When Your Church Community Becomes an Obstacle to Discipleship

  What happens when your attachment to your church's culture, community, and traditions becomes an obstacle to your discipleship with Jesus Christ?

      On my wall to my left as I am writing this, I have the conditions of discipleship, as found in the Gospel of Luke, framed and typed out in their original Greek in black and white. I have them there to remind me exactly of what Jesus said would obstruct someone from being His disciple. The first has to do with relationships, the second has to do with one's own self-identity, and the third has to do with one's possessions. In a nutshell, they say that if you are more attached to any of these things than you are to Jesus Christ, than you cannot be His disciple. If you cling to these things to where they become a trigger for fear, anger, and so on, then you cannot be His disciple as long as you do so. It is not a matter of harsh exclusivity, it is that fear and agape cannot occupy the same space. No one can serve two masters, as Jesus said, and either we are enslaved to our own flesh's survival responses and consequently fear, or we are voluntarily enslaved to the Spirit of Christ and the God who is Love flowing through and manifesting through us.
      So, what happens when you are so attached to your church community and traditions that it obstructs your discipleship rather than aiding it? What happens when you are, like the Pharisees, more concerned with tithing, ritual, dogmas, and so on more than you are with mercy, compassion, and knowing God through experiencing Him? What happens when the practices and teachings of your church or organization fly directly opposite of what Jesus actually taught, and everyone just goes with it? Or even if they don't overtly, but everyone is just settled into a kind of clique or internal culture and is happy staying where they're at with their potlucks, Sunday Schools, Wednesday Night Bible Studies, worship services, and not actually making any further progress in discipleship because you're told that there's no need within this insulated bubble of your church community. What happens when your church or Christian organization with which you self-identify becomes the obstacle to discipleship precisely because of that fear of loss of identity, not in Christ, but in that church or organization? And you know that if you question anything, you will be shamed, told you're either in sin or that your salvation is questionable, and ultimately ostracized.
      Being the member of a church does not equate to being a disciple of Jesus Christ. Growing up in a church, and being a faithful part of a "Christian" community does not equate to discipleship. The path of discipleship is submission to and cooperation with the Spirit of Christ in every response, word, and action just as Jesus Christ submitted to and cooperated with His Father in every response, word, and action. It is easy to pretend to be reflecting Christ's love to everyone around you when everyone around you already has an affection and concern for you as a part of their community, a part of their family. This is not to malign such loving familial relationships, but to say that they, in and of themselves, do not equate to discipleship of the Way.
      This is why so many are caught off guard when something happens to burst that insular bubble of their church community. When someone dies, when tragedy strikes, when a discovery is made which conflicts with their community's official teaching, and so on; when these things happen, fear is triggered in a way that they are not prepared for, and their survival responses kick in like they never have before, and they cry out "God why did you let this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?" When in reality, it is only real life happening and bursting through the illusion of earthly security "because I'm a Christian and belong to the "right" church." And in reality they were never actually taught what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, or how to be one. They were only taught that if they were a part of ______ church and followed its rules and teachings then everything would be better for them.
      And then it is made worse when none of their fellow members of that community can explain it to them either, including their pastor who may or may not tell them, "well, you just don't have enough faith," or "maybe you weren't really saved to begin with," all the while either willfully or ignorantly ignorant of his own ignorance of what actually being a disciple is all about. And this to someone who faithfully loved and served that community.
      If we are more attached to our faith communities than we are to Jesus Christ and His Way, then we cannot be His disciples.
      So what then? Do we burn it all down? Do we burn our bridges and strike out on our own? My answer would be that it really depends on your particular situation. The attachment is the problem. The fear of loss of something we cling to, or the fear of gain of something we are averse to is the problem. Wealth itself is not the obstacle to discipleship, but the attachment to that wealth. Relationships themselves are not the obstacle to discipleship, but the attachment to them. The same is true of one's self-identity. It is the fear of loss produced by the threat to the attachment which is the issue.
As Jedi Master Yoda once wisely said, "You must train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose." Jesus Christ would vehemently agree with that statement if everything He taught in the Gospels is anything to go by. It's not whether we're holding it in our hand, it's whether we're internally clinging to it as necessary for our self-identity or survival.
In the end, the answer is different for everyone just as Paul recognized in Romans 14 where he says, "Who are you to judge another man's servant?" Some can make progress as disciples with great wealth or being members of a church community or having many close relationships, and other simply must physically let them go in order to internally let them go and continue on the Way. The key is whether or not that thing triggers fear at the thought of loss, and that fear tears back control from the Spirit of Christ.