My Apologies To A Friend And A Brother

My apologies to all my friends who have ever been hurt by the Church.

My apologies to everyone who has believed in false doctrines and teachings that raised your expectations and then dashed them to the ground.

My apologies for a Church that is more concerned about being politically correct, their next building program, or the number of people they can pack in the pews than the people who sat in them.

My apologies for the lies we used to lure you into our buildings, only to tell you later that they were lies and it was not our fault you misunderstood.

My apologies for preachers who sell God’s grace like snake oil or the magic cure for all that ails you only to be trapped in wheelchair, the chemo clinic, or the darkness inside your head.

My apologies for those who blamed you for not having enough faith to receive healing when only you and God know how many times you cried out to him in the night.

My apologies for all the people who surrounded you in prayer when there was an audience and then never picked up the phone to call when no one was around.

My apologies to all of you have had your faith shattered and no one offered to walk through that dark time with you.

My apologies for spineless congregations who never stood up to corrupt leadership, and for the abuses that leadership doled as if it were their divine right.

My apologies for all for all the secrets you felt you had to keep hidden so that you could have friends within the community of faith.

My apologies for the way we have failed to teach the hard lessons of faith so that we might grow through adversity and not be demolished by it.

My apologies for presenting Jesus as weakling with no right to your trust to see you through devastation of this life.

My apologies for not showing you a God big enough to dream great dreams with and to dare great things for.

My apologies for every voice that was silent when protest should have been made.

My apologies for every hand that was closed when it should have been opened to give and to receive.

But most of all, I apologize for those who believed they could not love you when you failed to measure up to their idea of faith, who left you there alone when they should have been by your side – when they promised they would be until life got to real for their faith to weather. And I make one request of you, and that is to remember. Remember the God who loves you, the God who became flesh to suffer for you and to know what the pain of life on this earth truly is so that he you would never be alone in your suffering. He still want you and is waiting for the day that you remember and not all the people who hurt you in his name.

I can't erase all those things in your past, or even the things that you may live with for the rest of your life, but I can promise that I will do my best to never betray your heart as so many others have. I hope you remember, I can't imagine a world, this one or the next, without you.