A few things on my mind...

I'm writing this post because I want to attempt to articulate a few things that are on my mind at the moment. Theology has to relate to real life and answer real questions, so here is my attempt to articulate what is real for me at the moment. I’d really love to be able to engage with others in discussing some of these questions theologically.

Church Having been seriously screwed up by religion and pretty negative of a lot of what I see (not all, by any means) and having had some pretty bad experiences in some churches, I guess I’m pretty surprised that I still believe in church at all. Having not been a part of a community for nearly a year, I’m surprised by how unsettled I feel by being an isolated Christian. Forgetting all the baggage that gets put up around church (and there’s a lot of it!) stripped to its bear essentials I still think it’s a great idea. My take on church is that it is a community of people who choose to come together to be ethically challenged and to be mobilised to take action with that in mind. How good is that? And how relevant to the needs of our age?

But, this is where I struggle… first, there are so few decent churches out there. I’m sorry if I’m just unaware of the good ones and I’m sure there are some out there, but on my tour of churches this year I’ve been disappointed by how far so many are from the ideal I’ve just presented. So many are caught up in modernist baggage which seems to be more about defending the faith and less about equipping people to live.

A bigger struggle is with the way life is structured in the 21^st century. If, like me, you have kids and a full-time job, you have little time for community or even putting your faith into practice. It’s so easy to adopt an individualistic religiosity that does little more than read / write blogs and listen to podcasts on your ipod. To be religious is to be like the Madonna with her ipod!

This last point provokes a lot of questions for me: After all, I’m sure capitalism wants to make me compliant and wants my religion to be private and non-political. I think it has little to gain from giving me time to protest, march, or engage in ethical action that doesn’t involve simply changing my shopping choices. The ‘system’ (whatever that is) has little interest in giving me time for the counter-cultural church I described above. No dominant ideology wants people meeting together to think independently and question.

So, I am in something of a quandary: the reason we need church, is precisely the thing that makes it so difficult. It is the lack of community and the dominance of the capitalist hegemony that means church is so vital and so hard.

I feel compelled to ask questions about what all this means. Yet, here is another quandary: Without a community who is there to help me think these things through theologically and practically? Well, I'm hoping someone in the blogging fraternity might.

I’m sorry, I’ve rambled on a lot and I said at the beginning of this post that I had a ‘few’ things on my mind. I guess I’ll have to leave the others for a later post. So, what's on your mind?