Let's Save Sager!
I wonder if I will ever want to go back to church. Why? Is there any good reason to? Maybe to just be with people … weekly. But I can get that anywhere. I can get that in a bar.
It is hard to blog or podcast lately. Life out of the church has been refreshing and life saving… but it makes it hard to talk about the church. I begin to not care. The very idea of church is boring to me. Church is no longer my reality. Not only do I question the necessity/reality/authority of the church but I also question the very essence of Christianity … is it truth? I just don’t know. Can a Christian prove Christianity without the Bible? No. Christianity is based on faith just like every religion. And just like every religion, there are promises of a life better than mine right now.
Too good to be true? Maybe. Is it truth? I just don’t know anymore. I have fallen away and will probably go to hell. Sucks for me. But I must question this. I cannot just follow someone else’s lead anymore. I don’t need the weekly verbal masturbation and fake and forced friendships that the church offers.
If my “friendships/relationships” from the church were real … they would have continued after my leaving the church. Not a single one lasted. I have reached out to some … and I get the same result … empty promises. “Yea, let’s meet up”…never follows through.
BOTTOM LINE:
-Church is fake.
-Your “Church Friends” are not your friends.
-They will pretend to be your friend as long as you keep “stroking” their need for a fake community.
-You need to find some real friends that will love you for you.
-You need to get in a fight and lose.
-I am probably going to hell if your faith is as strong as you believe it is.
-The further away I walk away from the church; I feel more alive and have less stress in my life.
-Again … I am probably going to hell.
posted by Joshua Sager at
12:07 AM
29 Comments:
Those are some real and heavy words brother. And I want to personally thank you for being so open and honest, not just with us, but also with yourself.
I would like to challenge you with a question for your consideration: what is "the church".
I know you're gonna say... duh!!! what the fuck has SCP been doing here?!? But hear me out.
This one is just for you. Assuming that the Bible is the Truth and is God, blah blah blah, I would ask you to research what God's definition of the church is. My theory, on the whole "Josh-is-going-to-Hell-in-a-handbasket" situation, is that you've been so scarred (and rigthly so) by what man has bastardized the church in to. So it's no surprise that you are avoiding it like a $10 TJ hooker (and no, that's not William Shatner for you slow-pokes out there!).
We were designed to be apart of the body, and therefore, when you are not attached to it, it is obvious that you are going miss it less and less. Again however, I must reiderate, based on your writings and our conversations, I believe that what you refer to as "the church" has absolutly nothing to do with God's perfect design of it.
Question all day long, that's what we were built to do, but at some point you must settle on what YOU bleieve to be the truth. That's the beauty of the bible, it is the one truely untarnished source. Don't let some fancy preacher with a powerpoint tell you what's up, let God do it for you. But you must seek it. It's not going to fall into your lap.
I'm really sorry if I'm comin' across as super preachy, you know that's not me, but I really feel strongly about this one. If you were questioning God's design that's one thing. But you guys both are constantly attacking something that is already inherently flawed: man. So stop chekin' out dudes, and crack open that thing covered in dust bro.
You've got mad gifts from God, but you are going to have to make the effort to unfold them. He's not going bottle them up in a six pack for ya bro.
Love ya (said in a very deep, hairy, manly voice), and I'll be prayin' for ya.
Keep us updated please.
(and that's a wrap)
Let me just say that I have as much of a disgust for you as you have for me. So to begin let me just say...kiss my ass.
With that out of the way I would like to respond to your comment.
Welcome to the club. Authority, even at the highest levels, has to be questioned. I believe that most "christians" are that, simply because that is what they have been taught to be. The bible itself declares that we don't need the bible. If christianity is real then we have Christ (a.k.a. The Word) inside of us.
We should not decide the truth of God by the bible, rather it should be the other way around. As far as church people, they are just people. Why do we expect so much from them. I get the same crap from people in and out of the church. The real ones are called friends and that is why they are so precios and hard to find.
I say if your going to hell at least you are goin' for the right reasons.
* all things are relative to perseption.
* Challenge everything and your resolves will be unbreakable.
* Church people are stupid because people are stupid, we are they ones that put them on pedestools.
Great post.
p.s. kiss my ass.
Well, IMO, just because you left the church (the institution) doesn't mean you've left the Church (Christ's collective body of believers the world over). The only way to leave the Church is to deconvert from Christianity. Unless you do that, I say you're not headed for hell at all. (But then, I don't really believe in the concept of "hell" that 99.9% of Christians hold to anyway.)
Josh, I dont think you have fallen away. I think you are struggling. I too am struggling with a lot of issues that are sacred cows in Churchianity. Dont lose your faith man. You still are the Church. Jesus is closer to you than ever. I see him in you guys by reading your posts and listening to your podcasts. Much more than in some stupid church.
The fakeness of Church has driven many away. remember its not God that is the problem.
As the bumper sticker says, I Love Jesus, but some of his followers scare me.
Peace and Love and all. God bless
strong words indeed. I agree on the whole church friend oxymoron. waking up half an hour past noon, i see a text message on my phone from one of my age group people from church. it was sent an hour earlier, and it "invited" me to ou christmas party. i chose not to go the moment they said they were planning it. my sister ran into one of them later in the day and they said they were wondering where i was. after my sister tells me this, i say "i never wanted to go" out loud, and never felt better.
but enough about me...
josh, what's with all the "going to hell" crap? it's too self-effacing for your own good. you're free from all the stress from all the fakeness of it all. i guess that makes you feel more alive than before. our church has spewed out the likes of you, and they deserve better as do you.
i love you bro. for serious. your honesty in this space, for the lack of modest words, is like pure gold.
happy new year. thank god for new years.
When I first met my partner, he told me he was looking for the "perfect" church. "There is no such thing," I told him, "They're all filled with people."
I spent 40 years in evangelical land, taught Sunday School, played the organ and keyboard and was in church leadership. That all came to a screaming hault when I came out as a gay man. If I'd known that that was a way to get out of all of those responsibilities and busy work, I would have likely come out in my 20s!
I must confess that I do miss the community aspect. But you are correct, there is the potential for pseudo-community based on our "liking" each other because of a shared, "correct" faith, and if you are not "correct", it's hard to be around you.
For community to be authentic, we have to be authentic ourselves, and that certainly seems to be where you've headed, Josh. I am in the process of building new community in a "mainline" church and am excited that where I find myself, it is okay to be at different parts of the journey at different times. When someone from church is comfortable in telling me, as someone recently did, that she is not certain what she believes about God, I can begin to believe that I'm where I belong.
Josh,
I too don't think you're going to Hell. I think one thing you need to do in order to sort out this whole dillema you're having with the church is, not to question the church, but to ask some questions of yourself. Why did you ever set foot in a church in the first place? Why did you initially go there? What were you seeking? What was your motivation? Were you going to get something or to give something? Were you there to glorify God or yourself? Start at the beginning, the very beginning, before this blog and before SCP. Evaluate who you were then as opposed to who you are now. Then figure out what changed.
You are fed up with the modern-day church, I, get it. But you know what? So am I. But when I left my last church, because I was sick and tired of the games, I didn't leave the church altogether. I searched for one that gave me what I wanted, solid biblical teaching and a chance to glorify God. I'm now in a much smaller Lutheran church and happier than I've ever been! I went seeking a church that where I could glorify God and learn how to use my gifts to best serve Him. That stuff has to come first, and by doing that stuff I experience fellowship with other believers who wish to do the same thing.
Don't focus so much on what other people in the church have done to you. People will screw you over no matter whether you know them from church or not. My best friend, who I didn't meet in church, has screwed me over repeatedly and lied to me on more than several occaisions. Do I stop being her best friend too because of it? No. I continue to love her as a friend and show her that there are some people in this world who won't abandon you no matter what you do to them. I believe Jesus would do that in this situation and that's what i choose to do.
I could turn my back and walk away sure, that'd be easy. That's what the world tells us to do, isn't it? You've been hurt, you've been screwed over, leave it behind, you don't need them. That kind of attitude and thinking only serves one person, you. We are Christians because we serve Christ. As Christians we're told to love those who hate us, persecute us and hurt us. So before you start looking for answers, start by asking yourself some questions.
Well Good Grief Josh,
Seems to me you probably wouldn't want to go to the place you spend most of your time complaining about. This "church" subject seems to be the focus of your disdain, so it comes as no surprise that you wouldn't want to go.
I can't see whay your so torn about it though, unless somewhere deep inside you really still feel connected in some way. Just an observation.
josh,
I agree with everyone, you're not going to hell. I've been pretty lax in my church attendance not so much from detoxing but from quesitoning. I have a lot of the same questions and frustrations with the church as you.
I know God loves me despite my frustration and questions and even (probably) encourages those. I think anyone in the church that is that put off by someone questioning the church is nothing but an insecure, automatronic christian. If someone like that is telling you you are going to hell, consider the source.
Mark
josh,
I agree with everyone, you're not going to hell. I've been pretty lax in my church attendance not so much from detoxing but from quesitoning. I have a lot of the same questions and frustrations with the church as you.
I know God loves me despite my frustration and questions and even (probably) encourages those. I think anyone in the church that is that put off by someone questioning the church is nothing but an insecure, automatronic christian. If someone like that is telling you you are going to hell, consider the source.
M
Nah... I disagree with all of you and I agree with Josh... he is going to hell.
;-)
See you in hell, brutha! Wherever the "church people" AREN'T, is where I want to be. Could you IMAGINE heaven with all those ignoramouses? That CAN'T be the heaven that Jesus spoke about. Wow...I just got hopeful for a moment! Thanks Josh!
Sounds like you have been going to only fundamentalist/Charismatic/Evangelical churches.
I have been wondering about my "church friends". I have been attending a new place for 2 years. I know lots of people, but I have no friends (friends being defined as people I can call for no particular reason and blab for a bit about things that matter and things that don't).
However, friends are a rare thing. Most of my friends I have known for 15-20 years, and they were made at a time when I could invest lots of time in them. That is not as easy to do now. There are not as many opportunities as I once had to develop friendships. I don't think the folks at church are being fake, or that I am being fake. For me, it is just harder at this life stage.
If there is a fakiness to church friendships, I think it is because people feel pressured to "be real" and "be authentic", so we contrive feelings that just aren't there to show we are in community. We are trying to live up to the buzzwords and the hype.
For myself, I am just trying not expect too much too quickly, and have gotten comfortable that it will probably take years to develop some friendships. In the meantime, I am thankful for what I have.
I agree with Steve
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Gosh... are you in hell YET? I wish you would just stop your bitchin and get it over with already!!
...just foolin - me first biaaaatch!
Josh, you wrote a few things in this post about the fakeness of your friendships at church.
If my “friendships/relationships” from the church were real … they would have continued after my leaving the church. Not a single one lasted. I have reached out to some … and I get the same result … empty promises. “Yea, let’s meet up”… never follows through.
Etcetera. You and I were somewhere between acquaintances and friends back when I lived down in your neck of the woods and we were doing ministry together. So I'm thinking back on our time spent together, and it makes me wonder... Is it possible that you kept most of your church friends at arm's length and avoided a lot of opportunities to create relationships that went any deeper than "Sunday friendships"? I think you weren't comfortable socially in the home groups and Bible studies that you tried out, so you gave up on the idea and you ended up just being a workaholic minister who only had time for a very small selection of relationships that were anything more than acquaintances. Personally, I know we tried to make some time to hang out together, but between my job and your busy ministry, it was hard to make that time happen. And lasting relationships can only come with an investment of time. So of course the "friends" you had from church didn't end up being your friends after you left -- you only knew most of them from Sunday and the odd social event. How deeply did you know any of them before you left that church?
My experience has been different. My wife and I were in the same home group for 7 years or so and we developed a handful of really close friendships, the kind where you might spend some really special time together that's normally reserved for close family, make long trips just to see each other, or, as time has shown, still stay in touch and be a part of each other's lives even after you've moved hundreds of miles apart. How did we get there? We spent a lot of time just hanging out, and we spent a lot of time seeking God together and being real with each other about who we are, what we question, what we believe, what our faults are and all said, I suppose just living life together. We were close friends before we left our church, and so we're still friends now. The way I understand it, that's where the heart of any church is: the home groups where people have time and context to be open and real, to grow closer to each other and to God in honest pursuit of Him. That builds relationships and it builds a community with strong ties.
If you resisted that closeness while you were at church, of course you're not going to have any ties strong enough to maintain relationships after the recurring social event that created those acquaintances in the first place is gone. So I kind of feel like you're not actually being honest with yourself or us by saying what you've posted. You're complaining about shallow friendships that haven't lasted but you didn't create the groundwork for lasting friendships. In that respect, I feel like it's disingenuous to complain about how fake the church is. You invested a lot of energy in youth ministry, and the product was a lot of kids who enjoyed the high school youth group and their relationships with you. You didn't invest a lot of energy in friendships with other adults, so there was no product there.
At least that's my perspective. I don't know how you spent all your time, but that's the way it looked from here.
Love you, bro. :^)
Utterly pathetic! I wouldn't be surprised if you even say things like, "I'd rather go to hell anyway coz all my real mates are there" with a dumb smirk on your face. Which just goes to show you haven't quite comprehended the enormity of what you're talking about yet.
The bottom line with your bottom line is that it's probably a more accurate refection of you than on the church(s) you leave behind. My experience of people who leave churches because they "can't stand all the fakes & hypocrites" is that they were typically attention whores who used to fake it more spectacularly than anyone else. They then go on to assume everyone else must have been faking it just like them. The church then enters a lose-lose situation whereby the quitter wants the pastor and/or congregation to chase after them to beg them to stay. That's then their chance to tell the others "like it is", about how they can't possibly stay coz of all the hypocrisy, politics and egotism. Or if the minister and/or members of the congregation don't beg them to stay that's more proof of their 'lack of love' and hypocrisy. Whereas the truth of course is that they've seen it all before a dozen times and saw you for the fake you really were but were too polite to say anything.
The quitter then leaves church claiming that whilst Jesus is OK, but church/Christianity/religion is just a sham (like they were). After a while, and when the need to noticed and/or needed arises again, some then go on to repeat the whole process again at another church (or starting a blog seems to be a more recent tendency). Others just drift away completely claiming that they're going to follow Jesus in their own way, which roughly translates as "live my life the way i did before, the way I want to live it without any regard to prayer, scripture, fellowship, evangelism, service etc". You meet them years later and ask about their spiritual walk and there's an awkward moment before the subject is quickly changed.
With all sincerity I can say that I truly hope you don't go to hell. But the choice is entirely yours and nothing to do with whatever excuses you come up with. Your excuses and blame games will sound extremely lame on judgement day.
Wow! Sheildsy - when your on a roll.....watch out!
wow shieldsy... was that an autobiography? why the hell are you even on here? it amazes me how you assholes are attacking someone that you don't even know. if you don't like what josh is saying... stop listening to the podcast and visiting the website! do you feel like a bigger person and get off by attacking people's character? what excuses are you going to have and who are you going to blame on judgement day for being such a douche bag and judging people that you have never even met. last time i checked, this is just a person posting THEIR thoughts and experiences on THEIR website. get a fucking life...
"this is just a person posting THEIR thoughts and experiences on THEIR website
You're dead right ... posting their thoughts in a public place for the public to read and for the public to comment on. (They couldn't just write them in a journal or a members-only forum of course). But their I am forgetting the unwritten rule of most blogs ... only those who are like-minded allowed (sounds just like some churches doesn't it).
Yeh, sorry Josh ... of course you're not going to Hell, Jesus loves you, and as long as you're good and love your mum and have some good friends everything will be ok. The church sucks and you don't need it .. it's just a crutch for much weaker Christians.
"I cannot just follow someone else’s lead anymore. I don’t need the weekly verbal masturbation and fake and forced friendships that the church offers." (Josh)
This seems to be the whole point of the blog. I guess I am very close to this situtation in my own life - having a lot of friendships dissolve due to abscence from the church - god thing for me a lot of my friends had either left before me or with me - and we're still all friends - so I guess my church experience brought me some good friends - I think we all grew up though and hang out less - we get together and have a drink sometimes for fun - but we never actually hang out in church (that's where I have been left behind).
But the whole following your own lead - that's where I am at - I just got so sick of being told what this gospel meant and how the 'rules' are supposed to be kept - I gave up on that jazz. I search and read for myself now, when I did this I found I became less entrapped in someone else's problems and BS - and I found the freedom to be someone who can make mistakes - and I make enough for all of us on here. But I noticed there was always 'hope' after the mistakes - something someone outside of me might miss - and the church made this tough for me - to just be me. Expectations were crazy - hell, they wanted perfection - not knowing what perfection even meant (whole). I think going it alone - well, we all need to do this at some time or else we never mature.
Ahhhhwwwwww you took your post down Josh, I am dissapointed.
I appreciated your raw and real feelings.
Sheildsy....
I wrote this over on my other blog but thought I should put it here as well (especially becuase I love the attention)....
Just because this is a public blog offered to you to comment doesn't mean you have to. But since you do, I am assuming you are feeding your ego just like I am. Otherwise you could just read and let it go, or write in your private journal about it... but you don't.... you shameless little whore!
ut their I am forgetting the unwritten rule of most blogs ... only those who are like-minded allowed (sounds just like some churches doesn't it).
See... and just like your comment on my blog... you make a statment of opposition to us. Then when people defend Josh or I, you claim that "only the like-minded are allowed". That is weak. If you are going to critique us, everyone reading has the right if they so choose to challenge you back. Don't play that wimpy ass game of us not being able to handle criticism or critique. - when you cry about others challenging you and your comments.
Trust me, this blog is a lot less of a love-fest than most of its kind from my web travels.
...is there someway we could arrange some kind of blog-hug?
What the hell, Steve? Live and let live man. Why do you have to be such an ass and constantly prove your superiority to everyone. You are right man every else is an attention whore, you win the gold star of being awsome and right.
::knocks the dust from his boots and leaves this ego-fest, for now::
I hear you Josh, the thought of going back to church absolutely terrifies me!
I do think that somewhere inside i have hope that god will show me something real that will help me grow a relationship with him, and the only thing i know for certain right now is that that thing is lookin gless and less like the christian church!!
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