a scary and curious thing

A field guide to blending in at Church

page 17: What to do when your parents drag you to church

First of all - don’t panic.

You’ll probably only need to attend a one hour weekly meeting. You can handle an hour. Assume that your experience will be the same as many others. In many of these places the understanding of God is firmly held with a commercial capitalist world view - as if God is somehow like that blue genie in "Alladin."

The good news is you’ve probably been to the mall before - just look at this experience as a “Jesus store at a Spiritual Mall.” Here they mostly offer spiritual or motivational speeches aimed at the listeners’ personal growth and development. They seem to feel that the best motivation they can offer is to explain how listening to their speeches will make life “better for you.” (If it’s not about “YOU” why would you possibly be interested?)

But not to worry the challenge toward change is seldom so serious that you are expected to actually demonstrate any of the stuff they talk about. Just listen to the speech politely, the writers often throw in a few corn-ball jokes to keep things moving. Sometimes they are genuinely funny.

Anyway, the challenge to change will mostly be stuff to just think about. The audience is just as afraid of being vulnerable as the rest of the world and they are usually too busy with their own lives to be close to others anyway. It's rare that you would be asked about your true self by any of the other people there.

The good news on this front is that anonymity within the larger whole seems to be a pattern. Many of those in the audience with you, find they are able to just listen to the speech without doing much else. The two key things seem to be showing up regularly while “looking the part” and nodding your head at the right times.

Be aware that some of these places have a group of self appointed inspectors that decide who “measures up.” It’s an especially good idea to figure out who these people are and put your best foot forward.

To help you stay motivated,closely watch how people who are "rough around the edges" are treated by this group. (Pay special attention to women who have become pregnant before they got married.) Seeing their collective, quiet, public, disapproval in action is really scary. You don't need that in your life - shame sucks.

It's weird, the speeches are so often about how important it is for us all to love - but watching them make people outsiders for being human, will make sure your personal life is never too well known....




May YHWH help us all!