(regarding an acquaintance's preference for church attendance)
I want to be ill!!! This is a major vent on the direction or lack of direction I should say some Christians have. While dropping my daughter off at VBS tonight, I met a woman that goes to the early service at the church. She tells us that her family gets up and watches “JOEL OSTIEN” and then comes to the early service so they can get back in bed by 9:15.
She then goes on to tell us that her kids ask to go to Sunday school and they normally try to talk them out of it, but if they have to stay that her and her husband usually go grocery shopping and then come back to get them.
She likes how they get church out of the way and can enjoy the rest of their Sunday! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! I am going to talk to the pastor tonight when I pick the kids up and see what he thinks about his flock watching apostate preachers and just wanting to get Church over with!! And we wonder why our churches are in such trouble!!
(Paragraphs added by me to make reading a bit easier)
40 comments
I actually agree with this nutjob. Why bother going at all if it is such a chore. I mean do these people really believe that if they don't go to church they are going to go to hell? If god were real wouldn't he be able to see through the charade of going to church just because they "have" to?
I mean, they are all idiots.
"She likes how they get church out of the way and can enjoy the rest of their Sunday!"
BLASPHEMY!!! How dare they want to use their day off from work for something other than languishing in church pews!
"And we wonder why our churches are in such trouble!!"
Your churches are in trouble because of busybodies like you who 1. are so damned concerned about what other people want to do with their Sunday 2. feel within their rights to decide which preacher is or is not acceptable and 3. feel compelled to tattle on other people in the church for not being as devoted to sacrificing one day of their week as you are. If there were less people like you in the church, there might be more people who were willing to come (however periodically it might be).
the busybody has a point (though I'm not sure it was the one she intended). there are a great many comments here about how church is boring. Well this is not an eight-year-old who being dragged to church by her parents. This is an adult, capable of making her own choices about whether or not she wants to go to church, who has decided to go despite the fact that she apparently hates it. Whether she thinks sitting in a church wishing she were elsewhere makes her a Christian, or whether she's just trying to impress other people, something is wrong with this picture.
Heck, I pretty much cut back to C&E* church attendance once I was confirmed. Sunday became a day I could sleep in. The minister never complained, not even on the grounds that his job kept me clothed and fed. Not even a shred of guilt from living right next door to the church.
I think part of my weaning process was figuring that, if God was everywhere and saw everything, why would I have to go to church with a whole bunch of other people, one day a week, all to say and sing the same things, much of which I was starting to realize I didn't actually believe (and this was the United Church of Canada, fer crissakes!)? I wonder if there's a correlation between religious leaders, flavour of that religion, and the faith/lack thereof of their children (Catholics excepted -- their "exceptions" would probably mess with the interpretation of the results, ie, "no true Catholic priest...")..?
*C&E = Christmas & Easter
They think they can control the rest of us, so why not what other Christians do?
Wait until she hears about the many NASCAR-fan Christians who frantically check their watches and hope the preacher winds up so they can get home in time for the race...or the preachers who also don't want to miss the race!
The pastor is just going to think, "Hey, that would make a good sermon for next week. I'm set." You think he's going to chastise anyone who actually attends church for attending with the wrong attitude? He wants warm bodies in those pews, church lady. He can't afford to be too picky.
Oy, church is boring. I'd prefer a lie-in to listening to some old fart godbag drone on about the afterlife. On the other hand, that raises the question of why bother at all if you find it so dull. It's better to leave than pay meaningless lip service.
Oi. The Bible says to fellowship, but it doesn't necessarily mean church.
It's their business as to what they do. Leave them alone and concentrate on your own spiritual problems or those of people who actually want you to poke your nose in on their's - that is, if such people exist.
EDIT: She actually mentions in the thread:
"I was really upset yesterday so thanks for letting me vent. I listened to WOTMradio last night online and they were talking about the same thing and how people aren't in church for the right reasons. The played a reading of Jonathan Edwards "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and I just cried."
"GREAT!! Now my blood pressure is up again!! Thanks a lot!!"
Wow, she's really taking this hard.
But...church sucks. Seriously. It's all, "Yer bad, you suck, jesus is awesome, let's sing some shitty songs, and I'ma make you stand up for a really long time, then sit, then stand, then sit, then listen to some shit sermon with some shit passages in the bible, and then let's all stand up and sing some more and then sit and then stand and then go home, and remember jesus is awesome, and church has to be super early on a sunday or else you go to hell."
Fuckin hell. Once I stopped going to church, one of the greatest pleasures in my life was sleeping in on a Sunday morning. There is nothing that makes me feel more at peace and happy with the world than having a good snooze in on a warm Sunday morning, then going out on my verandah and having a cup of coffee and reading and checking out all the birds and nature and stuff.
Church just makes you get up early, dress up fancy, go somewhere you don't care about, listen to stuff that isn't real, and then go home feeling like an ass for being alive.
Church sucks.
"She likes how they get church out of the way and can enjoy the rest of their Sunday!"
If you think this is unusual, you really are deluded. Many people attend church out of a misplaced sense of obligation, guilt or because they think it is "good for the kids." Are you just realizing that now?
"I am going to talk to the pastor tonight when I pick the kids up and see what he thinks about his flock watching apostate preachers and just wanting to get Church over with!!"
Jesus loves a snitch.
"And we wonder why our churches are in such trouble!!"
Because they are obviously not serving a useful purpose in their followers' lives. It sounds like there is a more serious problem here than a fellow church member who needs to have fingers pointed at her and her family.
Yes, talk to the pastor tonight. That is, if you can catch him, because he usually remembers a sudden emergency when he sees you round the corner. He wasn't praying as he left; he was muttering "Oh god, it's that bitch again!"
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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