I want to own up to something so I can dispel it as a way of thinking. Because it has taken me a long time to realize how wrong I was about people who walk away from my church, or take breaks, or interact with it on their own terms/without a set schedule of appearances.I used to think that people who left the Church did so because they came into contact with other people who have. Like doubt was somehow contagious, and contact with people who walk away was a negative force that escalates people's feelings of dissatisfaction with the church. There are a lot of problems with this thinking. It makes the assumption that people can't be trusted to know their own minds, hearts, and motivations in relation to their own relationship with God. It assumes they are unreliable narrators in their own story.
I thought that way because it served me. It exonerated me from having to care about or address the complex and varied reasons why people walk away from my faith community. It allowed me to place blame on someone else instead of looking at myself and my behavior. It wasn't until I was invited to comb through the details of my own life that I realized doubt doesn't work like this. It isn't something you catch from someone else. It's a natural and valid response to prolonged inconsistency between expectations and reality.
I didn't wake up one day and find myself unhappy with my faith community. That disillusionment is a logical, justified response to hundreds of incidents of pain, exclusion, ignorance, loneliness, rejection, and being devalued for who I am and what I think over many years.
And here's the thing I only recently realized: the people I once feared, the ones who doubt... they are not a threat to my faith. They aren't waiting in the wings to stifle out the last candle. My experience has been quite the opposite. My friends across the faith spectrum have lifted me up. They can see I'm trying to stay, to renegotiate my place with my faith, and they respect that. They listen. They empathize. They give me the language and tools to keep my faith in God alive.
They save me from myself. Their hands, outstretched to me when I was drowning, became the familiar hands of God.
I would have lost myself completely had it not been for the people I once thought so little of. And I realized they deserved so much more credit than I was giving them.
Don't be afraid of people who distance themselves intentionally from the Church. Don't assume they want to hurt you, or that you fundamentally understand the Church better because you have stayed after they have gone.
Listen. Empathize. Learn. Embrace.
They may just be the ones who save you someday, too.
