When Christian Love Falls Short...
I spent two entire chapters in my book, To the Unloved, talking about church hurt. I went to the same church from the time I was 6 years old until I turned 19. Coming from an extremely toxic and abusive home, I considered the people at church my family. The pastor and his wife became like surrogate parents for a while… until I answered God’s call to preach. The Lord kept placing bigger and bigger dreams in my heart, and as I took steps to be obedient, I could feel my surrogate parents push me further away. And then one day we had a meeting where they pretty much told me to leave. My heart was shattered. I really loved them, and I thought they loved me. I felt free to be myself around them - that is, until they told me I wasn’t good enough. They didn’t use those exact words, but I got the point they were trying to make. They knew I was very much still in my healing process, and that outside of their church I was alone in the world. It didn’t matter. Nothing I said made a difference. So, I left.
It took a year before I was able to sit through an entire service at my new church. It took almost 3 years for me to even attempt to open up to anyone else the way I had done with them. I was so scared of trusting someone, seeing them as family, and then being discarded like trash.
Thankfully, today I have found my people and visit a lot of churches that are AMAZING (I’m an evangelist and also do book signings). I’ve healed from their rejection and realized the issue was with them, not with me. I was just a kid looking for acceptance. But, I’ll never forget what it was like to be hurt by the people I thought I was safe with, people I truly admired, who turned their backs on me.
Please show grace to angry people - deep pain is making them that way. And to anyone who is offended by everything church related, give it time. God stays good, especially when His people aren’t. Be angry at them, but don’t close your heart to Him. He’s got you.
Just to help, here’s a little excerpt from one of the chapters on church hurt in my book, To the Unloved. In this glimpse from chapter 7, I share one of the most powerful moments I’ve had in my journey with God thus far. At the time, I had just begun attending a new church and was not sure I even wanted to be a part of a congregation anymore. My former church family had hurt me so badly. However, this was the moment when God brought me clarity, helped me begin to move forward from where I’d gotten stuck in my pain, and decide to stay in His family of believers.
The following is from page 165 of To the Unloved by Kelly Goldson, copy-written in 2022, all rights reserved.
In my life, I can admit that in certain seasons I have been both the picker and the picked-on. Goodness, I had no clue I was even being so critical, but God took notice. Though it makes me cringe to think about now, I thought I was better than the people at that new church I found myself in after my last one dumped me. I thought they were boring and religious and long-winded. Looking back now, I can see clearly what the injured person I was at the time could not – that these people were kind, and passionate, and self-less. They were always ready to listen and learn, while I thought I should be teaching them. They were always trying to think of new ways to help the community, while I was so devastatingly preoccupied with myself. I honestly do not think I was a horrible person, though. I was a hurting person. And I truly do not believe there are as many “horrible” people in the world as we think there are, just hurting people. A leader in the church who I deeply admired had picked me apart, and now I was picking away at everyone and everything around me, trying with all of my might to replace that aching desire to belong somewhere and feel purposeful once again. I picked away at those who had what I lost. Pick. Pick. Pick. Pick.
And when I wasn’t mentally assassinating those around me, I was drowning out the sorrow with things I could control – entertainment, busyness, appearing important – attempting to fly like that eagle from Isaiah (40:31) with homemade, flimsy wings of paper and glue. And it wasn’t working out for me one bit, so instead, I threw stones at those soaring overhead.
And this, my friend, brings me to my point – the BIG point God unveiled – the root of church-hurt in all its gory glory: church hurt is caused by hurting people who really have no idea they are hurting people. In my pain, I had no idea that I was mimicking what had been done to me. I couldn’t see it, but I was shrouded in defense mechanisms that made it impossible for others to get to know me, let alone be liked, which is what I yearned for most. What I had wasn’t a “church” problem, but a “people” problem, and I was unloading the hurt that someone else caused right onto kind people who were trying to welcome me in. And in the years since all of this happened, in my prayer time with God, I have often wondered if the pastor and his wife lashed out at me from some wounds of their own.
After the divorce from my childhood church and a stressful year of plugging the dam of my heartbreak with a host of haphazard things, and trying to fly with busted wings – the Lord said something that helped me to stop griping and picking and avoiding and just address the root of my discontent already.
I was at a Monday night prayer meeting in the sanctuary when God interrupted one of my mean little thoughts with a sentence that shut me right up. Those gathered had begun to pray out loud, and I thought the prayer meeting should be handled differently. They were praying, and I was judging them, probably because my own faith was so damaged. I hated that they so easily had what I was fighting for. I had just begun to mentally criticize them for “showing off” with their lengthy prayers when I was interrupted by a baby’s cry.
My eyes opened immediately. There’s a baby here tonight? We’re the only ones in the whole church right now, and no one brings their children with them to prayer. What is going… I didn’t even get to finish my thought, because the Lord cupped my heart in His hands and softly but sternly said to me, “The critical spirit is never mature. It is always a baby, a defiant little child who demands its own way. Say what you really feel. You’re avoiding the real issue. Stop stomping around throwing tantrums and ask Me for what you need.”
I recall thinking to myself, “Wow… God has a sassy side.” Now I know better. God is a Good Father, and good fathers are honest.
As soon as I heard this, I felt like the child I’d been behaving like. However, there was hope in that reprimand, and clarity through the repentance that followed. I had been roaming around trying to deal with all the changes I’d gone through, and this finally gave me a practical idea of what I could do – inviting me to cease in my needless roaming and come, just come to Him, because He not only knew the way through it… but He was the way through it.
God told me to just ask Him already, to say how I really felt. He wanted me to stop trying to figure out if He still heard me, and pray like I knew He did. I had been praying passively, desperately, full of nothing but complaining and without any confidence in Him at all. Now, God was challenging me and calling me out of my pretentiousness and complacency and bitterness, saying, “Stop whining, and pray like you mean it!”
Those who gathered around me for the prayer meeting had not been the ones who were praying wrong. I was. I was the one trying to pretend holy. I had been avoiding church, avoiding prayer because I was afraid of a moment like this one, where God would tell me a tough truth that stung. When that moment came and He spoke over me whether I liked it or not, I found that His honesty didn’t condemn me, but surprisingly, it brought me clarity.
In that moment, I closed my eyes, the rabid hounds of my anxiety and anger now lay whimpering at the sound of my Sovereign Papa’s voice. I vividly remember whispering back to the Lord, “I just want to feel comfortable, accepted, and loved again. Please God, that’s all I want. I’m tired of feeling sad and frightened and angry all the time. Oh God, this is not who I want to be! This is not how I want to spend my life! But I don’t know what to do or how to stop.”
Goodness gracious, did God meet with me right then and there, and with abundantly more compassion and kindness than I deserved or expected! Then, He led me back to this encouraging truth: “Therefore, strengthen your tired hands and weakened knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but healed instead. (Hebrews 12:12-13 CSB)”
