I grew up in the church that my dad pastored, and I quickly learned that people either hold pastor’s kids to an unreasonably high standard, or wait to see when they rebel and fall off the rails. By the time I was 20, I concluded that I had no problem with God, but the problem was the Christians.
As I got older, I listened to people gossip about my family; and when this led my dad to leave the church, I decided that I had had enough of Christians. God might love me, but His people definitely didn’t.
As I found out about other things that had happened in our church over time—things that were unjust and that hurt my family—my hurt turned to anger. The more angry I felt, the less I felt I could go to God, and the more my relationship with Him deteriorated.
But I did not want to walk away from God because I loved Him and I knew that the Bible was true. Passages like Hebrews 10:25 and John 15:12 told me that the church is God’s plan and that we are to love each other—yes, other Christians too.
I’m still working through this, and here are a few things I’m realising:
1. Christians hurt each other
It may seem obvious, but none of us are perfect, so we will hurt each other. I can feel as defensive about my injuries as I want, but at the end of the day, I have hurt other people too. I need to be forgiven just as much as I need to forgive.
In Matthew 18, Jesus answers Peter’s question of how many times we should forgive others by telling the parable of the unmerciful servant, who after the King has forgiven his big debt, refuses to forgive another man’s smaller debt. Word gets back to the King and the unmerciful servant is thrown in jail.
This story has in some ways haunted me since I was a kid, because I really wanted grace for myself, but I have a hard time giving it out. I was thinking about all this recently and I concluded that if I met the people who had hurt me and my family back then, I would want them to know that I didn’t hold it against them.
2. There is no higher standard
Other people may have been holding me to a higher standard of behaviour because my dad was a pastor, but God wasn’t. God holds us all to the same high standard that none of us can meet. And because none of us can meet that standard, all of us are offered grace because Jesus’ blood has paid for all the times we mess up and hurt each other.
Every time we don’t meet that standard, there is grace to make us right with God again. I don’t have to try and earn my way back in. It’s comforting to know that God isn’t waiting to catch me out, but is waiting with grace and forgiveness.
3. We can choose how we respond
I may not like it, but living in this world means that at some point we will get hurt. What we do with that hurt is what counts. Rather than burying how I feel and holding on to resentment, I’m trying to remember what Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:32, to “be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
The church is full of broken people who will hurt one another. But they are also God’s people, loved and forgiven by Him. It’s not a perfect place, but one meant to help us grow in our walk with Jesus. No matter how bad things got or how painful they were, I didn’t want to give up entirely on the church. And I still don’t.
Originally published in YMI. Used with permission.
SHARE THIS WITH OTHERS
Play our role to be encouragers and missionaries in the digital world.
