Choosing Honest over Nice
By Tina Allbright
Today I gathered
up all my courage and sent an email that I've been wanting to send for
months. It is to my old pastor, the one at the church I left. All the
relevant details have been changed to protect the innocent. I'll call him
Reverend Jim. I'll call the church 'St Phonies'. Here it is, in all it's
raw and ugly honesty:
Hello Reverend Jim,
I've been meaning to contact you since our
failed correspondence last spring. When I saw you at **** and *****'s BBQ
last summer you remarked that you had intended to email me and that you
still planned to... That never happened.
I want you to know something and you need
to hear this. Someone at the church told me to go to you for help and
advice and I did that, honestly expecting to get some real help and
answers. And you failed to provide either. You failed to provide anything
but standard, toeing the Christian line, here's-what-the-bible-says,
formatted answers. And because I don't fit into that Christian subculture
like everyone else at St Phonies, I questioned your answers. So you simply
chose not to address me any further.
If the central message of Christianity is
'you are accepted' then you need to know that St Phonies is failing to
deliver that message. All I ever got was 'you are accepted if you are...
straight, conservative, unquestioning and just exactly like us.'
I don't expect any response or anything at
all from you. You're not my pastor and you don't owe me a thing. I just
think it's important that you hear me. You're a pastor - and helping
people who are struggling with their faith... isn't that kind of your job?
I don't believe in Christianity anymore.
After being at St Phonies for almost a year, and then leaving and having
almost nobody notice or care, my disbelief is strengthened. After asking
you for help, and getting nothing but smoke blown up my ass, any faith I
had in clergy (that wasn't already destroyed by Catholic priests) is
pretty much gone. I thought I made real friends at St Phonies - but no -
it turns out I was just another soul to save - one that got away. I don't
want anything to do with that kind of Christianity. And apparently,
Christians like you don't want anything to do with me.
That's as honest as I know how to be.
And then I hit
send. And then I felt better. And to be honest, I don't care how it makes
anyone at that church feel.
My mom always tells me 'If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say
anything at all.' I tell her, 'But mom, sometimes not-so-nice people need
to have not-so-nice things said to them!'
I'm not usually
the one to step up and say the not-so-nice things. I want people to think
I'm nice. I usually am. But sometimes, I choose honest over nice.
©
Tina Allbright
2005
