The Dithering of a District Diva

I’m having — I’ve been having– what I’ll call a bit of a spiritual crisis in the past few months. In my search for answers, I’ve sought the counsel of various spiritual advisers.  My latest mentor in the faith, was, well, less than holy in his intentions towards me; my pastor before him basically led his congregation in booing me out of the church for disagreeing with him about whether Al Sharpton should’ve brought up looting when he was supposed to be eulogizing slain teenager Michael Brown; and before that, my first NYC pastor basically said, “Our church isn’t for you,” when I questioned his playing Katy Perry and Bruno Mars during Communion. So yeah, I’ve been thinking, maybe church isn’t for me.

And I’m sure that’s probably not a fair thought. These were 3 pastors out of thousands, tens of thousands, even. But these 3 pastors should’ve done better by me. They had a fiduciary duty to me and they failed me and that sucks. Shocker: even pastors do things that suck. They deserve just as much grace as anyone else. But the more I read and know the Bible for myself, the harder it is for me to sit up under just anybody’s leadership, and the more pastors I know, the harder it is for me to automatically accept pastors as well-intentioned authorities deserving of my spiritual submission. Needless to say, [some of] ‘These Pastors Aint Loyal.‘ So, I have some serious pastoral trust issues.

This may be difficult for some Christians to understand, considering the current climate of pastor worship. Watching a congregation of Black women cheer on their megachurch pastor Jamal H. Bryant as he derided them for running Black men out of the church and then called them unloyal “hoes,” was surreal, but not as surreal as Christians warning ME not to criticize Bryant for what he said, because “the Bible says ‘touch not my anointed.'”

Misinterpretations of what “the Bible says,” intentional or otherwise are a huge source of emotional and even physical violence against believers. (i.e., “The BIBLE says, ‘Spare the rod and whip the child’!” Except no…no it does not. And the verse they’re thinking of doesn’t necessarily mean what they think it means.)

Not to mention the general misogyny/misogynoir that is so intertwined with church culture. In the past, I would come to church hoping for an escape from the exhausting misogynoiristic culture of the world, only to be met with sermons on female submission to men in 2014, or Christian dating with a hyperfocus on how women need to change to get themselves a godly man (the ultimate life goal, of course) or hyperfocus on women’s sexual purity, including policing women’s clothing choices based on men’s ability to concentrate or be “led astray.” Or women “co-pastors” who really only preach on women’s Sundays or during women’s retreats and about “women’s issues,” like how to be a Proverbs 31 wife and mother, or how to stay holy in your singleness until your Boaz comes, irrespective of the fact that lesbian and bi and non-binary and trans and asexual Christian women exist in the world and personally, long periods of time with children give me hives and maybe I really don’t want to be married ever, did you think of that?!

And all of this has me wondering where–if anywhere–I belong.

Someone told me that I was very brave to stand up to my former pastor and challenge his assertions about the grave miscarriage of justice happening in Ferguson and Al Sharpton’s respectability drivel. I held my own against the pastor, his microphone, his platform and his Amen congregation, for what felt like an hour, if it wasn’t, even in the midst of him insinuating that I was ‘stupid’ and I ‘didn’t know history,’ to raucous applause from the crowd.

“I wish I could say what I really feel, like you,” the man who called me brave said to me just weeks before saying he didn’t want to have anything to do with me. So, I take his words with a grain of salt. I don’t know if it was ‘brave,’ I just know it didn’t feel good. This is not fun for me. No one wants to constantly be on the outside, left to fend for yourself with no support–especially as a woman against a man, or worse, a group of men, or the worst, a group of men AND women.

It was extremely unpleasant, to the point where now my default setting is self-defense. I am not optimistic about church encounters, in fact I find them triggering, and I’ve burrowed myself deeper into my bed every Sunday morning since that encounter, instead of looking for another church, so no, I would not call myself brave. I would not ever call myself a ‘strong Black woman,’ either. I am extremely breakable; I’m prone to bouts of depression fueled by self-isolation, during which times I am likely to do things and surround myself with people who affirm how terrible I already feel about myself, simply so I can beat myself up over it later. I would not call myself “well-liked,” ever. I have a few great friends and that’s it. I have a few admirers who don’t really care to know any of this and just want to see my selfies with celebrities on Instagram, but oh well. Here I am, anyway.

So ‘brave’ is not the right word. When you’re already not well-liked and you’ve never before been well-liked, you’re just really free to say and do what you feel without worry that people might not like you anymore. (Though, can I just say: I am incredibly easy to love; I don’t know what all these other people’s problems are about.)

So the 10s of y’all that still read my blog after my years of neglect might stop reading because I’m writing about my spiritual crisis (which everyone knows you’re only supposed to write about after you’ve been DELIVERT!) and that would suck. I luh y’all. But oh, well. Here I am, anyway.

Which brings me to what I know for sure: absolutely nothing. Some Christians will tell you in a heartbeat what they KNOW, and I’m just not one of them. But that’s what faith is all about: believing in things which are not seen and which cannot possibly be knowable in the physical, human realm. For all of my frustrations with church culture and the racist, sexist, misogynoiristic heteronormative patriarchy within which we live, move and have our being, I know for sure that without Christ, I have no hope.

Without Christ standing in the gap between me and God, reconciling me to Himself, freeing me of any guilt and shame for all of my wrongdoings and covering me with grace during my wrongdoings (and WHOO, have I done some wrong this past month alone)  then I don’t know where I would be.

I still don’t know where I’m going to and I don’t like all the things that life is showing me, but I believe meditation works and it’s helping me (Thanks, Deepak and Oprah!). I believe prayer works and it’s helping me (Thanks, Holy Ghost!)  and I believe the Bible contains many conflicting things and must be interpreted through the lens of Jewish, Greek and Roman history, culture and etymology to discern true godly intent.

But most of all, as Hillsong Worship sings: “I believe in God our Father, I believe in Christ the Son, I believe in the Holy Spirit, our God is 3 in 1. I believe in the resurrection, that we will rise again, for I believe in the name of Jesus.” And for now, that’ll have to be enough.

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