Is it really necessary to be right?

A long-time Christian moved to a new town and for about a year attended a small church without becoming a member while making relationship and contributing to the life of the congregation. Largely because of the demands of a new but necessary job, she missed several Sundays in a row. Her friends told her that the pastor's wife wondered whether this woman had "fallen out of fellowship" and that the pastor was going to visit her to find out. No one called. No one bothered to ask her before the judgments, based on arrogant assumptions, flew like gossip throughout the congregation. The woman came to me extremely wounded asking advice about how to respond. Her first instinct was never to return to the church.

Unfortunately, I have encountered this situation far too many times - sometimes being the focus of the accusations (more than once).

It was this type of spiritual pride that Terry Soldan, the fictitious ex-wife of a pastor in my novel, Pastor's Ex-Wife (available on Amazon for the Kindle, btw), banked on when she left Pastor Ed and ran to her childhood bachelor friend's home. She correctly predicted that Ed and his board of elders and every other member of his congregation would immediately assume that she and William were having an affair and that, therefore, Ed had biblical grounds for a divorce. In addition, Terry would be ex-communicated, anathema, unless she confessed her sin and repented.

Some readers have asked whether it is really plausible for Terry to live in William's house without being sexually involved with him. Other readers will understand that it makes a great deal of sense because they will have lived Terry's life and resonate with her woundedness sharing her understandings.... Unfortunately for the church, William's genuine commitment and hospitality to his traumatized friend brought Terry more normalcy and healing than anything else.

Is it really so necessary to be right? Isn't our own righteousness nothing more than a used tampon according to Isaiah? It doesn't take too long for that to stink.

Job's Erstwhile Comforters

I spoke this evening with a friend who has known me since before I was married. That makes our relationship stretch back to more than 35 years when we attended the same church - a good one, for the most part - then- although it was led by a bully pastor who ended up disgracing himself without room to recover from his demise since he killed himself. But as my friend and I reminisced over the various shared griefs and triumphs that make up the fabric of our relationship, I realized anew that we Christians have a terrible penchant for abusing each other in the name of love. In my friend's case, she had what many in her circle of friends considered too many children too close together beginning when she and her husband were too young and, probably even more problematic for most of them, she was a strong woman who contributed what many consider the man's role in the marriage. The critics' solution was to equate their criticism of my friend with God's. Unfortunately, like Job's erstwhile "comforters" they forgot to get God's opinion before presuming to articulate it. It reminds me of what happened in the story, Pastor's Ex-Wife, to Terry when the members of the congregation she had served for decades decided to agree with the authoritative but abusively twisted opinion of Pastor Ed. So she was discarded as a heretic, anathema. Unfortunately, I have suffered that treatment and witnessed it being served to numerous victims from more than one pastor endorsed by many more ignorant bystanders who unknowingly bought into the unfounded opinions of the same just because it was the opinion of the pastor.

You can read Pastor's Ex-Wife by Lesley Barker on the Kindle. If you don't own a kindle, you can download the kindle ap for free to your computer desktop or smart phone and then you can buy the book in the Amazon Kindle Store here.