It’s been a while since I posted here but I needed a place to put some words tonight. There’s no perfect place for this and the words don’t really need an audience. But I need a place to deposit them. 

I’d like to preface this by saying I’m hugely optimistic about the future of society in general and the horizon of Christian faith. I think the most inspiring and beautiful days are still ahead for those who follow the way of the Nazarene. And I believe humanity will march on toward greater justice and equality for all, even if that path isn’t as direct a line as I’d prefer and filled with far too many detours and backtracks that feels like unnecessary wasted time. 

But some days (like today) I reflect on all I’ve seen and learned in recent years and it feels right to just mourn and cry.

Tonight I choose to let that heaviness and sadness in for a few moments. To feel it’s reality.  To acknowledge its effect on me and many around me. This heaviness isn’t the final word in the story, but it is PART of the story and to ignore it is to short-circuit what I think God is doing in the midst of it all. So I choose to let it in tonight and lament. 

This is my confession and lament…

I feel such deep sadness at so much of Christianity that has lost the peaceful way of Jesus and become marked by fear, legalism, judgmentalism, racism, greed, exclusion of others, hatred of enemies, and power politics. I’m embarrassed by so much of what passes as Christianity these days.  I feel like something I thought was beautiful and true has died and yet I’m afraid a lot of it probably never was as pure and noble as I remember in my younger years. It hurts to see a message of peace and love weaponized against those that don’t meet religious expectations or mobilized in pursuit of cheap political power grabs.

I’m grieve over the graveyard of hurt that religion has caused. I’m ashamed at the role I once played in this pain and perhaps the role I still inadvertently play in causing pain for some. I weep for those who have had to abandon faith communities in order to protect themselves from the shame, exclusion and taunting of prominent voices in my religious tribe.

I also feel such deep sadness in discovering that so many people I looked up to as heroes of faith when I was younger have abandoned the very principles of Jesus they taught me to cherish.  It often feels as though I’m mourning the death of people who haven’t actually died but who I have learned aren’t at all who I thought they were or that they once were.  I don’t always know what to do with the sadness and anger I feel over what feels like the loss of grief and the sting of betrayal at the same time.  It feels lonely to carry the legacy of teachers, preachers, friends, family and mentors who taught me about Jesus so well I can no longer follow in their footsteps.  Damn . . . it’s really this part that hurts the most, isn’t it?

All of this is enough that I’m tempted to walk away from faith . . . and also desperately clinging to it simultaneously.

There’s more I suppose. But that’s what I’m willing to lament tonight.  And it feels like a lot. 

I’m not cynical (not completely anyway).  I’m not in total despair either.  I know the peaceable way of Jesus is as much “good news” now as ever.  After everything, I still think His love is the real hope of the world.

But sometimes it feels important to cry a little bit and lament the stuff that’s gone wrong and feels so heavy.  It feels honest. And maybe the work of admitting to ourselves that we are grieving and lamenting it is the first step toward finding wholeness and peace. 

Tomorrow is a new day. God’s mercies will be there new and waiting.  So I’ll cry tonight, but I’ll wake up tomorrow and embrace them.  Maybe they’ll mean even more because of it. 

What do you need to lament?