It’s been 3 years, 10 months, and 5 days since my family walked out of the doors of our local Southern Baptist church for the last time. I knew when we were leaving that we were leaving something much bigger than our local church and even the Southern Baptist Convention, but I did not yet comprehend how far outside of conservative white evangelism the journey would take us nor how long we would be wondering in a spiritual wilderness. Sometimes the grief still leaves me breathless. I often feel embarrassed that it still hurts so much.

The racism, sexism, nationalism, homophobia, political hypocrisy, and celebrity culture of the white evangelical church tradition in which I was raised has become more and more visible to me. I barely recognize the faith tradition from which I came anymore. My family has spent several years visiting many different churches from other traditions (catholic, white mainline, various BIPOC traditions, etc). There’s been a few bright spots along the way, but I have a lot of questions for God about the institutionalized church. It’s not healthy. (Our tragi-comical church misadventures are a post for another day, but for example, we visited one smallish church for weeks, even attending events outside of the main service, trying to force it to work, and eventually gave up because nobody even bothered to ask us our name.) Trying to find a church where it feels like every member of our family can flourish has been a depressing endeavor. (Keep in mind, we’re a “model” family with a church background who wants to be in church, and yet the bar for entry is exhaustingly high). It shouldn’t be this hard.  We often stay at home these days for weeks at a time to recover before we feel compelled to try again. At this point, I’m honestly not sure if the Spirit is calling us to rest at home or keep trying. Author Aimee Byrd, one of the many thousands(?) who have migrated out of conservative evangelism into the wilderness, recently wrote a beautiful prayer about the struggle:

Lord, help my unbelief…I wish I knew where the lilies were. My prayers are being strangled by my unbelief. Each time I think you’ve set something up for me, a new hope, gathering my family on Sunday morning to look for you with me, we are deflated.…

Today is Saturday. The doom of Saturday. I can’t even find the garden where they have you. So I will just be sad. And mad. And pray for my unbelief—that my lament will not turn to despair.

Hold us here, Lord. Meet us here.

In the despair of finding a church, I have sometimes found myself asking if I should walk away and wipe my hands of Christianity entirely, but I still remember much of the good my faith has wrought in my life, and so I choose to hold onto hope. Recently, two of my favorite authors* shared why they choose to stay in the Christian faith, and it reminded me of a social media post I wrote awhile back about my own reasons. My reasons still hold, and I wanted to revisit them for this post and raise my ebenezer.

The Faith of My Parents

I see the evidence of Christianity in their life, and I know I have benefited. My parents converted to Christianity when I was a young child. Their conversion was a gift—so many cycles of generational brokenness ended with my parents.  My mom and dad aren’t perfect, but the arc of their life has and continues to display growth in the fruits of the Spirit, and I am thankful. It feels selfish to walk away from a faith that saved my family.

The Death of My Sister

My youngest sister died when I was 13. My extended family loved us the best they knew how, but their lack of hope was palatable. In their grief, my relatives hurt us more than they helped us. My church and the larger faith community provided healing presence as my family grieved. Our family’s faith and our faith community enabled us to process our grief in healthier ways. Processing my sister’s death was when my faith really took root and became my own. My family will always carry the loss of a daughter and sister with us, but faith in a good God and hope in Heaven helped us carry our grief in healthier ways instead of hurting one another.

The Great Cloud of Witnesses

My husband converted to Christianity in college. My husband’s faith helped heal broken places in his life. I cannot deny the positive changes I have witnessed in people throughout my life as they have chosen to yield their life to Jesus.

The Emptiness of the American Dream

The way the church treats people on the margins is mostly why I want to walk away, but my faith is what originally led me to the margins. Mentors in college opened my eyes to the overarching themes of the Bible to act justly, love mercy, and to care for widows, orphans, and foreigners. I have a good life. It would be easy for me to walk away from my faith, pursue wealth and comfort, and ignore the pain of others. I see the path most of my university peers took to pursue the “American Dream” and where it has led. I don’t envy them.

Hope

I have found I can’t handle and engage well with other people’s pain in healthy ways for sustained periods without the hope that there is a good God Who Sees. A God who is Love. My faith protects me from despair.

Humility

It’s often the people at the bottom of society who are most likely to have hope in a Higher Power, hope that there is a God Who Sees, hope that there is God of Justice, and hope in Heaven. If you’re the privileged person at the top oppressing others, there are reasons you would want to hope that God doesn’t exist. As an upper middle-class American, I live a very comfortable life. I feel like there’s some level of privilege and a certain amount of arrogance for me to say I don’t need God and hope there isn’t one.

The Remnant

In the Old Testament, when the prophet Elijah despairs over the corrupt state of his people, God comes to him in a still, small voice to remind Elijah of the remnant – the minority in Israel who had not bowed a knee to Baal (1 Kings 19). Historically, the majority of people serving those on the margins are people of faith. They are not the arrogant Christians dominating the news cycles and pounding the pulpits, but the minority who have steadily and quietly been doing the work of loving others for decades.

The Beauty of the Gospel

Intellectually, Christianity still makes sense to me. I still find beauty and hope in the message that humans are created in the image of God; that when God created us, God declared us “very good”; that all humans have intrinsic dignity. At the same time, I know I’m selfish. I feel it in my bones. I see human meanness all around me. I find truth in the concept of the Fall. We’re broken. Deep down we know it, and we all long for something better. I find beauty in the message of a Creator God who humbly came to earth to live and teach a life of love, sacrifice, and grace; a God who was willing to enter our suffering and die on a terrible cross to conquer death. I find hope in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

---

I keep finding myself returning to these reasons when I consider walking away. I’ve lost most of my former Christian community. I still feel lost most of the time, so sometimes it’s helpful to remind myself why I still choose to believe even if I’m still not sure what that looks like moving forward.

Here I raise my Ebenezer
Here by Thy great help I’ve come
And I hope by Thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home

from Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

I still choose to follow a Savior that guides me along right paths for his name’s sake that sometimes lead straight through the darkest valley. I feel safe following a Person who has gone ahead and knows the way to greener pastures even if darkness hides the way.

He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me

Psalm 23

---

Additional Resources I have found helpful on this journey:

New Wine Collective – a fresh reimagining of what it means to be the Church in our day

“Deconstruction, Transformation, and the Conceit of Separation” by Rebekah Mui – on the eternal tension of reforming institutions, to stay or go?

*”Why I’m Still a Christian” by Kristin Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne

*”Why I’m Still a Christian” by Jemar Tisby, author of The Color of Compromise

---

Thanks for reading Holy Tension! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.

Follow HolyTension on social media:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Pinterest
• Instagram

---