Churchgoers

There are many reasons. Some do not feel that going to church is necessary to validate their beliefs, for example. Others do not agree with the ideas that are disseminated in a church.

You know, this is funny that this question came up.

I was raised a Catholic, and attended Mass every Sunday and holy day of obligation for the first, oh....15 years of my life. Then, until 18, attended Mass whenever it was being given at school (catholic high school).

Since high school (I'm 47) besides weddings and funerals, I think I have stepped inside a church due to my own desire twice, plus one more time when I roommate I had in college convinced me to go to her charasmatic church once, because her parents were visiting, plus 2 more times when I was visiting a friend who goes to Mass, and I went along. So about 5 times total.

All these years I never gave it much thought, but I have never felt any guilt or wrong doing about not going to church...the twice I went on my own were 2 times when for some reason, I was trying to figure out what other people got out of it, and went to one Methodist church, and one I don't even know what it was church. Both times I felt it very annoying.

During my entire life, I have always held a belief in God. I don't feel going to church when younger made me a better person. I think going to church today would make me a worse person.

I don't need to join with a group of other humans to worship, that's it.

Anyway, the other day, for the first time in my life, the thought hit me..."You know" I said to myself, "There has NEVER been ONE time in my entire life that I enjoyed myself, felt close to God, or got anything at all by sitting in a church." This goes all the way back to when I was 4 years old....didn't get anything out of it then, or any time in between.

I've walked in many a woods, or beach or sat by a quiet pool and gotten a lot out of that.

What an awesome post, Chai.

As for me, I have always had a hard time with some of the actions and beliefs taught inside of churches. Still, even so, I have sat through sermons that have touched me so deeply I could not hold back my tears.

And on that note, I have also had many many deeply personal moments with God, in total privacy, that have had the same effect. So I always feel like I carry my church around inside of me. And God knows my heart better than anyone. While I don't have anything against all churches.... for me, someone that is supposed to be teaching me, I hold to very high standards.

I was an avid "church goer" for many many years. It became the very foundation of my life for a long time. I was very involved in a lot of what is considered the "more out there" concepts of christianity. Prophecy, laying on of hands, speaking in tongues, and so forth. I never did roll around on the ground and roar like a lion or anything even close to that though. It didn't matter what day something was going on at the church. I was there to report for duty. I moved to FL in July of 2000 and that is when things began to change for me. When I left my church of eight years in MI they "prophesied many things over me". Up until this point in my life pretty much everything that had been "prophesied" to me had happened in one way, shape, or form.

When I got to FL though... it was the complete opposite of everything that had been said. They had said how "easy" this transition was going to be. How God was going to hook me up with a support system very quickly and establish me here... blah blah blah... I don't even remember it all now. I just know it wasn't like I thought it was going to be. I would go into a church and was completely ignored as if I were some sort of unwelcomed intruder in "their world". It was a valuable learning experience for me actually. I learned what it felt like to be on the outside looking in. I had never experienced that before because at my church of eight years I was always the one looking from the inside out.

I had no clue how much it hurt to attend a church for three months and have no one even say hello to you. To make efforts to get to know people and only get brushed off and pushed aside. I had been very comfortable in MI. I had "my group of friends" and anyone outside of that was hardly of any concern to me. The final blow to me though was when I went to an "outreach" for the homeless one saturday night that the church I was going to put on. They did it every saturday night for the homeless people in town. It actually had a pretty good turn out. They did the worship, gave a ten minute lecture on tithing, and proceeded to pass buckets around to the homeless people to donate to "keep the ministry going".

I can't even begin to tell you how angry that made me. To say you are out there to "help" them but then ask HOMELESS PEOPLE to donate so you can keep "helping" them. Absolutely ridiculous. *shakes her head* Before I moved to FL I deemed myself to have a very close "walk with the Lord". To be very sound in my relationship with Him. Yet the more I saw outside of my little comfort zone I had lived in, the more discouraged I became. I stopped listening so much to the things I would hear in my heart, and I just kind of gave up on church and "christians" in general.

The funny thing is I actually had some friends who absolutely refused to go to church. They were very bitter angry people. Some church had hurt them somewhere along the lines and they decided never to go again. They were self-appointed evangelists in their own minds. They didn't need anyone. I remember talking to them and leaving thinking, God... I don't want to end up like that, yet as I look in the mirror some days I really have to wonder if that isn't what I am becoming. I want to love God like I used to. I feel something big missing in my life sometimes. Like a big hole. I have attended church occasionally through out the last couple of years, but I have no tolerance for it anymore.

To listen to the things these guys preach and then see what they do in their free time. To watch people isolate others because they aren't dressed the same, don't act the same, don't come from the same side of town... To listen to the things "christians" talk about right after they "witness" to the lost. To see how "christians" treat each other. It's all very discouraging to me. It's nothing I really care to be involved in because regardless of how far my "walk with the Lord" has fallen, I just don't think it's right and I don't want to live like that.

I actually was considering trying to attend church on a more regular basis just recently. I was talking to a friend from work who had invited me to her church. I was going to bring the kids from work one Sunday and one of the kids was concerned because she did not have a dress to wear. Now... me being me said... aaah don't worry about it. God doesn't look at your clothes anyway, He looks at your heart. I'm not dressing any different than I am today to go. My friend did one of these ----> and said, "Oh NO! You CAN'T show up in shorts. That's just disrespectful. You have to at least wear jeans." I was like... "umm.. no I don't actually and if people don't like it they can stare and gossip as usual. I'm not changing my appearance just to fit in at your church honey."

So you see, it's things like this that keep me from going to church. I personally think that for the most part the church has got it all wrong. They've turned something that was meant to help them to help others into something that is only to help themselves. I'm not down with that. Oops... sorry... there I go rambling again... *sigh*

I've been in churches since I was a baby, three to four times a week, for my first 18 years. When I became pregnant with my child, I was back in church and taught Sunday School, was an all around active member of church...

The worst people I've met, and some of my worst experiences, were in churches.

Church is no place for a decent human being. Not Baptist church, anyway.

I'm giving it one last try when I move. I'm going to try to UU church. I'll report back.

So far in my experience Baptists are the worst of the entire lot of them. No doubt about it Lash.

When I was a child I attended church regularly and every summer I would go to a church camp. When I moved from Kentucky to Indiana I felt out of the whole church scene for a few years. Then I decided to go with a friend and I realized many things after being separated from it. Much like hephzibah, I got the chance to see what it was like looking in from outside instead of the other way around. Nobody welcomed me except the preacher and that welcoming seemed disingenuous. The welcoming was, in my mind, more like "welcome to our church, feel free to stay and make sure to donate."

I sat in there for a while and that was the first time I actually noticed how they raised their voice to emphasize certain things and speed up their speech to casually avoid other things. (When was the last time they emphasized Deuteronomy 28:47-57 and 2 Kings 6:26-29 where Israel was beseiged by an army God had commanded and the inhabitants of Israel had to boil their children and eat them to survive?) I also noticed that many things were repeated over and over and over again to emphasize certain aspects instead of looking at the Bible objectively. And don't be confused, many posters on discussion forums like this one do the same thing by changing the color of the words "love" and such things and underemphasize other subjects like the punishment of cannibalism.

Anyways, as I was listening I thought back to my childhood in the church camps and how they had competitions amongst the campers to see who could memorize the most Bible verses. I also realized the importance of the "blindfold game" in the whole scenario. I was naive at the time and believed it was to build trust between me and my partner by one trusting the other to give good directions but it was more of training program to get us to unquestionably trust fellow Christians. Behind the small games and campfire stories was a ruthless indoctrination agenda. Again, the whole thing was disingenuous like the way the preacher welcomed me into the church.

Needless to say, I left with a very bad taste in my mouth. Church is what people tend to call "an aquired taste."

Wow.

This is turning into a REALLY great thread.

First off, I'm so glad this hasn't turned into an anti-God tirade.

Seems like the common thread here is that it's the people in a church that are the issue, not a belief in God itself.

Also, I'm learing so much about posters, things I never knew...

Lash, YOU are/were a BAPTIST!!!??? That floors me.

I'll post later, but re baptists, I had no experience with that belief system until I was way into adulthood, like into my late 30's.

Honestly, at first I thought these people seriously had to be kidding...but that's another story.

Not to be baptist bashing, expecially since the religion of my childhood was so different in tone, but the baptist experience is an extreme exaggeration of why I never got anything out of sitting in a church.

Thanks for starting this thread shark.

As far as I know my parents have never been religious yet the past few years they do go to church on Christmas eve, actually so has my friend who is my age,30!!

Ive been when I was at school, weddings,funerals but always felt uncomfortable.Not in a God way but they always seemed so regal and quiet that I felt like I shouldnt be there.
Its the last place you should take a child.
I also find it odd that churches are very elaborate, richly decorated places yet they are meant to be a place which represents a poor carpenter!

When I was a little girl, daddy used to take me to church every Sunday. Raised Catholic, he insisted I be baptised as a baby, go to church until I was old enough to rebel (he recognized I would rebel ), attend catechism classes, etc.

Little like that, I had my own idea of what God was. My family was quite liberal. If I insisted "I am not going"and stuck to it, well, that would have been my decision.
First and foremost, my father valued independent thought. He adored and nourished my questioning, curious side.

However, I liked church. It seemed magical. We attended a french mass with heavy doses of Latin. I was in love with the hymns: how I loved singing, my voice blending with everyone else's! I felt 'God is an alright guy'. And, most of all, I liked the entire day devoted to me and my dad alone. We had an entire routine set out.


I stopped going to church as a teen. I felt how others in the church were attempting to tell me how to live my life. I hated that. It spoiled it. The peer pressure was worse than school!

I still like the old, chain-smoking priest I had as a kid. I go see him every once in a while. He knew my father well.

I have visited all sorts of churchs, and have found the same 'peer-pressure' at most. I don't need that bs.

So, I don't go to church bc it doesn't make me life better.
The rare times I go now, it is to SING, or to bond with someone I love who is a regular church-goer, or to take a gander at what is going on around me. Isn't going to hurt me one way or another.

I could write a lot of stories of 'how bad church is'. Bc I have some bad experiences like many. And I wouldn't cry if churches disappeared from the earth.

But the bottom line is: I don't want to go. And I am in charge of this life.

What does a church do, what are the benefits?

good question mg....I can only give my take on it.

During religion classes in catholic grade school, the bible reads that "whenever 2 or more of you are gathered in My Name, I am in the midst of them"

So, to me, church is a place where 2 or more are gathering in His Name.

This made me doubt that God was hearing my prayers when I was little, because when I said them, I was mostly alone.

When I was in a church, where God was supposed to be amongst us, I never felt it, I was preoccupied with saying the words in the right order, saying them at the same time as the other people, not saying them too loudly or too quietly, etc.

I had it in my head that not only were my "alone time" prayers not as worthy since there weren't 2 or more there, but because they weren't in some specific order.

The priest would say..."Let us pray...." and then there'd be a string of words that sounded like a lot of thought had been put into them beforehand, or where the same memorized prayers that were said every week.

However, I see God in people on a daily basis. I see God working through them. I don't think I have to have a prepared speech for God, or be with someone else to communicate with God.

Church is a social construct, in short, and I'm not social.

From talking with other brits, I see that religious matters are dealt with differently than some groups of people deal with them here. I'm sure you think we're a bunch of loonies.

Well, i dont believe in church at all but if you want to know the benifits taught in christianity here they are. Church is supposed to keep you on track, a place you go to kind of force remind you to pray and read the bible and be nice to ppl or whatever. Next is its supposed to help you commune with other christians, a homebase if you will, and the outside world is the war zone. also its to show your a devote enough christian that you would sacrifce your time for god, intern for all he has done for you.

I think it seams like begging, mass pleading to god for mercy. I do think church is volitile, a place to be vindicated to go see that was a sin, now your bad. Church is a place to be indocrinated, to feed your mind all it can take so it will be less open minded, therefore more judgemental.

Lash, I think you'll find that Unitarianism is VERY different from the Baptist religion. I've had a lot of experience belonging to various UU groups (even though I still consider myself a Jewish agnostic), and found that they vary a lot from one place to another. At its best, it's a wonderful, tolerant place for people of all sorts of religious beliefs, or no religious belief at all, outside of ethical humanism. Most people who join and become active in a UU church or fellowship are very happy with the experience, at least for a while.

I don't belong to the UU church where I live now, because its format of services is too "churchy" for me. For instance, they use the word communion, even though it has a very different meaning than Christian communion. But I'm not comfortable with it.

Most UU's are a wonderful group of people IMO. One friend years ago referred to it as "the only modern religion." Try it, you may find spiritual nourishment far beyond what you'd ever experienced.

EpiNirvana,

You seem to have a somewhat warped view of Church. At least as far as what I experience in my Church. I know that some places of worship probably portray some of what I have read on a few of the posts in this thread. However, not all Churches are the same and not all Church services are the same.

I feel very fortunate based on what I read of other denominations. It validates, to me, that I made the right choice.

I am a Buddhist. I have not been to a mainstream church in over 18 years.

That was very kind, NWIslander. Thanks. I'll keep you posted. Hope you can find a gathering of welcoming, interesting people where you are.

All i have said is from my mother catholic side of family, my fathers lutheran side of the family, baptist churches, the nondenomination churches, the presperterian churches, and laterday saints. and two private christian schools. These all have yelded the same outcome in differnt ways.

I am sorry for your experiences. Fortunately, I have not had those experiences. I have, however, seen them. In some of the places you mentioned, but not in my denomination. Maybe that is why I chose it.