A Meditation on Churchgoing

I have a friend who calls herself "very spiritual" and says she has "a close relationship with God." She likes to watch Ultimate Fighting Challenge on TV. She hasn't gone to church since her childhood; she says she doesn't think it's necessary. "What's the point of sitting in a room with a bunch of people and reciting a bunch of words?" she says. Still, every year she sends me a Christmas card with a Bible verse on the front.

I have a friend who's an atheist, who calls Christianity "a big fairy tale." He once asked me how it was possible that I could believe in God when "you're such a no-bullshit person in the rest of your life." He's a very kind and generous person--he once surprised a large group of us by picking up the check at lunch--and, after a tour of duty in Vietnam, he's opposed to war on principle. He tells me that he believes the Gospel is generally right; he just doesn't believe in an afterlife or a supreme being, the resurrection or the second coming.

I grew up in a family that went to church every Sunday simply because it was Sunday. If we missed a week, it was either because my mother was sick or the whole family was on vacation. My parents' church was in the older part of town and didn't have a strong youth program--it never felt like a place I wanted to be. Certainly it wasn't a space that allowed for exploration or questioning, and neither of my parents had the vocabulary for discussing questions of theology. The best my mom could do was repeat something that had once been said to her. When I asked her why people needed to go to church, she told me "Because God is our shepherd and we are his flock." For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what that had to do with church.

So going to church on a regular basis didn't bring me closer to God. In fact, it drove me away from church (and, in large part, away from God) for twenty years. I didn't see the point of spending time in a place that required people to be as easily led as sheep; I thought I was too smart for that. Instead, I spent those years looking for answers in other places. But none of those answers were adequate, either.

I tell people I started going to church again because my daughter once looked at a nativity scene and asked me "Who are those people? What are they doing?" That's partly true: she did say those things in response to the nativity. But I started going to church again because something inside me--call it my heart, call it my soul--heard those questions and thought "She deserves to have some answers." And I knew any answers I could offer would make sense to me but be as limited as the ones my mother had offered, and would probably sound just as meaningless to my daughter's ears.

So I started taking my kids to church. They were small enough that they don't remember a time before we started going; church is just a part of our routine now. We go more often than we don't, but we take the occasional Sunday off when we're all just too tired to think about getting dressed and leaving the house.

When my kids ask questions about God or faith, I begin my response with "Well, I think . . . " I don't pretend I have the answers: I tell them to look in the Bible, talk to the pastor, talk to God. Figure it out. When my daughter comes home from her Confirmation class and tells me that she disagrees with something the pastor said, I ask her questions about her opinion, help her clarify what she believes and why. I don't tell her she's wrong, or that Pastor knows best and she should listen to him because of course he's right.

I go to church now because it's a place for thinking. It's a quiet space in the middle of a loud, chaotic week, a place to remember who I am and who I want to be. It's a place to listen more than talk, a place where the still, small voice can be heard. In those moments of silence, I can see whether all the pieces of my life fit together or whether I'm acting in a way that's inconsistent with what I claim to believe. I know I'm forgiven, no matter what I do, but I also know there's merit in trying to do the best I can.

I go to church because I need God to remind me, on a regular basis, not to be complacent with things as they are. The world is broken, and I need to keep working to heal that divide if only because I can. Because I've been given the gifts of good health, a clear mind, and an articulate voice. Because what I have doesn't belong to me, isn't what I've earned. It certainly isn't what I deserve. Because God is love, and love in action is the only way to change the world.