“Aw Mom, I don’t want to go to church today.”
“Why not.”
“I’ve been going all these years and I’ve pretty much figured out I don’t believe all that stuff they say down there.”
“Well you still have to go.”
“Why?”
“You’re the priest.”
I spoke last time about wanting to provide encouragement for those interested in exploring what church might have to offer and who approach cautiously. I spoke of familiar Christian words and themes that have become problematic even for those of us in the church. Of all the words that might present obstacles for those taking another look or a first look at the church, I can’t think of one more fraught than the word, belief.
The word has behind it not only deep history going back to the first Christians, who were called simply believers, but also strained modern connotations colored by media stories where the word believer is used to describe a variety of people, but quite often those who struggle to hold the line against cultural shifts. In many churches on Sunday the faithful stand up and say together, we believe, then recite a list of things any visitor would assume Christians must believe, or are at least supposed to believe—ideas that have, in fact, been considered the core of Christianity for most of two thousand years. At funerals, one of the rare settings where people not connected with the church have a chance to see what we are about, we quote heavily from John’s gospel where Jesus says those who believe won’t have anything to worry about at the end of their lives. Those sayings are some of the most cherished and comforting in our tradition, but how do they sound to those who have no idea how belief is acquired, or worse still, how do they sound to one who has tried and been unable to lay claim to such belief? We celebrate belief when we have it and ask God for more when we don’t. We even ask forgiveness for unbelief as if belief were something we could control.
The language we use would suggest that belief is at the center of everything we are about in the church, but I can tell you that is not the case in my experience. When parishioners are asked why they belong to the church, an exercise we repeat for the congregation every few years, the answers have to do with belonging and acceptance, with being part of a community that can help shape their lives and the lives of their children, with being challenged to respond to the needs of others, with deepening a sense of spiritual connection in the universe. We don’t hear much about belief. It’s amazing to me that anyone who doesn’t already consider themselves a believer has the courage to come through the door on a Sunday morning, but they do, God bless ‘em. I have great respect and admiration for those who ask if it is ok to stay around and participate even though they don’t believe everything on the list. Fortunately, what they are looking for probably has less to do with beliefs and more to do with what happens in a congregation and what becomes possible in community.
There are some Sundays when I am reading the words of our liturgy and wonder if they couldn’t be changed to better express the experience, and hopes and the important work of shaping our lives that brings us together. What I think happens for many of us is that we are raised with the church’s language, or we are helped through the door in a time when we are really looking for acceptance or guidance. We focus on what we have found that helps us and much of the language that doesn’t connect fades into the background, like the wallpaper in a familiar room. Once in a while we may notice things in the background that catch our attention because they don’t seem to fit our experience, but we have already grown accustomed to the room and we like it here so we work with the parts of the tradition that do fit and leave some of those other things leaning in the corner. When people show up in our churches without the credentials of belief, concerned that they probably don’t believe all the right things and that somewhere down the line someone may catch them not believing all the right things, what they don’t know, and what we don’t usually tell them, is that many, even most of us in church on any Sunday are in the same boat…including the folks up front in those nice white robes. JB
