Church=Spirituality???

The guy that took our staff worship time this morning shared that old list of "why I don't wash / why I don't go to church". To tell the honest truth it really got on my nerves this time, after years of hearing it, laughing at it and letting it slide off!

Mostly because he equated our spiritual lives with the act of going to church. And as so many of us know these days (aren't we the experts!) you just can't DO church and expect that to be your duty done, you're saved. As someone who has stepped out of just attending in attempt to find some doing, it was all I could do not to get up and run out. But I've learnt to just shut up and not offend anyone. Just about all the staff are very conservative, good church-going types - and I stick out like a purple goat in a flock of white-washed sheep.

I wish I could help them see that going to church isn't what it's all about. I've tried to share bits now and then when I'm on worship duty about what it means to BE. That if you don't go to church it doesn't mean you're damned. But it's a centuries-old mindset that I struggle against, an emphasis on turning up and being counted, an "us vs. them" thing.

And I have to deal with the kids of the parents too - those who tell my son "you can't be a (SDA) Christian if you don't go to church every Sabbath". He's tried to argue that you can, but it doesn't make a difference. It's hard for him to face that attitude, as hard as it is for me as adult. Fortunately for me I'm lucky to have a child who thinks for himself, who is open to the idea that we don't have to follow the nearest crowd.

But it still bugs me when I hear stuff like this, sincere as the folk are. I know I have no right to judge them in their journey - what's right for them may not be right for me, and what's right for me may make no sense at all to them.

It just bugs me, grates on my soul, that's all.