Post 21 - Coming to Terms with a Changing World

POST 21

Sometimes the world feels upside down to me.

Coming to Terms with a Changing World - A Previous Deconstruction and Reasons Others May be Deconstructing

Sometimes, understanding the changes in the church scene today requires looking back to the past to understand where we've been and why we sense so much confusion.

I was brought up in the church of my parents' choice—Baptist—from the time I was born. As young people, we complied. According to my parents, Pentecostals were “holy rollers,” and Catholics weren’t really saved. We knew nothing different. As a teen, my best friend was Free Reformed, a denomination with its own distinct identity. Later, I worked for The Free Methodist Church in Canada and witnessed strict practices like prohibitions against wearing makeup or jewelry.

I grew up in an era when females weren’t allowed to wear pants or slacks in the sanctuary. After our church's New Year’s Eve skating party, we would crowd into the women’s washroom to change into dresses for the midnight service held in the sanctuary. Even then, that restriction seemed rather odd to me.

We also weren’t allowed to swear, drink, smoke, get tattoos, or go to dances. Playing cards was sinful as was going to the movie theatre. Sundays were set apart for family dinners, rest, and other Christian observance including going to church twice. My father clicked the television off regularly when he saw or heard something he didn't like. My oldest sister was scolded for enjoying soap operas. My mother didn't want me wearing makeup, plucking my eyebrows, or wearing nail polish. It was confusing to me, as a teen who wanted to look as pretty as the other girls, to be scolded for such seemingly normal things. I vowed never to deny my own daughter such pleasures. I bought her makeup and nail polish to use for herself. 

I found it hard to understand why some Catholic or Free Reformed friends swore, drank, and smoked. Why was there such disparity?

 

I recall spending a week at a Baptist campground with my parents who had rented a trailer for the occasion. Again, it was a place where skirts or dresses were required for entering the sanctuary. I hadn’t packed one (who knows why?) and, as boredom set in, I actually considered taking down the curtains in the trailer to make a skirt just so I could attend the Friday night service. All I’d brought were shorts, jeans, and t-shirts.

After moving to another city, I found a church called Bethel Baptist. The people there were loving and welcoming, and I didn’t sense the same legalism I had grown up with. Around that time, I read a book about legalism, and it finally clicked for me. I saw that some of the rules we were made to follow might have been more culturally based and not doctrinal. For instance, the Bible doesn’t say liquor is “the devil’s filthy lucre,” as my father used to say; it only warns against drunkenness. Rules against women wearing pants, makeup, or jewelry, and requiring skirts or dresses, were often culturally influenced by modesty standards of the time rather than explicit biblical commands. Expectations for men to wear suits and ties to church were more about cultural norms of formality than biblical requirements.

While reading the book, not only did I recognize my parents’ church as legalistic, but I saw it as a bit of a cult--especially the part about encouraging isolation from non-churched friends or disapproval of inter-denominational relationships like a Catholic dating a protestant, or a Christian woman marrying a divorcee. It was an exaggeration of a biblical guidance to be “in the world but not of it.” 

My family was steeped in these rules probably because they were in their own upbringing. To see your children step outside the lines reflected on their parenting skills. So they did all they could to stop that from happening.

My father, in particular, was harsh about church attendance. Even if I was feeling terrible because of my period, staying home wasn’t often an option. My parents’ only friends were people from the church, and I got the message that my friends were supposed to come from there too. Dating someone outside the church? Unthinkable.

Their thinking was very black-and-white. If you did something on the “black” side, you were judged.  My father was demanding, critical, and often more cruel and condescending than loving. I often felt as though my father loved his church attendance more than he loved his children. 

I wonder how many others have experienced this kind of upbringing and felt the same sense of disconnect?

Proceed to Post 22