The church my family and I attend is starting something called “Forty Days of Purpose”, based on Rick Warren’s famous bestselling book The Purpose-Driven Life. You may already know that, or that Warren is the pastor at Colorado’s “non-denominational” Saddleback Church who hosted and moderated the nationally-televised forum with presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain.
This six-week “course” involves the participants meeting weekly at different homes around town, reading the chapters, answering questions, and having discussions on the material. And of course, with this comes the opportunity for a little friendly socializing.
As you may or may not know from reading this blog, I have a few issues with the doctrines that strict fundamentalist, evangelistic Christianity puts out. And Warren tends to endorse these doctrines. I have no intention of “rocking the boat” by making a nuisance of myself with others about these differences, but I won’t just sit around and parrot things that don’t compute for me either. So, the way I see it, this will be a chance for me to just be myself and see if the people around me are willing to accept me for who I am.
I’ve noticed before that, if they don’t get carried away with specific religious or political doctrines, people everywhere are remarkable similar in the way they see life. If you go into areas that people have common ground with other in, then it may be possible to establish a bond of at least good will between them, and possibly even some good friendships can develop. Of course, within a religious grouping such as the one my wife and I will be in, the pressure and challenge will be to hold true to my beliefs without offending others.
I have seen discipleship courses like this one being promoted in various churches before. One of the threads common to them is the teaching that the “disciples” should strengthen their ties to the church being attended, in terms of giving both their money and their free time and labor. I have a feeling that, without this inserted into the courses, churches wouldn’t be so keen on promoting and sponsoring them. After all, there is such a thing as the bottom line, isn’t there?
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This relates to my division of the directions that religion takes one into "introspection", "service", and "control". The first is the extent to which it makes you look at yourself, and provides you comfort and guidance when you need it, and for the most part I think it's a good aspect (except when it dovetails with "control", so see more later). The second is something that the Warrens honestly seem very much into, and it's also a good aspect (again, modulo the "control" issue).
ReplyDeleteThese bits are highlighted by a t-shirt that I recently saw someone wearing, which depicted hands together in prayer, and said, "No importa lo que fui, sino lo que soy." (It's not important what I was, but what I am.) The teaching that you can improve yourself, if you honestly want to and you work at it, is one of the very good points of the church, as long as it's not abused (you can't continually use it as an excuse to be bad and then "repent").
And then there's "control": give to the church, think like the church, don't argue with the church. Do as you're told and don't make waves. Be a good follower. Be a good tool of the church. And give, did I mention that? The church always needs money, the church is a business too.
That's what I consider to be the bad part of religion, the part that makes it divisive, the part that helps line the pockets of "ministers", the part that often smacks of hypocrisy. The part that wants to squelch independent thought because it threatens an institution that's based on believing things just because they tell you to.
It must be a difficult line to walk, not falling onto the "control" side of a church that's particularly strong on control.