'Should I go to church or stay home?'

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22 ESV)

Dear Abby: I was raised in the Christian faith by my pastor parents. As I reached my early teens, I realized that those beliefs didn’t really fit, and I gradually stopped attending church. I stayed away all through college. My time away only solidified that, in terms of belief, Christianity wasn’t for me.

After I graduated this year, I realized I missed the community and ritual of the faith and the church. There are a number of churches in my area, but I feel guilty attending one when I don’t believe in the same things as the other members. My family always taught me to be considerate of the beliefs of the people around me, and it seems dishonest to go to a service and listen to prayers my heart doesn’t embrace.

I’d still like to attend church. Have you any suggestions for what might be a good course of action? Should I go to church or stay home?

A sign, er, tweet of the times... sigh sigh sigh

I read the above in this morning's newspaper. I don't know that "Dear Abby" would be the most logical institution from which to seek advice on whether to "go to church or stay home?" But that's not the point and faith questions are seldom logical.

I see this person's unresolved spiritual tension as a foot in the door, a need to fill an emptiness. And I'm curious about the ill-fitting "brand" of Christianity that seems to be behind this publicized search for answers... This, brothers and sisters, is why (well, not entirely) I want to be a pastor! I would love to sit down with the writer of this letter and chat over a cup of coffee; we both need to know the rest of each other's story...

Unfortunately for the seeker, there are too many choices-- the Christian Church with Christ Jesus as its cornerstone can be difficult to identify with the naked eye, these days. From the time of the Great Schism in the 11th century (separating the Roman Catholics from the Eastern Orthodox), Man has continued to construct a veritable Tower of Babel of "true" churches (we've made a real mess of things, haven't we?). How does the outsider looking in know who's right and who's wrong? We can't all be right, can we? (That last question is meant to be rhetorical...)

And within this hodgepodge of Christian churches one would expect to find, um...Christians. But what does a Christian look like? Act like? Why does one identify with Pentecostals, the other Presbyterians? Or Catholics? Or (drum roll)...Lutherans (see previous post on this one)?

I saw a tweet today from the TheologyMix Twitter feed that addresses this very topic. John I. Snyder, "international pastor, author, and conference speaker," wrote a post to a blog on TheologyMix entitled What Is A Christian? — The Bible Study. An excerpt to what's labelled as an introduction (will this be a series of posts? I hope so!):

The Christian Church in North America is the most highly organized, high-tech sinking ship on the sea. In so many ways and in so many places it has lost its way, lost its identity, and has ruptured badly—not by external forces, but by internal strife and disagreement on the basics of faith. We may well wonder how much longer it will stay afloat.

Entire denominations that have been around for generations are abandoning their historic confessions and tossing overboard the theological and moral guidance systems that have kept them going forward since their founding.

All the fundamental questions are now up for grabs:

What is a Christian?
What makes Christians and the church different from the world?
What should we believe and how should we behave in a pluralistic and mixed up society?
Are there rights and wrongs anymore?

And other questions follow naturally:

Why does Jesus’ church have so little impact on the culture?
And why are we Christians more followers than leaders of social and political movements?

Good questions. (Maybe he ought to send them with an SASE to Dear Abby? Ha ha!)

Oh, yeah. Dear Abby's advice cured my hiccups:

Dear Unorthodox: You don’t have to stay home. Instead, explore a denomination that has no dogma or creed. One in particular, Unitarian Universalism, has been mentioned before in this column.

Unitarian Universalists believe in the dignity and worth of every human being, and encourage and support others in following their personal spiritual paths. If you would like more information, visit www.uua.org.

Oh, dear. Abby. Did you even look at the Who We Are section? The question at hand is "Should I go to church or stay home?" Now the answer is WAY simpler than the question itself.

Dear Dear Abby...