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Meera Atkinson  An individual’s relationship to their faith is critical in shaping their relationship with themselves, with others, and with the world.
Most people have a superficial, antagonistic or ad hoc relationship to religion; but for a person who has committed their life to it, the decision to question religion in search of a more genuine relationship with God is nothing short of courageous. Rob Lutton, aged 43 and father of a 15-year-old daughter, is one such person.
Unpack the issues...
Rob is the community relationship manager for Uniting International Mission and Uniting Church Overseas Aid. However, he had been ordained at 30 and, until recently, was a minister with the Baptist Church. After some years, married and settled in his ministry, Rob began to feel the stirrings of discontent. “You get caught up in the system of church and it consumes you,” he says. “It’s hard to divorce your identity from your job in that kind of work. It becomes one and the same. It’s not like you clock off at 5pm. It’s who you are.” Rob began to wonder what his identity was outside his role as minister. He also came to believe that the “Kingdom of God” is not confined to the church. “I saw God working outside Christianity in a genuine way, so I began to reflect and went back to the scripture. I woke up one day and felt I could let the whole thing go about needing to define myself as a Christian." For Rob that meant turning his back on the security and standing of his position as a minister. “It became a real cross to bear. I couldn’t carry it anymore and I don’t think God was calling me to carry it,” he says, admitting that the decision was an act of great personal courage. “I’m still reeling from it. I’m still working it through. There are days I wake up and I feel uncomfortable because I spent a lot of my life embedded in an institutional religion. I look back and see it was really gutsy. It’s the same for anyone who makes an active decision to let status go in order to grow and be genuine to themselves.” He made that decision two years ago and, shortly afterwards, his marriage ended. “It was a full-on time of life. To go through that kind of looking at your identity square in the eye is very unsettling. To feel completely alone in that struggle is unsettling and also for people around you. It led to a lot of things changing.” One thing that didn’t change was his desire to know his creator. At this stage in his life, Rob did a 21-day Buddhist retreat in India.  “That was a valuable process,” he says. “As I went through that period of questioning my faith it was a good place to camp within a good, noble religion like Buddhism. It was a protective thing and I saw it as a vehicle of God’s grace to me.” Because this revolution took place not long after he turned 40, people routinely put it down to "mid-life crisis" which Rob claims as a positive. “I think it’s a good thing. If you don’t have a good review of your life at some point in time and have a mid-life audit or an any-time audit you’re an idiot.” Centred now in his new life, Rob says his relationship to himself, to his faith and to others is “just a lot more real". “It’s not as comfortable and I think that’s good. It’s nice to have everything tidy and defined. As you look at your identity and peel it back a bit, it’s not a joyride. I feel I’ve got down to the essence of what it is to be a grace-filled person in the world,” he says. “My faith in God and the importance of Jesus in my life actually grew stronger through that process. That’s something some people within Christianity would struggle with but it worked for me. Sometimes the ways things work in your life are very creative.”
Unpack the issues...Discussion points - How do you see God working in the world? Is it confined to Christianity or is it bigger than that?
- Are pain and discomfort something we should embrace or something we should shy away from?
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