I spent a lot of my life involved with Church. My parents were Greek orthodox so I was pushed into a space where icons, and religious structure were paramount. Even then as a 6 year old I couldn’t see what the fuss was all about. I just couldn’t see what any of it had to do with God.
It was just an elaborate pageant.
Lots of colourful costumes, singing (albeit weird!!) not forgetting the free bread and wine. One of the most vivid memories I have is laughing with my sister and being given dagger stares by all these old women draped in black. I was very angry at them for making a place that should be a place of liberty into a place of bondage. Of course I didn’t know what that meant then but I felt the sense of confinement and control.

My involvement with “normal” church spanned most of the denominations. Assemblies of God, Church of England, House Church movement, Methodist” to name just some. Because of my music abilities I was almost always pushed to the “front” to lead or be part of the worship “team” and because I wore jeans and a t-shirt and seemed like a nice boy!!  I was almost always involved in youth work. So I had exposure to what goes on “behind the curtain” and I have to say almost without exception that I was seriously disappointed.
I saw the Church and its representatives as a force for good. With such huge amounts of power over the people who bought into the “pageant” I guess I was just so naive. I really thought they believed what they were saying. I thought that there was only one Jesus. I thought there was only “one way” What I found was the same lie and self delusion I have witnessed everywhere else.

In some cases the ego’s I met were far more dangerous than any I had met in the real world. Some would make massive boasts from the pulpit hoping to make God their witness and command the Holy Spirit to do their bidding. It was a show. Just like any other show. A parade of highly choreographed and practised sales pitches, designed to make you feel a range of things, depending on what the guy in front felt like when he wrote his story. Guilt, Shame, pity, sorrow. But interestingly never free.

I think the Church (which lets face it is a business like any other), has a need to keep its audience. They are the feeding ground. The mechanisms it uses to maintain its audience are the same strategies employed by any mass market service industry. The denominations serve to give  consumer choice. You want it loud and brash buy from the evangelicals, you want it sombre and reverent buy from the brethren. Whatever flavour you want, there is a preacher preaching it!!

Boy it messed me up big time. I have seen lives, families, good work, relevance and purity sacrificed for the sake of keeping control. Very little of what I witnessed seemed to have anything to do with the essence of what Christianity is all about (which is actually very simple)

Freedom is what I understood it was all about. Freedom of spirit, freedom of heart. The highest Joy, the deepest love. It’s not what I saw, but I did experience it for myself.

It’s funny how you can find something that is so right and so perfect and yet be made to believe that it isn’t right or perfect because it doesn’t follow what some guy wrote years ago.
I realised that for me, it was all about being real. Being truly free is about being truly real. To be fundamentally accepting of myself. To remove any trace of guilt. I felt that conformity was the biggest sin of all. That conformity was about losing myself in someone else’s interpretation of the truth.