Treated Like A Leper
The
next Sunday, I visited a smaller expat church. The sermon was good,
the worship was vibrant, and an elder greeted me afterward, so I asked him
if his church believes that
demons can enter a Christian.
After a pause, he replied that that is a question best answered by his pastor, who
will be
back the following Sunday; the sermon that I had just heard had been given by a
guest speaker.
When Kristin arrived from China, I took her to that small expat church, but we ran late and arrived after the service had begun. As soon as the service ended, the pastor came down from the pulpit, beelined for us, shook my hand and began to welcome us to his church. Just then, the elder whom I had met the previous Sunday came up and said to the pastor, "This is the gentleman I mentioned..."
Upon hearing that, the pastor ripped his hand out of mine, let out a shriek, darted past me, and began to corral his flock away from us. Kristin's eyes and mouth opened wide, and she asked me what was going on. I gently led her outside the building and around the corner, away from the pastor and his flock. I didn't answer her but surmised that the elder had repeated my question to the pastor, who didn't believe demons can enter Christians; he apparently had decided that the question had been posed by someone who had demons and whom he wanted to avoid. Because I had arrived with Kristin after the service began and hadn't yet been introduced to him as the one who had posed the question, he must have thought that both of us were first time visitors to his church, and had freaked out upon realizing that I was the one who had posed the question to his elder.
His church was in a field at the outskirts of the city so it took our tuk-tuk driver twenty minutes to come and pick us up after I called him. I sensed that Kristin was feeling rejected, having figured out the pastor's rejection had something to do with her. We sat on a ledge at the far corner of their church parking lot and I held her in my arms while waiting for the tuk-tuk, listening to the noise of the 'church' members fellowshipping away from the lepers.