Love Your Church?

[DarthOkkata]

I never got along all that well with religion to start with. I've heard people say that they truly loved and believed in their church.

 

I believed a lot of it for a while. I never really loved it, in fact, it was kind of an annoyance from the start. I hated it, it was boring, stuffy, and I had to wear uncomfortable clothes. I didn't get on well with other christian children, most of them seemed vapid and insincere.

 

Just wondering just how experience might differ. Did you really love it? Did you just believe and go along with it? Did you just go along with it? Did it annoy you too?

 

I honestly can't say I ever loved church or any class related to it. I had to take quite a few, and it seemed more like an extension of school than a fun youth activity or rite of passage training.

 

Only I didn't learn anything useful. Unlike real school, which held up, 'church school' experiments never panned out.

 

Later I learned that the books were both outdated and not old enough, and they were also full of inaccuracies and glaring errors.

 

Sometimes I think about it and get a bit irate with my parents for wasting so much of my youth.

 

I was one of those Atheist who hid out and laid low until they turned eighteen . Wasn't fun, but better than Jesus Camp.

[Aqua Kitty]

I never really loved it, in fact, it was kind of an annoyance from the start. I hated it, it was boring, stuffy, and I had to wear uncomfortable clothes. I didn't get on well with other christian children, most of them seemed vapid and insincere.

 

I despised Sundays when I was a kid. Sunday in general always made me feel sick to my stomach, because we'd have to go to church, which usually made me feel very guilty, then we'd come home and have "Sunday dinner," which was more of an ordeal than a meal, because it inevitably consisted of overcooked roast beef and vegetables boiled beyond recognition. *shudder* The one thing I liked about Sundays was going to the orchard after church in the fall. That was always fun. But it took me YEARS to get over that sick feeling on Sundays.

[twincats]

I actually really did like my church and the people in it. My mom even stuck me in the parochial jr. high (no, not middle school, this was the 1970's, baby!) a really small school of around 100 students in three grades. It was nice. But then, we were taught actual science and all about the scientific method and that it didn't conflict with the wholly babble since the term "day" was pretty much meaningless before the creation of the planets and stars. I really got a great education that put me in AP classes at least half the time in public high school.

 

It was a happy, friendly, close-knit community up until the time I left in the late 1990's and pretty liberal, as well. I don't know what it's like now and I don't plan to find out. I still like and respect these people and don't like to think about disappointing them. Plus I don't want to be proselytized to, either.

 

They had gotten kind of political and contentious before I left, which started making me look at the congregation in a different way, like just another group of people instead of a church sanctioned by gawd. It was the start of my deconversion, actually.

 

But all in all, my experiences were good even if the underlying principles were hooey.

[sethosayher]

I too found church (err, find, as I still have to go to keep my cover) to be a total bore. The sermons never interested me, and the services were just too hot and stuffy and repressive. I always felt like I was wasting a tremendous amount of time at church, even when I was a believer.

 

The one thing I enjoy about church are my friends there. Some are insipid sheep but others are very close friends of mine who I cherish...they don't know about my atheism though..

[DarthOkkata]

I too found church (err, find, as I still have to go to keep my cover) to be a total bore. The sermons never interested me, and the services were just too hot and stuffy and repressive. I always felt like I was wasting a tremendous amount of time at church, even when I was a believer.

 

The one thing I enjoy about church are my friends there. Some are insipid sheep but others are very close friends of mine who I cherish...they don't know about my atheism though..

 

Sorry to hear that, hiding sucks and feels unfair. I got out as soon as I was to old for them to force me into anything. It's not easy to do. I had trouble keeping my mouth shut and had to censor myself quite a bit.

 

It seems like an odd fear looking back at it, but it was confirmed when my mother mentioned she wished she'd set me off on a 'retreat' [One of the code words for Jesus Camp] before I was too old to say no.

 

I used to hate having to stay quiet while they shouted their 'praise' and 'witnessed' other people. Everyone was encouraged to go out and 'grow the flock', myself included. I found myself wanting to thin it. I've never attempted to convert anyone, but had to go through the motions otherwise.

If I'd said what was really on my mind, I'd have ended up in the fundy version of 'fat camp'.

[ogilvy]

I never got along all that well with religion to start with. I've heard people say that they truly loved and believed in their church.

 

I believed a lot of it for a while. I never really loved it, in fact, it was kind of an annoyance from the start. I hated it, it was boring, stuffy, and I had to wear uncomfortable clothes. I didn't get on well with other christian children, most of them seemed vapid and insincere.

 

Just wondering just how experience might differ. Did you really love it? Did you just believe and go along with it? Did you just go along with it? Did it annoy you too?

 

I honestly can't say I ever loved church or any class related to it. I had to take quite a few, and it seemed more like an extension of school than a fun youth activity or rite of passage training.

 

Only I didn't learn anything useful. Unlike real school, which held up, 'church school' experiments never panned out.

 

Later I learned that the books were both outdated and not old enough, and they were also full of inaccuracies and glaring errors.

 

Sometimes I think about it and get a bit irate with my parents for wasting so much of my youth.

 

I was one of those Atheist who hid out and laid low until they turned eighteen . Wasn't fun, but better than Jesus Camp.

 

at times i have liked going to church, when i was in a spiritual frame of mind. then i would get a lot out of the sermons and the praying. at one time i was at a Brethren Assembly where we would sit in silence a lot. i liked that part of it, but i didnt like that we sat around in a circle, facing each other. i found that oppressive. i find sitting with people in a room for whatever reason, oppressive. to be honest, most of the time at church, i only TRIED to like it, which was a bit depressing. i hated the hymn singing. my heart wasnt in it. i might have liked it if we'd done harmonizing, but otherwise it was boring and awful. i mainly liked the sermons if they seemed inspired, which wasnt often the case. i couldnt bear when sermons went on too long, or when the preacher shouted, or seemed to be feigning sincerity and conviction. i liked it if a preacher had anything original and 'real' to say. i couldnt stand the set ways of preaching, what they copy from each other, and what makes up for lack of inspiration. i didnt often like the prayers people gave. theres something weird about the way most people pray in meetings, like a set, acceptable way. there's a set way of doing it, a learned way. i guess that also made up for lack of inspiration. i guess there actually is no such thing as inspiration from God anyway. but when i believed there was, i hardly ever perceived it at work in church meetings. occasionally i thought i did.

in my last few months of going to church i became hyper aware of the horrible feeling that if i wanted to get up and walk out, i couldnt, and that made me want to. why couldn't i get up and walk out of church? there was no law against it. the worst that would happen would be that people would think i must not be well, and look questioningly at me. why that would be so terrible i dont know, but it would have been. and it started to bug me that i'd have to speak to people after the service, even a few words, when i would not like having to speak to them. i wouldnt feel like it. i can't bear having to do things because its expected, rather than because i want to do them. sometimes that becomes a huge issue, i dont know why. i didnt like thinking i had to go to church every week because the others did, and because it was expected. i guess, apart from going to work, where you get paid for doing it, theres nothing else i have to go to unless i want to, apart from church, and now i dont have to go there. so life it much more enjoyable, and i dont feel like so much of a coward.

[bush country]

I loved it up to the point that I finally realized it is just a highly politicized business run by an arrogant type-A preacher. If you are one if the insiders you can do no wrong until you disagree with a decision. Then you are chewed up and spit out the door.

 

As Sethosayher is doing, I am still going to not blow my cover. It is a contemporary worship SBC. The musicians are excellent but the message sucks. Watching the choir that I used to sing in is like being in a room full of drunks when you're sober. They look silly. It kind of hurts to see the preacher up there spewing his bs because he is actually really intelligent. Just that, like almost all xians, he was sold a bill of goods before he was old enough to understand it. Too bad he is not out doing fund raisers for cancer research or something that might actually do some good.

 

My answer to "did I love my church?" is that when I was a christian, I respected it. Now it is just a waste of time.

[ShackledNoMore]

"Love" or "hate" or "annoyed by" my church just don't seem like the right words to me.

 

I was brainwashed.

 

I kind of feel like I "loved" the church in the same sense that Winston loved Big Brother before the bullet passed through his head.

[Legion]

"Love" or "hate" or "annoyed by" my church just don't seem like the right words to me.

 

I was brainwashed.

 

I kind of feel like I "loved" the church in the same sense that Winston loved Big Brother before the bullet passed through his head.

 

You need to trip to Room 101.

[Vendredie]

Did I love my church?

 

Did I love any of my churches?

 

Not really. I hated the first few before the Community Church (which had contemporary worship) because they were traditional-- hymn books, itchy, stiff dresses, boring-as-Hell sermons. Between the first church I went to after moving back to the US and the community church, there were few kids to talk to, since they generally sat together away from their parents and my sister and I didn't know any of them. I was only 6-8 years old when I went to the first church, but the youth groups there were great, since I knew who everyone was-- most of the kids in my Sparky group lived close to my neighborhood or at least went to my school. Second church sucked, since it was in a vvverrryyyy remote part of my already very remote town, so few people went there and no one in my family really knew anybody. I didn't know anyone in the youth group, even though they went to the same school. Third church I knew everyone from the youth group, and I was still in elementary school, which was a short walk away from said church. I knew everyone there already.

 

Despite the community church being kind of crazy cuckoo fundie, I miss it sometimes. I had a lot of friends there-- many of whom I had met at other churches or at school. Though a lot of the kids turned out to be vapid and even fundie themselves, plus not being allowed to do anything fun (at 13 I had grown very weary of Christian music), I was still friends with them. And then camp... gawd I miss Centrifuge sometimes! I normally hung out with the adults because the adults liked me-- I was quiet, well-behaved, and intelligent. So I felt somewhat accepted there.

 

Now though... I don't want to go back to the community church. Too many crazies for me.