Why I'm a Lapsed Agnostic

I love All Saints Church in Pasadena, and I love all the people within it. But imagine my disappointment when a dear friend of mine who works at my church informed me that he had simply been "laid off" without prior notice and through an email. There were no calls to meet with the boss, or signs along the way to which he could point. He said that it simply happened out of the blue.

In these difficult economic times filled with challenges, it is the Christian spirit of the matter and not the letter of the law that matters. Perhaps I am naive. It seems that just about everyone (of decent, to average, to little means) is suffering, and a church is the last place I expected that a lay-off would occur. I keep thinking about the magnanimity that Christ instructed all people to learn from in his examples of how to treat one other and to live; he exemplified radical inclusion, faith, and good will. He spoke about empathy and love. He too walked upon the earth during his respective "difficult times" (the Roman Empire, institutionalized religion, and a stale, frustrated population).

It is easy to give when times are prosperous, but not thus when they are not; likewise, it is easy to give up or give in when times are difficult. Regardless of whether we can see ahead or make projections, we are all beholden to one another; we must do better than the “world out there.” I must admit that I have been hypocritical on this note because my pledges haven't been up-to-date by any means, and one could easily argue against me and proclaim that I am a guilty party – my complicity may have very well directly and indirectly influenced the lay-off of my friend. I have no excuses in some respects; being a full-time student only takes me a short distance. For this, I apologize to my friend.

Through recent inquiries, I learned that when building projects are on a church's agenda, these projects are separate from the human resources of that church in the books. So, it is not possible to take money from the building-column and put it into the human resources-column. One has nothing to do with the other on the books; otherwise, this would be known as a form of "cooking the books..." This "buildings versus human resources" matter has prevailed since the beginning of time I suppose – from the pyramids in Egypt to the Roman Coliseum to the expansion of All Saints. We want our legacies to outlast us, and it can be viewed as short-sighted to wish that we could hold on to those who give us life during our lifetimes.

Still, I believe in the church of "today" versus one that has not yet been built. Many people need a lot of “saving” these days - and I am not referring to that brand of "saving" that has become synonymous with Christianity; I am referring to the kind of "saving" the lends a hand, keeps people going, helps, loves, and fights against injustices. This is the more difficult building to erect and maintain. Structures will get built, and time will change the tapestries and blueprints upon which we dwell.

Christ was a man without a building, but he was someone who found the means to spread the wealth with mere morsels. His "church" was that which he wrote upon with wisdom and love; he did not preach from behind pulpits or in comfortable structures. We only ever have what we have in the moment; everything else is pretense. The past informs the present and beyond that, we have to move with a certain faith that we will be carried forward, from one moment to the next. Such is what "faith" is, in my estimation. However, I am not a theologian or philosopher, nor do I have any degrees at the moment to compose an irrefutable argument, and there is still much I have yet to learn that a college education will not teach me.

It was a little over four years ago that I first heard Ed Bacon give a sermon, from which I made up my mind then and there to be like him. He inspired me, even though the only words I hear him say were, "All life is sacred" with his booming voice bouncing off the echo chamber of the All Saints building. Though priesthood is not in the cards for me, I have taken what All Saints Church teaches and try to live "in the world" where God dwells in each of us and is reflected back to us daily.

I want to take the proverbial-church "out there" where the people need love, compassion, justice, and inclusion the most because they have no means to be elsewhere. Still, we are merely human - all of us are flawed. While I do not agree with the decisions made by Reverend Ed Bacon, I know that I must not use my anger to work against the goodness that otherwise exists, even if All Saints will be diminished by the departure of my favorite person there: Rusty Harding. At the end of the day, a physical church is merely a business - an institution composed of hard, cold numbers. Church is otherwise what its members make it to be through the embodiment of God within one another. God dwells in you...