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Maybe Finding Faith After a Lifetime Without Church?
I was raised by atheists. In my entire childhood, we never once attended church as a family. Which was something, considering this was small-town, Bible-Belt Georgia in the 1970s and everyone went to church.
Every Sunday was another weekend day of fun and games. Usually, we’d have a big breakfast and watch the 10:35 a.m. movie on TBS, which was usually John Wayne or, maybe, Mr. Roberts or something like that. I’d usually snuggle with Mom for a bit, move to sit by Dad for a bit. Somewhere in the movie, my sister would wander off to her room and do whatever it is she did.
I’d go play for a while, we’d have lunch on our own and — a rarity — supper on our own. Every other day, we’d eat as a family, but Sunday, we’d usually have soup that Mom would make and leave simmering on the stove or in the slow cooker. I loved those family moments.
So, yes, I was raised by atheists, I never had hours of my Sunday taken up by Sunday school, church service, post-church meetings, Sunday Lunch and I wouldn’t trade any moment I had with my family for any religion at that point in my life.
I did go to private school (thanks largely because my parents wanted my sister and I in the same school and she needed the extra care private schools gave) and in those private schools in small-town Georgia, there were chapel services, so I heard a lot of sermons. I even had to memorize Psalm 121 for one of the schools. I can still recite it, mostly, in the King James Version nearly 40 years later.
But I never could “get” God or Jesus and I couldn’t believe in Heaven; it didn’t make sense.
Every once in a while as an adult, I’d try a church service. One time, just before I left Chicago and before Covid came, I tried a Methodist church (it lasted about a month) and then a Lutheran Church (about three weeks). It just never really took. When I’d go, and I’d have to stand and would be asked to sing along, my legs would lock and feel very heavy. It was incredibly uncomfortable. Almost painful.
I did enjoy the PBS series on Catholicism and would watch a lot from Father Barron on YouTube. But, again, it never really took.
But at some point during the pandemic, I started watching the sermons of this little non-denominational church and something did click. I think it was that, for the first time, I heard a preacher challenging the congregation.
Most of the other experiences with church seemed to be “You’re OK just the way you are. You’re perfect as you are.” … and I couldn’t accept that. I know I have major flaws. I’ve given many people in my life good reason to not want to continue our friendship.
But this preacher talked about sloth not being just laying around being lazy, but also of it being very active, but not including God in your life. And the one that really stuck — and still resonates with me today and hopefully forever — is that we are all deeply flawed. We are all deeply flawed, but we are all deeply loved by God.
Now, for what would be the third week in a row, I’ll be attending church. The singing portion of the church still makes me very uncomfortable. I still can’t quite believe in heaven. And I, so far, have left after the service instead of hanging around. But it quietly has become something that I have in my weekend plans.
Maybe this time, I’ll stick around after the service and have coffee, maybe I won’t. But I believe that will happen someday, just like I intend to start doing some kind of small, limited volunteer work. And maybe after 51 years without a church, maybe I’ve found one.
Published in General
Welcome Brother. Might I suggest a short, simple book that might help in the journey?
I hope this church meets your need.
You may like this from Bishop Barron (today’s gospel reading in the Catholic Church is the parable of the Prodigal Son. If you’re not familiar with it, read Luke 15:1-3, 11-32). Notice how he addresses us as “fellow sinners.”
You might also like this (Joe Heschmeyer is my favorite apologist currently). It gets at your statement “I know I have major flaws.”
Which Heaven? The one they tell little children about? I bet if you privately asked everyone in the congregation to define heaven, you’d get at least as many answers as people. Probably more. Heaven is moving on to the next classroom.
“Wherever two or more are gathered, you’ll have at least 3 opinions.”
I just hope to get some summer vacation in between.
This IS your summer vacation! You think everyone gets an easy life like yours? 😆
One comment that my friend @iwe made to me a while ago is that each of us has our own arc. We move into faith and a relationship with G-d in a way that is uniquely ours. I find it tempting now and then to ask myself if I’m measuring up (and in some ways I’m not), but embracing the journey is so very important. Good for you.
Same thing if you asked them to explain how their iPhones work-virtually none can explain it accurately-yet they believe their iPhones work.
most modern people, even Christians, have a very deficient idea of what Gods is- but he doesn’t demand you understand everything b/c it is impossible for you to do so.
I should add, Bill, that I am happy you’re finding something spiritually related. It’s human nature to need it, with a few possible exceptions.
And yet a large number of people unquestioningly accept that the entire universe simply popped into existence out of nothing 13 billion years ago.
Well, the latest “theory” is Loeb’s quantum tunneling method whereby an advanced civilization (Class A) popped our (Class C) universe into existence (one of several “baby universes” expanding on the multiverse “theory”). It’s as if they’re unfamiliar with the falsifiability requirement of the scientific method. And they have no familiarity with the philosophical problem of infinite regression (solved by people of faith with God as the uncaused Cause).
But, remember, these are people of superior intellect. Just ask them.
God said “Excuse me!” after it happened.
People conflate morality and ethics with religiosity. They can both occupy the same space. Religious texts can provide some interesting takes on moral questions, but morality can also thrive independently. Religion can also be rather tribal, which can be good or bad, chauvinistic or inclusive, judgmental or forgiving. In the US, religion plays a part in our collective idea of morality, but it has little real power beyond shunning. That is a good thing. Religion, like all human institutions, can be coercive, or worse. Unlike you, I was brought up in a church-going family. But it never took. None of my grandparents were church going people, but they insisted that their children attend. My father was the single sibling to continue the habit into adulthood. My mother enjoyed the community, but was secretly never able to digest the dogma. She was quiet, respectful and never challenging.
I was different. Agnostic does not adequately describe me. I appreciate the sentiment, but refuse to accept “truth” as defined by others claiming insider information. And all too often faith is applied to politics; that is akin to coercion of a different kind, a sort of mass hypnosis. I will never be convinced, for example, that global climate change is anything but a political fever dream and yet, the pastor at my daughter’s church dedicated a series of sermons on the evils of a failure to wean ourselves from reliance on fossil fuels for power generation.
But churches, like all organizations, must have followings (and the funding that followers provide) to continue.
I choose not to play.
You are not the chooser.
Religion, properly understood, is the set of beliefs and principles at the center of one’s moral code. Religion is not ‘God,’ but one of the ways we seek to have a relationship and understanding of God.
One of the things I find about casual or non-religious people is they think of religion as an App rather than an operating system and that’s why they do not understand why deviations from orthodoxy can be troubling.
I pray that you find answers, Bill.
I did not come to faith in Jesus until I was 36, and grew up unchurched, though I did attend a Catholic high school. When I came to faith, it was not Catholicism. More like lower-case-b baptist.
I don’t know if my experience will be helpful to you. For me, the music was one of the major draws in the couple of months before my conversion, and remained so for a long time thereafter. So we’re different in that respect. I did find that it helped to try to let go of my objections, temporarily at least, and try to be a part of the experience.
I have found that the personal relationships with real, individual people at church are the best part of the earthly experience. More than the sermons, more than the music, though I have enjoyed both of these.
Involvement in a Bible study group has been extremely important to me. You might want to consider this, and look into it. They have always been very welcoming and friendly, in my experience, though there’s no guarantee at any particular place. Like many things in life, I seem to get more out of church when I put more into it.
/eyeroll until it hurts
/working on a post that addresses this type of atheistic conceit. . .
The key point about faith is that you get to have a relationship with God. The Christian faith is not about morality or about following rules, but about having a right relationship with God. Of course, if you have a right relationship with God, you will want to do things His way.
You mean like this?
I haven’t been paying close attention, but has anyone come up with a solid reason why believing the universe was created by God who was not created, is more reasonable than believing the universe itself did not need to be created?
Thanks for explaining how you got there. I hope you’ll be giving us updates now and then. (Now and Then is also this month’s group writing theme. Your story would have fit.)
Bill Jackson:I still can’t quite believe in heaven.
Bill, you might find The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis of help. He provides some great insight into how many people imagine what heaven might be like, from some unexpected perspectives.
Our hearts are restless, until they rest in You. St. Augustine
https://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/media/articles/ourheartisrestlessuntilitrestsinyou/
And they talk about quantum foam as if 1) it’s existence were as well-established as that of gravity and 2) you can find buckets of it at Wal-Mart.
Yes. The universe had a beginning. We know this beyond any rational doubt at this point through multiple lines of evidence- COBE data, laws of thermodynamics, et alia. The uncaused, non-time-bound first cause (God- one aspect of the divine character anyway) avoids the infinite casual regression of time-bound events, which is logically impossible.
What if the universe created the laws of thermodynamics, rather than the opposite?
Have you looked in Aisle 17?
They’re not really laws, just observation, leading to undisproven principles.
There seems to be some unclarity here that I will try to sort out here: laws have no causal power unto themselves. They determine how events will proceed when specific conditions are met, e.g. the universal gravitation equation, the point mass equation, and so related formulas seen in th study of gravity are all functions of quantities of matter in a given spatial relationship to each other, but none of these laws cause either matter or space to exist.
The question of whether the universe is beginningless or not only derives evidence from observations of the workings of these laws- the question itself is not strictly dependent on them. For a long time, it appeared that such evidence could support either an eternal or oscillating universe model, but the last 120+/- years of discoveries in physics and astronomy have repeatedly and thoroughly confirmed that the universe had a beginning.