We Are Made For God

At The Federalist yesterday, Casey Chalk had a article that attracted my attention entitled A Church Without God Is Dead On Arrival. The article itself was sparked by a Washinton Post article by Perry Bacon, Jr. Reading the Bacon article, I couldn't help but think that what he is looking for used to ccome from peoples' participation in service clubs like the Lions Clubs or the Rotary Clubs. It used to be that anyone who could afford these organizations was a member. They did good works, but they were not churches. Churches have a different function.

People get confused and don't realize that the Church has one real purpose-that of worship. What does worship consist of? Confession of sins and absolution thereof, prayer to God, giving praise to and honor of God, preaching of the Gospel, the good news of God's grace, love, and forgiveness, and the Eucharist or Communion. Yes, the church does other things such as prayers for the sick and shut-ins, counseling members, sometimes disciplining wayward members all within the Biblical principles laid down thousands of years ago.

People sometimes get balled up in controversies that really aren't, or needn't be. Bacon is concerned that his former "church" wouldn't allow a gay man to be a leader. Does God hate gays? No. But God commands against sexual sins such as beastiality, homosexuality, fornication. One may be gay, but out of love and respect for God, not practice gay behavior. It is the practicing of homosexual behaviors that is the sin.  One who practices homosexuality can not be a church leader.

Abortion is another thing God is against. He created each and every one of us in His image. We are gifts from Him, each and every one of us. To kill the unborn is to throw that great gift away like it is trash. Would you be angry of someone threw away a precious gift you had given him right in front of you? That is how God feels.  We must of course have compassion for people who abort their children, but we mustn't condone it.

While churches have historically provided other services to society such as schools and hospitals, and certainly being a regular member of a congregation provides a sense of community, the main function of a church is to facilitate the worship of our God. God is the center of our worship and as Casey Chalk notes, without God, the "church" is dead on arrival.  Such a gathering of people is not worthy to be called a Church.  The Church is built on one foundation, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

A church without God, prayer, or the Bible; a church for fellowship not faith, service not sacraments: that’s supposedly what lonely Americans need. Yet can such a civically focused ecclesial institution, or set of institutions, replace our increasingly empty (or repurposed) churches? In fact, they already exist, and have proved just as incapable of replacing the role vacated by that “old time religion.”

...snip...

And it’s not as if the nones are champing at the bit to join secular civic organizations that, denuded of any deity, prayer, or Scripture, still offer camaraderie and community service. Between 2019 and 2021, formal volunteer participation in America fell 7 percent — the largest drop that the U.S. Census survey recorded since it began tracking it in 2002. Covid didn’t help any, but this is not a new trend: Volunteerism has been declining for decades.

No, Americans are not just abandoning God, but each other, escaping into their smartphones and streaming entertainment. “Americans spend an average of 13 hours and 11 minutes a day using digital media,” Forbes reported earlier this year. It’s not only unbelief with whom churches must compete, but Apple, Amazon, and Netflix. Loving your neighbor or the Lord your God doesn’t offer the same dopamine rush as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, I’m sorry to say.

This is why a church for the nones is dead on arrival. The nones don’t want it, as even Bacon must admit. “But I’ve not followed through on any of these options,” he writes of trying to find a new “ecclesial” home. “With all my reservations, I don’t really want to join an existing church. And I don’t think I am going to have much luck getting my fellow nones to join something I start. My sense is that … those who aren’t at church are fine spending their Sunday mornings eating brunch, doing yoga or watching Netflix.” Americans are too disenchanted with an “intolerant” and “illogical” religion and too addicted to its chemical proxies to think an areligious alternative will satisfy the longings in their soul. Choosing church for its social utility, liberal pundit E.J. Dionne acknowledges in a recent WaPo column, is not a particularly strong draw.

So, in the end, it is really a failure of faith. Bacon doesn't believe. He, and other "nones" are looking for something in all the wrong places. If he starts with first believing, they praying, then admitting that he has done wrong, as we all have, can he then refind his faith. Perhaps it would help if Mr. Bacon would read the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and the Epistles by Paul the Apostle:

Only when Americans relearn that we are, above all else, made for God, will our personal health improve and our communities once more move with brilliant energy and excitement, unanticipated byproducts of passionately orienting our hearts and minds to the transcendent and its transformative demands. Until then, expect little from ham-handed attempts to fashion church (and spirituality) to our personal preferences and peccadilloes. As a young Augustine himself learned, all that resides in such vain efforts is vapid self-worship.