I'd thought of putting up a picture of a confessional booth, but they looked so holy and austere. This is my crap we're talking about, there's nothing holy about it- except that maybe I'll get some lifted off if I share it here.
I ran into some of our former club member attenders. I hate what I become around others of my club past. There is so much religion in me and it seems to just blurt out without my intending it to. So I find myself saying things I don't mean like "we'll keep in touch" or "we should really get together". It's so weird for me to see people that we only knew from within the corporate meetings. There is a false sense of friendship and comraderie, I say false because we've never REALLY talked, never shared our lives (apart from stepping into a building together). I'm not saying the shared experience of worship or study or whatever was bad, but I know that Jesus wants more for us, He calls us to relationship, not this one-upmanship I find in me.
When I'm around club people, I watch in horror as a part of me tries to justify our lives by sharing all the things the CEO is doing in us- not to brag on Him so much as to validate our living as we do (without the traditional club framework). I feel like I'm the king who foolishly showed off all the treasures in his palace, boasting in his riches only to be plundered of them thereafter.
I didn't realize what a great performer I was until recently. I excelled in the club arena. It was easy to look good. What is much harder is being real, being honest, having compassion for others, putting others first, serving, admitting faults, admitting that my neighbor, the one I had tried to "witness to" loves naturally, gives generously, shows ME love while I tried to balance all the heavy planks blinding me from realness.
For so many years I looked at people who were not attending club meetings as heathens. In fact if they were not at OUR meeting, they weren't experiencing the "richness" we had. Now those eyes are turned on me if not in reality, at least in my mind and I'm trying to tell myself that those eyes are not the ones that count.
3 comments:
See...this blog is already valuable (to me, at least).
This post is something I could have (or should have) written. But I wouldn't.
Or I wouldn't have been this decent and gentle about it...
ouch!
You put that wonderfully.
I totally understand what you mean. I am finally at a point that I do not judge others for going or not going to the club as well as not feeling compelled to convince others why I do not attend the club. I am content in the pursuit of withdrawing to God's morality in His kingdom.
Elaine
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