This post is a response to my April 6th post, which I gave 10 reasons for why I am now motivated to attend church, after having been away for close to 10 years.
This reason is as follows:
7) Because relationships based on intellectual and logical interests are much harder to cultivate into what is personal, trusting and meaningful than is the case with relationships based on personal and experiential interests.
I have this discussion group that I go to. It is not your average secular, intellectual discussion group.
I will explain more in my next post(on reason #9) what one of the main purposes of this group is, but for now I will share some aspects of the group that are worthy of mention in this post.
The group has more to do with our experience of nature and thoughts that arrive from that and our developing relationships which each other, than just a group intellectually discussing a topic, not really connecting as a group, and then dispersing. Nope, the group meets twice a month, once to have a potluck, where we eat, play games, and get more acquainted with each other and the other time(which I'll expound more in the next post) where we go through a chapter in a popularized science book and discuss what things we've deeply reflected on concerning the topics. The group is reserved for those who have attended on several occasions, so that we are actually getting acquainted with each other and not with new people every time, because of the turn over rate. So there is a sense of commitment to the group. In fact, in August, those belonging to the group will be spending a couple of nights at a beach house to continue to cultivate our discussions and relationships with each other..
A conclusion I've arrived at is that the way we operate this group is crucial for what it accomplishes. All of the people in this discussion group came from our secular community where people are only associated with each other on an intellectual and logical level and there really isn't an atmosphere for more personal, meaningful relationships. It's not that the people in our secular community don't have values for relationships and transparency, but we're not in a community that creates atmospheres for these things and so encourages these things. In this regard, the CFI "community" of Portland fails as a community.
Better designed than the atmosphere that our discussion group tries to create are the atmospheres at Imago Dei Portland, though it seems they might have sort of the opposite type of challenge. It makes sense that because many of the associations there are based on personal and experiential interests, that this would make it difficult to cultivate intellectual and logical interests.
So the thinking here is as follows:
it's harder for those with an intellectual basis to their
relationship to cultivate personal, trusting, and meaningful aspects in
that relationship
AND
it's harder for those with a
personal, trusting, and meaningful basis to their relationship to
cultivate intellectual, rational, and logical aspects to that
relationship.
But Imago Dei has both types of atmospheres that seem to be successfully cultivating these two separate experiences. And that's one of the reasons I'm enjoying going to Imago Dei, because they have class atmospheres that intellectually delve into subjects like C.S. Lewis books, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, etc. and they have other atmospheres like their church service that encourage a reflective, personal, emotional attitude towards the things that really matter.
Since these psychologically, emotionally, and socially fulfilling atmospheres seem to be unique once a week thing to church, I would argue that that is one of the top reasons people go to church. Yes, I'm sure most Christians would say it is their relationship with God that moves them to, but take away all the things church provides and the gathering together of believers would dwindle. But by how much I wonder? I guessing, outside of the relationship with God, the gathering together of believers is 60% of the reason people go to church. I know it's more complicated than that and so this is a reason for why I'm doing this posts. To come up is substantial reasons for the phenomenon that is church..
Yes, it was my idealist point of view that we could create a community that had both intellectually and emotionally satisfying relationships. This was one of the biggest reasons I volunteered the way I did for several years in CFI Portland. I believed it could become this. Sadly, years later, this was one of the biggest reasons why I had to finally face my dissatisfaction with my secular community, because it had fallen short of this, and why I basically stopped attending CFI Portland with some occasional exceptions.
I told my mom through email the other day that, progressively, over the last 3 or so months, I had started attending church again. She was so happy when she replied, talking about how God was so faithful. It was nice to see her that happy. Of course, I'm going to church on my own terms. I encouraged her to read my blog posts that have to do with why my now attending church.
The book that I am most interested in reading at this time in my life is Religion for Atheists. In the chapter on community the author starts off by saying, "One of the losses modern society feels most keenly is that of a sense of community."
This is something I hope to recover for secular society, because without it, we will in certain areas continue to de-evolve... And the best way for me to recover it is to learn from those who have refined it over the centuries, the church.
