“Pastor Says”
Breaking free of the sheep bargain
The sheep bargain
When my family first moved to the rural South, one thing that struck me was certain adults whose opinions always started with “Pastor says.” Even at the ripe old age of 12, I found this habit off-putting.
Didn’t they have any opinions of their own? Didn’t they ever think about anything?
I would slowly come to understand, to my disappointment, that the answer was no. In fact, the pastors appeared to be hired specifically for the task of doing their thinking for them. They didn’t seem to like thinking. So this guy would round up all the confusing and mysterious things in the world, process it all in his head, and then spit out what it all meant — in short, easy-to-remember judgements.
It was like they had handed over their own brains to this guy. He would tell them what to think, what to do, and how to live their lives. They followed him and quoted him like sheep.
Why would they do that?
Me, a sheep? Never
Fast-forward five years when I became and evangelical myself while away at college. I now understood what it meant to be a born-again Christian.
But I was not like that. We were not like that. We were a group of college students on fire for the Lord. We were like apostles, or evangelists.
Not sheep.
I attended a variety of churches during the three plus years I was a child of God. They were various Baptist churches during an SBC summer missions assignment and an independent charismatic church near the campus in the Shenandoah Valley.
Before each service I felt a vague sense of trepidation.
What would Pastor tell us this time? Sometimes he would reassure us about the bounty of Jesus love for us, and how special we were to God. Other times, the sermon would just focus on some teaching of a theological point, and how wrong others were in their misinterpretation of it.
And then there were the ones I dreaded — about all the ways we were failing God. Evangelical pastors love this one. For these ways are infinite. The demands of discipleship are so overwhelming and contradictory. There’s always plenty you’re neglecting and always a requirement for more faith than you will ever muster.
Some pastors would humbly include themselves in this critique, while others would take an accusatory tone. Any problems that beset the world, the church, or this particular congregation were laid at the doorstep of our failings, our phony faith, and our hypocrisy.
Either way, they made me feel guilty and worthless as shit.
Wait a minute
It wasn’t until I began what is now called “deconstructing” that I stepped back and noticed what I was doing. I was dutifully showing up to be manipulated. This guy was going to dictate whether I felt good or guilty, whether I respected myself or felt ashamed. He was going to control not only the quality of my morning, but my self-esteem and spiritual health.
“Pastor” was going to determine what Jesus thought about me — whether I was his beloved, struggling offspring, or a lazy, timid, faithless hypocrite unworthy of my status as “disciple.” Despite the fact that I was basically the same person whom he had called “specially chosen and loved of God” just one week before.
What if I had been sick and stayed home that morning? Would God have been disgusted with me if I hadn’t heard “Pastor” say so?
He was going to tell me what to think and what to feel — not just about myself, but about everyone else and the world in general. And I was just following along, eating it up.
I had become a sheep.
Why did I assume this guy in the pulpit was privy to God’s opinions about me and the rest of us? Just because he more informed and more spiritual than the rest of us, did that make him the actual mouthpiece of God?
Did he have the right and the power to define me?
The shepherd’s stick
I remembered one sermon in particular that had seemed to stick in the back of my mind, making me feel ashamed and afraid. It was during final exams. The several of us from the university who regularly attended this charismatic church were stressed and pressed for time, though we did not skip the service.
The sermon was one familiar to most white evangelicals. We weren’t doing enough for the Lord. We weren’t praying, reading scripture, volunteering in the church, going on missions, and evangelizing enough to merit our status as disciples of Jesus. And God was watching us. He had our number. In this case, we also got the kicker — Jesus was coming back, any day now. And woe to those servants who he finds tarrying upon his return.
“Pastor” was throwing up his arms warning us about the day when we would be caught tarrying. We were too involved with the world and had been neglecting our discipleship, holding out on God… blah…blah…blah…whack…whack…whack!
Removing the blinders
Much later, in the light of just one step’s distance, it occurred to me that I had been listening to someone who had no difficulty whatsoever devoting himself to his own discipleship. He had already finished school, so he had no more studying or exams. As a pastor, all he had to do was get up in the morning and go to his job, and he was automatically working all day for the Lord.
Then he would go home to the fruits of a dutiful wife — a clean house, a full pantry, and a prepared dinner. After dinner, she would continue to clean up, bathe the children, and put them to bed — giving him plenty of time to do his daily prayers, Bible study, or other pastoral duties. And as for evangelism, the weekly altar call at the end of each service checked that box.
This guy’s life gave him room to do so much work for the Lord he probably even allowed himself to watch a few hours of TV without feeling drenched in Jesus’ spit or burnt in God’s fiery breath.
And yet he judged us, running on a treadmill just to survive and make it through the day before even thinking about our discipleship duties.
Because we allowed him to. It was all part of the bargain.
Revelations 6-66
This revelation was only one flash of light among many that eventually led to my deconversion:
- We all become sheep as soon as we give someone else control of our minds.
- It’s easier to spot other sheep than to notice your own white wooly tail.
But basically, you just have to open your eyes and look around.
