I haven’t felt like blogging lately. I just don’t know what to say. I’m tired of dealing with all this religion stuff. I’m tired of thinking, reading, pondering, contemplating, obsessing about it.

It’s been my experience with regard to religion that as soon as you find answers to one question, six more questions come up, none so easily answerable. At some point you want to stop thinking and start living.

I guess I’m back to the same place I’ve always been — wondering why it’s so easy for some people, and not for me. I’ve been writing about my growing frustration with FCoS (First Church of Suburbia). Before Christmas, the senior pastor approached me in the lobby after a seasonal concert and I mentioned I was reading a lot of feminist theology and he asked me how I felt about FCoS’ services, as a feminist. I told him I’d give him a call, make an appointment to talk about these things, but I never did.

For me it’s a matter of resource allocation. I have a chronic illness, and I have to be very careful about how I spend the hours in my day, how I use the limited energy reserves I have. I have to make time and energy for work, friends, and creativity, and lately I’ve been feeling like FCoS isn’t worth my energy. Harsh, I know, but if I were a normal, healthy person, I would just suck it up and go to services and bible studies. But lately, I’ve been thinking, do I really want to spend Sunday at FCoS, or do I want to spend my religious energy on, say, Church Pomo downtown? My mother has been encouraging my brother and me to talk with church leadership about our thoughts and perspectives. We’re hesitant, even though I know that our senior pastor is a thoughtful man who is open to new ideas and interested in engaging them. Is it just laziness on our part that we think, oh, they won’t listen to us anyway? We know from experience that often when you present Christians with a critique of their doctrine/practice, they often get defensive, and no real dialogue happens once the walls go up. But it’s not fair to assume that will happen. We should give them the benefit of the doubt.

I like going to Church Pomo, where communion isn’t served in little plastic cups, there’s artwork on the wall, and sermons are preached from the lectionary. But I’ve seen enough church-hoppers in action to know that leaving a church when you have problems with it isn’t necessarily the most helpful solution. FCoS is led by upper-middle-class, baby-boomer management types. It’s a little intimidating for twenty-something kids like my brother and me to approach these people and say, hey, we think things have to change.

technorati tags: church, christianity, religion

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