Fear and Trembling

Wednesday was mine and my wife’s 31st Wedding Anniversary, and we got a somewhat questionable anniversary “gift”.

Questionable because it could be a very good thing for us, a sign that the “we are striving, we will be thriving”, mantra our faith has kept us repeating may finally be showing signs of visible progress. It could also be another false sign and prove to be another self-serving move by a religious community to attempt to drive us further down, to prove to us that we haven’t reached bottom yet, and these religious people are intent on showing us where the bottom really is.

Having said that, I do not want to be unfair to the person I talked to yesterday. The District Superintendent of the United Methodist Church gave us every indication that he meant to do what is right for us, and for the church: legally, civically, socially, morally and ethically. I will hold on to that impression while I wait for him to get back to us after working through the situation with the church. I will trust in what he said, and that he is a man of integrity — something that should be a given for a person of his position.

But I also have the history of my interactions with that church, and other churches, where they gave that impression, and then proved to be totally self-serving. Perhaps these churches and the people representing them during my past interactions did not see themselves so, but that is what it turned out to be.

I think of my interactions with the Avondale United Methodist Church, and then my later interactions with Gloria Dei Lurtheran Church, and they both share a pattern that I have been able to recognize in many other interactions in my life, and realize to be a natural one for fallen man.

In both the above alluded incidents, someone did something to wrong me: openly, visibly, publicly, and I went to the church staff to ask for assistance in getting aid and succor, and also to find a means of reconciliation with the person who wronged me. Church staff said they would do that, and then turned around and stabbed me in the back, coming back with a list of things that were my infractions, and totally ignoring the wrongs done to me that had originally brought me to them.

This is what I fear will happen here. The District Superintendant will go back to the church after our conversation, and the conversation with the church will jump back to the alleged items that are supposed to be my wrongs against them. And I am definitely willing to discuss with them the issues they have. But they are not in the driver’s seat on this one (at least they shouldn’t be — if they are, it is because they have usurped an authority that does not belong to them).

In this case with Avondale, I have listed three specific crimes, civil crimes, that have been perpetrated against me and mine, items I could (and may, if they choose to ignore them) take them to court over. But as Scripture says, we should not take our brother to court in front of the unbelievers. Besides which, I also seek reconciliation, not vengeance. Anything they may have as my wrongs against them definitely do not fall into items that violate the criminal codes of Kansas City and Clay Counties, MO, nor those of the State of Missouri or the United States of America.

Avondale, on the other hands, has violated federal elections laws, Missouri laws against assault, and the laws against libel. Those are the ones I knew of before yesterday’s conversation. Yesterday’s conversation means I now know I have to add laws against slander to that list (The District Superintendant was told by the church that a church member has a restraining order against me. Never mind the fact that there are no restraining orders in Missouri, they are Ex Partes, before you can get an ex parte against someone they have to be given a court summons and the chance to appear in court to challenge your request, and I have not received that summons, nor have I been served papers confirming an Ex Parte against me. Perhaps the person believes the letter the church sent to me is a restraining order, but the Church has no such legal power, and to propogate such a false allegation against me is slander, as well as showing that the church has no concept of what our laws really are, which may explain why they are violating them against me with such impunity.)

Now I can hear my own brother’s voice in my head, saying I shouldn’t be airing dirty laundry in public on this blog, and if I want reconciliation why am I putting these things out here for everyone to read? Why am I trying Avondale in the court of public opinion? Quite simple, I am not trying them here, even though it is public. I want it as a matter of record what I did and said on certain dates, so if the church comes back and tries the backstabbing routine, I can reference something that has a time and date stamp to put paid to any attempt on their part to change the events and the timeline. I have learned through unfortunate experience that this is essential for me in these situations.

But I want it out there to everyone that I came to the church to discuss wrongs against me, and if they try to ignore them and make it about wrongs against them, then they are very much NOT on the side of Christ, no matter what their church doctrines may state — Their actions would prove them hypocrites — a category that Christ hurled his severest warnings to.

And so I now publicly apologize in advance to that District Superintendent if my fears above really are unfounded, and thank him from the bottom of my heart for the often thankless job he has taken upon himself because of my situation. But I also implore him to remember, that though his job is to represent and support the church, that to do so he must not let them make this situation about them, or about any of their past statements and declarations around this issue that are against me, but about my issue of the church’s wrongs to me and my wife, and until that is resolved, until the church apologizes and admits wrong, and the process of reconciliation begun, he hasn’t completed the work he needs to do to support the church in the way that Christ expects him to.

Christ will judge both him and the church on how they respond. Christ will also judge me if I do not do everything in my power to seek reconciliation, which includes not letting the persons who wronged me get away with ignoring their sin and thus continuing in it, if it is at all in the power of my actions to do so. I do not say that arrogantly, but with fear and trembling at the thought of seeing Christ when he comes in HIS power having failed to attempt it.