QUARANTINE LIFE: WEDNESDAY THOUGHTS: CHURCH

I saw a post that read “I can’t wait until we can have praise and worship.” 

It made me sad. 

Why wait? 

Can God not be praised unless it’s a group activity?

The defiance of gubernatorial orders in many places, proves that people have relegated God and the acknowledgement of him to a specific building. 

They have deified his representatives, and checked their brains at sanctuary doors. 

Leaders are dying, and their public stances on social distancing add more insult to the injury of their passing. 

Too many want to attribute positive outcomes to their own stamina and faith, as opposed to God’s grace.

If this pandemic isn’t an opportunity to draw personally closer to him; to read, study, pray, praise, meditate, serve, and worship, I don’t know what is. 

People are risking their lives, and jeopardizing the lives of others to maintain an, albeit well meaning, habit. Why don’t they think they can worship God at home?

Many have become so accustomed to their role in planning the weekly show; performing, dressing for, and competing with one another, “doing” church, and building bigger barns, that they don’t know how to do anything else. Is God even in the mix, or is his name merely being used for PR?

An elder relative said long ago, that the church was the only place where some people could have a title and feel important. Church was the only place where they could “be somebody”. 

They sincerely believe that merely going, constitutes service, and that they can evaluate, based on the level of emotionalism, and good time that was had, whether God was pleased with their offering. 

They can’t worship at home. Who will see them dance? Who will measure the level of their anointing? Who will determine how off the chain, bananas, blazing, on fire, or dope the “service” was?

Others have enjoyed profiting financially from the busyness. Virtual church is messing with the money. Virtual church is also exposing whether the pomp and circumstance of weekly convocation has been hiding a gross lack of substance, pure motive, wisdom, intelligence, and Bible literacy. 

There are enough sermons in the can, worldwide, to save armies. Every message on how to BE the church has apparently fallen on some deaf ears, but many pre-pandemic church goers are re-evaluating what they’ve been doing all of their lives. Perhaps that’s the fear— that some realize the flaws, futility, miseducation, manipulation, and game and will find new places of worship, purpose, and the true meaning of service and won’t come back when the quarantine is lifted. 

Amos 5:21-26 is screaming:

“ I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs. 

I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river; righteousness like a never-failing stream! Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel? You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of your god.which you made for yourselves.” 

Perhaps, returning to business as usual isn’t what God likes or wants. This forced stillness is difficult for those whose identities and livelihoods were tied to being seen, who never “studied to show themselves approved”,  as well as those for whom church was an escape from the homes to which they are now relegated.