These are some thoughts I posted as a comment on someone else's blog. They are also things that I've been thinking about for a long time. I might write more extensively on this subject at a later date, but for now, here are a few brief lines on my general thinking:
We need to take the phrase "go to church" out of our vocabularies. "Church" isn't somewhere we "go." The phrase alone indicates a deeper mindset that "church" is a location, a building, an event, (an entertainment?), something we can attend.
By Biblical definition, it's not possible to "go to church" or "attend church." Because church isn't somewhere we go....it is something we *are*.
After all, think of our families: We *are* family. We don't "attend family." We don't "go to family." We *are* family. The statement indicates a certain mindset, and it's the same mindset we should have when thinking of the church.
It isn't possible to open or close the doors of the church, because the church doesn't have any doors other than Jesus Christ. When our family assembles to worship God, we should want to worship God *with* them. Not "attend a service" so that we can say we were there. But anytime our spiritual family is assembles in order to praise God, we should feel a drive, a burning *need*, to praise God with them.
I believe that if we try to change our mindset about "going to church" vs. *being* the church, it will go far toward resolving some of our inner conflicts about "life in the suburbs" (meaning our everyday, do-this-do-that-rush-to-activities habits) vs. true spiritual life. If we can learn to think of ourselves as *being* the church, perhaps this can help us refocus our priorities, so that the accumulation of status symbols and the living-out of the social life become less important.
In closing, a thought about the kids and the soccer games and the medals and the ribbons (which kids receive even if they haven't earned them, because we want to boost their self-esteem): Why do we allow our children to get sucked into this you're-ok-I'm-okay culture? I'm all for academic achievement.....but why do we push it so hard? We want our kids to grow up and go to college and get goods jobs. From a young age, kids say, "I want to be a fireman, a police officer, a teacher, a vet when I grow up."
But I've never heard a kid say, "When I grow up, I want to be a faithful Christian." I've never heard a parent say, "When my child grows up, I don't care if s/he goes to college, I don't care what job s/he has.....as long as my child has an active, healthy relationship with God."
If we as parents want to keep our kids out of the everybody's-okay culture, we're going to have to change our own priorities first.
"The world we have created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking."
~ Albert Einstein
2 comments:
I became a Christian later in life than a lot of my friends, but I had still heard the phrase "go to church" quite often. I guess I wasn't sucked into it as easy as some, though, because my grandfather would always say, "let's go to worship" "we'll be late for worship" "let's go worship" and never did he say "let's go to church." Even though, growing up I did not regularly attend "church," when we visited my grandparents we attended "worship." Now my grandfather did grow up in a Christian household in the (cliched phrase) "bible-belt, so it proves that no matter what you inherit as far as your "religion" you should still be reading and proofing using the bible, applying it to your daily life. Which is what you're doing, of course :)
It's what I'm *trying* to do, anyway. With varying degrees of success, depending on whether or not I open my eyes far enough to what God is trying to teach me. ;o)
I think your grandfather had the right idea. Lately, I've been trying to change my vocabulary from "going to church" to "worshiping God"--or from "go to church" to "go worship" or something similar. I firmly believe that how we speak affects the structure of our thinking, not just the other way around.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Bri! I always value your insights, and it means a lot to me that you take the time to share them. :o)
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