The day after

Christmas is over, I am in no way disappointed.  I think this is the worse Christmas I can remember having in a while.  Nothing particularly bad happened, I just feel extremely anxious about this whole "God" thing and what is supposed to mean.  Oh, and some family stuff but I'll save you the sob story.

The pastor at Chapel Creek (the church I've been visiting) gave some beautiful stories this morning about how much joy there is the birth of a child.  It was incredibly refreshing and the cheesyness was kept to a minimum.  But I can't get over cringing everytime I hear "God" this and "God" that and then talk about church committees and business meetings.  One woman, during her prayer talked about how the church was small but wanted it to grow and looked forward to it growing.  Why?  Then you have to create more space and take up more time creating stuff for people to do.  Slowly but surely it turns into a social club and you have to have a place to support this club and that means more and more overhead.  Which means then you have to have busniness meetings and a hierarchical stucture so someone can decide what to do with this thing "the church".  Whatever happened to meeting in people's houses?  Plus, what the hell is "community worship" all about?  I love meeting together but getting together to sit and watch some people perform in front of an audience just sounds like entertainment to me. 

I really like the people at this church and I think they have much to offer each other and the people around them.  The other night one lady had us over to her house and we all sat around and drank wine and laughed and talked with each other.  All this and all at the cost of a couple of bottles of wine and a few snacky foods.  No bulding payments, no extra electricity costs, no staff salaries, no equipment costs, just friendship and wine.  Why isn't this good enough for "church"?

I wish I could have enjoyed this Christmas season, but churches make me tired, christians make me suidal, family makes me depressed, and the idea of "God" confuses the shit out of me.  I'm still semi-hopeful, although its becoming more and more painful to remain that way. 

Comments

[Jerry]

Hi Adam.

I wanted to thank you for visiting my blog today. I was also grateful to find that I am not the only who struggles to understand God. Anyway, I commented to your comment on my blog if you care to look. I hope to hear from you again.

[Leighton]

One problem I ran into back in the day was that church (or Church) seems to be not just a community, but a community dedicated to understanding life and the universe in one particular way. When people find that way unpersuasive or incoherent or irrelevant, it's hard or impossible for them to fit in, no matter how much they might want to. It's just a rough situation.

Hope is good, unless it destroys you. Something people never seem hear growing up is that having all the belief and faith and hope in the world still won't ward off the Dark, and that at the end of the day everyone still has to fight their battles alone. That's never easy to deal with, but it's worse when it comes as a surprise, and still worse when you think you have some kind of magic talisman that will chase away despair. That's the phantom faith that too many American churches peddle: join us, and you'll never have to worry again. Problem is, it doesn't work.

[Adam]

Leighton,

I think you put my struggle into words very well. Thank you for your insights. They are extremely helpful.