‘All we are is dust in the wind’ – Kansas
I recently presented my church family a survey asking what questions they or others they knew had regarding faith. Not surprisingly, someone asked why people need to go to church. It wasn’t a snarky question; it was legit. They were relaying a question someone had asked them, someone who didn’t see the value of going to church, and wanted to know, I presume, how best to answer it. Now, if it were a believer who asked such a question, I would of course give the standard answers: you should go to church because Jesus calls us to community; to worship; to grow; because we need each other; because the church is God’s chosen means to make disciples and spread the Gospel. If all that failed, I might pull out Hebrews 10:25 and close with the old ‘because God says to’ bit. But the question didn’t originate with a Christian. It came from a professed unbeliever who thought church was a waste of time.
How to answer such a person? Why should they, or perhaps you, reader (for after all I don’t know who is reading this and shouldn’t presume you believe) bother with church?
For starters, I let me say that if you are asking why you should go to church for religious reasons, why you should enter a building on a Sunday morning to take part in an institutionalized religious service, I don’t think you should. Yes, I know that sounds weird coming from a pastor who leads religious services every Sunday, but honestly, being religious has never had much appeal to me. If you go to church to ‘get religion,’ I’d say you would be better off to stay home. That isn’t why I go to church, and it isn’t why you should go either.
I think you should go to church for a different reason.
I think you should go because it is the place where you just might discover what life is about.
Perhaps you think you already know what life is about. A lot of people do. I see folks every day who find meaning and value in quite a noble place: in each other.[1] In family. In friendships. In loving and being loved. There are far worse places to find meaning, I’ll grant you that. If you view the universe as nothing more than a vast cosmic accident, or, if you think accident too indelicate a way to put it, then something that just happens, ‘each other’ would be a good place to find meaning. You should spend your time, transient though it may be, cherishing your loved ones, nurturing your relationships, and working to make the world a better place for them. I see great appeal in this. I have seen Carl Sagan’s Contact and am moved somewhat by the revelation in the story that, in the end, in all the universe, all we have is each other. And so, if you believe that’s all there is, then by all means, love those around you as much as you can while you can. Make the most of your journey from the cradle to the grave by loving and being loved. You will live on in the memory of those you leave behind. Perhaps in the effect you had on them.
But of course, if you believe that is all there is, then you must acknowledge something. Your memory in and impact on the hearts and minds of those around you may not be as great as you like to think. Sure, you matter to those around you, but mattering is only a transient thing. For one day, you will die, as will those who love you. Your memory and impact may live on, in your children, your grandchildren, perhaps even others. But one day, even those who remember you, even those you impacted, will pass from the scene as well. Eventually, there will come a generation that no longer remembers you. I mean, honestly, how much do you know about your great-great-grandparents? Or their parents? Not much I bet. And as for your impact, well, perhaps you will leave an indelible mark on history, but for most of us, even our greatest impacts will one day become so attenuated they will hardly be felt at all. In the end, a day will come when no one will remember you, and the life you lived will fade from both memory and history.
All the more reason to make the most of life while you can, right? To seize the day, love for all you’re worth, and give as much transient meaning to this transient life that you can. For yes, if the physical universe is all there is, that’s really all we have. All we can really do is make the best of what is, in the final analysis, a crappy situation. Enjoy life and forget about the fact that in the end, even if you do manage a legacy that lives on in memory and history, even if you do make an impact that matters for millennia, one day even the universe itself will burn out, perhaps devour itself as stars collapse and black holes consume one another, until finally, as Steven Hawking suggested, everything ends in darkness, in a moment when, if anyone were around to see it happen (which there won’t be), they might say the only two words that could possibly sum up the meaning of the universe’s entire history: So what?
That’s what life means if it’s just something that happens. Fill your world with all the transient meaning you can. But in the end, it will end. Nothing will matter. There will have been no meaning to it at all.
But what if there’s more?
What if life is more than a cosmic accident, something that just happens? What if life is more than the inevitable if lucky conglomeration of just the right molecules? What if life happened by design? What if there is a Designer who imbues all life, each life, with eternal beauty and purpose? What if we were made for more than fading memories and attenuated impacts? What if, as the songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman sings, there is:
More to this life than living and dying,
More than just trying to make it through the day…
More to this life,
More than these eyes alone can see,
And there’s more than this life alone can be? [2]
If there were, wouldn’t you like to know it?
A church, that is a community of faith as opposed to an institutional religious event, is a place where people seek to know if this is true. A place where people have opened up their hearts and minds to the possibility of more. It is a place where you can hear the experiences of others who have found something more. A place where people have found deeper meaning than the transience of memory and impact. A place where people have found something more than a universe destined to end in darkness. A place where people have found, okay I’ll come right out and say it: God.
And in God, they have found more life and love than they ever imagined. They have found a universe filled with love, created and held together by love, in which they may, by all means, cherish their loved ones, treasure their relationships, and work to make the world a better place, but may do so knowing that their relationships and loves are more than transient. They are eternal.
I would offer this to you, dear skeptic, as a reason to go to church. That you might open your heart and mind to the stories of those who have opened theirs to such possibilities – and found something more.
And maybe, just maybe, discover that they are right.
Under Christ’s Mercy,
Brent
[1] I am aware that some people don’t find meaning here at all. They are self-absorbed and could care less about those around them. I am choosing, reader, to not count you among them. If I am wrong about you, I would suggest that you should perhaps go to church to, if nothing else, learn to come out of yourself.
[2] Steven Curtis Chapman, More to This Life.