DRAFT 2 – Much less tired and yes, I’ve had coffee –

When I think about a paradigm to discuss what my old church structure, I look for a lot of different things. The UBF is quite parallel, but not necessarily accessible. After all, not everyone has had any experience with abusive church cultures. Some have made the comparison with abusive parents, but that is not quite correct. Children fear abusive parents, they do not fight with their brothers and sisters to fawn over them. Some have made a comparison to medieval court behavior where the nobilty fawn over each other and their king. This is a closer comparison because those in power usually had money and privilege. There’s more to that, but it doesn’t quite cover the unspoken law of conformity. In the old church system, all members were expected to conform to some unstated standard, usually the personality and energy of the evangelist. Then Thursday night, it occured to me that the most accessible analogy is the culture of being a smurf.

Consider the smurf village: everyone looks the same and wears the same things except Papa Smurf, Smurfette, and Baby. Everyone else is given a standard issue a white smurfy hat, a white smurfy pair of pants, and sometimes an extra-smurfy white shirt of some kind. (Painter Smurf got an exception to wear a red vest. Since Papa Smurf also wears red, conspiracy theories abound as to the possible connection.) In short, there is little diversity. However, not everyone is entirely the same. They are usually classified according to their talent and named for their talent. There’s Handy that builds things, Hefty that is strong, Farmer that grows food, etc. Some are named for their passion despite the fact that their passion is not the same as their talent. Consider Harmony Smurf who loves instruments despite the fact that he can’t play any of them. Others are named for their faults and are expected to do nothing but become worse. Clumsy Smurf is well-loved, but everyone demands his help in physical tasks when he obviously has a problem. Lazy Smurf sleeps constantly and Grouchy Smurf, in general, doesn’t want to be as smurfy as everyone else. Taking all of smurf village as a whole one thing is clear, everyone has a clearly defined role and they do not deviate from it.

The undisputed leader is Papa Smurf. He is obeyed almost without question. He is presumed to not make any mistakes and he is generally serious. However, he’s not a bad guy, he loves babies and children, he always talks about his care and concern for ‘his little smurflings’. He does a lot of work to take care of their needs. He has even been known to chuckle from time to time. However, he has a frequent need to go speak to other powerful wizards all over the world, or to go on some personal quest. To that end, in all his wisdom, he always leaves Brainy Smurf in charge when he’s gone. Everyone hates Brainy Smurf, because he is going to spend the entire time talking about how great he is and saying “Papa Smurf ALWAYS says….” and generally meddling in everyone’s lives.

Brainy loves to tell people how important he is and looks for every opportunity to demonstrate that. His only true friend is Clumsy who he is constantly trying to reform. For some reason, Papa Smurf always puts Brainy in charge. When things invariably go wrong, he chides the rest of the smurfs when it is really Brainy’s fault. Brainy escapes with a mild admonition to be more smurfy and then Papa Smurf expounds on his vision of true smurfiness. In the end, nothing ever changes and Smurf Village goes back to normal. It’s always the heirarachy of Papa Smurf – Brainy Smurf – Smurfette – everyone else.

Consider the critic, Grouchy Smurf. When everyone is happily playing ‘smurfball’, he hates smurfball. When everyone is working on the smurfberry festival, he hates festivals. More importantly, when Brainy Smurf opines, he hates Briany Smurf’s Wise Sayings(TM). He doesn’t hate Papa Smurf, but he’s not really fond of anyone or anything except Baby. For that reason, I tend to think of Grouchy as the only sane member of this strange group, but he goes along with everything because he doesn’t know where else to go. I mean, he hates smurf hats, but sitll wears one. In some ways, I would consider myself a Grouchy Smurf.

Aside from their culture, they had their own lingo. ‘Smurf’ as a word could fulfil almost every part of speech (except a conjunction). In any given conversation, this all purpose word could be substituted for any other word. The meaning would be derived by context only. ‘Smurfy’ was a subjective standard for model behavior. Every smurf wanted to be smurfy. (Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.) It was the goal of every smurf to be as smurfy as possible, even if no one really knew what that meant. In practice, it meant to be happy, sing the theme song, love Papa Smurf, and be like everyone else.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the show as a child and I still like it. The whole purpose of this is to provide a metaphor for life in the church. Enough has been said about the Smurf Village, let’s move on to some practical examples. The following three incidents occurred throughout my life in the church. First, it will be presented in English, and then in Smurfese. Anyone that has been a part of the church should recognize the smurfese fairly quickly. Forgive me if relaying these incidents creates triggers for you:

In English: Leader says that coffeehouses are not good places to hang out because of their atmosphere. I disagree.
“Bro,” someone would say to me, “that wasn’t very humble.”
“Really?” I said mock-aghast, “All I said was that I didn’t agree with him about coffee-shops being a sinful place to hangout.”
“The Bible says that we should make a leader’s job a joy. I don’t see how arguing with him accomplishes that. Just don’t go to coffeehouses.“

In Smurfese
“Hey Smurf, that wasn’t very smurfy.”
“All I said was that coffee-shops are a very smurfy place to smurf.”
“But Papa Smurf always says to make your leaders job a joy. I love Papa Smurf. The leader says that coffe-shops aren’t smurfy, so I won’t go.“

I hate Wimpy Smurf.

In English: Leader comments about complaints about too many meetings.
“Okay guys,” weekly meeting speaker would say, “I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of attitude around here. You know, we freed-up your Sunday afternoons – the Sabbath is a day of rest, Amen? – but there is a lot of complaining about time going on. Frankly, your attitude is stinking up the joint and it needs to stop. Paul talked about how he OFTEN went without sleep and here we complain about seeing each other too much. Don’t you know that it is an AWESOME thing to spend time with each other?”

In Smurfese
“Okay smurfs, Papa Smurf says there’s a lot of unsmurfiness around here. You know, He gave you the afternoon off from the Smurfberry picking- but there is a lot of unsmurfiness going on. Like Papa Smurf ALWAYS says, ‘to err is human, to smurf, divine’. Isn’t it great to be smurfs and to be smurfy with each other?”

I hate Fired Up Smurf.

In English: Leader rebukes group for lack of baptisms or visitors. Declares Unilateral Fasting Day.
“We should be so ASHAMED about our STINKIN’ SIN!!!! Like Achan, it is running through the camp. We have become LAZY! We are sitting around the HOUSE instead of outside meeting people! Primetime is from 7 to 9 pm AND NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO BE HOME AT THAT TIME UNLESS I SAY SO!!!! WE DID THIS TO GOD and OURSELVES. Let’s repent! Let’s GET OUT THERE!!! Let’s BE TRUE DISCIPLES(HTDM!)!!!! In order to get us started on the right foot, we are going to fast starting RIGHT NOW!”

In Smurfese
“You should be ashamed about how UNSMURFY you smurfs are right now. The Smurfberry Festival is in two days and NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE. Well my little smurflings, we’re going to have to WORK THROUGH the NIGHT. Now, now, I don’t want to hear any complaining. You did this to yourselves and you’re going to have to work your way out of it. No special smurfberry surprise until we are done.”

I hate Radical Smurf.

Being smurfy had something to do with the five tenets of discipleship: good attitude, humility, heart, obedience, and hating sin. If someone wanted to preach a good sermon, the only requirement was a message on one of these five topics. These sermons were always awesome(htdm) or convicting(htdm). Though the principles were always mutable and changing, but these sermons were perceived as getting back to the basics. Specifically, we were always trying to be good disciples(htdm). Since everyday discipleship was vague, when someone preached about these five basic tenets, we heard it as a fundamental building block. Depending on the whim of the speaker that day, everyday discipleship could mean things like not watching the news at all, or watching two hours of it. Sometimes discipleship involved wearing trendy outfits (being sharp) and other times it was being thrifty. No wonder that members had trouble reconciling sometimes contradictary commands. Sometimes humility was being a doormat, sometimes is defining as confronting sin in others. The definition of sin, outside Gal 5, was always different from person to person. To some, it was a sin to go to any R rated movie, others struggled with PG-13 movies, still others saw any movie they watned. To some, beer was a sin, but wine wasn’t. To others, all alcohol was a sin. Even more telling, some smoked cigars once a month(cigar club) or on special occasions while telling others that smoking was a sin. If nothing else, the ‘group’ always had an attitude of one kind or another. The attitude was usually linked to not totally obeying your leaders.

Above all, there was this unstated expectation that you were always happy, or least you should be. I’ve heard it said that it was a sin to be sad. I’ve lived the experience of only being allowed to express so-called positive emotions and it is not healthy. Ever wonder why we had a backlash in large churches? We weren’t allowed to feel anything, even if we were allowed to do everything. Now that it is okay to feel hurt and angry, the old paradigm of ‘be happy or else’ doesn’t make the pain go away. Sometimes it seems as if some just sing the Smurf Theme aloud hoping to force the bad feelings out. I’m sure that the leader of a large church would love to see hundreds of happy, smiling faces again.

In any case, consider what would happen if a smurf was able to live outside his defined role. There was an episode where Clumsy was ‘cured’. It destroyed the social fabric of Smurf Village, so he went back to being clumsy to ‘save’ the village. It’s amazing how uncomfortable change can be, even if it is for the better. In the midst of so much change, it’s no wonder that there is a desire to go back to the old peace we once shared. I miss being in a group of thousands singing happy songs to God. I want peace and I pray for it to happen in my lifetime. However, I have no interest in becoming broken again for the sake of the social fabric of old church. It’s too easy to simply be quiet and sing happy songs like nothing happened.

That’s what being a part of this church had been like for me for so many years. If it’s not a useful analogy, then throw it out. For the record, though, I have to say:

I hate Papa Smurf.