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Christian author Jen Hatmaker: “I’m out of the church right now” · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's Tuesday, September the second, twenty-twenty-five.
• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the daily article podcast from Denison Forum.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today's daily article is written by Cultural Theologian Dr. Jim Denison and narrated by Chris Elkins.
• 0:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: The best-selling author and speaker, Jen Hatmaker, had lined women's events and conferences and was profiled in Christianity today.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: She and her husband founded a church in Austin.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their family was featured in an HGTV series.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: In twenty twenty, she announced that she and her husband were divorcing.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: In May, twenty twenty one, she stopped attending church services.
• 0:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: She has now written a memoir of her experience titled A Wake and has been interviewed by The New York Times and Time.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: In Time, she said, I'm out of the church right now.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that I will ever go back and I don't know that I will never go back.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I grew up under the steeples.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: My dad was a pastor.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I married one and I have always been a part of the machine.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was a leader.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was an organizer.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was a pastor.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know what church could or would be for me just as a person.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: My lifelong exposure has left me in a place where I know too much.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have been a part of the problem, so I need to break from the machine."
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've never met Jen Hatmaker and cannot imagine her pain of recent years, but if I had a relationship by which to speak to her about it, I would think with her about her statement, I don't even know what church could or would be for me just as a person.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: As emphatically as possible, I would suggest that the only way to find out is to try.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: If she chooses to stay away from the church, she obviously will not experience how Jesus can work through his body to heal and redeem her suffering, referencing First Corinthians twelve verse twenty seven.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: This issue is much larger than Jin Hatmaker's story.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Clergy abuses damaged untold numbers of victims, many of them children.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Many churches in the south were complicit in slavery and Jim Crow racism.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Many of us have stories of pain resulting from Christians who were far from the character of Christ.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And even if the church does not disappoint us, God often does.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: My father was very active in his church before he served in World War II and experienced such atrocities that he never attended church again.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am praying and grieving right now with the family of a dear friend who died recently of cancer after I and multitudes of others prayed for his healing.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am praying and grieving for another dear friend whose cancer has come back despite my fervent intercession for him.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wrote yesterday that trusting God in such times positions us to experience his best in response.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there's more to say here.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: As I noted in my first response to the Minneapolis church shooting, circumstances cannot change the character of an enchanging God.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Malachi three verse six, and Hebrews thirteen verse eight, he is today what he was before the tragedy.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this does not resolve the issue.
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: CS Lewis wrote after his wife died of cancer, quote, not that I am, I think, in much danger of ceasing to believe in God, the real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: The conclusion I dread is not, so there is no God after all, but so this is what God's really like, deceive yourself no longer, in quote.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps the Greeks got it right with their capricious deities atop Mount Olympus.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps God sometimes disappoints us because that's just who he is.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or perhaps my doubts say more about me than they do about him.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: It makes sense for me to question the character of someone only if I know enough about them for my doubts to be fair to them and accurate to the facts.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I cannot see the future consequences of God's present actions.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I cannot know how he will redeem President Suffering for a greater future good as with Joseph's imprisonment in Egypt, which led to his saving Egypt and his own family from starvation.
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nor can I know how he is redeeming President Suffering in my life as with Paul's Thorn in the Flush that led the Apostle to trust God on a deeper level than ever before and then testify in second Corinthians twelve verse ten
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I am weak, then I am strong.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, that in God when He disappoints me, can only lead to further disappointment and further doubt, because I refuse to allow Him to work in my life and then blame Him when He does not.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Conversely, trusting God even when He disappoints us moves our faith from a transactional religion to a transformational relationship.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: We all want the latter and would probably say this is how we relate to God.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if we turn from him when he does not do what we want, we discover that the former was actually the case.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Choosing to trust him when we don't understand him shows that our trust is not based on our circumstances.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this positions us to experience him on a level that changes our lives.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can offer three ways this has been true for me personally.
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: First,
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: When we trust God with our pain, we can experience his presence and comfort on a level we could not before the suffering came.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I was a summer missionary in East Malaysia many years ago, I experienced a deeper loneliness than I have ever felt before or since.
• 5:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when I turn to God in my darkest hours, I feel this presence at a depth that marked my soul.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Second, when we trust God with our pain, He can use us in ways He could not before the suffering came.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: When our son and grandson were diagnosed with cancer, cancer survivors ministered to us as others could not.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Henry now enoted, wounded people can be wounded healers.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Third, when we trust God with our pain, He can use our suffering to guide us into His purpose in ways He could not before the suffering came.
• 6:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: My back challenges of recent years have led me to focus more on writing than ever before, a season of my work in which I am finding grateful filament and joy.
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Michel Clause notes, God often leads us through our limitations.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: None of this makes pain less painful, but if you're in such a season, perhaps I can encourage you to believe that there is more to your story with God than you can know today.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: The greater the pain, the more we need a physician.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The harder it is to trust our Father, the more we need to trust our Father.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: and a relationship with God that transcends feelings and circumstances shows the world that such faith is real and relevant displaying the light of Christ in the darkest of days.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the screw tape letters, CS Lewis notes that Satan's quote, cause is never in more danger than when a human no longer desiring, but still intending to do God's will looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: and asks why he has been forsaken and still obeys."
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Will you endanger Satan's cause today?