This is a first shot at another chapter of the new book (see posting of 8 February). Comments welcome. No hurry, and pls be patient if I don't reply at once. This sort of exercise does not lend itself to repartee.
STEP 2
Sooner or later, for most people who want to be serious with God, there will be the vital step of passing through a church door.
This is where, in my opinion, things can go wrong, desperately wrong.
The doctrine you will be served, providing this is a main-line confession, will almost certainly be correct enough to get you to heaven. It is the wrappings where things can go wrong. A church, like any organization, has its hidden rules, its particular way of doing things and, above all, its power structures.
Put at its crudest, not every priest or pastor is ‘clean’. Not dirty like stealing money or playing with choirboys, but with agendas of their own, basically, authority, and controlling the right to speak. Plus taking enough money home to pay the bills. Too many churches still function on the basis of ‘pray, pay and obey’, the accusative of the two latter verbs being the priest or pastor. Some men seem to get a huge kick out of being the boss, of having the last say. This can get particularly pernicious when these persons (mainly men) are less well educated and cultured. Too often they compensate their educational deficits with throwing their weight around. This applies especially in situations where priesthood/pastorship gives them a social status which, at their educational-cultural level, they would not otherwise enjoy.
My own belief is that a key point in the process towards Christian community, at least for better educated people, is finding their own voice, sensing what the Gospel means for them and being able to express it. For this there has to be room to do so, and the right to do so with different words and emphases than the priest/pastor.
Where the priest/pastor is in it in order to be the boss, and demands either the monopoly of the word, or restricts it to those who follow his tune, people will not be able to find their own voice.
Simply they will be unable ever to reach Christian maturity (nor, for that matter, will the priest/pastor in question).
Too often Christians find themselves in cleft stick: they sense the need for a Christian community and often simply some emotional-spiritual stability. But the price is having to run a double discourse: the party line to the pastor and other leaders and your own words to God and a few close friends. And publicly you will be expected to leave the stage to the leader.
This game can become particularly dangerous when the entry point into Christianity is an emergency: marriage on the rocks, unemployment, depression …. A pastor wanting to grow his church will be tempted to take advantage of such people and use them to build a power (and money) base. His immediate first aid will be sufficient to get the people up and running again, his group may provide a base until the storms subside. But many times he is unable to provide long-term growth, which includes allowing people to speak their own language. I have been there myself, when my first marriage went onto to the rocks. I remain eternally grateful to the pastor of an evangelical charismatic outfit who held my hand over twelve rocky months. But once back on my feet I had to find my way into a ‘liturgical’ church, as did, incidentally, one of the pastor’s key helpers in getting me back on my feet, me into Orthodoxy, he into Roman Catholicism.
It is also a dangerous game in countries where a particular church enjoys a quasi-monopoly and alternative confessions are unwelcome. Generally these are undemocratic countries where people having one’s own opinion is unwanted. Several traditionally Orthodox countries fall into this category. As in any dictatorship, you learn the rules of doublespeak, but it is spiritually energy-draining.
If I were to give advice here, it would be
1) to have your spiritual guide outside of the church you decide to worship in.
2) If you sense that the pastor is intellectually or socially inferior, and will not give you space, go somewhere else. Don’t let a false sense of ‘Christian humility’ keep you where you don’t belong. You will almost certainly vortex downwards intellectually and culturally, and secretly hate yourself for doing so. Leave humility till later in the journey.
3) Work out where the money comes from: where the pastor is full-time without a stipend, but with a wife, kids; a nice house and a car, the only place it can come from is your pocket.
4) And don’t drop your pagan friends – if your love-in with a particular Christian community ends, you may need them again. One of my best friends is as pagan as they come, but is one of the few people to whom I feel free to say that priest X is a shit.