What About the Kids?

The morning she came out in church, my husband cried in the car. In the nearly 15 years I had known him, I had only seen him cry twice before--at the death of his grandfather, and at our wedding. "I just kept looking at all those people in the rows in front of us and next to us. So many of them were crying, holding each other. It was like they had been holding so much inside, so much of themselves. And hearing someone say out loud, in church, that she was who she was, was freeing to them, too. And I imagined if one of those kids were my daughter. If church had done this to her. Made her hide herself inside. Made her hate a part of herself. I kept imagining if it was my daughter up there asking to be loved, to be accepted, not sure what the answer would be. And I think about all the kids I grew up and went to church with who were abandoned by the church they loved. The church they grew up in. The church that taught them that God loved them as they were, and then encouraged their families to reject them when "as they were" turned out to be gay. I imagined if it were my daughters."

                   

We have been church-hopping recently, and I hate it. I don't hate it because I don't value variety of religious experience. If I could attend a half-dozen various churches a week, I would. But I don't like the possible implications of church-hopping. Are we entitled Millenials, mindlessly buying into the consumerist vision of church? Are we not willing to do the hard work that community requires? Are we too idealistic, too put off by real people, and real life? 

To be fair, some of our church transitions were inevitable. We moved two hours away from our college church, or we probably would have stayed there foreverandeveramen. One of the start-up churches we attended was too small to survive. And our house church was a lovely experiment, but it was always just that, an experiment.

But others, we left deliberately. The church we returned to after college was no longer a quaintly conservative, spirit-filled community, focused on prayer and study. Instead, it had become something very much less than the sum total of its (often very kind and beautiful) parts. It was cold, and seething with self-righteous anger, focused in absolute entirety on fear and exclusion. It was openly and unapologetically mysogynistic. It was a church defined by its homophobia. And it bore the spiritual fruits of its hatred and fear. I left in the middle of several services because I could no longer hold back the words that were raging in me. We could not stay. 

The mega-church we were attending was lovely. It was wealthy, educated, cultured, missional. It had wonderful pastors. It was comfortable. But we didn't fit somehow. Maybe it was the fact that, though we fit in beautifully, so did everyone else. I never met anyone there who didn't fit the cultured, well-educated, demure mold. I never met a brash woman with a loud voice. I never met anyone who knew how to ask questions. Maybe it was the fact that they handed my six-year-old a tract in Sunday school that reminded her what a hopeless sinner she was, and even though I know for a fact that she didn't, claimed that she had "accepted Jesus into her heart." She shook with terror that day and never really wanted to back to Sunday school again. Maybe it was how neatly, how quietly, anything or anyone controversial was swept under the rug, how privately decisions were made and hidden. The pastors were wonderful, the music was superb, but this wasn't our church. We did not stay.

Our newest church was by far our favorite since college. The children adored Sunday school and we liked the curriculum (they were even...gasp!...encouraged to ask questions). The people were friendly. They were smart, loving, interesting, diverse, and they were also a little bit charismatic, which was exciting, if a bit terrifying to my inner Catholic. Even though we had to drive a way to get there, we felt at home. 

But we seem to have a fatal attraction to churches in flux. As it turned out, this new church was no different. The sad fact is that embrace and inclusion are controversial, even in (especially in?) our communities that follow the One who welcomed those on the margins first of all. The organization to which our new church belonged was unable or unwilling to fully embrace all of its people. Those on the margins and those who supported them were just too far gone. They issued an ultimatum and the head pastor refused to comply. The church split. And of course, both because we cannot stomach the thought of any more exclusion, judgement or quiet conformity--and also because of our fatal attraction to the vulnerable communities, to the ones breaking and shifting and growing--we left with two of the pastors and half of the congregation for yet another new church.

I knew in my heart, and soul, and head, and all of me that it was not only the right thing to do, it was what we had been called to in the first place. Everything in me was singing and shouting out that this was right.

But then, a few weeks before we were to transition to our newest new church, a needling voice in my head asked the question, "What about the kids?" What was our constant church-hopping telling our children about faith? About integrity? Will they think that they should just find whatever place feels perfect for the time being and move on when it isn't? Will they question if their parents' faith was ever really genuine? If it was actually a selfish desire for a perfect and personalized experience? I don't want them to think that faith and community are easy, that they aren't a struggle. I don't want them to expect flawless perfection, lack of conflict, everything tailored to their personal desires. And our children were so happy at the church we had been attending. Sunday school taught them to express themselves, that who they were was good, that their questions were valid. Why would we force them to be church nomads yet again? I didn't want to be selfish. I wanted to think about my kids. What about the children?

But every last one of us is somebody's child. Every last one of us is a child of God, a child of the light. On the day she came out in church, on the day somebody's child, God's child, had to ask for embrace from her church, on the day other children, God's children, wept because who they were had been kept in the dark for far, far too long, my husband and I cried in the car. And we vowed that never again would our children go to a church that taught little children that who some of them were was not worthy of embrace. And we vowed never to put our children in a Sunday school that taught them that God loved them as long as they were quiet, demure, and didn't ask too many questions. We promised never to let our little ones grow in a church that taught them that who they were was beautiful, that their questions were valid, that God loved even the least of these, but that certain types of people just couldn't be in leadership, no matter how obviously they were meant to be there. 

What about the kids, indeed. The fierce mother bear in me refuses to rest until she finds a place where her children's big, beautiful hearts will not be crushed any sooner than the world is hellbent on crushing them. There are enough traumas and terrors in life that they will surely live through. The church is not perfect. The church, like any community, has its share of pain, conflict, and hard work. I will never reject that pain, conflict and hard work. It is how we grow, how we bring new things to life. But the church should not be a source of cruelty to children, even grow-up children. I will not be complicit in the rejection of any of the beautiful children of God. I will not be complicit in cruelty or rejection (well-intended or otherwise) in the name of God. I will not let my children believe that this is what following Jesus is about. I will not let my children believe that God cannot love them (or their friends and loved ones) as they are. The love that loves them no matter what--that's grace. It is not mine to deny. Or the church's. Not ever. 

And so we church-hop once again. And the children survive. And the children thrive. At our new church, the little one lights up more than she ever has before. She sings about Jesus with her whole being, which is made for love, which is made both powerful and supernaturally light with the love that fills it. She is a strong, loud girl. She asks questions. She loves boys, and girls, and cats, and cartoons and she wants to marry them all. Who knows who she will want to marry when she grows up? But she is not afraid of her loud voice, or her brash personality, or her questions, or her fierce, joyous love. And she knows that Jesus loves her. And she knows that God loves her, and that God always will. She knows that the infinite love she feels is a fraction of the much bigger love of God. A love that can embrace, and embrace, and embrace, so that none of the children are too far for its reach. Even the ones on the margins. Especially the ones on the margins.

"For it is true, together we live, and only

at the shrine where all 

are welcome will God sing

loud enough to be heard."

(St. Teresa of Avila)