Darn Christians!

Come to church (they said…)

Jonny (not his real name, that’s so you won’t know it’s Mike…) anyway, Jonny is in a rough place (drug underworld) and I would love so much if he could find some Christians who could love him.

“Come to church, man, you’ll see, it’s great!” is what I say to him…

From one rough place to another       

At that time my church was in a place that was so out of the way that it had won the prize. Even the train doesn’t get as far as this village…

“Wait for me at the station, Mi…JONNY.

I’ll hitchhike the last bit of the journey, when I reach the church someone will lend me a car and I’ll come back to get you.”

“Someone’ll just lend you a car, like that, man?”

“Sure, man*, cos us lot, we are like fa-mi-lee (family)! (*man is a nickname for cool people)

A new glimmer of light shines in Mike’s eyes, he is going to meet a community of extraordinary people!

(Er, what’s that? Oh yes, Jonny!) 

Hitchhiking 

Nobody picks me up! This world is just everyone for himself. And if the people with a fish (icthus) on their backside (of the car!!) don’t stop, it must be cos it isn’t their car! (A Christian has lent it to them!)

¾ of an hour of travelling on foot later, I reach the church!

Take that, man!

I go up to a Christian who often prays with her arms up in the air, explain the problem to her and she yells at me:

“No! I am not lending my car!” 

(…if there’s a problem it’s no one’s fault and it’s not because we’re nice that we haven’t got to be mean, and blah, blah, blah, and I am right…)   

Auderset leaves the church! (by car)

I am devastated! So disappointed… Well, what are we doing here? Just acting?   

“As that is how it is, I am leaving the church!"

I will live out my faith on my own! I don’t need to surround myself with hypocrites! As I head towards the exit, one thought runs through my head: 

If all the ‘cool’ people leave the church, there will only be ‘jerks’ left…”

(I’m cool because I say ‘Jonny’ as well as ‘man’)

“As far as you are concerned, you will keep your faith, but someone like Mike? Won’t he throw out the baby with the bathwater?

In other words: he will throw God out, when actually he only had problems with His fans (what do you mean, I said ‘Mike’? Surely not, I’d have noticed! Besides, it’s not me, it’s God!) 

OK, Lord, I’ll stay in the church… to make a difference and to welcome the Mikes who’ll turn up there…” 

Pumped up again, I find the courage to ask the church guitarist the same thing.

“No problem, mate, here are the keys,” he says, without hesitating.

“Just be careful, because the brakes don’t work!” he adds, with a look of innocence.

MikeONNY (phew! that was close!) is still waiting for me at the station. And so we were able to attend the service together... 

20 years later…

Since then I have been disappointed again by other Christians… and for reasons even more terribly worse (and to the power of 10!!). To be hurt, betrayed, cursed, have your hairs tweezered (to be called Mike and to have your name published in a book when you would have liked to remain incognito), etc. by people you open your heart to, always remains a bitter disappointment… 

The church service of change

To get back to my buddy in the rough place, it’s not so much him but more me who went through a remarkable experience that morning… For that was the day when I definitively made this choice: Even if I am disappointed by my family, I will never, for all that, stop being part of it.