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Submitted by jtrev on Tue, 02/07/2012 - 1:40pm

A perspective about living a life of service within the church:

". . . like all human beings, we come to this special profession and unique way of life with our individual limitations and our particular interior struggles.  We . . . often fall short of the ideals set before us by the Church and the idealized versions of ourselves that other people hold.  However, unlike most people, we have to deal with our human failings, our difficulties and our growth, in the public eye as we learn to reconcile what God expects, what the institutional Church expects, and what other expect -- no matter how unrealistic those expectations are."

"Dilemma" by Father Albert Cutie'

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Fitting Together Life's JigSaw Puzzle with Father Cutie'

Submitted by jtrev on Thu, 02/09/2012 - 12:42pm.

About forty years ago the church that taught me Jesus loves me no longer had a place for me.  It wasn't just me.  Almost 1/4 of the membership, including Pastors and Seminary Professors were in the exodus. 

I was entering Seminary.  I had expected to sit at the feet of my church's revered and scholarly teachers.  Instead I was at the feet of men and women from different churches -- both other Lutheran churches and other sects -- including a couple of non-Christian sects! 

While it was something of a shock to this sheltered, immature believer, for the first time in my life I heard what others believed about God instead of what was wrong with what they believed. WOW!  There was such freedom for my faith!

And yet there has always been this place of my heart that grieves the loss of "mother church."  There remain missing pieces of the puzzle about who was right and wrong, who decides who can stay or has to go, and who has the better understanding of what God has revealed.  I find that these missing pieces affect how I have pastored, how I have related to people of opposing views.

The book "Dilemma," by Father Albert Cutie' has helped me find some of these puzzle pieces.  Cutie' writes of his journey to Roman Catholic priesthood, through his priesthood, and journey out of the Roman Catholic church.  Reading his experience has allowed me to walk back through my own.  From time to time he absolutely nails pieces of my puzzle that help me understand what was happening in my journey, especially about the difference between faith in God and faithfulness or faithlessness in a church.

Here is the latest jig-saw puzzle piece he has given me:

Was I suffering a crisis of faith?  No -- my faith in God was growing stronger every day.  It was a crisis of ideology [editor's emphasis] and a profound change of mind and heart.  I never expected that I would mentally, psychologically, and spiritually evolve and change my mind the way I did, but I finally came to realize that I no longer held many of the positions that appeared to be so dear to my institution in which I chose to serve God.  pgs 225-226 Dilemma by Father Albert Cutie' copyright 2011, Penguin Books Limited

This little paragraph is an "OH DUH!" moment for me.  Both the church and I too often confuse faith IN God with ideology (doctrine) of the church ABOUT God.  My childhood church and I split over ideology, not faith.

This realization helps me understand the struggle in my current Church over ordaining gay and lesbian partnered people.  I think we have blurred the line between faithfulness to God and faithfulness to ideology.  I have done this -- in my lack of understanding of those boundaries I've shut out and been shut out by those of opposing ideology when there could still be a meeting at the center of faith. 

Could it be that the healing power of God's presence might allow those of us damaged in this latest ideology battle to restore relationship, even while being faithful to opposing ideologies?  What hope there is in this possibility!

How faithful and loving God is to put the leadership of God's church in the hands of the likes of us!