Confessions of a perfect Christian

I don’t like church.

Never have.

Nor does anybody else. (Be honest now.) As we used to say many years ago, whilst encamping in a sanctuary pew as far to the back as possible, plotting the next cycle of terror for our Sunday School teachers, “They’re called pews because they stink!”

I don’t care if they’re the cheapest faux walnut or most solidly expensive oak, the place reeks of banal worship, counterfeit goodwill and the dreaded varnish of soiled platitudes.

Okay. These are strong words. Harsh, even unloving perhaps. But, I say, not so.

As a “perfect Christian” I say, not so.

A “perfect Christian,” you say? How do I know? The Holy Spirit told me so. So there.

But I’ll tell you the real reason I don’t like church.

The real reason I don’t like church is because I want to like church, but I can’t.

I hate that. I want to like it. But I can’t. I love these people, these wonderful, precious people, but church seems to get in the way.

Everything about the way we do church seems to get in the way of my loving: the budgets and search committees and endless quasi-concertos of mind-numbing worship songs and the doctrinal controversies and cliquish care groups and “Sunday best” and hip youth leaders and the weary parade of short-term missions and the ingrown denominational relationships and the borderline schizophrenia of our private schools and pop-culture-inspired children’s videos and the historical idolatry and the illicit affairs and practical atheism and Sunday roasts and afternoon football and all the semiotic absurdities inflicted upon us in the name of Christ and the tight t-shirts and lower back tattoos and pierced flesh and thong underwear and the jugglers and jesters and entertainers and the totalitarian bread-breaking and juice-drinking and the caffeinated legalism and high-octane guilt and the canned sermons and store-bought theology and the neatly packaged hymns and the evolutionary mothballs in our creationist closet and the entire materialistic, calcified, institutional imperative of the whole manic thing and the shakes and shingles and siding and doors and windows. And the chairs.

I don’t like the chairs. Especially the folding ones.

So what’s a “perfect Christian” to do? Drive out the moneychangers? Tear down the temple? Drain the tepid Jordan of the baptismal tank? Crucify myself on the cross of this pampered, petted mediocrity? Start a cult? Write a column? Or just quit and get out?

Stop encouraging me. I’ll do it. I’ll do it right now.

But the thing is, where else will I find you? Where can I be with you?

This is the crux of my dilemma: I hate church, but I love you.

So I guess I’ll see you on Sunday. Save me a chair!

Faithful Skeptic attends a Mennonite Brethren church west of the Rockies.