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| Gif of a woman saying "I don't know what to tell you." Image source. |
So here's a cool little thing I happened to be daydreaming about:
I was thinking about what if, someday, I am at a church, and I mention that I don't pray, and then some church person says "well you can't be a Christian if you don't pray." And my first reaction is kind of an astonished laugh, the kind of laugh you make when someone says something so ridiculous and unconnected to reality that you just don't have any idea how to respond to it, and then I would say "well I don't know what to tell you, then, because I *am* a Christian."
I think it's a very good thing, a sign that I no longer have churchy PTSD or whatever you'd call it- because in the past, I have definitely fantasized about how to argue about these things, like what I could say to convince church people, what kind of evangelical jargon to wrap it in (ie, if I want to say the church is doing something harmful, call it "legalism" rather than try to make an argument that humans inherently deserve to have our needs cared for). And replaying conversations over and over in my head, and getting angry at the imaginary people accusing me of "falling away" and all that.
No, as I imagined this recently, I didn't get angry or argue with anyone. I just said "well I don't know what to tell you, because I am a Christian" and that was all I wanted to say.
(And if I really was going to say more, to give a reason why I don't pray, it would be this: I think it would be cruel and immoral if God chose who to help based on whether or not you prayed "correctly." I don't believe in a God like that. So that's what I would tell church people, if they wanted to know, but if they don't agree with me then I don't need to say anything else or argue.)
What's changed is I don't care if I can convince them or not. I don't need approval from church people. If they don't believe I'm a Christian, what do I care? They can just be wrong by themselves, while I continue to live my life.
I like to at least say 1 sentence to summarize what I think, just so that bystanders know that not everyone at the church agrees with everything- so we don't cause little ones to stumble by telling them that it's impossible to be a Christian and believe xyz. I want to be there, openly believing xyz, not arguing about it or giving a huge explanation of all the reasons why, but just being enough to put a crack in the belief that "all Christians" believe this or that.
(Well, when I say "I want to be there," I mean if I happened to be visiting a church with family members or something. I definitely wouldn't go to a church like that regularly.)
I believe in boundaries now. I believe in "they can't do anything to me." People might say I'm not a Christian, but it doesn't matter. There will always be people saying incorrect things. So what? It's not my problem.
Honestly, though, I'm oversimplifying it. If you had told me 10 years ago that I just needed to stop caring what church people thought about me, no, that would not have helped. They were my people. They were my best friends. You can't just suddenly stop caring. You can't just logic yourself into it with "why would you even want their acceptance, if you have to hide your true self to get it?" They were my people. So it took a long time- of course it took a long time- but yes, I'm happy to see I'm at a place where I don't feel I need to argue with random church people.
Obviously, though, if they don't believe I'm a Christian, then that's not going to be my church. Obviously, I'm not going to form deep relationships with people like that. Boundaries.
But yeah, if someone says I'm not a Christian, I'll shrug my shoulders and act like they just said something so very odd that it's not even worth a response. Because I don't need anything from them.
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Related:
Captain Marvel, Boundaries, and Why I Don't Go To Church
Accepting Myself (or, I'm Great, and It Doesn't Matter What God Thinks)
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