Once again, people frustrate me.

Well, last night was a monthly meeting we have at the church I belong to. (People in leadership positions come to the meeting and discuss things).

And we have a problem. Well, it could have been less of a problem save for the vagaries of human behavior.

One of our members - who is himself in a leadership person - is very likely to have charges pressed against him today. The charges are fairly serious. (I will not be too specific here in case anyone who thinks they know who I am reads, but, they are worse than passing bad checks but not as serious as murder...). Basically the man is in a kind of business that makes him vulnerable to these kinds of charges. There is more than half a chance they will not stand up in court.

The minister found out about it, and the man came to him to offer to resign his positions. The minister told the man no, that if he truly believed he was innocent of the charges, there was no need for him to resign, and even more, he needed to keep his head up and not give those who would gossip any fuel by withdrawing. The man wound up agreeing.

But the minister wanted to give us a heads-up and find out what we thought. (As the leader of the youth group - and I am also an Elder - I am considered one of the "leaders.") The general consensus was this:

a. We know this guy too well, it is very unlikely he would do this.
b. Even if he did do it, what is the church but a hospital for sinners? We've all fallen short and it's just that he fell short in a public and prosecutable way [if he actually did].
c. If he DID do it, he will need the spiritual counseling and support we can provide to help him get "better."

The minister remarked: I do not know if you all know how remarkable you are.

He also said, "Congregations often shoot their wounded." Meaning, many congregations would shun this guy and would call for his resignation from his posts.

I don't know that it's so much a matter of "remarkable" as it's that that's just the character of the people I go to church with. Well, maybe they are people of remarkable character but the response everyone gave was the response I expected. And the response I think is right.

So, that is not the frustrating part of people. That is actually the restoring-faith-in-humanity part of people.

The frustrating part is this: several years ago, when I was a new member, the church underwent a congregational split. It was very ugly. I almost - very, very close - hit the point where I said, "That's it, I'm done with organized religion" and left church attendance forever. (What kept me from it was the character of the people who stayed - the people I was talking about above).

As best I can determine, it was a generational split. There are a large number of members of my church (then as now) who are of my parents' generation and older. There used to be a large number of what would best be described as Baby Boomers in the congregation. The Baby Boomers - some of them at least - decided they had insufficient power, they weren't well-enough-represented on the board, etc. They tried to push for greater power - they tried to get greater than proportional representation. They tried a few ideas that were voted down by a majority.

So, they "picked up their marbles and went home." Or, in this case, went and built a new church.

(And so, to this day, the church I belong to has a few people of my generation and younger, a lot of people of the "silent generation," a few people of the WWII generation who are still hanging on, and almost no Baby Boomers. The truth is - I actually get on BETTER with people of the "silent generation" and older, mainly because when I was growing up I spent more time with my parents, their friends, older adults in my church, and older relatives than I did with my own peers. I understand people of that era and in general, find that their values are more in line with my own.)

That would be the end of it as far as I am concerned but for one thing.

The people who left began to spread rumors. Some of them were "matter of opinion" rumors, I will give them that, but in a few cases the rumors were - if what I heard was what was actually being spread - were patently false. Like, for example, we didn't believe in Jesus' resurrection.

The rumors were very bad when the split first happened but to my frustration, they are apparently continuing. One of the people who left is a coach in one of the schools and he was - for a while - working on some of my Youth Group kids, trying to (depending on who you ask) attract them to come to the new church instead or poison their minds against us. (We asked the kids what he was telling them and corrected the information that was wrong. I think one of my co-leaders also went to the man and told him to stop, and that if he didn't, she'd report him to the school board. It's sad she had to do that, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire).

Well, bringing it down to last night: some of the older, longer-term members - people who had known the people who left well - had been getting calls (one man got THREE calls from THREE people in a single day) from people who left who wanted to "visit with them" about the man who may be charged with a crime.

(I have to explain for those who live outside the South: when someone wants to "visit with you" it is not always a pleasant thing. It can actually be quite ominous. It usually means, "I'm gonna talk and you're gonna listen and THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN SAY ABOUT IT" but it can mean stronger things. For example, if your boss says he needs to "visit with you" around annual review time you probably better have your resume in order and a few leads on other employment).

Anyway, these folks wanted to "visit with" members about the man. Basically, in other words, either try to extract gossip that could be used, or tell the person how they thought this person was Bad and Evil and if we continued to let him come to church it would be having a snake in our collective bosoms. And the two people who reported the visit-with calls, good for them, both squashed the people by saying they didn't know enough about the situation, that this was a democratic country with a mostly-fair court system, and they were going to leave it up to the courts to decide.

No one has called me. I do not expect they will, for three reasons:

a. I am known for being out of the loop on these things. In fact, I did not know until the minister told us that the alleged incident(s) had occurred. Being out of the loop can be a good thing, I see now.

b. I was not a longtime member at the time of the split and as I mostly hung out with the older members, I am not as well known to the people who left.

c. I suspect at least a few people know that I like to put the smackdown when people try to gossip about people I know. (Celebrity gossip is another matter, yeah, it's probably wrong, but....somehow it feels different).

That said - if anyone does call me, if anyone does see me in Wal-mart and make some kind of pointed comment? I'm going to shrug and say, "I know almost nothing about the situation and it is my practice to assume someone is innocent until they are proven guilty." And I'm going to wish them a Merry Christmas and then walk away (or hang up the phone).

Because, you know? I just think the kind of almost-gloating that some people are apparently doing is pretty unChristian. (I admit, it's also unChristian how the people I go to church with still seem to harbor a grudge - some of them at least - about the people who left. I'm willing to forget about it and just pretend that those folks ALWAYS attended a different church. Well, except for the rumors thing. And except for them telling things that aren't entirely true to youth group members to try to get them to go to the "other" church. If both of those stopped I could ignore the existence of the split altogether).

This is just another way I am frustrated by people. Frustrated both by the attitudes of those who left (You left, okay? I guess some of you thought that would kill us and it didn't. Don't keep trying to kill us using gossip.) and by the bitterness of some of the people who stayed towards those who left.

And once again, I think of something I once told a friend: Some of the worst advertisements for God are the people who most loudly protest that they are His followers.

Because using a person's misfortune as a way of trying to advance your agenda - or making yourself feel superior - well, that makes Baby Jesus cry. And not forgiving someone for a difference of opinion, that also makes Baby Jesus cry.

(And, thank goodness that in four more days I will be on my way home for Christmas, meaning I will be even farther out of the loop, and even more unreachable by Those Who Would Pump Me For Gossip or Those Who Would Rehash The Slights of the Last Four Years.)