Palm Sunday

I went to church this past Sunday. Now, it's not like I haven't had reason to step in a church in the past decade or so. I've been to weddings and funerals, a first communion. God hasn't seen fit to strike me down for crossing the threshold or anything. Of course, that very well may be because there isn't one. But this past Sunday Blackstone decided to check out one the local churches and I decided to go with him. While our views on religion may seem, on the surface, to fall on opposite sides of the fence. In reality, the difference is almost negligible. Our views, feelings are almost completely in parallel, except he believes in God, and I really don't. I'm willing to allow that no one can know the truth, but that's about as far as I'm willing to go. I'm not sure I'm right. I don't understand how you can be sure you're right. But another difference between us is that he likes going to church. He likes the structure of it, and finds the experience relaxing, even if he does find disagreement with most of the same issues I do. I, on the other hand, find church completely unsettling.

We went to a local church where we know many members of the congregation. These are people I see every week. Truly wonderful people that I am happy to have in my life. But I sit next to these people in a church and I feel so conspicuous, so out of place, so unbelievably uncomfortable. It's about as much fun as a root canal. It reminds me of Hawthorne's short story Young Goodman Brown, where the guy is lured out to the middle of the woods and realizes he and his wife are being indoctrinated into this Satanic cult that the entire town belongs to, but he refuses and the rest of his life has to live in his town, his own home, as an outsider. A functioning member of the community, a husband, who now has to spend his life with this unsettling feeling, not knowing if what happened was just a dream or if the entire town belongs to this cult and he is, underneath all the day-to-day on-goings, really on outcast. Yeah, that's kind of how I feel at church, except swapping Satan for God, night for day, and the woods for a church. But that feeling, that you're all alone while surrounded by people, that everyone else understands, everyone else belongs and you don't. Oh, the theme is still the same for me. I feel like I'm sitting there and either I have completely lost my mind, or everyone else in the building has. We can't both be right, can we? But life just isn't that black and white. We have to allow that we both can be right, which goes against all logic, and is enough to drive me completely batty.

What I do miss about not going to church, is the coming together of the community. What I don't understand is why we can't have that without God and the Bible. This confuses the hell out of Blackstone. How do you have church without God? I don't know that we'd have to call it church, but why do we have to have God to bring a community together to do good works, support and help one another, remind one another about the important things in life, like love and kindness, peace and charity. I appreciate the moral education the church can provide to children and the moral compass it can be for adults. What I hate is how it's deemed necessary to praise God, shout out to Jesus, and read the words of long dead white men as if they were the words of God. I don't see why we need religion to be good people. I don't understand why we need to have our behavior rewarded with heaven or condemned to hell for motivation as to doing the right thing. Can't we just do the right thing because it is the right thing? Couldn't we still have the Ten Commandments without God and the Bible, just because it's the right way to live? Well, maybe not all ten of them. We'd have to drop that one about the idols and having no other gods. That should just make it easier. Fewer to remember.

Granted people need structure, guidance, rules and enforcement. It is human nature to look out for you and your own before all others. We have a government, laws and jails for that. I believe that without order, without law, the world would fall into chaos. I just don't believe that the same is true for God and religion. I know there are many other people that have studied the basic history of religion, how it originated to explain what the science wasn't there to explain yet. I know other people accept the theory of evolution and the Big Bang. What I don't understand is how so many of these people sit in a church and don't feel as alone, confused and scared as I am. Not by the fact that I don't have a path, that my soul is in turmoil, but because I most assuredly am not. I'm not just uncertain that I'm not like them, I'm positive to the center or my being that I'm not. It scares me because I know what I believe, because I feel so alone. Because at any moment I'm waiting for their eyes to glaze over, for them to tie me up and carry me to some god forsaken place in the woods where they do away with all the non-believers.

And many of you, my good friends and readers, lord knows what you think of me now. I do not think you're crazy. I do not think you're brainwashed. Which means I have to allow that these other wonderful people in my community, they're not going to declare me a witch and burn me at the stake. I can breathe a little easier now, well, at least a little easier than Young Goodman Brown, anyway. My center has been shaken a bit lately though. I'm telling myself it's good to be shaken a little now and then. The growing always comes with discomfort.

Comments

[Alice]

I've been going to a church here for about a month now and I have to tell you - it is a really good place. Their focus is on serving the community and the message of the bible - and the feel is more like a classroom and less like a church. I feel like I'm in school, literally. There are parts of the service I don't like - they pass around a mic at the end for people to pray out loud, they sing at the beginning - and so I come in late and leave early to skip the parts I am uncomfortable with. But - like you - I believe that at best we have to admit that we don't know.
I don't think I'm going to be able to wrap my head around the idea of believing in God/ Jesus the way the members of the church do. But I do believe in their mission to serve the community, I do love the fact that I feel a sense of community and structure and once every week I feel as though I am learning very good ideals/ morals as it pertains to life - if I leave the Jesus part out of it and just listen to the message - I am always, always left feeling challenged to be better. So, with that, it's also a church where I can openly ask and argue when I have questions or disbelief's or when I think they simply are not challenging people to question the teaching - and they don't care, they aren't offended, in fact they welcome the conversation.

[Polly Poppins]

There are people, atheists or agnostics, who miss that very sense of community and attempt to start a non-church church, but I have only read about it. But I feel exactly as you do when I go to church, very much.

[Alice]

Yeah, but the problem with a non-church church is - what do you base your learning or teaching on? Church, for me, is a good place for that sense of community because if you leave the God part out, the message is just as useful. At least at this church it is. The moral teaching is still a basis on which to come together.

[Diosa]

Alice, I am wondering how many people are actually uncomfortable with at least some aspects of church, but go because it still provides a sense or morality and community in their lives. I can really relate to that.

Polly, I've been thinking that if we looked hard enough, we might find a church we're comfortable with. We've even toyed with the idea of bringing the kids to a different one each week. This requires more time and effort than we've been willing to invest, though. I like to spend Sunday morning at the gym. It's one of my three gym sessions and I can barely keep dedicated to them as it is.

[Lissfull]

How interesting. I've been away for a while, and I love this post Diosa. I love the sense of community we get at church. I don't like the sense of going out and spreading the good news of Jesus. That's weird to me. Religion is a very personal and difficult thing to discuss, look at how many wars go on because of the different views of religion.
Go to a different church once a month if you have time I am sure you could find something. I would say even try a synagogue. I do believe in God, but I think had a married someone else, I may have a different religion. I wanted for my family that sense of unity, that sense of believing in one religion that I didn't have growing up. I am more science based in my beliefs I think.

I hope that my children keep having faith in some kind of religion as they grow. If nothing else, it is something to turn to when you have nothing else to turn to. There is a comfort that if you have no one else, you have God. But I don't shove that in people's faces. I respect what you believe, and I loved that you came to Thing 1's first communion. You don't need Church or religion to know what is right, you know it in your heart and you certainly teach your children what is right.

What you do is more sincere than the person who takes their child to CCD just to make first communion and that's it. You are firm in your beliefs and you don't falter. That's a belief and faith in yourself and your belief system and that's very real. I know you know all this and don't need me to build you up on your beliefs. Excellent post.

[Diosa]

Lissful, glad you like the post. If there's one thing every intelligent and compassionate person in this world should be able to agree on, it's that we need to respect each other's beliefs and allow room for open and honest discussion.