Almost six months have passed since my life unravelled in such a
spectacular fashion.
Been spending this time re-looking at my life, and re-thinking
everything that I have gone through. And a few things stick out:
Relationships:
The closest people that I have been around and who have been around me
are those from church. If I were to count 20 of my closest friends, easily 19
of them would be from church. Yet in the aftermath of what happened, I found
that I’ve lost almost all of them. Now, of course in that list there will be
those I’ve hurt and betrayed. Naturally the instinctive understanding of them
is that I should not expect them to care for me anymore. And I understand that.
But I beg to differ.
There are 2 basic ways to respond to what has happened. People are free
to think “WTF! He’s such a jerk! To think all this while I’ve treated him as a
friend, and he turned out to be this vile pervert. I no longer wish to see him.
I’m done with him.” They would be perfectly within their rights to think so.
However, I also know that there are friends who react differently. They say “WTF!
He actually did that? What an asshole. But hang on, that’s not the same Peng I
know. I dun deny that he did all that, but there’s definitely a very big gap
between the person I know and what he did. And since I care for him, I want to
know what happened to him.”
Am I being idealistic? Maybe so. But if my sister had wronged me
heinously, I would still want to meet her, and talk to her directly. She’s
family, and I want to find out for myself what happened. I wouldn’t settle for
just what I heard. And so I guess the first disappointment I have is that it
seems like the church wasn’t family at all, after all. My pastor asked to meet,
then cancelled on me, never to arrange another meet up. My church elder met up
with me, only to be surprised to hear me say that over the years, I had tried
many times to repent and stop doing what I did. It made me wonder how big a
jerk he thought I was, and how long he’d been thinking so. My other church
elder met me once, and then never again got in touch. Now there’s only 3
persons left in this church I’ve devoted my life to, who still keep in touch.
Nobody else in my “close circle” has even bothered to directly ask me what
happened, or to find out what happened.
Now, I know I sound incredibly self-centred. But I don’t think that
just because I feel remorse towards the community for the way I’ve let them
down, I no longer have the right to feel disappointed at them for the way they
have responded to the situation. Before, I always worry that I was too jaded,
that the church community I devoted myself to has many qualities, and we had
genuine relationships. Yet on hindsight, I find myself vindicated in my opinion
that I was never really very highly valued as a friend (let’s not even talk
about being a brother). I was good for all the operational requirements that
the church needed, and so it was only right that there was some reciprocation
for all I had done. Yet none of that mattered once they felt offended by what I
did. All of a sudden, the only thing left was anger and disappointment –
followed by estrangement.
Michael Card once wrote “Only a friend can betray a friend”. And I find
myself wondering – how much of a friend was I? If nobody questioned the gap
between the person they know and what they heard, how well did they really know
or care for me? And if I wasn’t that much of a friend, wherefore comes the hurt
and disappointment? There should only be anger.
And therein lies the dreaded conclusion: there is only anger towards
me. And so I guess there wasn’t ever a genuine relationship.
Me & God:
A very natural result of my estrangement with the church community
would be my estrangement with God. There have been those who tried to urge me
to return to God. And I know there’s also a part of me that’s asking myself how
long more do I wish to avoid God. But at the moment, God remains too distant
for me.
A brother from the Men’s Ministry tried to get in touch with me, and
showed his concern for me. Throughout the dinner he empathized with me, showed
concern, and urged me to return to God. He invited me to one of his meetings,
sharing that there are godly brothers who would like to pray for me. I declined, and told him it was too soon.
Another invitation came along, followed by another. After a month, the
invitations stopped. As did the concern.
I find myself wondering how the story would end if Jesus had invited
the woman at the well to come to the temple and be prayed for. If he hadn’t
stayed and talked to her, and showed a concern for her personal life. And yet
many times the church only seems capable of agenda driven concern (Or maybe I
should use “Purpose Driven” Concern. It seems more trendy in the church context.).
The truth is, the church is the physical manifestation of Christ. When
the church has professed such an extreme estrangement towards me, I am unable to
detach it from my relationship with God. And even if I tried to restore my
relationship with God, there would be no context for me, since there is no
longer a community I can serve.
In Short:
In the last 6 months, it feels like a very heavy burden has been lifted
off my shoulders. I no longer busy myself incessantly with ministry, with
church. I now spend my weekends resting with the wife, recharging and restoring
our relationship. And the more I detach myself from the church community and
context, the more understand why the world feels it doesn’t need God.
The problem isn’t God. I know that. He is still the same God as before
my world collapsed. I still believe He is real. And He is there, watching me as
I type this.
But right now I find it close to impossible to go back to Him, because
I still feel my life might be in a lesser mess if I had never known him. Maybe
the disappointments and burdens of my baggage with Grace, Andrew, Zhang Mushi,
tuanqi, youth service, and even PPCFC… maybe if all these had been removed from
my life, I would not have fallen into the sort of pseudo depression that
contributed to my deviant behaviour.
Maybe.
