Practising compassion towards people I have left in the past, establishing new vital vocabulary and also possibly creating a new subblog…

As I was “working along” today, I was thinking again, reflecting on the fact that many of the people I have encountered in church and subsequently ranted about on this blog are to all practical intents and purposes, practising a completely different faith to mine. And my heart is full of both grace and respect for people of other faiths, even though I believe that they are fundamentally wrong. So why is my attitude so different towards Christians who disagree with me?

OK, let’s go back a little further. I was thinking about the blog post that I recently wrote about the time that they tried to exploit me in a certain church. On one hand, I feel as if I really “gave it to them.” And there is a part of me that feels very gratified about that, in a “serves them right!” way. However, there is another part of me that thinks, actually, I could have gone a lot further. However, the point of the post was not to sit down and tear down those people, it was simply to highlight a specific thing that happened. And there is yet a third element to my thinking, which tells me that I honestly did not have to go into that much detail.  All I needed to say was that there was a guy who refused to give me a contract for a role I wanted to do in church on a voluntary basis. And that was literally all that I needed to say to argue my case about being exploited. As I initially wrote it, I made it all too easy to identify exactly who the individuals concerned were, for people who were also in that church. So I have now unpublished that post, while I try to sift through it for any material that can be salvaged.

Ruminating: So after writing the post, this is the way my mind works – my mind continues thinking it over, looking for extra points to use to back up what I had already written. This is why sometimes my initial published posts start off one length, and then grow and grow over the coming weeks. The bad thing about that though is that when I have written a negative post about someone, those negative thoughts remain in my mind and I think on them over and over again. This is what has led me to a state of being so tremendously angry, because my mind focuses on these events endlessly, and these angry thoughts just continually feed on themselves.

I was also thinking, in relation to this man, that you know, I don’t have to hate someone because they have demonstrated poor character traits, even poor character traits towards me. I need to learn to forgive whatever was done towards me, and then look on this person with compassion. I was also thinking that I might need to establish a forgiveness subblog. I need to practise thinking of these people positively, with grace and compassion. I was thinking that compassion is like a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets. I’ve actually got a very strong compassion muscle towards almost everyone else, but just not evangelical Christians and other Christians who have caused me pain.  I always think to myself: “Well they have the Bible!  Why don’t they just open up the Bible, sincerely read what it says, and just do that?!”
I was also thinking that anger is also a muscle, and in my life it is completely overdeveloped towards those Christians from henceforth to be known as “Churchists” and people that I cannot deeply respect.

I thought of new vocab to help me understand how to relate to these people, so that I can learn to practise compassion towards them, as towards any other faith, while recognising that they are essentially a different faith within a faith. In fact, there are essentially lots of different faiths within the faith, representing all the different denominations of the Christian faith, but all these Christians are united by the fact that they do not invest as much time, effort and sincerity into their faith as I do. People might be offended or surprised at that statement, yet it is just the candid truth. Many “Churchists” also fail to see the Bible the same way I do or interpret it at face value. So from henceforth, I am going to think of these people as “Churchists”, whereas people like me I will call “Biblists”. What has kept me angry though, what still causes frustration though is that there are so many “Churchists”, and they all speak so loudly, and they claim to honestly represent the Bible, so by their shouting and their actions they redefine  for the sake of onlookers what the faith of Christ is all about.  I am going to have to find a compassionate way around this. Also from henceforth, I will have to assume that a church is “Churchist” before going anywhere near it, while I am of course looking for a “Biblist” church.  The sad truth is that by default, in our world as it currently looks, the overwhelming majority of people claiming to be  Christians  will be Churchists rather than  Biblists because there are so many demands on the time of each one of us, and Biblists are such because of the huge and compelling time priority we give to our faith. It takes such sacrifice, it does not happen easily, there is no well-trodden path, it is filled with confusion – you could call it the narrow path (filled with difficulties and obstacles, that Jesus spoke of in the Bible)! Someone truly has to exert a tremendous amount of time, effort and determination to live as a Biblist, which is why the number of “Churchist” Christians  is so much greater.  Because it is very much a time thing, the mere fact that someone has a job which takes up the vast majority of the time, indicates that even if they were truly and deeply sincere about faith, they are all the same likely to be Churchists – and this describes most of the middle-class Christians of different ethnicities in various churches – which is why it would be extremely hard to find a predominantly middle-class church which is truly Biblist.

So what Tosin, are you saying that people should not work?!  Yes, that is exactly what I am saying! Oh very well, the Bible calls us to a life of simplicity, so I believe that our work, our jobs, should complement our faith, rather than the other way around. Our jobs or means of making money should be what we fit into our spare time around our faith, rather than the other way around.  It is radical, it is hard to imagine, but it is Biblical – think of Paul the tentmaker. I believe that if we truly want to impact the world the way that the Bible calls us to, then we have to make those same crazy sacrifices, like the First Century Christians did.

So from henceforth, this is going to be my attitude towards Churchists:
– Give them utmost respect as I would towards any other faith.
– Diplomatically stay away from them, as I would any other faith. Nothing would ever make me go inside a mosque, would it?  From henceforth I am going to have to assume that a church is Churchist, until proven otherwise. The crucial factor determining a “Biblist” church from a “Churchist” church is the pastor, whether he or she is a Biblist, and promoting a Biblist faith.

Forgiveness blog: the point of this exercise is to learn to train my mind in grace towards people. I was thinking that what I might do, would be to write out for each post everything that happened regarding a specific painful encounter with a “Churchist” or anyone else, then crucially write out how I am going to think graciously about that incident and the people concerned.  Because this still involves describing the often unedifying things that people have done, and often too my own silly actions, I might need to keep this private for just my own use. And then I need to actually practise doing what I write on each post! I need to dedicate specific time to practise filling my mind with compassion, letting all the bitterness drain right away. The aim is that if I were to ever meet any of these people ever again, I could be genuinely friendly towards them, but this time, I have learned to graciously turn down any invites that they may give me to participate in their churches or to try to develop deeper friendships with them. Some people though, have forfeited even this. From the way they have treated me I cannot even trust them with being polite towards them in person, but I would have to extend grace and compassion towards them from a very far distance.