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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The three-sided line - faith, God and church
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
I find that there is a world of difference between faith in God and faith in the church. A continued faith in God does not necessarily lead to churchgoing, any more than a waning faith in God leads to the end of churchgoing - to my mind, for some at least, Sea of Faith and its acolytes are a way of continuing the practice of togetherness and articulating what sits at the middle of it and binds it without the metaphysical elements of theistic faith.
This line is three-sided in that one can have faith in either without the other, or in neither.
What is your experience of this three-sided line? Have you found yourself falling out with one but not the other? Different ones at different points? Has falling out with either always led to falling out with both?
For me, I have at various points desperately wanted to fall out with both, and found that God seemed to be acting like a particularly insistent labrador scenting food, pushing me inexorably in his direction and into the church. I have also found myself falling out with the church and being without it for geographical reasons. I have always found my way back, because I have found that my faith needs community to prevent solipsism. Now I am becoming very aware that the same community can prevent growth by making certain attitudes and postures a condition of membership. I am also finding it increasingly hard to justify the decisions and actions of the church I am part of, to myself or anyone else. For both of these reasons, I am wondering whether a time of looser association is coming up, which scares me more than somewhat. Given my tendency to introspection, would such a loose association lead me into total isolation?
What is your experience of these issues? How has this led you to where you are?
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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".
Foolish, potentially deranged witterings
Posts: 2208 | From: Norwich | Registered: Apr 2010
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jacobsen
seeker
# 14998
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Posted
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif) Great analysis. Thank you. My problems/gripes are with the Church, but I can still see the point of community.
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But God, holding a candle, looks for all who wander, all who search. - Shifra Alon
Beauty fades, dumb is forever-Judge Judy
The man who made time, made plenty.
Posts: 8040 | From: Æbleskiver country | Registered: Aug 2009
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Jemima the 9th
Shipmate
# 15106
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Posted
I agree with your analysis of community. I am at a point of deep grumpiness with the Church both big and small C - with what I see as the homophobia, misogyny and unwillingness to engage with the real world in the CofE at large, but also with the petty infighting and irritations at my local church.
I've wondered quite a bit whether I should stop going to church, and seek community elsewhere. However, I suspect that the same irritations would crop up wherever I went! Grass always being greener and all that.
2 other things also occurred to me last night. 1. If I moan so much about How Things Are Done locally, it is probably down to me to do my bit a bit more than I am currently. Course I might be wrong, everyone might be happy with things as they are.
2. I read a wise notion a while ago that where a community has a common aim, it is strong, but where the focus of the community is the community itself, it tends to fall apart.
I think there's a lot to be said for discipline - for me, at any rate. If I didn't go to church I'd be even more arrogant and navel-gazey than I already am. Perhaps.
Posts: 801 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2009
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Autenrieth Road
Shipmate
# 10509
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Posted
Always before no-faith/no-church have gone together for me (and the flipside: faith/church have gone together). This time around I am at the moment keeping the church and ditching the faith. But this is all very very new to me; ask me in another year and I may have come to a different solution.
I'm sort of asking myself the question, as I continue going to church, "what is here if I don't believe in God, and aren't bothering to even think or wish that I should believe in God?" I'm finding interesting things, but this is all less than a month old, so quite wet beyond the ears.
I've spent the last several years thinking "what people say about God doesn't make sense and I can't believe it, but I wish I did, and there's probably something wrong with how I'm thinking." So this is a new, and much much much happier, place to be in, and also a place where I can think clearly about things instead of spending my time trying to make sense of things that don't make any sense to me.
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Truth
Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005
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