A Different Sort of Sunday

Sunday morning, I did what I basically never do (sit down if you’re standing) and went to church.  To say that I am skeptical of organized religion would be an epic understatement: to say that I had my share of misgivings prior to would be even more so.  An unexpected recent shift in my perspective somehow allowed me to adopt the rationale of, what could it hurt, right? 

I was raised in a Christian family, a preacher’s son no less.  I never missed a service, won every Bible drill, loved God in a way that only a child can.   For most of my young life I accepted the Bible, God, Christianity, the whole nine unflinchingly, but I always had questions.  The Bible is confusing, right?  There are contradictions throughout and to a thinking person; a lot of it just did not, does not make sense.  Back then when I asked the questions I was never satisfied with the answer or lack thereof really.  It’s a matter of faith.  Ours is not to question.  Or most common and a tad more bluntly, because the Bible says so.  As my assumed God-given questioning mind developed, I became more and more frustrated with a God who would not allow me to question him.  I was taught to love and trust God, but if I’m honest I didn’t fully, even at that young age.  Being politely told to believe and to simply have faith in something I didn’t fully understand under the ever-present threat of the eternal damnation of hell just made my desire to question more intense and my frustration for not getting answers that much greater.  Blind faith is a fool’s endeavor – I still believe that.  

There simply wasn’t any room for intellectual thought or discovery in the church that I grew up in.  I don’t blame anyone for that, and it’s likely simply a product of my personality more than anything.  It’s even more likely, that I never fully made my displeasure known to my family and certainly not to the congregation who by all accounts were convinced I was of the devil.  At any rate, the frustration with Christianity and its practitioners that I felt as an adolescent soon morphed into an ambivalence toward God.  Ambivalence quickly became anger.  Anger soon became an outright hatred of God, Christianity and anything / anyone associated therewith.  I turned my back on...I denounced God and for the majority of my life now I have lived as a non-believer.  I’m not proud of that as I once was, but it is a relevant fact.

Having accepted the invitation from a close friend earlier in the week, I didn’t sleep much Saturday night.  I was exceedingly anxious, knowing the internal Pandora’s Box I could potentially be opening just by being there.  It was fear that kept me awake.  I was fearful of what I might find out about myself, but I suppressed my fear and blocked out my doubt.  For the first time in recent memory, I reserved my premature judgment and went (blindly) into an incredibly stressful (at least for me) situation with a fully open mind.      

The building didn’t look like what I had always known as church – it is a repurposed warehouse.  There was coffee and bagels in the foyer and little kids running and hippies and hard-liners in hemp and pressed suits sipping cups and hipsters and stoners in skinny jeans and flannel just chillin’.  Still a little dizzy from this new sensation, I exhaled (finally).  I didn’t look or feel out of place and I took my seat without incident.  To look around and see more than one dude who likely shares my affection for Anthrax was refreshing and it set my mind at ease a bit. 

I readily admit that when the music started I became quite emotional.  This wasn’t any worship service I had ever attended.  It was the opposite in almost every way, of what I’ve always known Christianity to be.  The music (which isn’t allowed in my original church) was uplifting and thoughtful and reverent in a way that I didn’t expect and couldn’t comprehend prior to.  When the congregation joined in the vocal, I lost it for a minute.  All of those feelings of guilt that I’d always harbored for not being a Christian, for the supposed disappointment my family had to endure as a result, all of the hate I’d held onto for all those who proclaimed to be Christians but treated me like shit, all of the fear of hell but love of hard preaching and a million other unnamed feelings came boiling to the surface.  I don’t believe in such nonsense as religious or spiritual epiphanies, but there was undeniably a moment on the front end of the service that made me realize that something has been missing in my life.

If there is anything that remains of my hard-line Christian upbringing it is the importance of scripture.  Scripture was present throughout every song.  There was a scripture reading between songs and the sermon was all scripture based.  It will sound odd but I’ll say it anyway; as skeptical as I remain, scripture must be the basis. 

The sermon was familiar; the crucifixion…I’ve heard it a thousand times.  I know the history and the science behind it.  I know the Christianity associated with it.  I’d never heard it preached this way though.  The crux of the sermon or at least what I got out of it is the magnitude of JC’s response to the repentant criminal dying alongside him on another cross.  The familiar text says, Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.  The pastor stated same repeatedly, then he paraphrased…I will meet you where you are.


I will meet you where you are?  No one and I quite literally mean no one on this earth has ever extended me that same courtesy.  At the same time that he is delivering this message he admitted his own hesitancy to accept what seems like an empty promise, his own predilection towards doubt, and his own struggle to consistently believe in a disinterested God. 

Maybe it’s just me, but this didn’t feel like church.  It felt like community.  If felt inclusive.  It felt like intellectualism and religion might actually be able to coexist.  It felt right.  It was a good day.

All of that said the intellectual and skeptic in me persists.  The words and thoughts of Charles Darwin and Thomas Henry Huxley still ring true for me.  I still find the concepts of heaven and hell and Satan and all the other, comical and ridiculous.  I still have big problems with Christianity:  a doctrine of love and inclusion and salvation that is all too often publicly and quite vocally practiced as hate and exclusion and damnation.

So that was Sunday.  Am I fixed or whatever?  Of course not.  Have I suddenly fallen back in lock step with the saved?  No.  Am I willing to question my own disbelief?  Yes.  There is a spiritual intellectualism that has been missing from my life for most if not all of it.  I’ve talked about and have written about a path and this and that a hell of a lot, usually in a different context.  I’m not saying I’m starting a new path or even that I believe in such a thing.  I’m not saying I believe a damn word of anything I heard Sunday or any day before.  I am saying that I felt better this morning in a very large general sense than I did yesterday.  I feel better tonight than I did a week ago at the same time.  I’m not saying that I’ve found or that I need or that I'm looking for or that there even is a thing that could possibly be something spiritual for me.  All I am saying is that I’m open to the idea now.

That’s a different sort of Sunday for me and one hell of a big first step.