Helping

I think I’m done helping.  I guess I need to explain that. Okay.

When I was young and my church youth group didn’t like my questions (or my bad habit of reading the bible and trying to figure it out, and also not helping them shun various people who sometimes eventually became my friends), something interesting happened. 

It all happened because I wanted to help out.  They’d had a big, stupid church division, and were now having a youth group weekend, though most families with young folks, and most of the men who'd done youth group stuff had long since gone in the division two years previous.  Due to the vastly reduced numbers of families in the church, they were having trouble finding enough places for the visiting youth to sleep. I was 23, with my own place, so I said if they needed to, they could send a couple of the older young folk to sleep on my couch/floor.  I knew they needed the help.

What happened was they wanted a different kind of help from me entirely.  They said they’d appreciate it if I didn’t attend.  They asked me to help out by not going.  Said they couldn’t stop me, but asked me to not attend, as a favour.  So I helped out in that way.

Now, I’d already helped out with the division they’d wanted to have. I’d helped out by being silent and submitting to it and continuing to attend the same street address.  I’d helped out by not standing up for any of the weak who were strong-armed by the powerful.  I helped by denying those folk the right to "be" among us.  And denying them just like Peter denied Jesus.  We never knew them.  Many of us did that. Betrayed them all like Judas betrayed Jesus.
Most of us eventually got to feel what that was like on the other end of the equation. At that time, some of us did want to speak up, make a fuss, shine a light under those rocks, and defend folks who were getting railroaded.  Those of us who wanted to do any of this even a little bit soon became "them" instead of "us."  They got excommunicated and shunned by us without exception. We did that to them.  It was the only strategy our Christian system used in “dealing” with anything or anyone much.  
 To this day, those of us who got kicked out have had to fight for the chance to attend things like our own relatives’ weddings, on occasion. We have no right to "be" among those who used to be our own people.  We will always be "them" to the "us" we can no longer move among.  But back in the day, I helped out with the division by not speaking up, and by letting this go on.  I got to keep my chair in that room.  For about five years.

As I said before, whenever some of the youth started openly listening to pop music, going to the movie theatres and to concerts and live sporting events, some shunning went on.  That's how we did.  Kids were forbidden to associate with these particular youth and their worldly habits.  Grown ups just did the same thing without being told.  It wasn't a culture where love and forgiveness got learned.  It was a culture where cutthroat, competitive piety was the order of the day.  When the sharks smelled blood in the water, we took the opportunity to move up that piety ladder.  It was ugly.  Who among us is least worst?
But simply doing these worldly things didn’t get you shunned, all on its own.  It was not trying to hide that you were doing them that got you shunned.  You could do them, alright. You just had to not admit to it, even if everyone knew.  You had to never mention that stuff.  You had to pay lip service to the idea that, say, rock music was evil and worldly and bad, while listening to it private.  If you (once) said that you liked Pink Floyd and thought it was good, that was it.  We had to deny many things we loved, and the people who'd created those works of honest, human reaching out to other people.
  Those among us who had the “decency” to lie or sneak weren’t fooling anyone, but at least they weren’t going to “lead the youth astray.”  I was expected to help out by shunning these people too.  I didn’t want to help, so I got shunned too.  And soon I was frequently asked to help them shun me too, in various odd ways.  They were looking to me to make it easy to shun me.  They wanted shame.
Because reputation was what bought you anything in that system.  It was your currency.  The devil does not buy souls, but my church certainly bought and sold reputations.  If someone blackened yours, that was it for you.  No friends, no dates, no inclusion.  Backs turned on your and you were abandoned.  You were cut out of the next generation entirely.  Your genetic heritage would die out.  Reputation was your life.  It was held hostage by the church.

When I was 21, I started having the occasional (single) beer or glass of wine at social occasions.  Because my conscience told me it was natural and normal and scriptural, and that how I'd been living wasn't.  It was then strongly (overtly) suggested that I needed to help out the church by abstaining from alcohol (and movie-going and live music and sports) for the rest of my life so as not to lead the young astray.  I wasn’t willing to help in that way.  I didn’t believe it would have been good to feed into that culture so focused on some fictitious, phony outer appearance of piety.  Others have made the opposite decision, abstaining for life from things they don’t feel are wrong (not meat, though.  Guns either), just to “help” not give the wrong impression. I don't think that kind of sacrifice is a good thing, though it seems terribly self-sacrificing and holy.  I think that because I'm starting to get a clear glimpse of the faces of the gods it is a sacrifice to.

There was even one young couple who’d never actually been church members, but because people disapproved of them, the church was collectively shunning them anyway, instead of trying to encourage them to become members.  Certainly no one was looking for good in them, to foster.  People wanted to judge, correct and shun them, though.  Because that always helps.  They were to attend church, then leave immediately afterward, to avoid anyone having to socialize with them. No one wanted their World Cooties.  In particular, if there were any church dinners or social things, they had to head out before any of that happened.  I was supposed to help shun them, but I didn’t.  I actually went out for supper with them and ate with them. Cheeky.  That kind of thing would not go unpunished, it turned out.

Then the church folk also wanted me to help out by (literally) informing on my friends.  Judas style.  Offering them up.  At first the interrogations were done informally, by private parties. Phone calls and such.  I was asked to confirm any number of spurious rumours.  Confirm, not deny.  Would I admit to it?  Because my denying any of the accusations would be punished.
Eventually this was done by a meeting with three elders.  They were supposedly meeting with me because the brothers' meeting had sent them, but they'd certainly not been sent to rigorously "mine" me for information on my friends, I don't think. It wasn't supposed to be about me informing on them and bargaining my "sentence" down.  but they sure enough did make me feel like they viewed us all as criminals.  Degenerates.  Traitors.  Dissident.  Commies.  Dirty hippies.  
And I refused to help inform on my friends.  What I helped with was I corrected all the misinformation that others were helpfully providing about my friends.  Ridiculous stuff.  Stuff about which I knew the sordid back channels through which the information got harvested, warped, concocted and spread.  So I denied it and corrected it and identified where it was coming from.  And I got excommunicated and shunned for life.  They made it very clear to me that I would never be allowed back in.  This meant I had to help them shun me by not offering to shake their hands, not trying to eat with anyone, and not showing up at any social functions.  Including wanting to eat at meals that were parts of the weddings of friends and relatives.

And that was just the beginning.  My helping certainly wasn’t at an end there.  I soon got the actual phone calls from my closest friends, asking me to help them out by not attending their wedding reception because an uncle, prominent among the church folk, was making a fuss about having to eat in the same room as people like me.  Some relatives simply didn't invite me and others like me at all.  But here was a chance to help out.  Would I help?  As a favour to my dear friends?

“Wait, a minute,” I thought.  He’s an elder.  He’s a missionary. He’s supposedly the spiritually strong one, the example of Christ-like living, the one to look to for proper behavior.  And I’m being asked to help out, by helping tolerate his Pharisee spirit because he can’t tolerate Thing One about me?  He’s unreasonable and inflexible, so the help I’m supposed to provide is in being the reasonable, tolerant one?  This seems backwards.  I’m officially the reprobate, and yet I’m being asked to help by being more forgiving and understanding than the Christian missionary power guy.  Maybe that well is dry.  Maybe that account is overdrawn.  Maybe it would be doing evil so good would theoretically come.” 

So I said I wouldn’t help. I said if I had to drive all the way around the Great Lakes to get to this wedding, I wasn’t about to help out with the stiff-necked “uncircumcision of heart” of one of our prominent missionaries by going to stay in a hotel room by myself in a strange city while the wedding reception went on, just to help protect his delicate sensibilities,  nor his precious reputation as one who did not eat with publicans and sinners. 
I am far from the only one who has ever been asked to help in this way.  I wasn’t even the only one asked to help in this way at that one wedding.  And unlike others, I'm not related by blood to bride nor groom.
To their credit, bride and groom relented.  I went, and got to eat, thought I wasn't (unlike the nonChristian guests and guests from other Christian groups) allowed to take part in the unconventional wedding ceremony by helping read scripture portions, nor sing a song or anything like that. Good thing I don't sing.  But I drank a glass of wine at the reception, because bride and groom also refused to help out the church by ensuring there'd be no wine used in celebrating their joyous event.

And what’s happened over the years is all sorts of examples of the under, mis and unfathered kids of the brethren movement have presented themselves to me for advice, or to learn stuff.  Mostly about the bible.  Sometimes about life.  They have needed to confide about abortions, or molestations (sometimes both), about rapes, about slander and all manner of tiny, deeply traumatic Brethren betrayals in their homes and assemblies.  I have put in over twenty years of helping with this kind of thing.  And I don’t think a single person has ever approached me for a conversation without being soon warned about me, and told not to talk to me.  People whose boyfriends had daily hash habits were warned not to talk to me, lest I corrupt their morals.  My reputation has been systematically blackened and kept blackened.  Whenever a good word has been spoken, it's been neutralized.  "You don't know him" is what's said.  By people who haven't spoken to me in about twenty years and don't read my stuff online.

I have helped people do their work for college and universities, sometimes editing doctoral theses, including ones in religious programs on more than one occasion (I’ve helped one person get a PhD in Divinity, and I hope another succeeds currently as well).  Often I have been asked not to advertise that I’m providing this help.  I have edited people’s entire novels for them, gratis.  I have recorded any number of people’s songs.  Not all of them were excellent.  Some of them were.  I seldom have gotten a name-check for my efforts.  Occasionally I have. Thanks to those of you who were not ashamed of the stake I was burned at.

But when I wanted to go to a bible conference last fall, I was asked to help out by not attending.  I was told they couldn't stop me, but they asked if I'd just not.  To help them have a nice conference for nice people. One without people like me there.  I refused to help in this way.  I went in fear and trembling. I was admitted to the room in fear and trembling.  Many of my childhood friends walked past me without a glance.  People who were welcoming to me have suffered in many ways.  Their reputations have been blackened in retaliation.

When I first put material on the Internet about the divisions, and my life experiences, I was asked to help out by removing it.  I have generally refused to do this, depending upon what it was. If I thought it was helping the weak and mainly only hurting those who don't need my help, I left it up, guilt-free.

As part of dealing personally, I wrote a few books.  I did this to help myself, but also to serve God and help the untold numbers of others with similar experiences; the kind of people whose ex-brethren memoirs have a special place on my shelf.  There are more ex-brethren memoirs than one might imagine.  To my mind, though, there aren’t enough yet.  And not the right kinds.  So I wrote another one.

I was asked to help out by not putting anything bad about the Brethren in my writing.  To not talk about the brethren guy who falsely told the parents of boys at the school where I worked that I was gay and shouldn’t work with young boys.  (And then refused to apologize when I confronted him about it.)  Not talk about the people I literally had nightmares about.  Not talk about what happened to my father, my sister, my friends.  Not talk about the hundreds of “disappeared” people.  I have explained that the very nature of the one book in question required this.  Then I was asked by friends to help them out by not depicting their association with me, lest family and friends disapprove of them.  I helped out with this.  I was also asked to help out by ensuring that only Brethren people read my book.  I drew the line there.
If I bother you with all of this, all you have to do is judge me. That would be traditional and no doubt it will make you feel a whole lot better about the situation.  Just call me bitter and tell everyone you know how very bitter I truly am.  Be sure to say how sad it truly is.  Be sure to express consternation about why I can't just...  be someone else.  Don't think about there being no natural emotion I can feel, no human reaction to my situation that I can have, that you aren't going to call bitter.  Don't think about the fact that there is no winning scenario, no way back for any of the thousands of people in my situation.
I know what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to depart from you, pretend I never knew you, and make or join a different church.  And then I'm supposed to be loyal to it, not let there be any hurt to its reputation no matter what it does or doesn't do.  I'm supposed to live out the idea that all the different Christian groups aren't one, that God doesn't bless us or get disgusted with us together as a Unity in our community, that we have nothing to do with one another. 

But I don't want to do that.  I have helped people whose first language is not English write official church correspondence.  I have helped people write religious tracts and pamphlets.  I help write them. I don't get to know how they were received at the other end, nor am I name-checked.  That might mean helping my reputation, which might get some tarnish on the reputation of the person, family or church that I'm helping out.

Because always I am to help out by keeping my very involvement a secret.  My skills are very welcome.  My reputation isn’t something they want to help me with by acknowledging me in any good way.  When people meet me, they say things like “You’re much warmer, nicer and kinder in person than you present yourself as being online.”  I tend to tell them that I don’t use my time online telling everyone how warm, nice and kind I am.  If my reputation doesn’t match me, I’m going to leave that up to others to worry about.  I’m not the one who made my reputation what it is.  Not really.  I didn't help with that much at all.  That was done to me in the houses of my fellow church folk.  And in twenty years not one of them or anyone even close to being them has ever expressed any remorse or regret over the "situation."  No one has asked to be forgiven, so as to see if I can do that.  But I'm not done helping. 

Am I being clear about the “helping” not being over yet?  My parents “helped” with a division in 1991, by keeping their seats and keeping their mouths shut.  In 2003, they couldn’t help with the next one.  There was another rash of kicking people out for not keeping their mouths shut about how many people were being kicked out, and my father said he couldn’t support it.  He wouldn’t help them have this division.  So they kicked him out too.  The bible verse they quoted at him was “My way or the highway.”  (okay, maybe that’s not a real bible verse, but it was what he was told.)

And where he goes to church now (because he did that thing I won't do), I knew for years that I wasn’t welcome.  I knew that I was supposed to help them shun me too (they’re a faction of the group who kicked me out to begin with, and they would never let me back in, nor does my conscience support helping that exclusive system by being an exclusive member of it anyway).  But I didn’t want to help. 

I asked if I could attend one time and got no answer to several emails.  I officially requested my previous request be (officially) brought up at a meeting of the elders (the guy I was emailing, another guy, and my dad) and rather than do this, they gave me very grudging permission to go.  So I did.  The man I’d emailed about this did not speak to me.
(In the New Testament days of the church at Philipi, which Paul and Timothy wrote to, there were "overseers," authority figures in the church to make sure it was orderly there.  Because of all of the people. It amuses me to see that, in many modern Plymouth Brethren churches, there are like three guys, all of whom are overseeing, though there aren't really any other people for them to oversee.  There are no men who aren't overseers, it seems, or perhaps less oversawn than overseeing.)

I blogged about this, and am clearly blogging here about it again. Thing is, I’m supposed to help out by going away and shutting up and dying alone.  I’m supposed to help by never sharing any of the bad things the Brethren do to people.  Even if sharing this stuff seems to help out wronged people immeasurably.  I think wronged people should be helped first, and church elders who wrong people, second. If they'll speak to me.  My concern is the people who have no one to speak up for (or to) them.  I want to do something for them.  So I do.  Makes them feel like they were bitten by the problem, rather than personally being the problem.  Every time I deal with a Brethren person, if they do something good, I can tell people, but if they do something bad, I’m asked to be a good chap and help out by never telling anyone.  Love covers a multitude of sins, after all.  Well, I am not loved.  If I am, it is by entire groups of church people who don't speak to me.  This makes it very hard to tell.

And last weekend, once again, I helped a Brethren person.  I completely rewrote something for a kindly gentleman.  Some “ministry.” Intended to edify.  A study of early Brethren stuff.  Darby, Kelly, all that.  And he asked me to help out by not revealing that I had helped with it.  By my name not being on it. My attitude, my skills and my time were very appreciated, but my name wasn’t. If I’d pushed, I could have insisted I get credit for it.  But I didn’t.  I helped him not help my reputation.

And it might have been the right thing to do.  I don’t think Jesus made a single decision based on what would improve his reputation and better public opinion of him.  He wouldn't have taken two steps to "make a good impression."  So I won't either.

But I feel resentment.  Quite a lot of it, actually.
I let him read this.  He says once what I rewrote for him is available online, I can maybe take credit for it.  Like, if it "flies," then he'd be happy for me to speak up.  But he's worried my involvement, as a bitter person, will guarantee people won't read it.  I'm not so sure.  You read this, didn't you?