Let them eat cake - a formative church story

A few decades back, my folk's marriage and our family was in pretty much perpetual dysfunction.  I was still in elementary and figuring out life.  Church was big in being a problem solving/solution offering organization if someone had issues.  As the old saying goes, we had subscriptions, not just issues.

We were pretty private, I thought.  If there was a family squabble, usually between my addicted, misguided dad and anyone else, it was kept inside the family - at least I thought.  Maybe a couple of people heard something here or there, but usually other relatives and only after it got physical.

Apparently something got out.  I remember a pretty well-to-do lady "at church" making mention to my mom that if only she (my mom) would treat my dad like a king, then he would certainly treat her like a queen.  Or something to that effect.

When I heard that, as a naive youngster, I remember thinking, "Wow, maybe that will work!" and wondered what mom would do with the advice.  Well, mom did not take that really well, to my memory at least - and at first I thought maybe she was being a jerk - I was confused!  Wasn't this good church advice?

It was not many months later that we heard that the well-to-do lady's husband had been cheating on her and they were getting a divorce.  As a child, I remember trying to put together all the pieces of that hopeful puzzle to understand that lady, her advice, their impending divorce, and so on.  It didn't fit.

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Summarizing - here's the scoop.  The nice church lady with more money than she knew what to do with was living in her own upper-middle class, well appointed life and assumed that the things she did were things my mom could do.  And she was wrong.  My mom knew it, but I had no clue what was going on.

Mom didn't take offense at the lady, per se, just at the well-intentioned, but largely ignorant advice being freely given as if she, my mom, were a peasant in need of being told where the free food was located and being told that advice in front of others (apparently).

We were in borderline poverty because dad couldn't/wouldn't hold down any kind of job.  Mom worked the night shift and made ends meet by babysitting other people's kids and ironing their clothes in the daytime, when she should have been sleeping.

Here's where the rub was - the nice church lady WAS well intentioned, I think.  I believe she really was trying to help, from her point of view.  I think she really believed that the advice she was giving was actionable/doable because she assumed my mom had the physical, social, and emotional resources and the same starting point that she, the nice church lady, had.

Mom, thankfully, had been in this rodeo multiple times before and knew when it was time for the clowns to come out and draw the bull away.  

She wisely stepped back behind the fence; gracious and giving, but intuitive enough to know the fat lady was about to sing for the nice church lady.

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That's one of those weird situations I watched unfold in the church that puzzled me until later years.  It wasn't until much later that I realized that people had different resources available to them, different assumptions about how bad or good things are/were, different history and understanding of life, and so on.

I did watch a lot of times when middle/upper-middle class people, whose outward appearances were relatively good, gave relationship or moral advice to others, especially to poorer people.  Usually the advice was well intentioned, but, again, missing the mark on those important baseline assumptions.

That's probably one of the things that drew me into learning about sociology and seeing the world through that lens.  Too many times people see life through their own socialization and background and cannot genuinely put themselves in other people's shoes and try to understand one another.

Even more frustrating as I grew further into the discipline was the realization that some WERE able to put themselves into other people's shoes and didn't know what to do with that information.  Lots of foot in mouth moments were witnessed.

And on the far end of things, some people knew and/or understood where others might be coming from and went ahead and used their info to screw the other person or people over anyway because they wanted what they wanted, even if it cost the other person or people, 'cause you know, they're little people. 

Power corrupts. And the thing is, because it's dressed in church clothes or couched in church terms, people will bow to it - especially if it benefits them.  And that's probably one of the gadflies that kept me going until I gave in to the process of actually unpacking, sorting, and rebuilding faith/church things.

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One of the benefits of knowing God directly and not working only through the institutional church is that I know that God doesn't have a human subcultural filter he gives me advice through and expects that I'd have someone else's baseline resources to work with and from.  He works with me directly.

It took many years of being inside the institutional church and benefiting from the resources there to be able step outside of it and see it objectively, or at least a little more than before.  It's not the devil, but the devil is just as active and alive inside it as God.  

I don't hate "the church" as it were.  Many have asked if I'd recommend to others the church I just left.  I'd say, if you like church, it is one.  Local congregations come in all sorts of flavors, preferences, styles, etc. 

I'd never say, "Just find the one you like and join it" without encouraging a person to know God and look to see if what's going on in a congregation is what God is leading and not simply a charismatic's dream.

And yet, for those with the eyes to see it, God's church exists inside those churches AND outside those churches AND across church "boundaries" AND wherever God is leading.  

And that's one of the beautiful things God has showed me over the years.  Jesus is the one who prepares his bride to be spotless and beautiful, it's not us.  He is faithful and he does it.

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"Let them eat cake" is a line often assigned to a French noble/royal who was destined to have her head chopped off by the poor in the French Revolution.  It's actually one of those manipulated quotes.  She wasn't really that ignorant nor was she suggesting the poor had access to "cake" - she likely never said anything like that.  Google it.

Either way, it reminds me to be aware of my assumptions about people, about the language and word choices I use around some people, about the purity of motives that I have and that others might have, and more.  Much more.

I'm grateful for God's use of so many people and things to show me how much grace he has on all of us.

I know there'll come another day when I see another giant beam sticking out of my eye that I can't see yet.

And I know that he'll show it to me when he's ready and I'm in need of it.

On the regular, he reminds me, very gracefully, when I'm not being graceful toward others.

And regardless of all that, I, like you, continue to live by grace.

Grace and peace to you!