If I'm a good person, can I skip going to church?

[jilly4cats]

If a person is a good person who loves and prays to God and is kind to his neighbors, how can a loving God say that person will go to hell if he doesn’t go to church? I am a private person who is uncomfortable around others. This is the way God made me.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

Your question reminds me of the conversation in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve disobeyed God:

God: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
Adam: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (cf. Gen. 3:11-12, emphasis added).

In other words, Adam blamed God for his own sin, implying that if God hadn’t made Eve then Adam wouldn’t have sinned.

“Good people” seek to obey God, not to blame God for their own failings. If you love God, you will obey the Church he died to establish for you, and will go to Mass to be present with God on Calvary. If you don’t like being around other people, offer up that small suffering in union with the infinitely more significant suffering of Christ on the cross.