There are people in our churches who have experienced different faces of life than the ones that get acknowledged within our church walls. There are those who have worked not only in the “real world”, but in the real ugly world; that dark underside of humanity. There are certain professions which reveal to their employees a dark reality that is far more hopeless and entrenched than I’ve ever heard a pastor on a pulpit describe. In the churches they talk about sin and lostness, but those on the front lines know, and have seen firsthand, the insidiousness that evil can attain to. Nurses, police officers, social workers, counselors, paramedics, some doctors: these people are part of our churches, and they agree with many of the things proclaimed, but at a fundamental level there is a disconnect. They have seen a side of the world that most have not imagined. It is not just that they have seen terrible things, it’s that they have seen terrible things on an endemic and systemic scale. They have seen entire segments of society locked into destructive patterns and generational curses, they have seen again and again the results of cultures of violence, abuse, and neglect. They have spent years trying to fight against this, to push back the darkness, only to find that the darkness is stronger. And the darkness at times has enveloped them.
So they stand in the services, often beside more appropriately conditioned spouses or loved-ones, and move their lips as the songs are sung, but are listless as they try to reconcile the world they have seen with the truths they know, with the words they hear from the front. It often gets jumbled and while at points they may feel clarity, for the most part they simply struggle in their attempt to put the fractured world back together in their mind.
The pastor talks about the drug addict who found Jesus and got clean and started a ministry. The front line worker however, knows only drug addicts who were sexually abused as children, who have so devastated their minds and souls over years of abuse, and who upon recovering would likely attain to a level of semi-independence at most. Even then, the family and societal structures around that person would likely pull them back to where they were before, like crabs in a bucket. The front line worker listens to the success story knowing it to be an anomaly. The person on the news and the pastor’s protégé are nothing more than the exception that proves the rule. They are inspiring at first glance, and misleading upon further inspection. The front-line worker knows this, but still struggles to believe that the leaders in her church (that is, the white, middle-aged, affluent men) are right when they say that Jesus singlehandedly overcomes an individual’s sin and gives a completely revised life. Of all the many things the frontline worker has seen, she has never seen this happen the way that they describe. She is not entirely without hope, but cannot honestly frame that hope in the terms described by the men at the front.
Thank you.
Most people in the front lines including the clergy, accept these positions with thoughts of making a difference. They are put in a position that they are ill prepared to face. They cannot prepare themselves. There are no courses in despair. Until true despair is seen or felt first hand in its loneliness and depravity, one can only listen to stories, and try to empathize with these unfortunate persons.
Most of our clergy only see the torn edges around the problems, they rarely venture out of their safe church pulpits and into the streets. The doctor repairs the cuts and bruises and sends them on their way, the police pick them up, and then drop them off for someone else to care for them.
Unfortunately all the front line can do is keep them warm and safe while in their care, and hope that tomorrow will bring them some sort of salvation.
I enjoy your blog, and love your thoughts my friend! I hope God blesses you and your lovely wife.