Coming from a household where I am the pastor’s kid of, not one, but two parents, you would think that I have a fairly biased perception of preachers. I don’t. I do not have a particularly biased opinion on Christianity, or really any religion in general. Understandably, any type of organized religion will tend to have its flaws, and have its positives, to be perfectly candid.

Being in church your entire life you tend to meet a lot of people, and when you tell them that you’re a preacher’s daughter --through both your mother and father-- you get a lot of responses. And obviously that is so, so fun.

And being in this position you also tend to hear a lot of groans. I hear a plethora of complaints about the church, and about religion in general --and for me, I actually respect the perspective of church critics. Because anymore I feel as if the church has become a breeding ground for self-righteous bullies in the disguise of church leaders, and dedicated Christians. I may have a twinge of paranoia, but this is what sends newcomers running for the hills.

And I cannot blame them.

The church has a notorious reputation for kicking their wounded while their down, and I have seen that more often than I have seen any acts of mercy. There was actually one time when I had a conversation with someone about this and they made the comment that we expect more from Christians around us, so the church is quicker to make hasty judgements against their own who are “supposed to know better.”

However, this still has yet to make any sense to me; I have always found the church to be a place of refuge. It is a place where you go to get picked up, cleaned up, and sent off to do better when you screw up. And while we are on this subject: it’s okay to screw up. You are allowed to screw up, and mess up, and make mistakes, and learn, and forgive, and do better; the point is, do not consciously screw up because you know that God forgives. That just kind of defeats the purpose for like even trying to become better. I mean, I slip up all the time, but I acknowledge that I am not perfect.

Nevertheless, it is a more often than not that I have witnessed the repercussions of pride, and self-righteousness in the church. So what gives?

If the church is supposed to be this so-called “safe place,” as I have claimed it to be, then why isn’t it? Why do people keep walking out, and vehemently oppose stepping foot into another church again? Why do people become so sensitive and get their feelings hurt?

Here’s the thing: in general, you don’t get to choose whose feelings you hurt, and you don’t get to choose how people feel. On the other hand, the sensitivity I mention is not the sensitivity of those who are hyper-sensitive to the Bible, or the message being preached, because that is a whole other story; I mean, that people tend to become insanely hurt when they put their trust in the people they are supposed to call their “family in Christ.”

This is an adorable term of endearment, but tends to get misconstrued in the grand scheme of things. Because let’s face it: families are messy.

And sometimes families hurt each other. With this, I cannot say it’s okay, and that it’s totally allowed to happen because it is just something that happens. It’s also something that drives people away from the church, and something that splits it in two. This is because we put our faith in people instead of God --which is not okay.

Thus, we have a vicious cycle of kicking the wounded while their down, and for a church, that’s just plain unhealthy. A sick church is one that has lost sense of its true purpose, and today, we have a lot of those --whether church leaders want to admit that, or not.

In addition to this, the hypocrisy of church leaders, and congregations just solidifies this whole fiasco. The problem with the church is the amount of stuff that gets accepted, and the amount of similar junk gets rejected. It’s a confusing whirlwind of right and wrong, and a lot of gray areas that vary from person to person it seems. Personally, this is when you get strong in your own faith, rather than to rely on people to grow your faith for you. Though here is where I can see that people get turned off to the church. It is within these gray areas in which hypocrisy creeps into, and it’s an odd place to stand. It is odd when the pastor is found in the hypocritical position; it is almost worse when it is the members of the congregation who are found in the hypocritical position.

But as previously mentioned, this is where you have to make a choice. Will you continue the cycle of kicking the broken while they’re down? Or will you pick them up, band-aid the issue, and let them try again tomorrow?