Church for Non-Believers

1) Given a choice between doing what's right and doing what's right for them, most default to the latter
2) Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, i.e. Hanlon's Razor
3) Everyone has their struggle

 

I'll pray church helps with that question. Varying denominations have different thoughts on the nature of mankind, but I've found one reason many are in churches is rooted in deep wounds suffered at the hands of others. (In some cases, wounds suffered at other churches.)

I could debate denominational approaches and various faiths all day, but generally, all churches/faith organize around the principle that, if solely left to our own problem-solving strategies and coping mechanisms, sooner or later, we'll find it doesn't work/just isn't enough.

 

I've seen it explained in the book with all the Masses for that period of the calendar (missal?) that non-Catholic Christians should not take communion, but members of some Orthodox faith are allowed. It says the Church welcomes all and regrets the split in the faith, yada yada.
I don't know if this always is done, but I've seen adults who are in the process of converting, but who have not had First Communion (maybe it's Confirmation), leave the Mass after the Gospel, before the transubstantiation bit happens.

 

Catholics aren’t who usually enforces that rule, God does.

And, if you violate it, He will smite you; perhaps with a blast from the sky or perhaps something more subtle. You might discover that the hair on your head is thinning while, at the same time, the hair in your nose and ears grows thicker and longer. If that sort of thing happens and you haven’t taken some sort of unholy communion, you should probably do a bit of soul searching to try to discover what else it was that you might have done wrong.

 

Whoa!

That will take awhile.

 

"Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever."

-Sam Harris

 

Most anyone who knows anything about the Bible or who believes in and tries to follow its teachings knows that it wasn't written by an invisible deity. And that God won't necessarily punish him with fire for eternity, either.

 

'Regardless of what the church itself says'?
Seriously?

If you are attending another religion's service, the issue is not what you believe but what the parishioners believe.

What a pompous, unbelievably tone-deaf approach to visiting another religion's service.

If you are attending a service - Methodist, Catholic, Hassidic Jewish, Baha'i, Shinto, Muslim, Lutheran, Pentecostal - whatever ...
You should be respectful of the beliefs of the parishioners whose service you are visiting.
You are a visitor. Be respectful. How hard is that?

You are not 'technically eligible' to take part in anything unless the parishioners themselves believe you are eligible to take part.

I don't believe in god but I have manners and common decency. When I visit a church for a service - wedding, funeral, whatever - I try not to contradict the beliefs and traditions of parishioners who have welcomed me into their service.

 

This is an interesting topic. First let me say that my second graph speaks to the "manners and decency" aspect of the conversation. So, for example, if I were in a Catholic Church, and I knew of someone there who knew me and knew (somehow) I didn't really believe in transubstantiation, and that my taking communion (say, on Christmas Eve, were I to be in a Catholic church on Christmas Eve) would somehow be offensive to them, or cause a row of some kind, then I just wouldn't take it. Went to a Catholic wedding, for example, and didn’t take it because I knew the people knew I wasn’t Catholic. It wasn’t for the rule’s sake but out of mind for those folks.

Similarly, if I'm overseas, in a Christian church that wants me to, I dunno, remove my shoes for some cultural reason, yeah, cool with me. As far it involves me, try to make peace.

this line..."You are not 'technically eligible' to take part in anything unless the parishioners themselves believe you are eligible to take part." That way lies, for Christians, some dangerous, legalistic thinking - the kind of thing that separates God from his people. And I know you didn’t mean it like that at all. You actually mean it from the best of perspectives - you’re in another person’s place of worship, respect it. And as it relates to faiths outside Christianity? I quite agree.

In Christian terms... the person whose place the church is? It’s God’s. And God’s rules - broad or strict, whatever it is in a given situation - trump denomination rules. My first loyalty belongs to correctly applying what I think are God’s standards above and beyond some extracurricular interpretation of it. Jesus showed this over and over and over.

And communion being one of the few sacraments, I wouldn’t want someone to think eligibility was related to, you know, some kind of extracurricular standard that’s not in the book. It’s not.

Eligibility is a separate thing from how you handle the situation.

 

If folks want, they can take the sacraments on their own. But, if they want the gravitas of an well-established church’s tradition and ceremony, it seems odd to violate the terms of that same ceremony.

In Christian terms, the church is God’s. But so is the car driven to the church, the roads driven from home and the very home that was left.

Denominations exist and churches divide because people cannot seem to always agree what God is and how She should be followed.

Why would someone mock the solemnity of a ceremony by violating the traditions of the same instead of participating in the ritual where he or she would be welcome?