Never Missing Church

TWO WEEKS AGO, on a bright, lovely Sunday morning, I noticed that my mattress was infested with bugs, so hastily I dragged the heavy thing out the front door and onto the front porch, to be further dealt with later. I tried to be careful, but at some point while I had the door open, my cat got out. I was waiting to be picked up to go to church, and when my ride arrived, my cat was still out, so I reluctantly canceled going to church. It turned out that my cat came back inside at six o'clock that evening, unhurt, so, I could have gone to church, but didn't realize it at the time. Other than that, I haven't missed a single Sunady in the last several months, ever since I started going, and, my attitude now is that I don't intend to miss church again in the foreseeable future. Thus I seem to have become something I never thought or remotely imagined I ever would; a regular church goer. Well, good for me. More power to me. Chalk one up for the power of open mindedness. For that is precisely why I am attending, despite my antipathy towards religion; open mindedness, my firm conviction and insistence that I can benefit from church, no matter my personal religious beliefs, or lack thereof. And indeed I benefited yet again today, August 18, 2024, by listening to a sermon based upon the story of the good Samaritan in the book of Luke. A truly great story, in my opinion. The Presbyterian church has something called a "lectionary" which I take to be a schedule of sermon topics for future Sundays to be given by all Presbyterian ministers everywhere. Not surprisingly, I had never heard the term before. My minister, a totally cool dude, told us that the scheduled sermon for this week was based on a scripture that was simply way too weird for him, so he decided to skip it, which he said he rarely does, and to improvise. The offending scripture evidently was a graphic depiction of communion, the body and blood of Christ, so, I'm glad he skipped it. Sounds pretty weird to me too. Once again I am confronted with the reality that ultimately everyone has his or her own religiosity, no matter how similar to somebody else's belifes yours may be, there is at least one particular fact or belief upon which you differ; we are all as unique spiritually as we are genetically, although in many ways closely related to other people. That obvious reality is yet another of the many reasons why it would be a horrible idea to try to instal the Christian religion as the official national religion of these United States of America. Which version of the one true faith would be elevated to official status? Catholicism? Or perhaps one of the many hundreds of Protestant denominations. Trying to render the official national religion into some generic, watered down version of Christianity would accomplish nothing but further dilluting the church. Equally interesting is the apparently well founded historical thesis that elevating a religion, any religion, to the status of state official status, tends, instead of strengthening the religion, rather, to weaken it. There is evidence that membership in officially established churches tends to decline or flatten out over time while in churches which remain outside the protection of the state, growth in membership is more robust. Almost as if the very act of mandating a certain institution motivates people to resist the mandate and the institution, like resisting taxation, military service, or burdensome government proclamations and regulations. Officially established religions smack of government control. Religions outside of government influence maintain their independence and freedom. People by nature prefer freedom to government control, in religion, and just about everything else.