CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: Church can be tough but should never get between us and that 'love which is our ultimate place of safety'

Diverted from the A96 on the way to Aberdeen because of a fallen tree, my wife and I passed a sign near Alford. Tough Church, it read, writes JOHN DEMPSTER.

We smiled. We both know from experience that church can sometimes be tough, and at that moment we were listening in the car to a Nomad Podcast about spiritual trauma in which people spoke about wounds inflicted in churches.

At the start the presenters showed such lovely gentleness in warning people who might be “triggered” by the discussion to find a safe place and a safe time to listen, with coffee in their favourite mug and someone to talk to afterwards.

Such understanding and empathy is what you’d expect to find in churches – which claim to be communities of love – but some have found church-going stressful.

Now you might say: “You can’t be ‘safe’ all the time. You need challenges to help you grow and mature. God isn’t ‘safe’ – God will not let you go until you catch the divine vision for your life.”

And indeed there is room for challenge in church – to a bigger conception of God, a bigger view of what’s possible, a sensitivity to my sinfulness when I’m not living in line with God’s love.

Facing these challenges can be difficult – but in all of them our hearts are enlarged, drawn closer to God. And there is a fundamental sense that we are secure, we are loved, and safe.

But a significant minority of Christians are wounded by church – and this is besides the tragedies of physical abuse. Some suffer under controlling, manipulative church leaders; some from the burden of expectations churches place on them. Some because they are expected to buy into a precise framework of beliefs with no doubts or questions permitted.

Some suffer because of a mismatch between what others in the church claim to experience and their own realities. Some through a deep fear of hell, some because their gay or trans identity is not affirmed.

We must listen to those who have suffered in this way, and perhaps share our own secret suffering, and ask ourselves how it can be that a community founded on Jesus can so wound his brothers and sisters.

We must listen, where necessary confess, and seek to show gentle compassion like the Nomad hosts.

What, over the years, has dissolved the spiritual trauma I have experienced is the recognition that I am cherished by the God whose unwavering love is my fundamental theology.

Tough church? We need churches which are tough in another sense: allowing nothing to get between people and that wild love of God for them, the love which is our ultimate place of safety.

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