Tarshish & Tainted 'God' Words

cataloging grief with goodness unfolding.

Every few days or so another pastor gets out of bed and says, ‘That’s it. I quit. I refuse to be branch manager any longer in a religious warehouse outlet. I will no longer spend my life marketing God to religious consumers. I have just read over the job description the culture handed me and I am buying it no longer.’ Every few days another Jonah, realizing that his or her vocational disobedience is endangering everyone else, that this careerist professionalism is in large part responsible for the wicked character of American religion, says ‘take me up and throw me into the sea.’

-Eugene Peterson

Those words remain a banner.

When rupture compels us to shed the layers of conditioning and many colloquialisms of Christian faith, what remains will include a lot of sorrow.

Image source: website of John Baumgartner

I’ve gotten some distance from that former world. The above-quoted excerpt of Eugene Peterson three decades ago provided such validation for what many of us have reckoned with. “Tarshish” is where collateral damage (read: people) is necessary for religious success and the preservation of kingdoms (read: churches). Peterson elaborates on the seeds of internal corruption when Tarshish intoxicates faith leaders:

Being loved by God is twisted into a lust to God-performance. I get a glimpse of a world in which God is in charge and think maybe I have a chance at it. I abandon the personal presence of God and take up with the depersonalized and canny serpent. I flee the shining face of God for a slithery world of religion that gives me license to manipulate people and acquire godlike attributes to myself. The moment I begin cultivating the possibility of acquiring that kind of power and glory for myself, I most certainly will want to blot out the face, flee from the presence of the Lord, and seek a place where I can develop pride and acquire power.¹

In his own story, Peterson confronted the moral predicament of Tarshish admirably. He remained a pastor of a congregation for multiple decades. That congregation maintained membership within a broader denomination. So while he stayed inside the institutional structure, Eugene deliberately renounced and retreated from much of the surrounding church environment in America.

Perhaps this is where some generational differences come into play. I can respect the commitment and those who remain today but I do not equate institutional loyalty with virtue. The abuses we experienced and the abuse I continue to witness in the Christian church has impacted me so viscerally, cellularly.

Vernacular-Grief

I still mourn the loss of language. A lot of Christian rhetoric has become like the Chernobyl exclusion zone. When I come in proximity to it I often feel sick.

At the same time, the given speech of evangelical faith was once a deep comfort to me. I don’t disdain or demean anyone who accesses that comfort today; I just wish more people discerned the dangers.

For me, grieving hasn’t meant facing the loss of all spiritual or Christian connection but the loss of orientation with words my body once welcomed—and can no longer metabolize.

I previously wrote about having a language for low places, as well as embracing a faith fond of mystery, where words are scarce.

Another way to describe the impact of words is through our somatic memory. Words are stimuli with storied significance that prompt our nervous systems to respond. Many of us experience a boundaried response in our bodies to any stimulus that feels or sounds like “Jesus co-opted.”

I have learned not to dismiss those somatic prompts. We used to hear never to heed the desires or sensations of our bodies. Today I honor the congruence our bodies remind us to cherish. It’s not just that physical sensation communicates when we feel bad (or good)—it’s that our bodies also align us to the goodness we seek.

We suffer greatly when we attempt to force our bodies into submission with beliefs. When we learn the way of congruence instead, we begin to heal.

I grieve the years of investment and all that I entrusted to a faith system that bore no resemblance to love in the end—or a God who tenderly meets us.

Out of Bounds Belonging

When we migrate from words that no longer nurture, we also migrate from many laws and norms in which those words were embedded. When we flee from words, we flee from worlds.

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard a Christian exclaim without qualification, “You must belong to a local church,” or, “you must come under spiritual authority!”

The world is so much bigger than the disembodied land of Musts I once inhabited. So, too, is God.

Sometimes being aligned with truth means building a life out of bounds.

There is a vibrant community of solace and spiritual vitality operating apart from longstanding faith establishments. This does not negate the theoretical value of institutions, but it does confirm that integrous belonging may be found without them.

We talk to people all the time—locally and otherwise—who are trying to figure it out: community, ritual, spiritual connection. With or without the organized church.

I still find an episcopal liturgy and sacraments meaningful, for example, so sometimes we attend a service in town. We’ve connected with a couple people there but we won’t be signing on as church members. That’s not the system we subscribe to anymore.

I still want to exist in a world enchanted with meaning and wonder. At times, it has felt like religious abuse has robbed me of the possibility entirely. But the more we explore this new world of Loving Uncertainty…enfolding ourselves in the lives of others who likewise hold the grief and mystery of it all, the more we begin to recover ourselves.

Christ has died.

Christ is risen.

Christ will come again.

A simple and repeated use of language.

When I say those words inside a cathedral now, I say them with authentic hope and unremitting doubt. There’s nothing about that I want to fix.

The words wash over me as possible, not as propositions for the devout.

Similarly, I feel hope when I share a meal with someone who no longer identifies as Christian but continues to embody their life fully, loving their friends and family, grappling with pain and the origins of love itself. Our humanity enjoins us to one another. There’s nothing about that I want to fix either.

1. Peterson, Eugene H.. Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness (pp. 12-13). Eerdmans Publishing Co - A. Kindle Edition.