A Christian dilemma?
In his novel, The Cobras of Calcutta, Grant Sutherland wrote of “…old Mr Douglas, who goes about the town like every other man, his soul undiscovered and the small change of the day’s doings on his tongue.”
The picture is of an old man, wandering the village, nodding, chatting, acquainted with everyone but known by no one. He is secure in the anonymity of small talk, a wonderful preventative against self-disclosure. And “old Mr Douglas” seems to like it that way. Perhaps it was safe.
There’s a pleasant, congenial sadness about old Mr Douglas. There are stories that won’t be told, memories that will be enjoyed alone, and perhaps, as the time approaches, end-of-life challenges to be faced in alone.
Life as a game of solitaire can be comfortable in its seclusion, but when the game is all but over, little remains.
Anonymous in a crowd
As I read the words they reached beyond the life of old Mr Douglas and touched my own. As followers of Jesus, we have been reconnected to God and each other by a common shared life in Jesus.
The reconnection has been made, but are there doors yet to be opened? In our disconnected society, is the “undisclosed soul” something we can too easily take home from our Christian world, and yet still brand the meeting fellowship?
There was a period in our lives when, for the first time in many years, my wife and I were part of a large church. It was an international church in an Islamic nation where we lived for several years. The country was extremely and brutally restrictive for ethnic believers. For expats like us, the only possibility for Christian connections was the several-hundred-strong international church.
We entered the church as strangers having not long arrived in the city. It had all of the hallmarks of a friendly church. The handshake, the smile, the greeting. By the time we got to our seat we had been asked several times how we were, but there was no time to tell the enquirers. We were told they were glad to see us but then the next person entered and the ‘greeters’ were quickly glad to see them as well.
When everything possible is not enough
This, I have discovered, is normal in a large ‘friendly’ church. But after several weeks, we realised that we came and went, to use Sutherland’s words, ‘(with our) soul undisclosed and the small change of the day’s doings on our tongue.’ Within a few weeks, we stopped attending. We settled into a home group, which gave some greater opportunity to make connections beyond smiles and ‘how are you?’ Where even the ‘small change of the days doings’ became sacred because they were listened to and, where necessary, prayed about.
Don’t misunderstand – the large church did everything they could under the circumstances to make us feel welcome, but even so there was, for us, the awkward feeling of being like the proverbial ‘odd man at a wedding’.
Protective mechanisms
Thinking back on that experience, I began to wonder, and make some substitutions in the lines about Sutherland’s ‘old Mr Douglas’…
“…who goes to the church meeting like every other man, his soul undiscovered and the small change of the day’s doings on his tongue.”
Indeed, the church mentioned above and others we have drifted past since, have done everything they could, under the circumstances, to connect people. But when doing everything we can ‘under the circumstances’ is not adequate, the sometimes-simple solution might be to change the circumstances.
Our penchant for big and orderly might actually be a protective mechanism that enables us to attend, seem to perform a religious duty, but leave our ‘soul undiscovered’. Unchanged and unchallenged in comfortable anonymity.
