Finding a Reason to Believe

Once, while I was a very young pastor an old woman of forty-seven made an appointment to speak with me. She was a complete stranger to me. I had never seen her before and I never saw her again after that one meeting. She explained to me that she married while very young to her a boy she dated in high school. They had been married for more than twenty-five years. The elements of her story consisted of a litany of brutal uncaring sexual acts, adultery, beatings, daily berating, public insults, with little expressed evidence that this man held the slightest modicum of respect for her.

Her story provoked the macho side of me to anger. I just wanted to protect her from this horrible man. The better side of me simply broke my heart as I imagined what she must have endured for almost as long as I had been alive. We sat there for several minutes in deep silence. I just gazed into her eyes. Tears streamed down her face and tears markedly present in my own eyes. I was in the presence of a living tragedy. That’s when the perplexities began to take form in my mind.

In the next part of her story, still told with great anguish, she confessed her love for this man and a commitment to their marriage. She began to defend his good character. He worked hard, made a good material living for their family, and, there were moments he convinced her that, despite all evidence to the contrary, deep down he loved her.

It was clear that both her accounts were honestly told and sincerely believed. This man, she thought, both loved her and victimized her. At that point, because I had no idea where to take this conversation and because I lacked the skills of a well trained counselor I fell back on an old trick. I ask her, “Why did you want to speak with me?” She really didn’t know what motivated her to call me except, “I just needed to talk with someone.” She made it clear that she did not want to do anything different about her life with this man. As I recall, in a pitiful effort to redeem the time, we prayed together and I told her just how much Jesus loved her.

In my arrogance and ignorance, I placed her story in a metaphorical file labeled “cowards I have known.” How insensitive and uncaring was my assessment of her. Recently, I have added my own vocational story to that same file. Don’t misunderstand! My marriage, of nearly forty years, though not perfect and ever in need of emotional and relational maintenance, is essentially healthy and life sustaining. No abuse there. But, my relationship with the Presbyterian Church (USA) – our General Assembly, our published authors, most of it theologians, with my presbyteries, the Renewal networks that bumble through their tangential aims, and, even, with the congregations I’ve served have dulled my soul and deadened my spirit. They constantly alienated me from any kind of healthy spiritual fellowship in Christ, they have sucked all the joy out of worship, and placed me in one moral crisis after another.

Still, like that woman from so long ago – “I try to find a reason to believe” my Church loves me and together we love Jesus.