Comfort foods for the soul (16): God knows our nature
I have previously written about some irremediable past but God knows them all:
This is a continuation.
It’s a much bigger deal with deeper pain.
What would you do if you are presented with evidences of a lead pastoral staff not being honest with intellectual integrity, teaching matters not aligned with the local church traditional teaching, and running up overtime and compensation?
No brainer right?
That was my initial conclusion.
Plus, I had the luxury of not having any organisational function and responsibility.
I could easily have let it go.
I could but I didn’t.
I brought together some senior members old pals, discussed the issue with them, and agreed to call a meeting of the church's management team to deal with the problem.
There is no point in relitigating the historical details, for it’s not the point of writing this to show who was right or wrong.
The results speak for itself.
* The concerned lead pastoral staff, together with his two subordinates, made a spectacle in an all congregational bare-all meeting, defending and accusing and causing a lot of aggravation.
* Soon the individual left the church, with reportedly a handsome severance.
* The remainder pastoral staff criticised that the senior management members were influenced by an unnamed senior, which would be me, and were implementing “white terror”, left too after a few months.
* The younger families felt the senior members were lacking in love in the treatment, and depriving them of a pastoral staff friendly to them. A few families left as a result.
As for me, I wasn’t in HK to set out my arguments or to defend myself.
Also I was very disappointed with my senior members old pals for firstly agreeing with me on the approach, and then later on changed their mind, opening the door for that all congregation fiasco.
Worse, I was so fed up with the church who seemed to be concerned about keeping everybody happy than doing what’s right.
So I wrote to relinquish my membership held since the 1980’s.
I never returned to the church.
I never cared much about church membership.
But the friendships that have been deposited over several decades hurt as days went on.
I felt I owed them a lot.
I owed them the acceptance and friendship ever since my return from USA to Hong Kong in 1980. They were my only home church in HK.
I owed them serious gratitude for they had rendered me all sorts of practical help, not least financial loans over the years when I left HK the second time to pursue my final degree. They invested and trusted in me.
I owed them the promise to help in whatever capacity I was needed, which I delivered, but until I left the church for good. They did need help.
Moreover, I now feel I owed them the grace and latitude to continue to live amongst them, albeit with my disappointment and disapproval of their priority of things.
What to me at that time was the cleanest and the least damaging approach to all parties concerned—a surgical meeting leading to resignation with no opportunity for debate or negotiation.
The operation ended in a mess; though ultimately the cancer was removed, the patient was gravely damaged in a severe loss of blood!
I wasn’t young then.
But with hindsight the surgery was too abrupt, mostly symptoms of youth.
Perhaps, there could have been room for conversation, meetings, persuasion, and maybe some compromises.
Perhaps more grace and patience to allow for repentance and rehabilitation.
Perhaps more risk taking that principled health might be sacrificed for harmony.
Perhaps.
Many more perhaps.
But “perhaps” is now in rear view mirror.
Hurt, sadness, and a sense of brokenness are seen through the windscreen.
Such a heavy weight of irremediably sense of regret.
I have no silver bullet to cure such regret.
I can only return again to Psalm 103.
He knows my frailty as a creature.
Dust.
Then I can sleep.
“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” (Ps 103:13-14 NIV)
