My husband and I spent the last long weekend being tourist in our
own town. We’ve lived here for over 20 years and we didn’t know
the details of the town’s history the short term visitor picks up
while visiting the tourist spots. However, even though a tourist may
know detailed bits and pieces about a town, they rarely know the
town.
A resident, on the
other hand, does. A town is a community and if a community wants to
survive, it takes care of its members. Now people don’t always
agree how to do that and some have hidden agendas, but ultimately,
there is a consistent goal to make the town work and look after the
residents. The residents may include the homeless, entrepreneurs,
recovering addicts, Olympic athletes, mentally or physically ill,
Phds, high school drop-outs, gang members, military.....anyone who
lives there.
I used to be a
Christian tourist, not someone who goes on pilgrimages, but rather a
someone who tours various flavours of Christianity.
The church I
attended as a child, defined sin as doing the wrong thing, a series
of rules and regulations which had to be obeyed or else God would be
mad at you and you would end up in hell. It was a common parenting
technique, behave or be spanked. But God’s punishment was scarier.
My teenage
rebellion against parental authority included my rebellion against
this version of God. My subsequent touring of different faiths led
me to a place where I accepted Jesus as my Lord and saviour. My
self-centred understanding of that concept made me a spiritually
superior jerk ‘cause I had my ticket to heaven and anyone who
didn’t believe as I did was a sinner who was going to hell’.
Every encounter I had with people, especially my family, became an
opportunity to preach the gospel as I knew it, whether they wanted to
hear it or not.
I continued to
tour, checking out a variety of one issue churches. They all had
appealing facades, sounded good and, like at most attractions, the
tourists were tightly controlled.
At one church, I
knew a woman who was encouraged by the church leaders to leave her
husband because ‘he held her back from her ministry’. I met
people who were told their faith wasn’t strong enough since they
weren’t healed from a physical disease or they were struggling
financially. They must have been sinning because ‘perfect health
and financial success were marks of God’s blessing’.
Once I asked a
‘teacher’ about the struggles and the persecutions of the early
Christians and apostles, and I was told ‘if they knew then what we
know now (about faith) they wouldn’t have had to suffer.’
I knew a young
woman castigated for missing Sunday evening services when she went
skiing after the morning service on her only day off.
I saw marriages
explode because people acted the part of good Christians while, in
reality, they struggled with the problems and pain which their church
said would disappear once they said ‘the prayer’. When their
lives finally fell apart, they felt shunned by the church since they
obviously were not ‘new creatures in Christ.’
These were churches
which shot their wounded, hid the bodies out of sight while the
stench announced a failure of their love.
This was tourist
Christianity, a place that looks intriguing but is unable to sustain
life.
True Christianity
requires us to love each other no matter what. As a Christian
tourist, I had a self-sanctified, holier-than-thou attitude which was
not conducive to loving relationships.
As an Orthodox Christian, at
every liturgy I confess I am the worst of sinners and, compared to
Christ, I am. This humility is the way to loving relationships which
creates community; a group of people living with, and struggling to
overcome their problems, who are strengthened by the love and care of
those around them. An accepting community nurtures all its members
and doesn’t kill the weak and shun the difficult.
Sure, the passing
tourist may spend money but it’s the community which, in the long
run, sustains or destroys the people who live there full-time.
This is my
Christianity and this is my community.
