It strikes me that many people, in considering this issue, have lost proper perspective on what it is to attend church. It is sort of like how most people living in the Western world today probably don’t remember life without electricity or indoor plumbing. Luckily for me, I’m old enough that my grandfather was raised in an era that had neither of these luxuries, and he passed the stories of his life on to me before he died about a decade ago, so that I can always have in mind how life once was, and be thankful for all that I have. God willing ,if I ever have children of my own I will make sure that they know those stories, too.
For us as Christians, our Fathers (or “Church parents”, if you will
) have told us what a great joy and blessing it has been to gather together in worship, and how central it is to the life of the Christian community. But we’ve mostly forgotten their lives, because we are wrapped up in our own. Being a “good person”, you see, takes time, so who can be bothered with the stories of the ancients and what they went through? It takes even more time to be “good” when you are trying to do it all by yourself, too, which is another problem of modern Western societies…
Jesus Christ does not need to see you in Church. He does not need you to eat His body and drink His blood. He does not need your praise nor your prayers to sustain Him. All of these are for
your salvation, which you may work out any which way you choose. Y’know, free will and all that. But I think it is good to listen to those who have come before you, and faced all the challenges that you have faced and more. I don’t know or really care why you are not going to church (in the sense that it is none of my business how you conduct yourself). I just know that if centuries upon centuries of saints, recorded and unrecorded, were also good people
and gave everything they had, to their very lives, in order to worship God in spirit and in truth, then the dichotomy of “go to church vs. just try to live a good life” is against the witness of the Christian life as it was in the beginning, among those who were closest to Christ and His apostles and disciples. It is a modern, false dichotomy. For sure God loves you no matter what you do, but if you do nothing for your own spiritual welfare then in what sense are you accepting of the love out of which He has called you, and given you the power to be a child of God? It is a far greater love than that of your parents, so to have you defend your parents from perceived attack in this thread while not honoring also your Father who is in heaven by even spending ONE HOUR A WEEK gathered together with fellow Christians, in remembrance of the ultimate gift of His Son…well…I think there are deeper problems here than the internet can fix. I pray that you will realize what you are keeping yourself from. It is easy to stay home (and, really, it becomes easier every time you do it), but you will not find the narrow path that leads to salvation in your living room while lounging around in your PJs.
