Samaritan Love

I was a good Christian girl raised by good Christian parents in a good Baptist church here in the Midwest.  My mother put me in dresses for Sunday morning services, my father wore a suit and tie to church, and we sang the century-old hymns in the sanctuary.  When I went to college, I went by the book and fell in love with a cute and smart church-going boy, dating him chastely for three years in our church community.  When we married, our wedding party was full of our church friends, and on our wedding night we gave our virginity to each other.

Again, I was a good little Christian girl, raised to believe that the church was a city on a hill, a beacon of hope, the source of capital-T "Truth" and capital-L "Love".  

But Life came along, and yanked on the threads of my immaculately-knit beliefs.  And when my life's edges started becoming jagged and unraveled - long before my issues included thoughts of divorce - it was the Christians who abandoned and rejected me.  Christian women I'd lived with and cried with and traveled with and loved.  But when the time came that I needed help, the Christians who told me I could depend on, they turned me away; three of my bridesmaids were church friends, and I'm no longer on speaking terms with two of them.  

I was dumbstruck by their turned backs: I had been taught that the Christian church is where Truth is, where lasting friendships grow, where real Love is.  And I wanted those things, still believed I could find it in a Christian church, so I kept trying to find it there.

Not long after leaving that church, my husband and I tried another church.  I joined a women's bible study (mostly mothers) and explicitly asked for help.  I showed them my wounds, like a refugee on their suburban front step; and they looked at me blankly and went back to their comfortable church routines.  (They did not intend to be unkind, they were just unequipped, I believe).  After trying three different bible study groups in our three years there, struggling and unable to find a place for us there, we finally left.

After we left that church, I tried again (my husband did not), this time in a younger demographic of peers.  But my pleas were met again with the same blank stares and discomfort, sweet but naive young Christians who had no category for responding to someone suffering and questioning like me.

I tried again.  I went to another church by myself, and then another church after that, so frustrated - since infancy, I had been told that the church was the place for Love and Truth.  So where was it?  Why couldn't I find it?   When I asked that bitter question of Christians, they tritely replied, "Church people are just people, too."  Yes, I get that, but - !  Aren't they God's people?  Claiming God's influence and presence in their lives and actions?  Shouldn't that have some measure in the accounting?  Shouldn't that make them different?

I went through this process for years, struggling through multiple churches and Bible studies and church retreats, still stranded, still disconnected from the capital-L Love that was supposedly there.  And I was flailing and drowning, increasingly weakened by my heavy marriage and old wounds from old churches.  I reached my hand out blindly, praying and wishing for love, for help, for community.  And finally, there were hands clasping mine, arms pulling me from the torrent of the flood.

You know who did help me up?  Who came to me in my hour of need, without me having to chase and beg for it?  Who clasped my fatigued arms and gave me rest and healing?

Non-Christians.

It wasn't the followers of Christ that loved me like Him - it was adulteresses, agnostics, atheists, bisexuals, divorcees, lesbians, out-of-wedlock mothers, single fathers.*  Like the parable of the Good Samaritan, it was the Christians who stepped around my broken soul like dog mess in the road; and it was the non-believers in my life who came to my side and picked me up and loved me back to wholeness.

When I needed someone to listen to my anguish, it was an adulteress who opened her home to me and kept sending me texts to check up on me.  When I needed a safe place to take a short break from my marriage, it was a lesbian and her kind wife who offered me their spare bedroom without my asking.  When I needed kindness and understanding in the turmoil of my departure, an unwed mother held my hand and stroked my hair and called me beautiful and strong.  When I tentatively started dating again, it was a divorced single father who loved me whole again with his infinite sweetness and grace. *

I recently spoke with an older Christian who loves me (he is twice divorced and finally happily remarried).  And we were talking about my divorce and he was asking, "What are the influences in your life?"  And I told him excitedly how I am reading social science books and Moby Dick, and he chided me, "None of those are Christian books - be careful."  And I told him how much my non-Christian friends had loved me and saved me and made me happy, and he chided again, "None of those people are Christians, are they?  Be careful.  You should seek out more Christian friends."  

I was hurt, and offended.  Why does a religious identification, a check-box on a form, matter more than actions?  Shouldn't I seek people who are, instead, more Christ-like?  

To be fair, two of the women who have supported me best are Christians ... but, in my experience so far, these loving Christians have been the exception, not the rule.

One of those women asked me sadly, "Do you think you'll ever darken the door of a church again?"

I think I will, someday.  But not someday soon.  

And for now, I will rest gratefully in the Christ-like love of my beloved Samaritans.

... ... ... ...

* I only tag them with these negative characteristics here to show how ridiculous that these are their defining traits.  All of them should be defined by their love and the broader scope of their actions, not by these stupid limiting lesser-than titles