Sick of Airbrushed Christianity

So I've had this title as my MSN banner for the last little while and it has got quite a lot of responses. This term came to mind when I saw a picture of Faith Hill on the Wal-Mart shopping cart rack and I hardly recognized her. She just looked too perfect. Her hair was a different colour and there was not a flaw or imperfection in her face. She just wasn't real...she looked airbrushed.

Most of my frustrations have to do with the church I attend. The College and Career/Young Adults group there is pretty large and I've been going for about 2 years now. However, I have never really felt like I have belonged and the only ones that I feel know me are the people that I was friends with before I started going there. I mean, I know that when you have you have larger groups cliques/smaller groups are bound to form, but with such a large group there should be at least some people that I gel with/fit in with. Sometimes I just feel like my hair isn't the right colour or I'm just not "cool" enough. So much of it seems so high school to me. Our College and Career seems all about "let's see how much fun we can have." Now don't get me wrong, I like to have fun, but I think people need more than that to feel fulfilled. It just seems like there is really no one there that could care less about how I am really doing. This has improved a little bit since smaller groups that meet on a weekly basis were formed. I mean, my small group is all right. I feel I can share somewhat openly there but within the larger group as a whole there seems to be this fear of going past the surface stuff because there might be hard stuff to deal with. People will ask "how are you?" while they are looking around for the next person to talk to. It seems everyone just wants to hear the "I'm doing good response" and then move on. I've dared some of my friends to tell people what they are really thinking or how they are really feeling during the Bible studies and then sit back and watch them freak out.
Its like at my church as a whole they just want to show people that Christians have perfect, happy lives because we have Jesus. Everyone is trying to be so stinkin happy all the time. Its like you have to bury all of the tough and ugly stuff you are dealing with and switch your "happy switch" when you walk in the door. I mean, really, one Sunday one of my good friends sat there just bawling in church and the person beside her just got up and left at the end of the service! Where's the love? I mean, I'm not saying that everything my church does is wrong. There are some things I love about my church: my pastor's preaching for example. He is a very engaging speaker and does not skirt around the tough stuff that most people avoid. Our church also does well at church discipline. For the life of me I cannot rememember or find the reference for this (can anyone help me?) but somewhere in the Bible it says that if your brother or sister is sinning, you should first try to address it one-on-one with him and if he does not listen and does not want to repent, then some of the elders should be brought in. Then if he still doesn't listen you bring in more leadership. Sometimes it even has to go public like it did in our church when one of the guys who was in leadership was engaging in pre-marital sex and other reckless behaviour with his girlfriend. They wound up pregnant and church leadership ended up addressing it in a public setting. So there are some things that our church does well.....we just need to get the love part down. Like, I really wonder what the people at our church would do if they asked someone how they were doing and the individual replied "Actually I feel like killing myself today. How about you?" I say this because I struggle with depression and when I hit my lowest points I sometimes am suicidal. I just hate having to pretend that everything is perfect when I go to church. Whatever happened to being human? Like did I miss the passing out of the superhuman/perfect life pills when I became a Christian or what? I think a lot of Christians (and churches) need to wake up and realize that it is all right to be human and let others be humans. It is all right to address that people are having a rough go of it. Who ever said that life was going to be easy? (Again, if anyone said that, did I miss it?). Acknowledging that someone is having a hard time does not mean that you have to have the answer. Sometimes a hug and a "do you want to talk to a pastor?" or "is there someone I can call?" or even just "its ok to cry" can greatly help. One of the moments I felt most loved at Bible College was the second semester I was there. I was really really depressed and calling home never ever helped because it would make me even more scared and depressed. I remember saying goodbye to my parents one day and then just bawling. A girl from our dorm floor that I didn't even know asked me if I was OK. I said no and she asked if I needed a hug. She held me and let me cry on her shoulder. No one else had done that for me, not even my friends when I was crying through supper in the cafeteria. I knew that that girl could not instantly fix me, but her just letting me be real and vulnerable made me feel that much better.

There, that's my rant. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it. I know that if you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem. So if I want people to allow me and others to be vulnerable, I need to allow them to be vulnerable. Just need to figure out what that will look like in a setting like our College and Career.....maybe just asking better questions other than "how are you? How's work/school?" Maybe asking about best and worst parts of the week? It seems its always easy to pick out problems but the solutions seem so much harder.....anyone have any suggestions?