Why I go to church

I attend an Episcopal Church on my island almost every week. Here are reasons that do not play a role in my decision:

1. I believe I will go to hell if I miss a Sunday. God is taking attendance.
2. I know that Christianity is the Truth and am glad I am one of the chosen.
3. I need the socialization of the church members.

Here is why I do attend:

1. I have no idea what is true but I am pretty sure that all the doctrine should be taken in quotes. While I profoundly doubt the literal truth, I can appreciate the seeking outward beyond one’s self for meaning. The very best theology, from the Middle Ages to the present acknowledges that these claims are but metaphors for truth. But metaphors are better than nothing and sometimes quite a rich source for understanding. Look at the power poetry has to speak deep truths while saying seeming nonsense. While for Augustine and Anselm it might be “faith seeking understanding”, for me it is a search for both. At least some kind of understanding and some kind of faith. I am not sure we should hope for more than that as deep faith so often morphs into a frozen certainty. I have developed a deep aversion to such faith — which might not be entirely fair, I acknowledge. I tend to cringe when scripture praises God for saving us and dashing those Babylonian babies to the pavement. I feel very Babylonian at times. Well, most times. But then I find glimpses of beauty and truth that simply astonish and I stay. Something true is being said here.
2. I have grown up in a church tradition, first Roman Catholic and then, by my own choice, Episcopalian. I could go in an Asian direction but I think like a European and find the pageantry, scripture, music, and language comfortingly familiar. Taoism still lures me intellectually but I know my world view fits into the architectural parameters of a medieval cathedral. I can read stained glass and the iconography of Christianity. The music reverberates in tonalities that fit my ears in years of listening to them. I breathe in rhythm to the cadences of plainsong. I know where the chords travel and that familiarity offers me an acoustic context for reflection. And the liturgy is familiar to me, even when I find myself pulling back from making certain claims and promises that I cannot voice. From early childhood onward I could never utter the phrase “we believe in one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” How on earth can we presume to that level of exclusion? Who do we think we are, anyway? So an aesthetics coupled with a familiar intellectual tradition keeps me returning.
3. I see each service, each parenthetical participation in liturgy, as a witness to not knowing. Truly hovering in the “cloud of unknowing” I enter in and sit apart. I watch my actions and feel both deeply outside the circle and yet drawn to it. I see Christ much as I see Dionysus in that both point us beyond to a Truth that beckons us with every breathe we take. I read the liturgy as trying to grasp at the transcendentals that permeate human experience as both seductive lures and pure promises: Truth, Beauty, Goodness. I am there as a witness to my own abject ignorance, not-knowing, but at the same time, I see the search as all important. Going to church is an act of both humility and deep hope. The universe is not lost in space. It is breathing, living, real, and beautiful. If only we can try to glimpse it.

Philosophical reflection seeks much the same goals and I attempt that as well. But the sensuous, embodiment of a church service offers another door into the house of questions that serves as our home in our search for meaning. God is the acknowledgement that we are not the most important thing in the universe but God also represents our passion for meaning, for logic, for order, for love — and for Truth, Beauty, and the Good. I may be an impostor among the faithful. Then again, maybe there are more of us out there. That is why I go to church.