Break the Rules

Jim Palmer of Divine Nobodies posted at his blog several days ago a list of rules that he broke when he was in religion which he now is glad he broke. A few stood out to me that I'd like to comment on.

"Assume that everything you’ve been told or currently know is all there is to truth and anything refuting it must be wrong. In other words, you’ve arrived with virtually nothing left to learn except for trying harder with what you already know."

I believed this. It produced a life that became stale, mundane, and without vitality. Deep down inside I felt that what I had built regarding "belief" didn't work. The "abundant life" that was supposedly afforded to the believer was nowhere to be found. What I had been told over the course of many years turned out to be built on false assumptions. Anyone believing they have learned it all or have come close to that height is certainly one of the more self-righteous persons around. That was me. The extent of my knowledge I see today as small. There is so much more that I don’t understand, that I don‘t get. This fact is liberating.

"If you keep applying the same formula or beliefs and it doesn’t produce the result it promised, assume the problem is you."

I certainly believed that I was the problem. Weekly berating sessions by professional clergy wore me out. I felt so useless to God and believed I would never make the grade so I gave up trying. (My husband has the same testimony.) I became an unbeliever. It affected every part of my life. I was a regular attendee but I wasn't a believer. I couldn't relate to what the people up front were talking about. They were talking about something that didn‘t seem real to me. And I blamed myself for this failure to believe. I was somehow deficient. There was no option either. If I didn’t fall into the parameters presented, there had to be something wrong with me. I reject this today!

"Just accept at the outset that your humanity is your enemy."

This was easy. The do’s and don’ts of the elite in charge made it clear that if my life was not transforming into a more peaceful and righteous life, it was me (my flesh and humanity) that must be getting in the way. I reject this today!

"Equate God’s blessing with improved circumstances or existing in a constant state of 'good feelings'."

Again this one flows right out of the last one. Emotions of anger, anxiety, and fear, to name just a few, were not acceptable in my belief system. These would be labeled with a “lack of faith” thus putting the feeler into a lesser position with God. The polarity then would be that those who never displayed anger, anxiety, or fear, not to anyone from the church at least, were more righteous and better Christians all around. This resulted in me stuffing my feelings and becoming a good fake. I reject this today!

"Don’t ever let yourself fully give into love and freedom."

This one is an accumulation of all the others in my opinion. This one kept me from experiencing life with my God, my husband, and my family in the ways that the creation is designed to experience life here on planet earth. Love and freedom are what God is all about.

So what is different now? Well, the difference between then and now is revelation. I know this word can have negative connotations. I don’t mean it that way. It’s simple really. I see and believe now that Jesus and Father agreed to make redemption available to me before I had any say in the matter.

It never was about our doing good enough or being good enough to receive his gift of salvation. And there is nothing we can do to keep it. We never were and never will be good enough for God in and of ourselves. He made us righteous through Jesus. This is grace. I walk daily now believing that what I do or say will not distance me from Father. This is the gospel, the good news of Christ.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes...” Romans 1:16 NKJV

Retrospection… part 4

This writing is preceded by three posts which can be read...
part 1
part 2
part 3

During this period of seeking, one Bible verse consistently showed up. Galatians 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

What is being “crucified with Christ” supposed to look like and yet still be alive? What does this mean? My seeking continued to take me to places where grace was talked about. What is this grace? Unmerited favor is the definition I was familiar with. I came to understand that favor with God means that He is pleased with me. There is nothing I can do to enhance or destroy the way God sees me. Doesn’t sin disqualify me from it? Is my sin stronger than Jesus and what He accomplished at the Cross? No, I think not. We cannot undo what Jesus did. It’s that simple. He paid the ransom price one time for all people. This spells FREEDOM!

Falling from grace, according to the Bible, can happen. It happens when we think we can gain God’s favor by what we do or don’t do. If we think our deeds or attitudes can separate us from or join us to God, we nullify grace. We say that the power of the blood of Jesus is not strong enough to overcome our works of self righteousness. The reality, however, is that the blood of Jesus is not only strong enough to overcome our deeds, but He did it for the whole world without anyone's permission.

One of the first things that clicked in my understanding was that my dependence was to be on Him, not myself. Dependence on myself created self-righteousness. This created expectations of others. I expected the church people to act differently. I placed expectations on them that God never did. After realizing that those expectations were wrong, I released them. Almost overnight, the anxiety that I had been experiencing stopped.

The disillusionment that I experienced was only possible because I had an illusion. My understanding of how God saw me was an illusion. I thought His judgment was still around the corner. I thought that Old Covenant principles still applied to today. (I didn’t really believe this, if you would have asked me. But I lived it regardless.) The Cross of Christ brought in a New Covenant. The belief system I had a year ago, has been mostly overthrown and replaced by grace and peace. It’s not even a system anymore. The religious life I had before has been replaced by a real life. A life that doesn’t bury me alive. A life that allows for my humanity. A life that I believe God intended me to live.

Retrospection… part 3

This writing is preceded by two other posts which can be read here (part 1) and here (part 2).


Through all this God was working to restore us to Himself. The primary reason I would give at the time for leaving was that I wanted to recover our spiritual lives, whatever that meant. Feeling disconnected from God and not understanding why, it seemed that the church we were in was not going to be a solution for us. Not understanding the emotions inside, we found ourselves leaving Sunday morning services in worse shape than when we went in. The decision to leave did not come easy. We simply left. No explanation to anyone.

Not characteristic of us, this manner of departure demonstrated our lack of strength. The emotional battles we had fought for 20 months had taken their toll. This was not a battle I was going to fight. I didn’t care about solving any of these problems anymore. I had no faith that they were solvable. “Get me out of here, it hurts!” was my general standing.

We visited six or seven churches for about 6 months. To our astonishment we found that each was basically the same as the others including the one we had initially left. Every church seemed to have the same basic format and connecting with people was difficult. Nothing meshed.

It was toward the end of this six month period that I found a book online entitled So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore? written by Wayne Jacobsen. It sparked something inside of me. I read it to my husband. We gave ourselves permission to stop trying to find a church. At first it was difficult. Perhaps more for my husband than me. For quite some time I had been disenchanted with church. New ideas had sprung to life and I felt God stirring things up.

I listened to Wayne's online series entitled Transitions. I read his book entitled He Loves Me. Feeling God's love was foreign. I knew in my mind that He loved me, but I wanted to sense Him. After reading He Loves Me (twice), I decided to ask God to show me His love everyday in whatever way He wanted.

My heart began changing. I was waiting for Him to make the moves. I did not try to create anything. I simply waited for Him. Things that I was doing seemed to be connected. The journey on which I had embarked to find God began producing fruit.

Retrospection… part 2

part 1 is here

Where was God in all this? This was His Church, right? This isn’t supposed to happen in church! Then I thought why the heck were we so open in the first place with our problems. If we had just kept everything to ourselves and not told a soul we’d be better off, I thought. But that went against the grain of the route we had taken to restore our marriage. Complete openness and honesty was a key in our restoration. Why would being open and honest with God’s people cause such a backlash against us?

It has taken quite a bit of time and analysis to try to figure out the answer to this question and others. To date this is what I figure. My husband and I have a relationship. We love each other. We loved each other before all our problems surfaced. We turned towards each other and grabbed hold of our life again and were able to build a stronger relationship than ever before.

These elements were not present in our relationship with the church. Quite frankly, I don’t even think it is possible to have a relationship with a church. Think about it. A church… what is it? A building? A group of people that know each other simply by what day of the week the calendar says it is? Or by what kind of doctrine the church ascribes to? We were amiable with many people but we didn’t have deep loving relationships. The deepest we ever went with anyone was when we started telling our story to some of the couples.

We were told early on that others did not need to know our struggles, but it didn’t take long before we found ourselves feeling isolated. I thought we needed to talk to someone. Resources that I had read indicated that openness and honesty was the best policy for recovery. After being encouraged on several fronts to talk, we did. It seemed like the right thing to do. Our thinking was that by being open and honest it would help others to do the same. If we could have problems of this sort, certainly others were having similar issues. We might be able to help avert other disasters. “If this can happen to us, it can happen to anyone.”

It was not clear in my mind who was to be trusted and who was not. I know now that we put ourselves in an extremely vulnerable position. I was never certain that our openness was the right approach. I knew it was a risk. I also knew that forgiving was risky but it was paying off in my marriage. Helping others would be worth it I thought.

Because of the gossip and the feelings of isolation and shunning (whether this was intended or not, it was real to us), we slowly became disillusioned with the whole process. Without resolution we left the church that we had attended for 12 years.

Retrospection… part 1

I started this blog last December 2007 hoping to capture some of my journey and put it in a form that might be productive to not only me but others. The learning process is fluid. Much has happened in the last two months which has helped me understand more clearly still what took place. These next four posts are a synopsis of my journey to date. These won’t conclude my writing on this issue but I do want to scale back and begin looking at other subjects. So this is the first of four…


My foundations were destroyed 3 years ago. I tried to find stability in my faith as I understood it at that time. My husband and I continued going to church and tried to make sense of the problems we had encountered in our marriage. We found resources online that sent us in the right direction as far as our marriage was concerned. However, the disillusionment that we experienced regarding the church and the lack of support that we thought should be present bothered us. Where was God in all this? Why didn't this work the way we thought it was supposed to? We were both at a loss in understanding what was happening.

I expected a certain outcome and didn’t get it. Should those in charge have helped in a more hands on manner? Perhaps. I don’t really know. I suspect that I would have reacted in a similar manner if someone else‘s house had collapsed and I was in their same position. I knew that logically I had no grounds to judge anyone else unless I was willing to judge myself in the same manner.

The puzzling thing to me was that the stuff my husband and I dealt with in our marriage had hurt me much worse than what the church people had done or not done. Why was I having difficulty getting past the seeming non-caring approach of the church? Was I just bitter and angry? I know what that looks and feels like. This was not that. Anxiety plagued me on a daily basis. My husband and I had been very open and honest with a number of people at the church with regards to our marriage issues. When we started hearing that our story was being told by people whom we had never talked to… well, the anxiety escalated to new levels. The presence of gossip caused a myriad of negative emotions inside my mind and heart. I did not feel “safe” going to church. The church that I thought would and should be a place of healing became a place I did not want to be.

Expectation vs Expectancy

Religion produces expectation
Relationship produces expectancy

Years of my life were spent in a religious system that taught me to expect certain results from God according to my behavior. It was never said in a way that made me think I was manipulating God, but that is what resulted. I never thought "hmmm, I'm going to manipulate God today to get such and such". If it was that obvious I'd have seen it. It was much more subtle.

In my heart and mind, performance created acceptance from God. I walked believing that my actions made me right with God. What I did in the institutional church made me acceptable to God and His people. Well, maybe it was true regarding His people, but it is not so with God.

Ephesians 1:6 says... “to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” He freely has bestowed grace on us and accepts us "in the beloved" because we are in Christ, not because of any works we produce.

By thinking that I needed to do things to be accepted, I felt obligated to perform. This created a false security in my relationship with God. Because I seemingly did all the right things (such as attended church, raised my children in church, did tasks in church in order to "do my part", and did not cause waves by openly disagreeing with how church happens, etc).... I followed the rules.

The expectation that I was somehow "protected" from bad things happening to me or my family proved to be a false belief system which collapsed in on top of me. When my marriage became threatened by forces I could not control, my life disintegrated before my eyes. This wasn't supposed to happen to people who were sincerely serving God. To say I was disillusioned at that point would be an understatement.

False beliefs do not produce intimacy with God. Jesus said He was The Truth. Believing lies about God produced in me a complacency that grew over years. It did the same in my husband. When we crashed and burned, we were set on a course by God that was meant for us to recover His heart and love. A living relationship with Him.

I’m now beginning to learn to live in expectancy. What new truth does He have for me? What new understanding does He have for me to know He’s working inside of me, that He’s renewing my mind daily and teaching me that His Way far exceeds my way.

Freedom in the Spirit has never been more real. Freedom to be who He made me to be. If He lives inside me, which I believe He does, then He is able to live His life through me. That creates expectancy. The future is not regulated and dictated. I believe He wants me to live in His faith and move forward. Releasing my expectations of how life should be has freed me to live. Every day is new.