Decaying Church: The Walking Dead

In his book, The Divine Magician, Peter Rollins calls the church to be an agent of decay, “a putrid agent dedicated to encouraging the decay of that which we already know is dead.  The term decay is important for a couple of reasons. First, because exposure to decay is more visceral than exposure to death.  The decay of those we love can be more traumatic to us than their death… because decay confronts us more fully with the reality of death.”  (Rollins 2015, p. 175)

Personally, my journey towards Christ began in a moment of quiet, sobbing desperation on my bathroom floor, where I lay down my burdens, my anxiety, and my control, and gave it up to grace. As I saw myself in all my flaws and I just couldn’t promise to do any better, I told God, “This is the best I can do.  Do you still love me?”  Grace answered me, “Yes.”  There is something magnificent and terrifying about being loved, just as I was, in one of my darkest moments.  I wanted to dive into this faith I could see, hear, feel, and taste in liturgy, in prayer, in practice.  I wanted to lay my life down at the foot of the cross and let Jesus remake me.  I wept and prayed to be worth of the incredible gift of grace of God in Christ.  I was ready to die to my old life in order to find a new life in Christ.

I may have been ready to let my old attachments die, but the decaying, well, that was a little more difficult.  The things that I held dear, my accomplishments, my pride, my self-satisfaction, all of those old idols didn’t just give up the ghost, they hung around, waiting.  Sometimes it seems like I’m hanging on to all my dead weight--the attachments, the pride, the selfishness--and clothing it in another way. It’s like my attachments and distractions aren’t really dead, they are the Walking Dead--zombies.  The undead attachments are still with me, moving slowly through my psyche, stalking with labored, stilted steps, relentless in the pursuit of living flesh.  My zombie sins thrive in the dark, in denial, and in self-satisfaction.  

My most persistent zombie, the need for approval and accomplishment, is sneaky and clever.  When I started out this journey, in that moment of humble acknowledgment of grace, I laid my pride down and stopped trying.  I was raw and afraid coming to church that first few times, hesitant and suspicious, and the zombie slept.  As the community welcomed me and I grew comfortable; however, I fell back into old patterns.  

Being a peculiar type of non-competitive overachiever, I can even be an overachiever at doing church. If Christianity was a class, I want to earn an A.  I can read every book, write every blog post, volunteer for every committee within my talents, and really, really hope that someone notices.  I can easily drive myself to work hard, hoping to prove I’m good enough.  If Christianity were a cocoon, I wanted to crawl inside it.  I wanted it to wrap me up safely, so I would not have to feel inadequate again.  I wanted to be the best person at admitting my inadequacies, at praying, “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner”.  I was going to rock the hell out of confession and win an award for humility.  It was OK to be humble and broken, because I was going to be an A+ Christian.   If I was just a good Christian, then I would be good enough, right?  I would earn my way.  And, the Walking Dead rise again--boy, do my zombie sins love that kind of thinking!

The thing about the church, the grand decaying mechanism, is that I can’t earn an A+.  There is no rubric to score, no extra credit to earn, there is only people, people to love.  The decaying process of the church makes me vulnerable.  The more projects I undertake, the more help I need.  The more I feel accomplishment, the more I share the credit with the people that brought our shared dreams to reality.  My zombie sin of striving for approval is brought out into the light of community, and there it disintegrates. Through love, my sins gives way to the agents of decay, which break them down to make room for new life.  In Christ, I can let go of the Walking Dead, in order to live a new live, for love of the world.

Rollins, P.  (2015)  The divine magician:  The disappearance of religion and the discovery of faith.  New York, NY:  Howard Books.