Disaffiliation

      Disaffiliation occurs all the time in our shared lives. Whenever you align yourself with others, it is an affiliation with a common sense of need and/or purpose. Your felt needs drew you to a uniting function and the others who had similar needs. Organized leadership helped you and others to gather and act within the shared sense of purpose that bound you together as you met each other’s needs. Nurture filtered down through layers of society that resulted in smaller groups whose specific needs affinities bound you to each other. Friendships grew and seemed as if they could last a lifetime. Then, you graduated from highschool and your lives slipped apart. Less and less contact led to fewer shared needs and over time, you drifted apart. There were no hard feelings, the common bonds or affiliations just crumbled. 

     As you married, had children, and grew families, the blood affiliations born out of mysterious love with all its wonders created a unique little society that was fascinating and terrifying all at once. The importance of family emerged as paramount and the complex relationships were so important that you kept hammering away day by day building what you earnestly desired to be healthy productive relationships with people so deeply tied to your being that words cannot adequately express it. But people are imperfect and the devil delights in oppression and chaos, so he pokes and prods at your most vulnerable insecurities to break down harmony and rhythm. Even family affiliations crumble.

    Imperfect harmony in families, workplaces, and greater society causes you to search for meaning and purpose, and your needs drive you again toward connection with others who feel the same way, and hope from an organization and benevolent leadership so that you can enrich your life, end chaos, and escape oppression. You find yourself drawn to a higher power whose supreme perfection and love must hold answers and endless energy to overcome discord, discouragement, and depression. Charismatic people drew you because they seemed to have strengths you desire and the peace you crave. One day, they invite you to a place and to people whose needs are like yours and who seem to have found a source of enrichment, meaning, and purpose. There is order and generous leadership, hope and harmony. Over time, it too will crumble. 

    The Church Universal is such a people and purpose, but it comprises thousands of smaller gatherings of societies. Each form in the same ways we've already considered, and each suffers the Enemy’s assaults. Chaos and oppression will emerge unless, with God’s Grace, you and others surrender your pride, embrace each other with Christ’s love and seek first His Kingdom. Broken and redeemed people form Christian societies for mutual healing and restoration, but some people whose shattered dreams make them risk averse and, like wounded, cornered animals, are likely to snarl, snap at, and claw each other. You and they need generous, patient, kind, and thoughtful leadership to overcome fear and disappointment, deep aches and sharp pains. Crumbling hurts and over time it breaks again and again. . 

     Weakened structures place inordinate burdens upon their most vulnerable elements. Someone must bind the damaged joint and bolster the weakened member. The LORD moves toward the wounded and, in the Body of Christ, the Church, it is often through the hearts and minds of Spirit-filled Christians. They will usually speak truth in love and either find one whose suffering has so diminished their weakness as to make them ready for help, hope, and healing. Wounds must be debrided and cleansed, which is a painful process that some cannot stand, so they wince in anguish and limp away from the source of healing. Oppressed by the decay and chaotic in their wounded ways, such people interpret truth in love from the Spirit of Christ as another assault upon their harmony and peace or their barest foothold above the abyss of self-loathing and despair. The relationship between the little Christian society crumbles and they move on. 

     Larger societies form out of the smaller churches and they organize themselves and provide leadership for even greater good so that local expressions of Christ in communities are strengthened and empowered to do all the good they can, eliminating chaos and oppression, and speaking truth in love. For a season, these movements generate enormous energy and attract multitudes of hungry people, like you. As a larger society grows, so too the complexities of order, organization, and leadership. Love compels you to hear the voices of the oppressed and the victims of chaos. Deep feelings make your heart ache and truth seems elusive when love brings staggering grief. It seems logical to expand your view of humanity and embrace the oppressed; we call it missions in the Church. Like Christ, you relish deep connections with people at the point of their felt needs and drink in the nectar of Grace when healing and restoration occurs. But you are often only a few steps ahead of them on the journey of sanctification and it's easy to recall old sorrows and unhealthy responses. Also, some of those to whom you are called are very weak and often require more stamina than you possess, and spiritual and intellectual capacity beyond your ken. It’s easy to forget the divine economy issuing from beyond time and space. And you crumble. 

     Frustration, grief, and angst oppress you into chaos and fear. So, you disconnect. The once precious affiliations fade in significance and the strange, sad comfort of shallower relationships and carefully controlled environments makes you feel safe and gives the illusion of freedom. There is emptiness ‌but dumb diversions and memories of pain and frustration remedy it with putrid salves made from bitterness, envy, and lethargy. Ironically, you leave behind a trail of crumbled bits that mark the pain others felt when you disappeared from their lives. They wonder if they could have done more, or they smirk dismissively at your weakness because they, too, ache from brokenness and disillusionment, and they tied some of their hope to you. When you disagreed with them or failed to support their distorted views, you pushed some secret button known only to their psyche. It triggered an avalanche of emotions and old heartaches. All the while, Christ’s Spirit grieved, and the devil cackled with delight by oppressive, unregulated feelings and the chaos they bring. Crumble, crumble, crumble. 

     We strive toward truth in love and facts over feelings even while the whole human struggle between animal nature and God-nature ripples through societies, even Christian societies. A fault line whose epicenter is too dangerous for anyone to dwell in for long, like a canyon, divides us. So, we move away from the fault line and further from each other. We form societies on our respective sides and the process of community, society, and family continues to nurture and fracture as the giant crack spawns a thousand lesser ones. Each of them is a smaller void of separation that truth in love and facts more powerful than feelings can span. Only Christ can heal the great wound, but we can imitate Him with the lesser ones. We can pick up crumbling bits and replace them where possible, and discard them when necessary. The crumbling stops each loving gesture of humility, patience, and grace in the Spirit of Christ.

     Disaffiliation is inevitable and is often a healthy expression of healing and restoration. Disaffiliation won't fix everything that needs repair, but it will lessen the burden upon weakened members. It will shrink the cracks to manageable sizes to make new bonds and restore old ones. It offers a fresh start and permission to leave behind oppression and chaos that was beyond your strength and required more than your spiritual and intellectual capacity. So many people and societies pin hopes and dreams to illusions of harmony powered by watered down fuels of shallowness and exclusive relationships with only like-minded people will oppress whomever threatens them. Their own attainments will not satisfy them, because they never satisfy, so they relentlessly pursue the identified sources of their pain, believing the capitulation of their enemies will bring them peace. It is far better to give them your tunic as well as your coat; to walk another mile in servitude so they can be on their way and you can return to your sanctifying journey with Christ who gave the Enemy His life for a little while and then won the ultimate victory for the LORD’s Name’s sake and our salvation.   

    

    Disaffiliation works best when it frees you to move forward to holiness, because it is your highest priority. Our timeless, all-powerful LORD is more than able to handle the rest.