Week 2: The Puppet's Message

"For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory..."

-The Lord's Prayer

"Love, love me do.  You know I love you."

-The Beatles

The Beatles are on the radio again.  I’m driving to church, and I realize that the famous Beatles lyric doesn’t really make sense.  Sounds good, though. 

My second outing in the churchgoing atheist project takes me to a Reformed Church.  The Reformed Church is the Dutch equivalent of the Scottish Presbyterian Church that I knew growing up, so once again this week’s service is familiar.  I’ll broaden my horizons as the project continues.

Familiar it is, but looking at the ritual with fresh atheist eyes still yields a great deal to write about.  The best part of the service is the children’s sermon.  There is a puppet theater standing at the front of the sanctuary, a tall wooden box with a window and curtain.  The children walk up front (there are a handful of children at this church) and the puppet show begins.  It consists of a single Sesame-Street-looking puppet saying The Lord’s Prayer.  But as she begins, “Our father,” the voice of God responds over the sanctuary’s PA system: “Yes?”  And in the conversation that ensues, God explains to little Suzie what the prayer means.

Little Suzie doesn’t want to hear it.  She tells God that she just says her prayers because it’s routine.  She doesn’t know what it means, and it doesn’t matter.  It makes her feel good just to say the words, even if they don’t mean anything.  God explains to Suzie that it’s important to think about the words in prayer and to actually mean them when you say them.  And God has hit the nail on the head. 

I don’t believe most Christians listen to the words of the prayers in church.  Now we can never know for sure what’s in other people’s heads, so maybe I’m just assuming that because I spent years not listening to those words myself.  But I’m pretty confident in this belief, partly because the words of those prayers are pretty bizarre when you do actually think about them.  Consider the prayer of confession that is printed in this week’s bulletin: “We confess that we have not bowed before Jesus and are slow to acknowledge his rule.  We give allegiance to the powers of this world and fail to be governed by justice and love…”  If people actually listen to this, they will realize it promotes Jesus as a ruler in this world.  It is not a metaphor; it explicitly says that Jesus should be crowned ruler in place of the governments of this world.  It ends with the idea that people should “obey the commands of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  If people actually obeyed those words, they would invite the poor and the blind to feasts (Luke 14), or if they really obeyed, they would sell everything they have and give it to the poor (Luke 18).  I’ll resist the urge to pursue this line of thought further at this time.

Returning to my belief that Christians don’t actually listen to the words of prayers in church, I need only look to this children’s message for proof.  The church leadership is aware that people—children, at least—don’t think about what they say.  I would extrapolate this to the bulk of the people.  They read the prayers like automatons, performing the weekly, mindless ritual of recitation without reflection.

The lesson from little Suzie isn’t over yet.  God has some moral teaching for the little ones.  He explains each line of The Lord’s Prayer, and when he gets to “lead us not into temptation,” he must explain to Suzie that he’s aware she sometimes tells lies.  Sometimes she watches things on TV that she shouldn’t.  She has friends at school that do bad things.  And God explains that Suzie shouldn’t put herself in situations that will make her do bad things.  God will “deliver us from evil” if we do not put ourselves in positions to be tempted.  While on its face this is good moral advice to give to young people, it is a logically twisted explanation that is typical of Christian attempts to explain religious beliefs.  If it is our responsibility to avoid evil, then what are we asking God for?  I’m sure this fits into the whole “free will” thing—it would be too easy for God to just deliver us from evil, so he puts evil temptation in the world and puts the onus on people to avoid it.  If they do, chalk it up to God’s guidance.  If they don’t, chalk it up to individuals’ weaknesses.  This is a nonsensical explanation to give to children under the guise of logical moral advice.  It’s provided by a voice in the sky (the PA system), which also gives children the bogus idea that God listens to their prayers and responds in personal ways.  Anyone who really believes this is sadly misled.

Although the structure of the service looks exactly like the Presbyterian services I’m used to, there’s one unusual addition.  Early on is an “Exhortation to Self-Examination.”  I’ve never seen this before.  It’s self-explanatory, though: it was simply a call to the congregation to think critically about their own behavior.  This is consistent with God’s message to Suzie in the children’s lesson.  It’s ironic that the service seems to emphasize this need for people to actually think critically about their religious lives.  I appreciate that idea, but I find that that kind of reflection about religion only leads away from the groundless superstitions of church.

Having written way more about the children’s lesson than I’d intended, I’ll keep the rest short.  The sermon was given by a guest pastor.  It was about the kingdom to come, in recognition of the last Sunday of the liturgical year.  The speaker attempted to reconcile Jesus’s statements that the kingdom was at hand with the obvious fact that it is not here, even 2000 years later.  I’ve read and heard many attempts to explain the “kingdom” that Jesus refers to.  The bottom line is that nobody knows what the kingdom means, and there is a wild variety of interpretations of it.  This particular speaker argued that we continue to wait for the kingdom, and that we must avoid the “secular despair” that we are tempted into by its absence. He claims that we can’t even imagine how God’s kingdom is going to be when it happens, and all we can do is “bear witness” as we wait for it.  We must create pieces of that kingdom in Christian communities here on earth, so that what God has promised will be visible.  This will make it so that people will not be justified in their disbelief.  We won’t know when or how God’s kingdom will come, but we are assured that it will.

If people indeed think critically about this, they will realize it is a devious trick.  It is a logical trap.  The pastor argues that it is impossible to know when or how God’s kingdom will come, or what it will look like when it comes.  If these are necessary components of the definition of God’s kingdom, then Christian communities are tricked into forever waiting in ignorance.  Theologians have gotten away with this cruel game of blind anticipation for 2000 years.  I do wish the parishioners and leadership of this church would listen to the puppet’s lesson, because the advice to actually think about what churches say is the most intelligent thing I heard in this building.  

"Love Me Do" doesn't make any sense.  It sounds good and means nothing, just like today's sermon.  The difference is that the Beatles don't claim any special insight into God's plan.

Week 1: The Uncomfortable Start of a Project

"This is the day the lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."

-Common expression to open church services

"Little Darlin', it feels like years since we've been here."

-The Beatles

Waking up on Sunday mornings is pretty alien to me, at least recently. 8:30 seems ungodly early for a weekend. But I am intent upon suffering so for my first trip to church in two years. It would not be church if it didn’t feel like a chore, right? But as I wake up, I get this unusual feeling—I’m looking forward to church. Weird, I know. I begin the drive to church, and it’s a beautiful fall morning. The air is fresh. I see neighbors walking dogs, raking leaves, talking to one another, and they seem happy. The sunlight is coming from a strange direction, lighting the trees into a blaze of orange and yellow. I turn on the radio, and the Beatles are singing “Here Comes the Sun.” The world is conspiring to make me happy about church.

One cannot help being tempted to see God’s hand in this beautiful morning. It’s as though he is thanking me, welcoming me, approving of my decision to attend church again. Or perhaps he just made such a beautiful morning in an attempt to prove his existence to me, an unbeliever.

If there were a God, he would know that I’m attending to church in order to look at it with atheist eyes. He would be offended that I will sit and pretend, sing along, read the prayers, listen to the sermon, and not believe a word of it. But I’m not worried about an imaginary God being offended and striking me down for unbelief. I will pursue my project: I will attend a different church every Sunday and write about it from an atheist’s perspective. Simple as that.

But where to begin? I want to ease into this project—nothing too crazy yet. So I choose a mild and liberal Baptist church near my house, and a church that will probably be similar to the Presbyterian ones I spent so many Sundays at earlier in my life. It will be nice to start with something familiar.

Approaching the church, I begin to worry about the empty parking lot. And where is the front door, anyway? I end up circumnavigating the building looking for a front door, but there are only about 15 cars in the parking lot, and no obvious influx of people. My plan to blend in and observe inconspicuously will not be easy if there are only a few people here. Not finding the front door, and feeling pretty stupid about it, I make my way in through the church office, and find the sanctuary. I must be early.

I'm not early. It's 9:55, and there are still only 10 people in the congregation, and I’m feeling pretty conspicuous, but at this point I’m committed. Five people in the front row. Not wanting to be too rude sitting in the back row, and I take a seat a few rows behind the crowd at the front, thinking I can hide behind them. 9:59. The five in the front row get up and relocate to the choir’s bench, leaving me in the very front of the congregation, right as the music begins. Awesome.

As the service starts, though, I’m oddly relaxed. Who cares if there are 10 blue-hairs wondering about the random guy in the front row? I do a half-turn and get a quick glance at the crowd behind me as the service starts, and I realize I’m attending a dying church. There’s almost nobody here.

It’s a strange mix of emotions I feel. There’s something comfortable, familiar, and almost joyful about being here. I spent so many hours in church growing up that it’s like returning home, or seeing an old friend again after many years. The comfort to be found in church is real. But I’m conflicted because the premise on which it’s all founded is nonsense. I’m angry I spent so many hours praising something that was never there. The people sitting in the rows behind me draw inspiration and guidance from a system that is a lie. So why am I depressed to see so few people here?

But when the pastor speaks, I like him immediately. He’s wearing a bowtie. He begins, “So the hated Yankees have won the world series,” and proceeds into a discussion of sports. Interesting, but it doesn’t seem like a sermon. I look at the bulletin and realize this portion of the service is the children’s lesson, and then it really hits me—there are no children here.

What do I really believe about the church? If I believe there is no god, and I believe religion is an enormous delusion, then should I be happy that there are no children to hear this lesson? Certainly church is not going to disappear anytime soon, if ever, but this one is—that is a near certainty. A church without children is doomed.

Growing up, I never used to listen to the sermon. But this one is good. The pastor touches on one of the best aspects of religious belief: charity. I cannot deny that religion makes people more selfless and compassionate than we are naturally inclined to be. The pastor builds his sermon around the passage from Mark in which a woman pours expensive oil on Jesus, and the bystanders protest that it could have been sold to give money to the poor. The pastor attempts to make sense of this strange action and Jesus’s approval of it. It is a perplexing section, and the pastor weaves it together with stories of charity and transformation from the local Rochester community. He focuses on Foodlink, an organization that provides huge amounts of free food to hungry families all over western New York. He asks the questions: will there always be destitute people? Will it always rain in our lives? Will there always be suffering around us? He answers those questions by saying that there will always be suffering until the kingdom comes and everyone is called back to god again. In the meantime, though, in our lives, god will rain blessings upon us in unexpected ways, as Foodlink does for the Rochester hungry and the woman in the gospel does for Jesus. People can give of their deep passion as expressions of charity, and others can be transformed by that.

A beautiful message, and artfully delivered. I wholeheartedly approve of his message of charity, and I believe the congregation, small though it is, follows through on this message with their actions. But do we need the Bible to inspire this? No. In fact, I do not believe that the gospel passage he analyzes conveys this message of charity. Though it was a passionate sermon, it was based on an illogical interpretation of the passage. If Jesus really believed in charity, he would not have applauded the woman for her kind act of anointment. The bystanders were right; the woman’s action was foolishly wasteful. I’ve been to Foodlink to volunteer*, and they have pallets of food as far as the eye can see, and each day we’d move a different food item. One day I was there, it was bananas. The Foodlink analogy doesn’t work, because the modern day equivalent of the woman’s action would be a Foodlink worker taking a pallet of bananas, turning them into a giant banana milkshake for Jesus, and then pouring it down the drain after he tasted it. Those bananas might be given to Jesus out of her deep passion, it may be a beautiful gesture of appreciation, but it removes food from the destitute who need it. The bystanders were right to protest. As far as I can see, this Bible story doesn’t make any sense in a 21^st-century context, and maybe not in any context. Unfortunately, every Sunday religious leaders must attempt to explain and find relevance in Biblical texts that sometimes defy logic. Jesus was dead wrong here, if we read the story from the perspective of the hungry.

I believe human morality has its basis outside of God and religion. We do not need to play games of logic in order to find moral messages in a biblical text that may contradict what we know to be right. The church's minister, in his message of charity, was right, and Jesus was wrong. But the logical gymnastics are a sad necessity of religious belief, and one that most believers choose to ignore.

As I leave the church, I shake the pastor’s hand and thank him for having me as a guest. I genuinely liked the service, the sermon, and the people. Still, I feel like a liar and a snake, because I’m pretending to be a believer but I’m secretly there to dissect and criticize. Those few people in the congregation will stay to discuss their charity work, and I will go home to type up an arrogant critique and then watch football.

This church is dying, and it does sadden me. Though I am sure belief in god is wrong, I’m surprised that I find myself thinking the world will be slightly worse off if this congregation dissolves. I realize that I should approach this project with a spirit of intellectualism, but also with humility and an open mind. I have much to learn.

*Incidentally, I can’t claim to be a particularly charitable person. Saying I volunteered at Foodlink makes me sound much better than I am. The volunteer work at Foodlink was part of my college fraternity’s charitable work. We figure that a few days of volunteering balances out four years of reckless drunkenness.