The cause of hurt...

I picked up the book Sex God by Rob Bell on Friday. It was 50% off at the store and I had been wanting to read it so I was like, what the heck! Well, I am only into the third chapter and it is a pretty awesome book. I love how Bell gets to the center of issues and is pretty raw with calling things what they are and not sugar coating them.

I had had numerous conversation with people who have been hurt or have issues with the church...or issues with other groups for instance jobs, school, a group of people, etc. I found this very interesting what Bell says "I often meet people who aren't part of a church and don't want anything to do with God because of all those religious hypocrites. Often they have great pain that the blame on 'the church'. But it's not possible for an institution, whether it's a church or a school or a business or even the government, to hurt somebody. Institutions are made up of people. People hurt people." (Bell, p. 45)

This really got me thinking because it's so true. People hurt people. We can often say we have problems with an organization and really we have problems with a person or multiple people in that organization that have hurt us. This really is the cause of our pain, of our anger, or our hurt. But guess what, it's way easier to blame a church or an organization for our hurt because they can't fight back. It's when we realize the person that hurt us that things get complicated because we don't want to confront the person to try and resolve whatever the matter is. We begin to make excuses that they won't understand how I feel, or they will think I am attacking them, or it won't change anything if I tell them how I feel. Bottom line is they are excuses because we are too scared to confront the direct cause of the pain we are feeling. So, what does this all mean? I don't know. It just got me thinking, maybe it will challenge your thinking too.