Being burnt
Like many of us in this category, you may have given yourself enthusiastically to the work and ministry of the church in the past. You trusted. You believed in the message of Jesus – and you still do, deep down. But the way churches operate, the kinds of things that were expected or said, became too much. You may have encountered ‘Christian’ people either in leadership or amongst the congregation whom you now suspect were just downright evil. Their level of brokenness, all dressed up in a façade of respectable spirituality, perhaps accompanied by wealth, was extreme and it bled all over you and your family.
Let’s say that you stuck at it for longer than was good for your mental health, but you did so because you hoped and believed that this was just an unusual period in your journey of faith. Things would get better, you thought. And didn’t Jesus struggle with awkward people, after all? He didn’t give up, so you felt you had to carry on, too. But the personalities and the structures of formal or informal power in the church just did not change or soften. In fact, your questions and explanations seemed to incense them all the more. The contention became ugly and you knew that this was not what Jesus called you to.
With a sense of relief, tinged with guilt, you finally left.
