Churches - They Just Couldn't Speak to Me

“…I honestly tried the churches, but they just couldn’t speak to me. I’m not against churches or religion. I just don’t want to waste my time in places that have no real wisdom, only to discover that when I’m fifty or something. All I want is reality. Show me God. Help me to understand why life is the way it is, and how I can experience it more fully and with greater joy. I don’t want the empty promises. I want the real thing…”

One comment from a 1994 study in the U.S., cited in John Drane, Cultural Change and Biblical Faith, (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2000), p. 118.

This sounds like a reasonable expectation. I find myself thinking the same thing increasingly more often. ‘Sedated’ (not medically), passionless, and lifeless. I’m increasingly not wanting to be 50 (quite some time off for me) and finding myself having wasted away my life, Sunday by Sunday, year after year – this life gifted to me – a frustrated, sad, wasted-away life…It has always seemed to me that the gospel and it's implications are so much more that singing a few songs, calling it worship (which it might well be for some people), listening to a sermon, going home, and coming back a week later…

Comments

[maggi]

me too, paul. When I am old I want to wear purple... (and no, I really don't mean Episcopal purple!!!)