Setting the Record Straight

    My dad passed away Monday, December 2^nd, 2024. There was a memorial service the following Wednesday. The service honored his life and memory well...for the most part. It wasn’t my place to address any of the issues I saw there. That wasn’t the purpose of the service, and in that regard the celebration of his life by his friends and family was good.

    But it also wasn’t my place because of political considerations. The honor guard was there for a branch of the military I was kicked out of. The service was held in a church that holds to damnable doctrine. Many of the guest were from a church I’ve been unofficial excommunicated at. When I sung the line “Thou preparest a table before me, in the presence of mine enemies” in Psalm 23, I meant it. I was there to honor my dad and I behaved because of it.

    Many people from my past will read this and roll their eyes, saying “Oh boy. Here he goes again: quiet and soft-spoken in person but boisterous and mean online.” But this is merely a record of my own ideas for the purpose of spurring on the discussion that would otherwise be lost, or pointing others to for the purpose of beginning that discussion. That is always what I’ve done with blogging: I refuse to feel guilty for exposing my own thoughts for what they are.

    With that out of the way, I’m extremely disappointed with one recurring topic of conversation in the service: Dad’s obsession with studying. If you were there you may have noticed that it was constantly praised as a good trait by those outside the family (even in the message delivered by the pastor) but rarely mentioned by the family. Even then, it was only because it served as a connection to him in something he was extremely proud of. The Greenwell family didn’t care about our dad’s continuing single-minded obsession with bible study (which, now that I think about, you probably wouldn’t have noticed: but I did). In fact, most of us had already said our goodbyes to him long ago because of it.

    I understand sugar-coating dad’s life after the stroke, but not to the point of praising the self-destructive tendency that killed him. And it wasn’t just the stroke messing with his mind either: dad never gave up his dream of explicit Christian ministry. That was it. That was the goal, and it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. But you could see it in everything he did, because he was never fully present apart from biblical studies or things of that nature. Everything else was a necessary distraction. His dates with mom were playing guitar and singing at nursing homes for pete’s sake: there’s a reason that bitterness manifested in an instance I won’t mention here. Dad had fully expected to break into a livelihood of Christian ministry for the entirety of my life and that never left him.

    There’s nothing wrong with a desire for ministry. But “hope deferred makes the heart sick,” and there’s a long train of choices dad made that lead to it ending like this. Even before he had the stroke, it’s highly likely that a better diet and exercise would have helped him get his blood pressure under control. But who can blame someone who led such a hard life with so many ungrateful children for failing to take care of himself, especially when he was so mindful of the much more important heavenly matters? And I’m not faulting dad completely here: yes, more discipline would have made his life better, but he was living fully committed to what he was taught and believed. That’s why after the stroke he fully believed he would be miraculously healed. And if you’re going to be miraculously healed, why bother with physical therapy? Why not have another cookie? And if it occurs at home or in a nursing home, what’s the difference? God will still get the glory when it happens. And besides, that means plenty of time for study and preparation in the word for when it does happen.

    But then it didn’t happen. God said “no.” And what was left to salvage? Everything dad had was already invested in a future supernatural healing that would never happen. So, if he couldn’t be whole on earth, he wanted to be whole in heaven. And so he spent the last years of his life miserable and alone in a prison of his own making.

    I hate what happened to dad. In some ways it’s his fault. In other ways he was the victim of a Gnostic “Christianity” that made him “so heavenly minded that he was of no earthly good.” But, whichever way you look at it, his death was explicitly caused by his beliefs. Dad’s theology killed him.

    Is this what Jesus promised when he said that “I’ve come to give you life and life more abundantly” (John 10:10)?

    If this is what Christianity produces, I don’t want it. And my siblings that have rejected it are right to do so. You (Christian) treat this world as if it doesn’t matter and then complain when some people want to love and enjoy their life as if it matters. So they look somewhere else.

    I’m so tired of a Christianity that destroys everything it touches. You make men like my dad feel guilty because “being successful in business is to be a part of the Babylonian worldsystem” and then watch him kill himself in the pursuit of trying to be a worthless Pastor like you. You won’t even lift one finger to ease his burden. But you will lift up the pastoral ministry like it’s the end all be all of the Christian life. Then you complain that my sister is power hungry for wanting to be in pastoral ministry when she isn’t qualified either. You reject the law of God in favor of the law of man, and then call the cops on your own people because you’re not equipped to deal with sin in your midst. You promise the joy, peace, and prosperity, then blame the person who believes you for their lack of faith when your beliefs are found to be lies. You have a form of godliness while denying its power, never allowing it to affect anything in your life beyond your own nose.

    God damn your worthless religion. I cannot join you in the celebration of that.

    And this is why the best our family can do is smile at each other when events demand it while keeping our distance from each other. “Can two be united unless they agree?” I hope that dad’s death can stir up this fractured tribe to honor the God he loved in order to honor him, but there is no room for true forgiveness and reconciliation even in the Christians in our family. Because this world doesn’t matter to us, just like it didn’t matter to dad. I reject that. And it’s why I have to bury the past and move on. It’s why I left the camp. And yeah, sometimes it’s lonely out here. But what else can I do? I have to follow in a single-minded devotion to what I believe to be true, just like dad did. It’s the only thing us Greenwells know how to do.