A Poem for Church Hurt

If you’ve spent more than a couple years in church, you’ve probably experienced it. Maybe you were dealt with harshly by leadership when you needed grace. Maybe your words were misinterpreted and you lost a friend. Maybe your love of truth caused someone to distance themselves from you because they couldn’t see your love for them. Maybe you couldn’t live up to unrealistic expectations or one of your spiritual heroes took a long and messy tumble from the pedestal you had constructed for them. Maybe you got sick of hypocrisy or maybe something truly horrific happened to you. Maybe you still don’t really know what happened.

As Christians, we are supposed to point the world to Christ, but we often fail miserably. Often, we have different ideas about the particulars of what it means to follow Him. Some say it means eating with sinners and tax collectors. Others say it means overthrowing the tables of the moneychangers. When I hear these as the examples of how we ought to emulate Christ—either in seeking to extend grace without judgment or to bring fiery purity, I’m always left with the same thought: “But I’m not God incarnate. I’m sure Jesus was able to closely associate with messy lives while resisting the temptation to emulate them, but I’m not sure if I am. I’m sure He knew the hearts of the moneychangers in the temple and rightly condemned them, but I’ve wrongly understood motives before and dealt with situations poorly.”

Recognizing that we are not Jesus, I think, is perhaps an important step for all of us to take in trying to humbly follow Him. Far too often it was my thinking that I bore His image more accurately than someone else that caused me to do and say things I later regretted.

Many from my generation are reacting against the legalism that we experienced growing up. That makes sense. People did a lot of damage to other people, and to the cause of Christ.

I’ve heard my more grace-loving friends talk about the need for the church to be “a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.” I agree, but I often fear that we don’t extend that medical care to those already inside the church whose legalism may in fact be a cover for their own wounds. People both inside and outside the church have experienced difficulty, abuse, and heartache, and are often reacting to the pain either by acting out or by pushing it deep down in an attempt to make it disappear. We all have blind spots and we need each other to gently help us see them.

“Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing,because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”

- I Peter 3:8-9

Many have left the church, and when they think of it, think of the way it was when they were young. I have stayed in the church and I have seen it change and grow and seek to right past wrongs. I have experienced some of my greatest heartaches because of the church, but also some of my greatest joys. God has used church hurt to humble me and He has used the church as a healing balm. Jesus knew that we would struggle—with holiness, with grace, with unity. That is why he prayed for us in the garden.

A few years ago I had a dream that I walked into the church where I grew up, the one we had left in a church split when I was in the second grade. The building was cold in my dream, but something about it also felt like home. I marveled at the architecture, which was more grand than any churches I would attend after that point. When I woke up I wrote this poem:

Sanctuary of My Dreams

I sat long in that frigid pew,

My gaze to Heaven ascended;

The ceiling hewn from timbers strong

Like Noah’s Ark upended;

The carpet – was it green

Like life anew in earthly days?

Or was it red as saving blood

And fires of the blaze?

A tattered old hymnbook before me

Held within each page,

A symphony of guilt undone

And of the tempter’s rage;

This poetry my mind had formed

As early as I stepped

Into this place still yet unborn,

And reborn when I left;

I saw another book abandoned,

Sized for a child’s hand;

His portrait then gazed back at me,

A fellow son of man;

Was it for our oneness you wept,

And in that garden promise kept,

To take the cup with bitter taste,

For our conflicts your blood to waste?

With pity for our sickly souls,

Did you then march to meet your goal,

And suffer in that mid-day night,

The flames, which our dark hearts ignite?

A pity still we, bound by death

And life anew and heavenly breath,

So soon forsake your pardoning hour

And turn each other to devour.