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 

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, girls 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.

Restrictions

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. And those Legion halls were full of 'drinkers and smokers'.  

Sundays were set apart for family dinners, rest, and other Christian observance including going to church twice and maybe a youth activity or visiting others after the evening service. 

My father clicked the television off regularly when he saw or heard something he didn't like on it, like a woman in a low-cut top or swimsuit. My oldest sister was scolded for watching 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 at my school, 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?

 

Legalism Stands in the Way 

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. I thought about it, but didn't do it.

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 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 interdenominational relationships like a Catholic dating a protestant, or a Christian woman marrying a divorcee. There was lots of exaggeration of biblical guidance to be “in the world but not of it.” 

My family was steeped in these rules probably because they had been 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. 

My sister was a dean of women at the denominational Bible school. Students weren't allowed to hold hands or kiss on campus. (My sister and some of her friends remained single their entire lives.) She once squealed on me to my mother because she saw me kissing a boy outside the gym at youth group. She also didn't attend my second wedding, I suppose, because I had been divorced. She never knew why I was divorced only that divorce and remarriage in her mind was taboo.  

My parents and others like them had black-and-white thinking. If you did something on the “black” side, you were judged.  I recall my father as being 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?

But I'm an older woman now. What is it in the modern context that bugs me? 

A book I'm reading now Invisible Jesus, suggests many know what they don't agree with more than what the do agree with regarding the church. 

Fear of Legalism

There is a church nearby a friend of mine went to (she's passed now) and wondered why I didn't join her there. "We have a younger pastor now," she once said. But I knew it was associated with the denomination of the church I was brought up in. I imagined the DNA would still be legalistic and I wasn't willing to go down that road again. 

Just before the pandemic, this church underwent a huge renovation. It is beautiful. I think they went by the build it and they will come theory. Now post-pandemic, numbers are down both financially and in the pews. And many of their faithful seniors have passed. 

They opened their gym for community use and I go to a gym class there. There's nothing not to like about the building, especially the two giant play structures for children, and the large open meeting rooms with floor to ceiling windows and a fireplace.

But I fear the legalism. I've listened in online a couple times and we visited there Christmas Eve. In once sense, it was comforting going back in time to an environment I might have been in 40 years ago. But, on the other hand, I'm cautious. Legalism--means making everyone the same if only they will follow the right rules. 

And by now, I will not be confined by rules.

I don't want to feel I must conform to a standard to be accepted. I already know I am a non-conformist. 

I prefer relationships that offer grace not analysis. 

I prefer kindness, empathy, and understanding over pressure to convert everyone around me or to cough up my testimony on demand.

The legalism of my youth was harmful to my soul. I don't want to live a rigid life like that again. 

I prefer authentic faith that prioritizes love, grace, and personal spiritual growth. Not having to account for why I was not at church. 

And so, my canoe bravely skims these uncharted waters, steadied by faith and guided by God's hand. Though my journey has been intense and transformative, I’m learning to trust in the timing of His plan. 

The destination remains a mystery, but I am determined to wait patiently, resisting the urge to race ahead, knowing that He will lead me where I am meant to be."

Proceed to Post 22