So I went to church....again

On my faith journey.

McLean Bible Church

In July, I went to church for the first time in a very long time.

And, I wrote about it. It is, to this day, the post that generated the most — and most thoughtful — comments, emails and texts of anything I have written in the past 20 months in this space.

In that post, I shared my faith journey. Which, I think, is best summed up this way: A nonbeliever who very much wants to believe.

Between writing that post and today, a whole lot has happened: Donald Trump won the presidency again. The Dodgers won the World Series again. Taylor Swift filled arenas around the world again.

Here’s what hasn’t happened again: I hadn’t gone back to church.

Why not? Well, logistics mostly. My kids play travel sports. Those sports usually have games on Sunday mornings. Which is when I would usually think about going to church. (I know you can go on Saturday nights but I was raised Catholic and we always went to church on Sunday.)

Which is not an excuse! Like, if I really had wanted to, I would have found time to go. I work for myself. I work from home (most days). I could have gone. I didn’t.

And that probably tells you a lot of what you need to know about where I am in my efforts to become a believer: Not much of anywhere!

To be clear: I DO NOT think that church attendance is a necessary component of being a believer in God. Plenty of people I knew growing up went to church to check the “good Catholic” box and then acted anything but like it during the other days of the week.

But, I DO think that carving out time to go to church is a useful way to make sure you spend at least an hour a week thinking about faith and God.

Or at least it is for me. And I haven’t done it.

I was thinking about all of that while sitting at the McLean Bible Church this past Sunday morning. Yes, I went back to church! And spent at least some of the time while at church thinking about why I didn’t make going to church a priority in my life. The mind is a fascinating machine!

I had a bunch of other thoughts during the 90-minute service. And, honestly, I weighed whether I should share them in this space. Because if I am going to church to mine that experience for content, well, that strikes me as missing the point. There are some things better left unshared — as my wife is always telling me 😂😂😂 .

But, I decided that I wanted to share my impressions with you for two major reasons: 1) This is a community. And communities support each other. This is something in which I need your support, guidance and wisdom 2) If there are other people out there struggling with their own faith — how to find it, how to think about the journey etc. — I want this space to be a resource for them.

And so, without further adieu, a few thoughts/observations on my most recent trip to church:

• Seeing faithful people is inspiring…. The church I went to probably seats 2,000 people. It is MASSIVE. I sat in then upper deck area, which gives you a view of all the people sitting down on the floor. And, honestly, I think it is really amazing to see people who (seemingly) have NO doubts about their faith. They are singing every word of every song. They are calling out in support of the preacher during his sermon (more on that below). Honestly, I envy them. I really would like to believe that wholeheartedly — that Jesus loves me, that Heaven does exist, that I will be united with everyone I have every loved there. But even seeing their belief — even if I don’t currently share it — was inspiring.

• …but I struggle with all the hand raising/waving. Look, I was raised Catholic. You interacted as little as possible with the people around you at mass. And you certainly never showed any sort of emotion. Heaven forfend! So, going to a church where people are raising their hands all the time — to witness to God’s greatness, I think — is, er, weird. I am just being honest. It’s the sort of stuff that I was raised to think belongs in those churches where they do snake-handling. (The best church/snake handling story I have ever read is this one, by the way.) I get that people feel moved to witness. To yell out things like “Praise God!” or “Amen!” I do. And, like I said above, there’s a part of me that thinks it is absolutely awesome that they believe so deeply that they are moved to action. And yet, there is a also a piece of me that is like “this is super weird” and/or “this is all for show.” I don’t know how to reconcile these two thoughts.

• At the end of the service, a guy sitting a few rows away from me approached me. Egotist that I am — TV never totally leaves you! — I thought he was going to tell me that he recognized me from TV or YouTube or whatever. Nope! He introduced himself and asked my name. I told him. He then said (and I am paraphrasing): Throughout the whole service I saw a light shining down on you. Like God was singling you out to me. And I can tell you are a warrior of love for your children. And I just want you to know that God loves you. If I am being honest, my first thought was: Does this guy say that to someone after every service? (I know, I am cynical! It makes all of this hard for me!) My second thought — and the one that has lingered with me over the last 24 hours — was/is: “What if this is a message from God?” As in: My biggest knock on faith has always been that I can’t see it. That there’s no PROOF. And yet, I went to church on a random Sunday and a guy came up to me and told me he saw a light shining on me and that God loves me. Like, do I need more evidence? What am I waiting for — a 2x4 to the head? I am still not totally sure where I land on this. It was a deeply strange experience for me — and one I had no idea how to react to.

• Judgement. The basic point from the pastor — David Platt — in his sermon was this: The way we make judgments (and have judgments made about us) in this world is not AT ALL how God wants us to make judgments (and how He judges us.) (You can watch the full sermon here.) In my career as a political journalist, I have been on the receiving end of a whole lot of judgment and criticism. And, I have doled out a fair amount too. The sermon made me think about how I judge, why I judge and what it means about me. And it also made remember that I never want to judge anyone too harshly — because 1) I am flawed myself and b) life is long and you never know what that person’s future holds. I also was thinking of the sermon on judgement reading through the comments section of my Joe Biden pardon post this morning!

Thanks to all of you who read this far. I am trying — so far unsuccessfully — to figure all of this out. If you have thoughts or suggestions or comments, I’d love to hear them. You can put them in the comments section below or, if you’d rather not share publicly, feel free to email me at cillizzac@gmail.com

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