stay or go....

[james73]

I guess I've been in various churches enough to know that there is no such thing as a perfect church. And, since I find myself in this strange collection of brothers and sisters called the Local Church, perhaps I need to just get on with it. Find a way to make it work.

Here's the main objections for me:

1.LC/LSM feels like a pyramid scheme, a very well-oiled unimpeachable pyramid scheme so well implemented, self-perpetuating and self-protecting it will never fall. I don't want to bring new people into that.

2. I am now having a real problem with traditional Christian beliefs. My view of God is my own and it doesn't make sense to anyone I have tried explaining it to - that's not to say I'm closed to other ideas, I just don't want to others to say my view is invalid, that it's "wrong", because how can a feeling be wrong?

Well, imagine trying to describe your experience of God if you had no religious background, no knowledge of what religion was, if you'd never heard of "God" or "Jesus" or "Bethlehem" (By that I mean, never even heard the most basic well known bible story). And you'd start talking to a Buddhist and he'd say "oh yes, you are talking about impermanence" or whatever and you talk to a Christian and he'd say "now you're talking about God" and you'd talk to an LCer and he'd say "ah yes, now you're talking about the centrality of God's Economy"- would any of them listen and try to put their experiential knowledge, rather than their religious knowledge, in your frame? See how their experience matches with yours, without trying to name it or label it or identify it? Not to abandon their own beliefs, but just to see, just from a empathetic perspective. In fact, more likely, and this is what happens in my group, they say, "ah what you are probably feeling is X, because Y, and this is because it says so in Z, chapter 1, verse 6, footnote 4". Which would be fine, except they totally miss the point of my sharing, repeatedly, and always, without fail, take on this pitying look as if I've been with their group for 18 months and STILL DON'T GET IT.

I have thought about leaving Christianity altogether. But I do feel, there is God, there is something loving and lovely and we have this wonderful opportunity in Christianity to share this on a regular basis with like-minded people. Given the diversity of human minds, surely those who believe there is "one God" are about as like-minded as one could EVER hope to meet! So why can't we draw the line there, instead of saying "yes, there is one God and he has to be Triune, and he has to have an Economy and he has to speak only through this book"?

Well of course that is very naive. But you know what I'm talking about here? I guess it's Christian problem plus LC scam feeling. Of course as someone here said recently, the creeds have value, historically and as a sum of experience of a great many Christians far more spiritual than I who have wrestled with these very thoughts for far longer periods of time. But still, I come back time and time again to the same question, every week, ever home meeting: should I stay or go. Because staying makes me unhappy, yet I feel going is the easy way out. Of course I can find a another church, there are hundreds here, but maybe it's so easy it feels wrong, somehow...

Thanks for reading if you're still here... it helps just typing it out, but if anybody's got anything to share on this, great!