I May Have to Become a Methodist...Darn It

I have a friend who may become United Methodist sometime in the not-too-distant future, and the prospect of that distresses her.

In her words, “I may have to become a Methodist. Darn it.”

I won’t go into all her struggles, but she has attended a church which has proven to be pretty toxic for her.

Basically, because of some pretty profoundly disturbing and abusive incidents early in her childhood, she developed what is essentially an addictive sense of guilt. She struggles with a sense of shame, self-loathing, and dread that she is going to be punished by God for sins she cannot even describe or recall. Many children, when they are sexually, physically, emotionally or spiritually abused, assume that they did something to deserve such treatment.

Often, their abusers do whatever they can to encourage them to feel that way. If the child is consumed by guilt and shame, she or he is much more unlikely to report the abuse, because they assume others will simply join in condemning them. That provides the abuser with cover.

In my friend’s case, this guilt took on a harrowing spiritual aspect when, as a child, she had a “vision” in which God seemed to tell her she was hopeless, worthless and damned for eternity. She lived with the horror and the terror of what she assumed was divine condemnation, for 25 years.

Over the last few years, she has attended a church where the preaching has emphasized God’s displeasure with sin and eagerness to punish it. They portray a holy God, enraged and repulsed by human sinfulness, which renders all of us worthy of hell.

Yes, they do speak of God’s grace and forgiveness, but it often seems an afterthought. They are busy trying to terrify people into loving God. My friend has come away from their worship services distressed, depressed, and discouraged.

Their preaching sends her deepest fears dreads into overdrive. They push all the old panic buttons for her. She wonders why she is supposed to love a God who is so full of impossible demands and eternal punishments? So do I.

The preachers seem to see grace as too soft and squishy to bring people to a transforming relationship with God. No, they must be shown the whip hand and have the hell scared out of them.

But my friend has lived with debilitating fear for most of her life. It is absolutely NOT what she needs. Slowly, over the last couple of years she has come to realize that the God of the Gospel offers something quite different…

Grace.

She has come to learn of God’s passionate love for human beings who have been battered and broken by the oppressive and soul-crushing power of sin…both their own, and the sins which have been perpetrated against them and left their spirits wounded and battered. Instead of a vengeful deity furiously demanding love from us, and threatening us with hellfire if we don’t give it; she has come to discover the God who loves us even when we neither realize nor deserve it, and who is willing to go to all kinds of trouble to keep us out of hell. Even when that trouble involves an excruciating death on a cross.

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus read from the Book of Isaiah, 61:1:

The Spirit of the Sovereign  LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives  and release from darkness for the prisoners

That’s not a message my friend has heard much in her current church for quite awhile, and it’s absence has been keenly felt by her…and others.

She has decided that the atmosphere there is toxic and she must find a place where grace is emphatically preached and practiced. She hopes to find it in a United Methodist congregation in the community where she lives. She has had previous experience with Methodism, and I have had a role in helping her to discover a much more gracious God than her guilt and despair oppressed soul had dared to imagine. So, she’s going to give the UMC a try.

She finds herself frustrated by this, because she prefers a more ordered and liturgical form of worship than most UMCs practice, and that structure has been important to her. But far more important, is the Good News of God’s relentless grace! So some trade-offs may have to be made. She may have to sacrifice some of the form of worship she has found helpful, in order to better celebrate the grace she has found to be essential.

She lives too far from here, so Union UMC is not in a position to be that church for her. But, I would hope that when (not, if) others like her, come to our church, they will discover the amazing and saving grace of a God whose love for us, inspires us to goodness and fills us with hope.

Should they become United Methodists, that will be great. Even if they do so with some reluctance. But far more important, I hope and pray that they will become followers of Jesus, in whom grace found flesh.

Grace & Peace,

Bob Morwell