A Christian First

It caught me off guard the other day when my 12 year old son referred to himself as an Adventist homeschooler. Immediately I understood why he said this but I still stopped and asked him why he said it. He told me exactly what I already knew; it's the only thing he's ever known and he still identifies with that denomination.

He was around 2 years old when we joined the Adventist Church. We attended the same church for almost 10 years, the boys attended the church school during that time, I worked as a secretary at the church for 2 1/2 years before going back to school to get my degree in teaching and then taught at the school for 5 years. So, our life was focused and centered around our church and church family. He has only known himself, outside of our family, as an Adventist.

However, there came a point during which, I became disenchanted with the hypocrisy within the Adventist school system and the church. Specifically, the pastor's refusal to baptize our oldest son, who, after attending baptism preparation classes, twice, was refused this next step in his spiritual life because he played sports on Sabbath. This is despite the fact that there were wealthier families in the church with children in the same sports leagues who were allowed to get baptized. This broke my heart. I had seen first-hand some of the poor decisions and inequities within the church because of the humanness of the members but I also saw the damage it does to individuals and their walk with Christ along the way. In this case it was an opportunity for a young man to make a very special and public commitment to Christ and this man, who was our pastor, crapped all over it. How sad is that?

Having worked for and around the church and school for almost 8 years, I saw these situations on occasion but overlooked them and explained them away as I put my head down and plugged along being reminded that these men were not my boss. I do believe that God worked in incredible ways in my life during this time. However, this particular situation was the straw that broke the camel's back. The other breaking point was when, after expressing concerns with my oldest son's teacher about his grades and performance, she just smiled and told me what a pleasure he was to have in class. At that point I could care less about his deportment, I was talking about his performance academically. So, after being ignored and nothing being done in class to help him succeed I took my concerns to the school board chairman and shared that my husband and I were thinking about homeschooling our oldest as a result of the inaction on the part of his teacher. Well, she blew up and told me that "If the school was not good enough for my son then maybe it wasn't good enough for me." I took her at her word and put my money where my mouth was...I walked. With my husband's support, I quit my full-time teaching job, which I loved, in order to homeschool our boys, whom I love even more.

We withdrew our membership 2 years ago and have not joined another church since. We've visited a couple but have been faced with the mega, fast-food version of church or the small congregations where nothing will happen unless you're doing it. It is a huge investment of time and energy to find a church, join it, and become a part of it. I don't know when we'll be at that point again. In the meantime, we have to contend with family members who tell us that their salvation is secure despite the fact that they've not been to church in the last 20 years and then bop in and out of church on occasion and ask us why we aren't going to church. Sheesh...some people just don't get it.
 

Having grown up in a home divided by parents who attended different churches, priests that have acted selfishly and only considered their ego rather than the best interest of their members, or the hypocrites who judge others but are unwilling to look at themselves, make me want to throw in the towel on "church". In the end I just want my sons to embrace the idea that they are a Christian first, regardless of denomination or how often you step inside a church.