I feel very blah today.
I was reading this blog about a woman that's been on the infertility journey for almost seven years. Pretty much her entire thirties. They tried everything., including a surrogate mother. That pregnancy didn't take either.
Then, the couple tried to adopt, and the local police chief in Vietnam refuses to sign the papers releasing the children. So, this couple, along with other couples who've adopted children from that orphanage, have been stuck in limbo for almost three years. Their son was seven months when he was matched to them, he was 36 months at the last blog post of hers that I read.
Can you imagine that woman's pain? Holy crap. But she sounds tough and resilient and uses humor a lot to stay sane.
We went to Denny's instead of to church yesterday. I'm trying to get some clarity on why it is I want to attend a church anyway, before trying another one. Despite the weirdness of the small Baptist church, I liked being recognized there. I felt like I was part of a community.
I think that's why I want to go to church, despite my very hermit-ish tendencies. But my developing religious and spiritual philosophies do not fly well within the traditional church environment. It takes me right to the crux of my confusion.
I have powerful internal voices telling me that I'm sinful, back slidden and unacceptable. These voices gain power within the church, because so frequently, the church's message agrees with the voices.
Simultaneously, those old and inbred voices are telling me that I can't understand God outside the context of religious authority. The very idea that I could is blasphemous, ridiculous, laughable.
Then I have another voice reminding me that what I'm feeling isn't conviction, it's condemnation; it's an ancient condemnation that I'll never placate by any action of mine.
I keep getting the feeling that the church wants me to be in submission to it- to its pastor and its unique group dynamics. It feels like the church wants to play three important roles in my life: to be a direct pipeline to God, to be a translation for His voice and to verify that my actions are acceptable.
The problem is, I grow increasingly jealous of those roles; I want them for Christ. I think that He, not the church, is my pipeline to God. I think that He is the Word, and I think that through Him my life and my actions are redeemed. He is the one that teaches me how to live my life.
When I attend church, I participate in a set emotional ritual. I should come to church feeling good that I have presented my physical person properly to the church, with the acceptable and necessary equipment. I can feel especially good about myself if I attended my small/life group earlier.
Once church begins, I should feel bad that I have sinned during the week and that I have not prayed enough, read my Bible enough, or gone to the Wednesday prayer/study group. Or, if I did, that I did not pray out loud or that I did not read the assigned section in my study book, or that I had doubts or questions that I knew were unacceptable.
During worship service, I should repent and go with the emotional flow. I must work myself up, using the lights and the sounds, to reach the acceptable fever pitch.
Then, before the emotions have a chance to wear off, they pass around the offering/tithes plate/bag and I give tithes but I feel guilty because I haven't given an offering. Or, I don't give the full tithes and I know that I'm sinning big time.
However, I get a burst of pride and accomplishment when I put my envelope in the bag. No else knows what I'm giving, but they can see that I do. In the eyes of the church, I'm acceptable.
Then I prepare to humbly take in what the pastor is teaching me. I busily scribble notes in my study guide. I look up the verses in my Bible. I Participate.
At the alter call, I feel how miserable is my state and how far I have yet to go, and how infrequently I feel the presence of God in my daily life, which is full of HGTV, loading the dishwasher and early morning commutes to work.
I repent, but I'm not brave enough to go up to the front of the church. I feel bad, but I pour out my heart as best I can on my own.
Or maybe I'm desperate enough that I do go down to the front. I'm deeply humbled and yet exulted. I'm a dear daughter of the church. I say that I want to receive more of God. I receive the laying on of hands and lots of impassioned prayer.
Then I walk out. I feel emptied, clear and sparkling like a goblet washed with Cascade. By that evening, however, already I feel the film of the world shifting down over me. I read an extra chapter of the Bible to try and desperately hold on to it.
Maybe I pray longer. Maybe I skip my favorite show. Maybe I get addicted to denying myself things in order to feel good about myself. I go on religious purges like other people go on diets. Maybe I'm immune to all this and I just go to church because I always have.
Church is like a club. It has membership dues, initiation rites, and ceremonies. It has standards for membership and a vertical authority system. Some rites are for members only, others are open to guests as well. We look up over the backs of every one's heads up to the pastor, who is the only one who can look us in the face.
When I attend church, I'm directly engaging these old, powerful patterns of belief and behavior. It's exhausting and it's stressful. It's frightening to live in the question, instead of leap at the answer.
But how weak is Christ, anyway? Is He so weak that the people who question church slip right out of His grasp? Is He chained to the pulpit like a dog on a leash? Is He so obtuse that He can't talk to people's hearts without the church's official translation?
Is the devil so powerful that he can pretend to be Christ, and speak lies into people's hearts, and Christ just stands there off to the side, wringing His scarred hands in consternation, unable to free His son or daughter from deception, because that person isn't in church?
I think not. I think it's terrible to believe so. I think the real church is vast and invisibile to the world. The world doesn't recognize it, because it's organized according to people's hearts. It doesn't have political sway or a collection plate or a dress code. It's made up of all those bruised and broken hearts that hunger after Christ where ever they happen to be, inside or outside of a church building.
