I was raised Lutheran--by which I mean, I grew up going to a Lutheran church every Sunday. My father had grown up without any sort of religious training. My mother didn't know a lot about what it meant to be Lutheran, specifically; she just knew that she'd always gone to a Lutheran church, and she was Confirmed in a Lutheran church, and therefore she kept going to a Lutheran church.
I hated church, as a kid, and hate is not too strong a word. Our church was in the old part of town and had no youth program to speak of. Occasionally there would be some spurt of youth-oriented activity, and my mother would insist that I go and hang out with people I didn't know at all. I went to church because I had to, and when I didn't have to go anymore--when I moved away from home to go to college--I didn't.
Having kids of my own is what changed my mind about all of this. When you have children, the world starts looking like a much different place, full of potential dangers and injuries. I didn't want my children to grow up vulnerable to twisted people who might claim to know something about the Bible and the afterlife; I wanted my kids to have a certain amount of Biblical literacy that they could claim as their own. And when I started looking at the Bible myself, I realized that I actually believe what the Gospel says. Like, really believe it. I realized that social justice and Christianity go hand in hand, in spite of the fact that many people who call themselves Christians work very hard to prove that's not the case.
I go to church now because I believe in what it stands for. I believe in helping people who need help, which is what Jesus did. I believe in loving my neighbor, difficult as that is sometimes. I believe that doing these things is the only way to heal this broken world. I go to church to remind myself of that.
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