Jobless in Seattle

When our kids were young, we packed up and moved to Seattle seeking work.  I had been searching for months and we were broke.  We needed a job in the worst way.  I received an offer and we felt God had opened a door to a new career.

My new job, as an international commodity trader, started off well, but within weeks my new boss died in a drunken stupor and the company shut down the project I was working on.  I found myself out of work again.  I was crushed.  We had bet everything on the job working out.  We needed the income desperately.

I tried to keep my emotions in check until we got home, but I couldn't.  Tears spilled out and my voice cracked.  I wept with my little family in the car on a dark rainy freeway in the middle of evening rush hour.  I looked through my tears and rain splattered windshield at all the cars with drivers that were coming home from work, and going back to work in the morning. Work I was without. What kind of man can't support his family?  I was humiliated and filled will guilt and shame. I was pained by the anxiety my lovely wife did not deserve.

Our little family comforted each other as best we could, but we were frightened.  We were in need of love, community and support.  We needed hugs.  It was about this time that the local pastor of a church we had attended a few times came by for a visit.  He sat down on the couch smiling, welcomed us to the community, and then launched into a lengthy condemnation and shaming of my wife for wearing earrings, and for me as the husband, for allowing it.  This was one of the least successful welcomings I have ever experienced.  I doubt this technique is taught any longer in the Evangelism and Church Growth 101 class.

It was on that visit that we were clearly shown the depths of the chasm that separates religious dogma from Jesus' way.  The last thing in the world we needed at that moment in time, was condemnation and shaming for not supporting a prescribed set of religious dogma.  To this day we carry the pain and scars of that pastor's visit.

"I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil, but rather have us wasting time.  This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious.  If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God. ~ Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz