Church

Every Wednesday evening and every Sunday morning I find myself playing with a praise band, usually as the keyboardist, but sometimes as the bassist, and once in a blue moon as a singer.  As much fun as I have playing in the praise band, I’m not wild about a lot of the music. Neither Hillsong nor Chris Tomlin nor most any of the other stuff that currently fills up the Billboard Contemporary Christian Chart does much for me. Frankly, as a listener, I find a lot of it terribly dull and repetitive. Beyond that, I find I don’t relate to many of the lyrics. My trouble with them is that they all sound very self-assured, as if every line has an unwritten exclamation point after it, when pretty much every thought I have about God or Jesus or Heaven or Hell has a question mark after it.

Maybe I’m wrong in this, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I am not alone in my confusion and doubt. I also doubt that I’m alone in my disgust with the hypocrisy I see in church: my own and that of other attendees.  I have frequently been a vocal critic of organized religion, and yes, I am prepared to defend that criticism. Still, I am a regular church-goer, even if my motive is at least in part that they pay me to play. I enjoy the people and the ritual and the sense that there is something beyond us which is behooves us to recognize. But we fall short. I refer to “religious community” in the broadest possible sense when I say: I think we can do better. We need to do better.