New Year and I’m Still going to Church

Three different times people asked me last week about the “point of church.” Great question! My thoughts are always evolving, but here are three reasons I’m a part of a faith community.

1- I’m still goin’ to church because it helps me locate myself in and around a good story.

Story is, I think, how we make sense of our lives. Facts are useful, but facts always wind up being filtered, as I understand it, through a story to create meaning. For example, there’s… 

The consumer story: you are what you’re capable of consuming.
The empiricist story: you become only that which you can verify. 
The tribalism story: you are who your tribe says you are. 
The capitalist story: you are only as good as who you can beat. 
And on and on. 

Story helps us locate meaning. I’m still a part of a faith community because I believe I need a good story. And love is a good story. I might change my mind tomorrow, but as of today, violence-absorbing, perfection-denying, grace-giving-love is the best story I know. (I recognize your church may not know about that kind of love and therefore you may not have a good story. Maybe you should find a new church?)

2- I’m still goin’ to church because it’s a way to “navigate the wrath” of old, tired, and dead stories.

As I’ve said elsewhere (and one should reference oneself as often as one can) if it’s true that God’s son was innocent, that he offered up his life voluntarily, that God didn’t need him to die, then his life, acts something like a wrench being thrown into the gears of our violent mechanism. 

With the gears of the machine grinding, lurching, slowing down, awkwardly smoking, and finally stopping with a bang, we are left in the quiet, bereft of the way we’ve always created our identity: sacrifice. It is not surprising that shutting down our sacrificial system creates anxiety, or generates, to use a Biblical word, “wrath.” Previously, we were able to funnel our wrath onto a sacrificial victim, but now, because of the work of God’s Son, that process has been dismantled which means, among other things, that the wrath is unharnessed! Dr. James Alison, in Undergoing God says it’s possible, “the reason behind the Christian Church is to enable people to navigate the wrath released by the gradual loss of belief in the violent sacred.” 

The unharnessed wrath is the beast’s response as it realizes its source of energy is being depleted. Since all of us have been marked by the beast, it takes all of us to figure out ways to navigate the wrath. An unhealthy church will promote scapegoating and look for ways to revive the old system. A healthy church will create space to tell a better story even while living within the raspy sound of the machine’s final breaths.   

3- I’m still goin’ to church because, well, as cheesy as it sounds, I really like my little faith community. 

I enjoy the songs we sing, and how we continually evaluate the lyrics in light of the good story.
I like the meaningful prayers, and how we often question their meaning.
I appreciate the text we read, and how we’re intellectually honest about portions of the text that don’t seem intellectually honest.  

But more importantly, I love the people I sing the songs, pray the prayers, and read the text with. These are people who have stood by me in the absurdity of life. And in many cases, I have been able to return the favor. And that part, the part about people standing with each other? That is a good story. 

Which leads me to say, I am still a part of a church because it helps me locate myself in and around a good story…