God, Church and Manchester United
Mrs LB made me think about this as we're currently - erm - between churches and MiL (Mrs LB's Mater) keeps asking if we've found one.
What if we're just not fussed?
I love thrashing out theology and all that unknowable anyway stuff, but when it comes to standing in a church and singing or saying 'Oh God you are so big, so absolutely huge, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell you!' I have to face the reality that I'm just not that interested. Nor is Mrs LB, it's probably part of why we're, ahem, between churches.
It's not about rejecting or accepting God. It's a bit like my attitude to Manchester United. I don't cheer when they win or when they lose or go to matches. My day to day life is not affected in any way by their fortunes and doesn't interest me. And I feel a bit the same way about God.
Back when I believed in Hell and all its torments I remember coming across the hymn https://hymnary.org/text/my_god_i_love_thee_not_because and thought "hang on - all these things he's saying its 'not because of' - they're exactly why I'm here!"
So now I don't believe in eternal damnation I really do struggle with the whys and wherefores of religious practice. I have valued church in the past for the music, the community stuff, the commitments (when present) to social justice and so on - but I'm not sure I have a religious itch to scratch.
What is your perspective?
What if we're just not fussed?
I love thrashing out theology and all that unknowable anyway stuff, but when it comes to standing in a church and singing or saying 'Oh God you are so big, so absolutely huge, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell you!' I have to face the reality that I'm just not that interested. Nor is Mrs LB, it's probably part of why we're, ahem, between churches.
It's not about rejecting or accepting God. It's a bit like my attitude to Manchester United. I don't cheer when they win or when they lose or go to matches. My day to day life is not affected in any way by their fortunes and doesn't interest me. And I feel a bit the same way about God.
Back when I believed in Hell and all its torments I remember coming across the hymn https://hymnary.org/text/my_god_i_love_thee_not_because and thought "hang on - all these things he's saying its 'not because of' - they're exactly why I'm here!"
So now I don't believe in eternal damnation I really do struggle with the whys and wherefores of religious practice. I have valued church in the past for the music, the community stuff, the commitments (when present) to social justice and so on - but I'm not sure I have a religious itch to scratch.
What is your perspective?
Comments
On that, I recently experimented with the song creation AI Suno (for work purposes), and asked it to write a hymn in the style of Charles Wesley. The results were... not impressive.
So I find a weird joy in prayer, theology, worship, church history, old church buildings (and community with people I can talk to about that in my own way) but these days going to a physical church to be part of a big loud crowd ( or even a small one) and to have to interact with a lot of neuromajority people with all the anxiety and sensory problems that brings, and at a time of day when I'm not even awake and have few spoons which adds to the stress, just isn't for autistic/ ADHD me.
I recently was in the unusual position of having a preacher all to myself in a small quiet place praying and preaching because I was making a recording of them - and even though I was working I so enjoyed it - I just snap in to a prayerful place in the right circumstances but that's not a practical thing, especially nowadays as churches are merged and merged.
Jokingly, cos I know how bad this sounds and all the bad things, perhaps we need 'DeliverRev' for folk like me who can't do churches and crowds to match us up with ministers we can chat history and theology to and have a prayer with and listen to them expound in the privacy of our own homes or an old evocative church or religious site when we have the spoons for it.
Yes I know all the bad things... but with so many churches going and one size not fitting all maybe there are some other ways.
we (my family) are at the moment involved in a very small video outreach to Vietnamese people mostly in Vietnam, with the hope that this will result in some chat-relationships being established.
I think some folk use randomly shuffled fridge magnets with religious clichés on
Been there..
Take a bow @Telford , that is wonderful. Voltaire would be proud.
Church can be countercultural like that. Admittedly I wouldn't go so far as to say "is countercultural".
It does of course depend on the church.
For me, ‘going to church’ is an act of love and obedience. As Cs Lewis put it, ‘we have our marching orders’. I’m not there to question, judge or criticise. It’s to be with other sinners, to humbly ask forgiveness, receive His grace and put my troubles in perspective. I can pray for others, and yes (I’m with ChastMastr here) be part of the 2,000 year following Our Lord’s commandment, ‘Do this in remembrance of me’. Week by week, year by year it has come to mean so much more for me. I miss it when I can’t go through ill health.
This I know sounds awfully pious (sorry!) but it’s the authentic truth as I live it.
Amen times a million. There is also the command to not forsake gathering together. I don’t relate well to lots of other people, even Christians, but we’re still the Body of Christ, whether I relate to them in this world very well or not.
(For fellow comics fans, it’s like being in the Green Lantern Corps, with countless (well, 3,600, at least originally) members from other planets, many radically different or even incomprehensible (humanoid, animal-shaped, blobs, crystal beings, bacteria, one sapient planet, etc.), but all saying the oath*, all serving the Light and fighting for good against evil, and such.)
* (I knew the GL Corps oath—“In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight,” etc. long before I knew the Lord’s Prayer.)
Aside from Jesus, I'm not at all sure what I would do for a social life if I didn't have church. I work from home (have done ever since the pandemic) and I don't make new friends easily without a common place for us to be. School used to fill that function, but I'm in my fifties now.
Green Lantern Corps Version
"In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight.
Let those who worship evil's might
Beware my power--Green Lantern's light!"
My first thought is that church is a habit. I go because it's Sunday, and it's what I do on Sundays. It would be relatively easy to fall out of the habit (or rather, to develop the habit of not going), and this is more or less exactly what happened to me during a spiritual hiatus quite some time ago.
Getting out of the habit was easy - just take a day off to clear up a backlog of tasks that I'd been putting off, then another day off to take care of some other vital task, then a day to meet up with friends, and a day when it didn't really feel like there was a compelling reason to get out of bed, and that's the first month. And then here's a thing I need to finish off, here's "I was up late last night", and pretty soon it's "I haven't been to church for three months", and so on.
And what I found was that without that weekly reminder, it was easy to let God drift out of my conscious mind. I find that if I go to church every week - if I pray the prayers, sing hymns of worship, share in the Most Blessed Sacrament, and all the rest of it - then I keep Christ at the forefront of my mind. So I go, because it's good for me, and because if I let myself get out of the habit of going, I know what will probably happen.
Then some churches have a special atmosphere. I can sit in them for ages, in the quiet, and feel warm and secure. A good opportunity to thank God for his blessings.
This is wonderful! But how (given the topic's title) did we get here?
From here:
So it’s kind of my fault (shocking, I know…).
But why does it matter if that happens?
It’s harder to sustain a relationship that way.
What relationship?
With God.
Ah yes. The elusive "relationship with God"
In all my years I've never had anything I'd call a "relationship with God" - church or no church. And to the extent you could call any part of my emotions, thoughts or attitudes a "relationship with God", there's no correlation that I've noticed to church attendance.
But let's take this a step back - why would I want one?
😢 I literally don’t even know where to begin. I think I’m going to leave that other posters.
It's the person. I'm not interested in knowing A God, I'm interested in knowing This God. And that's because of how he has made himself known--his personality, as I've come to know him. I would feel exactly the same about him if he were not God and were purely and simply human. Quite a lot of people who knew him only as human seem to have felt the same way (and of course there were those who felt violently opposite, and crucified him).
But I'm drawn to him--and here, to avoid confusion and endless unproductive slanging off the Old Testament, I'm discussing the personality you see most clearly in Jesus in the four Gospels. I'm drawn to his kindness, his gentleness and courtesy, his humor and wit, his intelligence and wisdom. I admire his patience and endurance. I love the fact that when a bunch of people show up to absolutely destroy his plans to get away for a much-needed rest and a chance to grieve for his cousin, his first response in compassion. Mine wouldn't be!
I like the fact that he doesn't shame people who are fragile and needy. On the contrary, he defends them and finds ways to defuse the difficulties they are having with others (the woman with the bleeding issue, the one who wept over his feet, the man with the legion of demons, Matthew the tax collector, Zacchaeus ditto). I like the fact that he calls a spade a spade, even when he knows it's going to put him at risk of his life with the establishment.
I like the way he listens--as if he had all the time in the world (he sure seems to, even as a human being who needs his sleep). He's there for the people who show up at night, or who have long-winded conversations with him over a well, when to all appearances they've forgotten he said he was thirsty. He talks to scholars and to the uneducated as if they were equally interesting and equally worthy--I really think he thinks they are! He doesn't give a shit about his own reputation, and he hangs out with the most extraordinary collection of people.
He can be confusing, yes, and even off-putting--though you can usually get him alone afterward and ask for clarification (a thing the disciples did regularly, and he never came back at them for asking stupid questions). If he rebukes somebody, he does it quickly and cleanly--there's no dark cloud hovering over the interactions you have for the next few days, like there is with most people who've been angry with me. Five minutes later he's speaking as patiently and calmly as he ever did. He's consistent--you can always tell what's going to get him angry, and also what won't. In that sense, he's predictable. In other ways (such as his sense of humor, or his creative solutions to problems), not.
Really, if this were an ordinary human being with nothing of the divine about him, he'd be mobbed. He WAS mobbed (as well as having the aforesaid enemies). I want a relationship with someone like that.
The difficulty, of course, is that he IS God--and right now, physically out of reach, except for special cases like communion. And so the whole issue of making contact with him is not as straightforward and easily explained as picking up the phone or showing up on his doorstep. The ball is in his court--though he's told us that he'll answer if we go on asking, that those who ask eventually get--though it may not come in the form we're expecting, God knows. The most commonly used avenues for "knocking" on his door include prayer, Bible reading, communion, baptism, talking with those who know him already, and attempts at beginning obedience (discipleship).
I confess to getting frustrated with him fairly often. I was yelling at him last week. He didn't mind. I think he keeps me around for the comedy. Once, when he was refusing to make contact with me (or so it seemed), I set a trap for him. It's a weird relationship, but I wouldn't be without it.
Can I unpack that past sentence? What does it mean?
And oddly enough, it happens in the larger world that I run into people (very unexpected people sometimes!) who also smell of him, though they’ve never said a word about faith and may come from an ethnicity that is overwhelmingly non-Christian. And I’ll mention it to my son or husband, and two or three years later, quite by accident, we find out that person is a believer.
I’m sorry about the weird language—I’m not neurotypical myself. The closest I can get to it is a smell. It’s probably a personality resemblance.
Ah. I just - don't. I meet people, mostly who I don’t know very well with and relate to awkwardly.
Some scientists think there's a religious gene. I don't think I have it. I'm perhaps odd that I don't and wish I did. Most people without it never give it a second's thought.
Can I add that this is my (and Mrs RR's) experience also? The quiet prompting to listen to others, to do not my will, but His (and other's) will. I still get lots wrong, cock things up and horrid things happen, but over the years I've learnt to attend to and trust that 'small still voice'.
That our estimable KarlB attends church and takes the trouble to show us what it's like for him (and I suspect many others like him) is all part of (for me) God's way of teaching me more about his people and pastoral care.
Then your attempts to connect with Him, *because* it’s very rough, may count for more in His eyes than for those of us who find it easier. I would also say that the issues you struggle with that you’ve mentioned before—I’m reminded of Job. Job is the one who questions God—the others in the story are the ones who give the glib and easy (but wrong!) answers—and yet Job is the only one who is counted as righteous. He doesn’t get an an answer per se, but at least he asks the questions, and God even tells the “Job’s comforters,” “… my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done.” I know this may not help, and I hope I’m not being a “Job’s comforter” myself, but it might be worth thinking about. Prayers ascending, too. ❤️
If you're not feeling those emotions at the time you're singing the worship songs you feel cut off from everyone else in the service (many of whom may be probably feeling much the same way). Even when I'm not (conscious of) a Taize chant doing anything for me I never get the sense that I'm thereby excluded from what everyone else is doing.
I think Catholic worship works on a different principle from Protestant worship. (Warning: simplistic generalisation follows.) Protestant worship you do because you want to express gratitude to God or express a relationship with God that you already have; Catholic worship is a practice of acquiring habits of thought and love that you don't already have.
(In so far as I'm similar to KarlLB - and I think I can relate to what he's saying - I think KarlLB might be happier in a liberal high church tradition than in a low church tradition. But I may just be speaking for myself.)
But what I fail to understand is why the things you say attracted you are not enough. If all the Churches in reaching distance sing crappy choruses and seem only to be interested in their own emotional comfort then ok I can see that. And in this regard the most obvious difference in our situations is that my wife is strongly attached to the church.
Because I could get the same benefits from attending choral concerts and joining a local eco group, without any religious baggage.
They're thin on the ground around here. Mostly FiF types with the odd Charevo dotted here and there; our parish church is See of Oswestry.
The nearest liberal highish church is in Sheffield and getting there for 10am was too much of a strain on other family members. There's nothing else similar in the area.
But if you don't relate in any way to the content being deeply expressed in those songs, what then?
That feels like an apples and oranges comparison. Why bother with religious lyrics at all for church if lyrics don't matter? Why not just sing Born to be Wild, Nessum Dorma or whatever?
Sorry to join in so late, but I wanted to say that for me, my perspective depends not just on whether or not I believe in God, but on what I believe about him, and how I feel about it.
At one point well into my adulthood, I spent many evenings and hours pondering what I actually believe about God. The conclusion I came to was that the primary thing about the universe that convinces me that there is a God is my everyday experience of being aware of my own thoughts and feelings. I just don't see how that can possibly be explained by a theory of the universe that doesn't include God. I know that many people come to a different conclusion, but the non-theistic explanations I've heard strike me as completely unbelievable.
Because I was raised in a religion that expects me to believe only what I can understand and that presents a comprehensive, rational view of God and creation, I only pondered two possibilities: either that religious view is true or the non-religious view that there is nothing outside the physical universe is true. Having come to the conclusion that the former seems far more plausible to me because of the qualia I personally exerience, I find that I keep coming back to the fact that this God I'm choosing to believe in very much cares about what I do with that belief and how I go about applying it to my life. But I don't believe it means I necessarily have to do so in a church or worship setting because what really matters to this God I believe in is that I have a loving attitude toward other people and that I treat them well. Church and worship are important only the extent that they help me develop and maintain the attitude that best reflects what I think he wants from me.
A grand testimony! But do you enjoy the church services, is the the service of eucharist, for example (as it is for me) emotionally fulfilling and necessary to your well being?
I didn't really mean this to be about me but I suppose it was sort of inevitable. Next stage in my deconstruction of what passes for my faith perhaps?