As a part of my continuing studies into spirituality and philosophy, I decided to revisit Christianity. It’s the religion I was brought up in, but I have hard feelings toward it, mostly due to the mass hypocrisy and spiritually empty Christians I dealt with growing up. The Bible is still a source of profound wisdom, however, and I’ve decided that studying it will be one of the things I will focus on over the next year or so.
With that being said, I decided to go back to church today. This was the same spiritually empty church I was raised in, although to be fair, it wasn’t that bad. Back then (and, I believe, still now) there was a core of Christians who took their spirituality seriously. So, I decided to go back there and see what I could learn from them.
Firstly, this church has changed. They were a fairly small church when I was there. Now, they have a new, massive building, and huge attendance. I couldn’t believe this was the same church. Other changes I noticed were that the new building was far more… opulent than the last. You know those televangelist shows, where the stage is nicely furnished, and everyone is wearing fancy suits? This whole church is like that, not just the stage.
I decided to reserve judgement however, and attend the service with an open mind. Firstly, the praise and worship (which is ironic, since it’s just lip service; true worship is obedience) was about what you’d expect from a penecostal church; a choir singing songs about how awesome Jesus is. Lots of confusing the metaphor of the Bible for literal truth. You probably know the drill.
The sermon was better. The Pastor spoke on Luke 15:8, which I quote here for convenience:
8Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?
9And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost.
There are a few basic things that are shown in this verse:
Firstly, take personal responsibility for what happens to you, and for the mistakes you make. The woman did not get angry, she did not blame anyone else or think someone had stolen it. She simply began a diligent search for her lost coin.
In these verses, the house represents the woman’s self, and the coin represents something dear to her that she has lost. This could be lost integrity, patience, innocence, etc. She diligently searches for what she has lost, working to reclaim it without rest, showing us an example of the diligence we should all have in our own spiritual journeys.
…and that was it. The rest of the sermon was typical Mother’s Day fare, talking about the responsibilities and difficulties of being a mother, and how we should show more appreciation for them. I agree that this is a very difficult job that is vastly under-appreciated, but there wasn’t great spiritual substance in that bit.
I’ll go to this church again sometime, and see how things go. It was bad at first glance, but perhaps it isn’t as bad as it seemed at first. We’ll see.
Question: Why did you choose to go back to that church rather than finding a more spiritual christian church? They do exist, from what I hear lol
By: butchjax on May 10, 2010
at 10:46 am
Part of it was the request of my mother, who is a devoted member of said church. I also wanted to go back to where I first started in being taught religion and spirituality… sort of go back and see it with clearer and more open eyes. And as I said, there is a core of spiritual Christians there, it’s just that there are a lot of posers and hangers-on. I really wasn’t equipped to understand that spirituality properly when I left, so I really did need to go take another look.
I was told, however, that that day’s sermon wasn’t exemplary of how good the spiritual teaching usually is, so I’ll have to give it another shot, to be fair. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll try another church. There’s no shortage here in the Bible Belt.
By: florianlang on May 10, 2010
at 4:46 pm