Last Updated on October 29, 2016
I’ve probably made it clear at some point on this blog that I’m not a pastor; even if I have, it’s worth visiting again and from a somewhat different angle.
No, I’m no pastor.
I’m not a seminary student, either.
I didn’t take any theology courses in college, for that matter.
But I still write about faith issues, Christianity and the church. And I realy don’t think one needs to be a pastor to do so.
What’s more, not only do I write about this particular topic, I write about what I happen to think is wrong with them. (Occasionally, I write about what I think is good as well; I’m not all bad, after all.)
Why should you care what I think about faith if I’m not “qualified”  via theological training to speak out? Well, that’s an interesting question, isn’t it? And there are a few answers that immediately come to mind.
The first answer would be that I’m just as qualified as the majority of church members who have likewise never had any “formal”  training in theology. (Sitting in a pew every Sunday and attending a small group doesn’t make you qualified, either.) Yet those church members who are so outspoken on all things faith let their feelings be known with the wildest of abandon, completely uncaring of dissenting opinions, which they’ll dismiss with a mean-comment hidden with the sweetest of Christian gobbledegook like, “Bless your heart,” or “I’ll pray for you.”
So in that respect, with those people, call it even.
The second answer would be that there are plenty of pastors who are trained in their vocation yet produce sermons that the aforementioned non-trained Christians strongly disagree with. Those Christians have no problem calling out those pastors.
It would appear, then, that training has little to do with it; it’s more a matter of whether people agree with them.
The third answer would be that the church is referred to in the Bible as the metaphorical bride of Christ. If God Himself puts this much importance on the church, I do think that we Christians owe it to ourselves and our faith to question things that strike us as unchristian. Most Christians, no matter which side of an issue they sit on, would tend to agree, I think, that there is too much at stake for false teaching to be allowed to grow within the church.
Of course, what is false teaching to some is “God’s truth” to others. You have to decide which it is to you based on your relationship with God.
But the fourth answer is probably the most important here.
That answer is that I have to consider my audience.
I am proud to say that in almost 12 years of this blog, I have had the pleasure of having a very broad, very diverse audience. I have had people of different races, orientation and beliefs all visit. When it comes to faith, I’ve had Christians, Catholics, Jews, nonbelievers and atheists all stop by and, from time to time, express their thoughts on the variety of topics I write about.
I am proud to say that people who are different from me seem to find some common ground here. (Or at least enough of it that they are comfortable to discuss things rather than just shouting.)
That’s how real conversations happen. That’s what a blog is supposed to be all about, right? Blogs are part of social media. They don’t have to be just bulletin boards for the blog owner to post what they think without any feedback or interaction with those who choose to read it.
If there is someone who may have been turned off by a church experience but is at least interested in faith, I think there’s a great value in those people learning that not all Christians think and feel the same way. We are all on our own personal faith journey here. Many of us are pursuing a genuine relationship with the same God, although we hear what other people on that same path say and think to ourselves, “That’s not what I think at all.” 
Consider how many denominations there are. If we all believed the same thing, there’d only be one religion. That’s all we’d ever need.
I think it’s a good thing to know that just because Christians call themselves Christians, we’re not all the same. We don’t all think the same way. We don’t all believe the exact same thing.
And especially when there are Christians who seem more interested in spreading messages of hate than messages of love, the fact that we’re not all that way seems all the more important.
You are one of the most delightful, wonderful, truly well-spoken and truest believer I have ever met. It is an incredible pleasure to know you. I’m one of those oddball ones when it comes to religion – I’m not the agnostic my father is, nor the atheist my mother was. I’m mostly a scientist, a believer in science having the answers, but I’m a Celtic Wiccan, and consider the Universe to be the equivalent of “God”, not a white-haired man. I know that there has to a “higher power”, but not a person per Se.
My husband is a Roman Catholic and believes in it, but does not go to church at all, believing (as I do) that one can pray anytime, everywhere. He doesn’t buy into the dogmatic side of religion, but is confident that because he has been baptised and will go to heaven. Me, I can’t admit to that sort of hubris; I don’t know what is on the other side when we die. I liken it to what Doona Bae said in ‘Cloud Atlas’: “If I were to imagine Heaven, I would see a door.” I love that idea.
His family are mostly Roman Catholic, however, but the openly bigoted kind: everyone who is not an Anglo-Saxon or Hispanic “true believer” and is not heterosexual, and is adamantly against everything, rather than allowing for individual differences, is the “wrong kind” of believer. Except for his overly outspoken aunt, who turned into some kind of (I think) non-denominational Christian so she can be buried in a nun’s habit, even though never having been a nun, and have a higher role in the church, something Roman Catholics, being patriarchal, do not allow. She also has a Ph.D in theology – just Christian theology – but still hates any of the fellow anyone who isn’t bigoted. Unreal.
No one needs be a pastor to have a point of view or the right to ask and question different things, or to open a line of dialogue regarding religion. I do it all the time, and no one has ever said, “You aren’t clergy, what nerve do you have to discuss this?!” I think it is vital to ask questions, to have an open mind, to want to understand more, not only of religious groups, cultures, etc., but of our leaders, politicians, teachers, friends, the establishment, all of it, everyone. How else do we learn?
I grinned when I read your comment that sitting in a pew every Sunday in a small group doesn’t make anyone qualified, either – that was very funny, and very, very true! My grandmother made me attend Methodist church with her and my Pop-pop (who was half-asleep and as bored as I was), but I never learned a single thing; I think because as a child, it was meaningless, much more so than Sunday School might have been, but she may have been just perspicacious enough to know that that would not have been a good course to follow, raised as I was and a huge questioner from the get-go. Not that she was truly that wise normally, but in this particular case…
Regardless, if all believers were like you, it just might be that we would all be one cohesive group. On the other hand, however, I personally would hate to see all other belief systems go into the graveyard of the lost, because there is so much that is interesting about different views, beliefs, and cultures.
Once we stop learning, we stop living and we stop loving.