This is the church, here is the steeple

Jun 04, 2007 20:13


I am a faithful person about a lot of things- checking my email, calling Mom every week, going to Olive Garden once a month, etc. One of the things I am not faithful about, ironically, is going to church. There are reasons for that, way too many to post here with enough explanation so that they can be understood, but I do know I'm not alone in this feeling. Many of my friends from many different denominations prefer not to go to church, and to practice on their own and reach an understanding of the Word on their own. The Bible tells us to find fellowship in one another, and I do that. I frequently discuss religious matters with my friends, and even when we're not discussing God, I see God in them, and their presence, so I feel pretty much okay about not going to church on a regular basis. That said, I've been trying to go a lot more recently, because I feel that no church is going to be 100% correct, so I might as well enjoy what I'm used to.

The other night I attended the graduation ceremony for the 8th graders at my school. Though not a mass, per se, it was most definitely a prayer service, with all the trimmings. There was a big processional, candles, incense, Latin, singing a capella...in short, the whole shebang. And while it was nice to send the 8th grade class off to high school with a ton of fanfare, I couldn’t help but think to myself:

“This isn’t what He wanted. At all.”

I’m not a Biblical scholar, to say the least. Nor do I really know the symbolism of all the stuff that took place the other night. For one, I’m only half Catholic (the other half being American Baptist, like my mother). Secondly, the part of me that’s Catholic is a Cradle Catholic, meaning I grew up with this stuff so no one’s really ever bothered to explain it to me, thinking I’d just catch on sooner or later (which I haven’t).

That said, I get the feeling that Jesus was pretty low key. From what I’ve read, Jesus was a ‘no frills’ type of guy, even preaching against the pomp and circumstance of the churches in his day. He wanted something plainer, something simpler; something that did not have a thousand different rules, a patriarchal system, and was not made for public display.  I was more than a little curious to find out what He said precisely (as opposed to what I’ve ever heard and took on faith, or what I’ve made up as the years went by), and after hardly any searching at all, I found a lot of verses that relate directly to this.  Here’s the first:

”Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” (Colossians 3:12)

Humility is in bold for a reason. No, I am not taking this literally…I know that a priest cannot clothe himself in these things truly, but it seems to me a contradiction of what our priest was wearing the other night. He wore a robe made of some shiny material, trimmed in blue velvet. It made him stand out, and drew attention to him. It is his uniform, yes, but shouldn’t his uniform be one of humble cloth, that does not beg for attention? Are we not supposed to imitate Christ’s humility? Shouldn’t our priests, our earthly representations of Jesus, be the last people to don pristine, extravagant robes?

“For Jesus, who, being in very nature God,
      did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
 but made himself nothing,
      taking the very nature of a servant,
      being made in human likeness.
 And being found in appearance as a man,
      he humbled himself
      and became obedient to death-
         even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2)

Jesus washed his own disciples’ feet, giving them the message to make themselves lowly, to be servants, and that was the only way to teach.

This isn’t just about the robes, of course. This covers all manner of sins. Though the church was meant to have leaders (Jesus passed his torch to Peter, of course), He made it clear that no leader should consider themselves more important than someone else in the church, saying in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 12, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” We should be humble in our work for the church, not intent on showing off our education and understanding, but content to share it with each other in great humility, in awe of the mystery. Yes, we have priests who understand the doctrine, the details, the Latin, and the fine print, but without us, they would be preaching at the pulpit to empty pews, with no background music, and no one to help break the bread.

Those who believe that with all of their education, all of their philosophical musings, and all of their deep discussion, they will find Christ are dead wrong. James 3:13 says: “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show it by his good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.”

We concentrate too much of our time and energy on doing the proper things in the proper fashion. Prayers are memorized. We stand, we sit, we kneel, we make the sign of the cross, we parrot the Our Father. We give up meat, we write checks to the parish, we decorate the cold stones with flowers and banners, we fill the empty walls with incense. I watched the ostentatious ceremony of it all the other night thinking these things:

  1. Why do we glorify these walls so much? Why decorate something that does not live and breathe and love with other things that do not live, breathe, and love? Are we not close to idol worship by making statues of our saints, by gilding our ceilings, by using marble at the altar? We honor God, yes, but He is not in the brick and stone. And even if He were, would you really want him to stay there?
  2. Rote recitation is no substitute for heartfelt prayer, especially when He knows our hearts already. We might as well be honest. Kneeling is not a substitute for humility. Standing is no substitute for sincerity. We MUST mean it. We must think during church to understand. The motions are no substitute for devotion; religion is no substitute for faith.
  3. We make such a great show of our sacrifices, of our giving to the church. Giving up meat is no longer a sacrifice. Nor is giving up chocolate or video games when in today’s world, these are just two of the thousands of luxuries at our disposal. It is no sacrifice, let’s not pretend it is. It can serve as a reminder, but honestly, what do we know of God’s sacrifice? We cannot truly understand it because we are so undeserving of it. This is just another example of a pretense that we need to drop. Jesus hated these meaningless rituals that served as nothing but ways for the church leaders to exercise their power and as ways to flaunt self-righteousness. He himself did not abide by the strict religious, dietary laws of His time, believing it was the wrong way to show love to God. WHY DO WE?


We are clearly not meant to put our faith in things, or even actions and rituals. Instead, we should put it in God. These things only work when we have the right heart about them, and by their very nature (being public acts), that is hard to do. Jesus wants us to do these things in secrecy and not for personal gain. The Bible says:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. (Philippians 2:3)

Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence. (Colossians 2:23)

Hypocrisy, stagnation, pretense… these are things that Jesus wanted to do away with. I honestly can’t believe that He wanted the church to be the way it is today, with a whole lot of flash and not much rooted faith. It makes me want to research where in history we got so off-track, or more importantly, WHY we got so off track.

And listen, before you go hating me because I’m putting down priests or Catholicism or whatever, just stop. I am merely criticizing the extreme amounts of insincerity and spiritual idling that I see around me, and it occurs everywhere, not just inside a Catholic church. The few things I cited here are merely symptoms of a wide-spread epidemic. When will we be able to let go of our laws, our traditions, and what we’ve been taught to look beyond just what’s expected and find God? When will we realize that religion is not belief, or faith, or love, so that we can begin to look for our beliefs, our faith, and love?

hypocrisy, religion, church, faith, catholicism

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