Community

I’ll start off saying that it takes tremendous bravery/courage/faith (whatever term you prefer) to continue to seek authentic relationships after being hurt by manipulative ones, whether that is within a formal church setting or not. In other words it takes great faith to continue to pursue Jesus’ path to the Father (aka wholeness with oneself and everything else, which is the crux of the Sermon on the Mount) inside a church or outside. Our defensiveness and lashing out at others comes from the parts of ourselves we have not yet been successful reconciling to this path.

That being said, I am not sure everyone here that seems to think they are so at odds are actually in disagreement nearly as much as they think. There are many churches that (often seem way too diluted to many) are a great place to meet unpretentious fairly safe people who are genuinely caring and want a wholesome type of friendship/community. And many of those churches have leaders who are sufficiently humble or just like the comfort of sermonizing and not digging to deep into their flocks personal lives, that those wholesome friendships can and do develop that are fulfilling and life supporting.

Generally the problems arise when the leaders or flock (both are just as guilty) make some idealized conception of the church (and rules for how things ought to be done to bring about that idealized conception) the focus because invariably they are each trying to create a safe environment so they do not have to hide parts of themselves – become whole with themselves and everything else. Without realizing it they are trying to figure out a way to make actual faith unnecessary by joining or creating a group that is ultra safe, and tragically instead create a group that rejects most of themselves, each other, and life/reality.

So these fairly safe and unpretentious people we desperately need in order to help support us on our journey of becoming whole with all parts of ourselves and everything else (aka Jesus’s path to the Father) can be found within traditional churches and without, although they are fairly rare both places because they have to being doing the same thing and having some success at it or they will be stuck in wordly ways of rejecting the deeper vulnerable parts of themselves and everybody else.