In The Beginning
(Pt.2 Fall)

A week after I sent him the draft of The Outage, I received his response on another Wednesday afternoon—a carefully written reflection.

It completely caught me off guard, and I was deeply moved.

He stood by my fire and felt its heat. Though hesitant, he did not retreat.

At that time, I had not yet made up my mind to leave the church. I had even considered starting a spiritual writing fellowship within the church.

But in any case, I would no longer attend Sunday services and would be leaving my current small group.

I hoped that evening’s Wednesday gathering would be a light and dignified farewell—nothing needed to be said explicitly, at least leaving me with a warm memory of them in my heart.

But clearly, God had other plans.

He placed me once again in the cell group led by that group leader.

By then I had already seen through it—the leader had completely functionally merged into this Evangelical system of polite hypocrisy and stability maintenance, utterly indifferent to truth. And evidently, some of my past actions had made him feel threatened.

And it was just as clear that the others in the cell group were only engaging in friendly social interaction, never entering into the realm of genuine faith. This made me feel all the more despairing.

The discussion revolved around John 15. The first question was: In what context is Jesus saying “I am the true vine”?

It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen exegetical errors in churches or small groups before. But this time, I hadn’t planned to confront them.

Yet to my surprise, I found I could no longer tolerate it.

I expressed strong discontent right from the start, when I saw they were only connecting to the immediate context rather than reading the Bible as a coherent narrative. I pointed out that the vine refers to Israel, that Jesus was speaking to the Jews, and that this statement was a verdict against Old Testament Israel’s faith—it also invalidated the possibility of self-righteousness through external behavior.

But no one was moved, not even slightly.

The discussion continued along the pre-set structure, calmly and “cordially”:

“How would you describe spiritual pruning?”
“Can you share an experience where you felt ‘pruned’ by God? How did that experience lead to personal or spiritual growth?”
“How does abiding in Christ influence the ‘fruit’ we bear in our lives and communities?”
“In what ways can we collectively ensure that we remain connected to the ‘true vine’ and encourage one another in our faith journeys?”

These topics were inherently fine, but when people focused on maintaining their self-image and interpersonal harmony, even the best questions became hollow—they didn’t treat Jesus as the vine, they treated themselves as the vine!

That night, I curled up in a corner of the couch like a freak, utterly unable to pretend I could continue to fit into such superficial socializing that trivialized truth—I was just suppressing the urge to throw pillows or storm out.

I couldn’t even hide the disgust and pain on my face.

Suddenly, the group leader called on me—“Avery, can you share an experience where you felt ‘pruned’ by God? How did that experience lead to personal or spiritual growth?”

“I’m being pruned by God right now. I walked into a restaurant knowing the kitchen wasn’t clean, but as long as the food served was tasty, I thought I could trick myself into enjoying it. Now God has led me into the kitchen and forced me to see how disgusting everything is. I can’t dine here anymore. I have to leave.”

“Ok, it’s quite difficult to understand…”

Of course you don’t understand. You can’t even grasp the straightforward metaphor in John 15!

I don’t know how I held it together. In the end, everyone in the group took turns talking about how they maintain moral beauty. I, the one whose messages to the leader always get ignored, was sitting right across from him—and yet he could still speak gently, saying, “My way of remaining connected to the vine is to always put the need of others before mine.”

Then they started talking about the church’s discipleship program, looking all eager for truth while in reality exchanging pious nonsense, no different from the Old Testament system Jesus had already pronounced dead. Of the other three cell groups, two were out of my line of sight—I could only see Roy’s group nearby and wanted to get up and leave to join another group.

But I was even more afraid the other groups were just the same.

By the final prayer request round, I finally voiced my wish:

“May God give me more courage to leave the church. I came here from China alone. The church has been my only social connection. Though I’ve already decided to leave, I still need more courage to face it.”

No prayer needed—this wish was almost instantly granted.

“So you want to pray for the opposite of what we just discussed?”

I could almost hear the frost forming behind the group leader’s words.

“Yes!”

Then came the well-meaning onslaught from others. They tried to interpret my breakdown with all kinds of shallow reasons, treating my struggle as emotional turmoil.

I looked at them the way one looks at a bunch of self-righteous fools. And they looked at me as a weakling in need of help and pity—nothing more than a convenient prop for their performance of moral elegance.

The unrecognizability of the “Word made flesh” was becoming unbearably heavy in me.

Seeing that their well-meaning gestures could not soften me, the group leader began to lecture me with a subtly doctrinal, moralizing tone—he used Bible verses about the unity of the church to scold me.

But I found it laughable.

I almost provoked him on purpose: “After the church became institutionalized, some desert fathers emerged. They went into the wilderness to preserve the church’s spiritual vitality.”

“Does anyone in the Bible go into the wilderness?”

I thought this seminary graduate had lost his mind. “Jesus! Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days. Elijah also fled to the wilderness. Paul spent three years alone in the wilderness.”

“After Paul’s conversion, he pastored the Corinthian church.”

“Before preaching, Paul went to Arabia for three years!”

By the end of the meeting, I couldn’t hold back my emotions anymore. One sister from the cell group stayed behind to comfort me. I really wanted to open up, but I knew she couldn’t understand a word I said.

She interpreted everything I said as something personal, completely unaware that my understanding of faith was far beyond hers.

When I walked out of the apartment, I smiled and hugged the others goodbye one by one. They didn’t know I was saying farewell forever.

Finally, when I hugged Roy goodbye, I told him I was leaving the church.

“Has it become this serious?”

“Uh-huh.”

Then he mentioned the article. I asked, “You don’t think I’m crazy, right?”

Even though I already knew from his reflection that he had recognized the weight of my soul, I still wanted to hear it from his mouth.

“Of course you are not crazy.”

This was the first affirmation I received from a person—after realizing my calling.

God reached out to me through Roy once again.

This time, to make my departure resolute.