunday?”
Unfortunately, organized Christianity can’t help but miss the point of the life of Jesus because Christianity, although not as graphically as Mel Gibson, celebrates the death of Jesus, not the life. The best example of this is a comparison of the Gospel of John with the Gospel of Thomas. Of course Thomas is not a canonical gospel but it was written before John. In Thomas, Jesus says that we will never find salvation unless we bring what is within us out. John says that no one will receive salvation unless they believe that Jesus was god. And the figure of doubting Thomas is only in John.
Thomas is all about the life of Jesus. John and the subsequent victorious side in the battle to define Christianity in the first 300 years made Christianity about the death of Jesus.
Christianity is in its death throes, flopping around like a fish in the bottom of the boat. This death began 500 years ago; as it becomes increasingly unbelievable those who still believe become more strident and more exclusive in their behavior and thought proscriptions. It is our mission to delve into our souls where the divine and human meet and re-define our relationship to the Divine.
The Christmas stories are beautiful mostly because they remind us of our youth when life was simple and awe-inspiring in its newness. I’m listening to Christmas carols, and loving every one of them, as I write this. But, and this is the most important of buts, when the gods become unseemly, it’s time for new gods. Socrates said something like this and was killed for it, because nobody understood what he really meant, and he was too ironic to explain himself. What he meant was that when we transform our gods into mere phantasms of what they originally were, they are no longer gods. Jesus has been made into the king of the new American empire, he has been made into a Carlton Sheets clone promising wealth if you buy the right books, he has been made into a closed off, bigotted, small-minded, exclusionary caricature of his real life self, he has been made into an American capitalist instead of the defender of the poor that he actually was. I’m sure there are many other distortions of god so that he is no longer god.
If Jesus ever was god, he was god in the sense of the original heretics; that Yahweh elevated him to Sonship because of his exemplary life of contrasting the Roman empire with God’s imperial rule. And of course, that empire (like ours right now) was found wanting.