Getting Together

  When I grew up, the start to our week, its lynchpin, its setup, was church Sunday morning.  When people (eventually me) developed spotty Sunday morning attendance, serious bible verses about losing your love for Christ, or "getting cold in your soul," and worst of all "forsaking the assembling of yourselves together" were inevitably quoted in our absence.  If you didn't go to church every week, you wouldn't "be kept."  You would "go off into the world," which was the opposite of church. 
  An atheist I once spoke to felt this way too.  He knew that I didn't go to church regularly and his world view was deeply troubled by the evident fact that my brainwashing wasn't simply wearing off, wasn't leaving me a normal atheist like him, once that church indoctrination was removed.  It doesn't work like that for me. I know it has for many.  I don't 'go to church' Sunday morning.  This is not to say I don't have a Sunday routine, nor won't be talking to any Christians.  But Christians give a lot of lip service to what they think of as "Christian community."

  Because the bible actually tells about how Jesus spent his last evening together with his friends.  The actual Christ and the actual Christian community that had gathered around him.  When Christian was a kind of Jewish.  It was Friday night.  There was food.  There was conversation.  There was wine.   I'm imagining they could see to eat that evening through the use of candlelight or by oil lamps.  I don't think history bears out our idea that it was much like what we're used to seeing in paintings (everyone posing on the same side of the table, like on TV, so no one's blocking the camera or showing the back of their head).  I'm told that two thousand years ago, they didn't use tables and chairs as thoughtlessly and invariably as we tend to do today.  I don't know if they lay or sat crosslegged or lounged around the room on couches and cushions or futon-like mats on the floor, or what exactly, when they hung out together that night.  The bible says that the apostle John and Jesus were physically very close that evening, either leaning on one another or otherwise sprawled together in what certainly does not have to be read as a romantic way.

  And that night Jesus said how much he'd been looking forward to having this supper with them. 

  But then I think of "church."  It's not like that at all. 

What I'm Missing

  What I am missing in my life?  That exact same kind of connection.  With Christians.  Time spent hanging out. Where someone might well be sitting on the floor. 
  I am a bachelor.  I look for people and things to fill up my hours with, and it's not easy because so many have done the whole "See ya in twenty years!  Procreation to attend to!" sudden exit from my life during my twenties.  For some it is likely permanent. For most it is total, at least for now.  I know people who send me pictures, at Christmas, of their kids, who I have never met and likely never will, with not a single picture of themselves, who I have met, but haven't laid eyes on for ten or twenty years.  Even in the cases of the ones who don't want kids, they can have husbands or wives who don't enjoy having me around, and that's "it" for us hanging out then too.

  Wednesday evening, I often meet at a pub with a few other people who like to talk about stuff.  We have a beer and maybe fries or deep-fried zuccini or whatever.  And it's very nice.  They don't profess any particular religious belief.  But we enjoy each other.   And we know each other pretty well and we respect each other's differences. We certainly do talk about religion and stuff sometimes.

  Saturday evening, I often go to band practice.  What that's like is I drive to Tyler and Danielle's in the evening, and I come in and there is almost always something cooking.  Something's just been eaten or is about to be eaten.  And we hang out and we sing songs and enjoy one another.  They don't profess any particular religious belief.  But we know each other pretty well and we respect each other's differences.  We certainly do talk about religion and stuff.  There is food, music and conversation. It's "warm." It reminds me of the "last supper" in the bible.

"Church"

  But "church" isn't like that either, in my experience.  For one thing it's far too brightly lit for intimacy and warmth. And the music's bad.  (The smiles are worse.)  That formal "assembling together" has never had the same level of candour, of honesty, of compassion, empathy, understanding, tolerance or insight as the informal getting together with people who aren't Christians.  The worst are the ones where everyone is falling over themselves to seem informal and "just relaxed" that they're afraid to do or say anything approaching the wrong thing.  Where every act of informality is carefully applauded.
  At church, far as I know no one's "keeping up on on you" and seeing if you're okay, and noticing when you aren't, in my own experience.  (I hear mythic tales of superchurches where everyone's psychic, but I've never experienced that).  I have never had anything like the open conversations about God and the bible and what it means to be human and what's hard, and what might be worth trying, and what our hopes and dreams, fears and nightmares are.

What I Want

  What I want, what I demand, I am afraid, is that Christians simply be able to keep up with my interactions with their atheist counterparts.  They they be willing to befriend each other.  And they aren't even trying, near as I can see.  I don't see Christians, generally, except by accident.  You know why not?  They have "church" for that.  And they're "busy."

  When I was a kid, I'd go to bible conferences. In Montreal, Ottawa, Toledo, New Jersey, Chicago. Wherever.  And men would drone on and on about how wonderful it was to be us, being here, being told by them how wonderful it was to be us, being there.  And I'd wait quite impatiently for them to shut up.  Because I wanted to meet the other people who were there.  That's why I'd gone.  We'd have like forty minutes to try to connect with each other before the next windbag would start up talking about unity and togetherness, while we all had to sit silently again, not connecting until he was done.  There were people there who I spoke to only once a year, and I wanted to hear what was up with them.  I'd see if anyone would "really talk" despite there being Christians nearby.  Sometimes I'd find they were almost completely different from before when I spoke to them this time.  Sometimes I'd remember stuff I'd forgotten.  And there were people I'd not met yet that I wanted to meet.  I wanted to meet new friends. Girls, even.  And this was before the Internet, so being friends took work. And we did that work.

  As I got older, it became ever more easy and thoughtless and instant to keep in touch with people, no matter where they lived.  And so we didn't.  This has continued until Facebook statuses and the occasional comment typed under them are by far the most intimate connections most of us have to each other.

  Time and time again, some stupid, plastic little text-only Facebook conversation has amazed and astounded churchgoing people, who say "I wish I could be this honest at my church!" or "We never have REAL talks like this at any church I've been to!" or "These conversations keep me honest."  And always this makes someone angry that they'd impugned church in this way.  The angry people then post something like "Ten years ago, I attended a church that WAS sincere and honest and real!  We sometimes had real talks there!  So stop your generalizing, and don't say anything bad about churches at all, until you've attended Stony Brook Bible Chapel Fellowship.  Well, you can't go there anymore, because it doesn't exist anymore.  The building's being used for Narcotics Anonymous, but...I'm sure somewhere there's some church, that at least for a decade or two, might have levels of sincerity and honesty that can approach a Facebook discussion!"
  I'm angry too.  I want people to stop being amazed and commenting whenever Christians are sincere, honest and open.  Because there is only one reason I can think of why people are so amazed when a Christian conversation is honest, open and sincere.

Where I Live

 I live in a small town. It has only 4 000 people.  And all around it are other towns of the same size, or slightly larger.  And there is also the city of Ottawa, which is a pretty tiny city, as far as cities go.  And I grew up here.  I teach a hundred or so high school students each year.  I know many of those who are Christians, and there are more still that I don't know.  I know parents who send their kids to the Catholic high school so they can have "Silent Night" at Christmas.  I know the Christian academy for elementary age kids.  If I were to go into any church you could send me to around here, in all likelihood I'd find I had taught, I had once gone to church with, or am outright related, by blood and/or marriage to, some person there, or someone they knew well.  It's that small around here.

  And those empty evenings when I haven't contrived something to do with people who don't believe in God, I am at home, well aware that the other Christians are out there too, not hanging out.  They live just up the block.  They work in the stores. They have sometimes two or three churches on one block.  And they do not assemble together.  Instead they go to that one church and shut out the Christians next door.

   They are segregated like the American South.   It's like there're Baptist fountains, restaurants and bus stations, and Anglican ones, as far as our church community goes.  We really are segregated, with only a few, showy exceptions which seem to prove the rule.  Because we like it like that.  Because we'd far rather deal with people of no real religious affiliation, than with someone who chose a different church to owns them and their time, than with someone who might disagree on points of doctrine.  So we just stay segregated.  We live as if those brothers and sisters of ours at other churches didn't exist, or weren't Christians at all.  Not really.  Not the same kind as us, surely.

  And so, obviously, I am anti-"church."  Increasingly.  Because I believe it's something I am not to do.  If others want to mess around with all that, I will try not to judge them.  Yet "church" is all the few Christians who are willing to talk to me ever seem willing to discuss.  It's the sacred cow in the room.  We all know what the first question is that any Christian asks when they find out you also are a Christian:
"What church do you go to?" 
It's an "us" or "them" test.  How different are you?  You don't go to our church, certainly, which probably means we won't be hanging out, but if you go to a church that's not terribly different, you might come to ours?  Or maybe we don't like ours much, and maybe we'll switch to yours and then we'll hang out?
  I swear we're like little kids who need our churches to set us up with playdates and sleepovers.  Because we can't/don't/won't socialize like grownups.

What I'm Trying To Do

  For years I have had a simple test to try to meet people who have grown out of this: when I meet a Christian, and confess to them that I don't go to a church, I try to arrange meeting up outside of a church setting. The big question is, "If I won't go to your church, will you talk to me anyway?"  Will that person meet me at a restaurant or movie or pub or coffee shop or any of those kinds of places where normal people meet up?
  The experiment drags on.  In twenty years, it approaches 2% of Christians who will meet up at all, even once, if it's not at their church, and about 0% of them who will do it more than once.  And they live up the street from me.  I buy things in their stores.  They creep my Internet rantings.  They talk about me to others, but do not contact me on purpose.  They tell me this when I meet them randomly.  And I/we always say "We should meet up sometime."  And then they try to get me to come to their church.  And if I won't go, I am not forgiven it.  And I am not part of their life, apart from perhaps a guilty pleasure to creep online.

  Last fall I went to the Montreal bible conference.  I was asked not to go, and told that if I did, I was not allowed to have supper (or any other meal) with the people there.  But I went anyway.
  Because the fact that I wasn't allowed to eat there was fairly common knowledge, someone decided to go out and eat with me anyway.  And she tried to bring people, so the gossip mill couldn't suggest that a torrid affair had occurred (in those terribly "special" circles, whenever a man and woman leave the sight of the mob for anything over about ten minutes, a torrid affair is presumed to have, of course, occurred).  And not a single person came with us.  But she didn't back out, and stood behind the idea that refusing to eat with a Christian for no good reason whatsoever, was just stupid.  Because she's a hero like that.  So she now bears the accusations that what she did, rather than being a standing up for Christian community, for treating other Christians like Christians, for assembling together, even over a sandwich, was actually something romantic.  Among other things, this simply points up how unprecedented what she did truly was.  And no one interpreted it correctly, as far as she knows.  Or if they did, they said nothing, certainly to her, and let the "special rest" be the only ones who spoke up.  To think their special thoughts, uncontradicted.
  If you know who she is, and you can see the good in what she did for the body of Christ, shame on you if you don't let her know.  There sure are enough people out there who instantly judge anyone who advertently or inadvertenty, rocks the boat even a smidge.

  Last month I went to a funeral.  (note: I am NOT trying to diss people at a funeral.  I'm trying to illustrate how we do things, unthinkingy and habitually, as Christians, and to express my unrequited desire to be able to connect to them informally, outside their church settings)  It was the funeral of a man I used to go to church with, before church separated us all, never to reconnect.  I used to be invited to his house for lunch very frequently.  He and they were very nice.  In the 90s, me being invited to his house for lunch got curtailed by the fact that my church kicked me out.  And I never ate with him again and never will.  His mother either, though we were fond of each other.  And his kids grew up and I have never eaten with any of them since either.
  The odd thing is that that man, his mother, his wife and all of his kids got kicked out of "our church" too, just like me and everyone in my family.  This meant that, really, there was no reason for us to not be able to spend time together over food.  But though the reason I couldn't eat with them had been removed, upon reflection I realize that the reason I was invited to begin with is also not in effect nowadays.  You see, I'm not going to be going to their church with them.  I was always invited over for dinner before evening church, or lunch after Sunday morning church and before Sunday school.  And I never went to that family's church again, so I never ate with them again.  Because we Christians don't do that.  Social life = church.  Anything which falls outside of that tends to allowed to simply fall away.

  And at the funeral, I said to the man's wife how we should have a coffee sometime.  Because I miss them.  "There's coffee at church!" she said. I really like her.  Very single-minded.
  "I don't do church on a first date," I said, assuming I was being understood.  "It's one of my rules."

  "No more rules!" protested the woman's stunning adult daughter, who I didn't see go through her teens and twenties, and who now has a brain sharp as a tack to go with her piercing blue gaze.

  "I'm serious," I said.  "We should get a sandwich some time, or I could come over." (I am a bachelor and literally don't own a table, so inviting families over is something that I, like most bachelors, never think to do).  "We could all eat together. We can do that now."

  "There were sandwiches at the funeral!" she said.  "We did eat together.  Anyway, why don't you come tomorrow?"

  Could it be?  Was I to be invited back to that house to eat with them for the first time since my church kicked me out in 1998?  "I didn't eat sandwiches," I said.  "But tomorrow?  At your house?" I asked.

  "No. Here," she said, indicating the church. Because the next day was Sunday.  She didn't want to hang out and catch up so much as she wanted me to show up at church.  For my own good, I very much imagine. Because she's the kind of person who's always thinking of other people's good.  But Church was still the thing we all served, clearly.  It defined our timetable.  (I may well be wrong.  But it sure felt like that to me.)
  The conversation ended warmly and funny, when I confessed I'd eaten a brownie, which was more intimate than sandwiches, my ex-church compatriot declared, and I was inclined to agree.  But still, I'd like to eat with her/them at their house, or a restaurant.  Not at a funeral.  I don't see why someone has to die for us to all see each other.

  And before this, my sister and I met up with a guy we went to high school with, who went to our church until the division orchestrated within our church in 1991, after which we had never eaten together again.  We went to Pizza Hut.  We had beers.  (Well, my sister and I did.  He had Coors Lite instead).   He went on and on about how the half of our church he'd "gone with," (the opposite to the half we "stayed with" until it kicked both of us and our parents out) was so modern, so much freer, and so very unlike the repressive experience we'd grown up with.
  And in the middle of it, my sister wanted to take a selfie with him.  She was figuring out her phone, but wanted to have a picture of herself with him.  And he freaked out.  Because there was a Coors Lite can on the table right there in front of him.  He worried that if the picture were taken, someone at his church (he gave actual specific names that had him worried) might see that he'd drank an almost-beer with us.  I said I was unimpressed by the level of freedom people from his church claimed to possess, given the fact that this was even a concern.
  He has never spoken to me again.  "Was he not cool with what I said?" I asked my sister, because I'm completely clueless.  "I don't think that went over with him at this point," she said.
  I don't get "church."

  "But it's normal and proper and scriptural for Christians to deal in Christian community" I hear dissenting voices say.

  My response is "I find it abnormal and improper for Christians not to be able to deal in any way outside their little clubhouses."  And also "I'm not seeing much community."

I Haven't Given Up

  But the experiment continues.  I live surrounded by Christians.  My goal is to see if you will share a bite with me, knowing full well that I am not a potential attendee at your church.  That once you give up on recruiting me, you may yet acknowledge me as having some other worth as a human being, if not a Christian. I've lost faith that people can even tell the difference between God and "church" anymore, in many cases.  And I do not serve a "church."  And I do not follow a pastor or elders.  I emulate someone much less easy on the ears.
  But I will be continuing to carry out this experiment.  Because I have this odd idea:  I believe that, in theory, the community of Christians is a Unity. It is one.  Yet we've been trained to live as if it/we weren't.  Every Sunday morning, "we" go into our own My Little Jesus clubhouses and then have little or nothing to do with the Christian community as a whole. And we feel this is perfectly okay and quite natural and proper.
  But this effectively negates us.  God gives teachers, evangelists, shepherds and so on.  To everyone.  Not to specific "churches." And we guarantee we'll never spend time with most of them, unless they happen to be the specific ones we've met, and have officially appointed to those positions, in our tiny, poorly-attended church.  (Because they'll consent to be members of our church, rather than of all the others, again, which seems to be all important, for no good reason.)  We would rather plant churches than develop lasting, intimate, sincere, honest, open relationships with the Christians who live all around us.  We build far more churches than we could ever hope to fill.

  And tonight, the two Christians I know who will actually meet up and talk to me about bible things are meeting me at a restaurant to talk about James.  (I know.  I know.  That doesn't count as "assembling together.")  There is no church oversight.  No clear leadership.  It is, in fact, the opposite, or an alternative to proper church membership, involvement and attendance.
  And because they are both ladies, and are married to each other, I wouldn't trust most of the Christians I know to treat them as what they are: Christians.  I expect they'd be made an "issue", to come down on one side or the other of.  I expect no one would talk with them about James, but only about what they presumably do with their genitals.
  I expect all this because I've been watching Christians on the Internet.  And Christians seem like they'd much rather judge people, especially for matters sexual, and habitually look to the bible only to affirm ideas they have already been given long ago, than look to bible to get ideas from it.  Or hope.  And I need both ideas and hope.  Simply knowing who and what's "wrong" has lost the attraction it once had for me, and my reading of the bible seems to find it being about more than that.  And my life needs more than that.

  I also don't need to sing songs about how lovely it is for us to get together and sing songs, in a "smiles-only" environment.  Where things have to be fine.  Because we're Christians.  Or at the very least, where any problem a person has needs to get solved that month.  Otherwise it may make us need to doubt that person's spirituality for fear we will otherwise doubt God's willingness and ability to use church to "heal" people.

  Here endeth the lesson.  I predict a barrage of comments from people seeking to differ from me and not connect, due to my heretical views on that sacredest of evangelical sacred cows, "church involvement." And the necessity of Christian community, which I will be talking about with my Christians friends tonight when "forsaking the assembling of ourselves together."