sometimes...the more you stay in the church building, the less you feel Jesus

by Jonathan C on Wednesday, 19 January 2011 at 15:36

First, I want to say I don't think I am opposed to the idea of gathering at a church building. We need somewhere to stay for a reason, and we need a place. It comes to the why of the meeting and gathering. All of a sudden, I ask myself why I have to gather with a group of Christians, or those who claims to be Christians.

To tell the truth, Christians are not a group of particularly lovable people. While Paul said that he had a treasure in him, I suppose the awareness that you have a treasure inside you is the most neglected aesthetic in the epistemology of the church. We tend to be a group of rather relaxed people allowing our true selves to expressed without any qualification. We would play dome, laugh at people's back and commenting when we do not want to do and making excuses, then we would blame people of not doing what the Bible did not give a dame priority. We fall into the category of what Jesus' once termed, hypocrisy. There is a serious gap between what we talk and what we walk and only God could forgive us.

Once I saw a memo on a clergyman's door saying, 'Do you know what you believe?' and that showed how important this person regards orthodoxy to be, right beliefs before anything else. There was an immediate response inside me saying that, 'Wouldn't it be more important to know the where before the who?' More often we are concerned with the question of Who rather than the eagerness to follow God. We want to know if we have a right belief about God as if he is an answer to some questions and we think that if we 'know' who he is, then we are OK. But we don't care where he is because we don't take following Christ seriously. The Christian God becomes a piece of knowledge, or worse even, a piece of information. We have turned the incarnate God to a piece of knowledge.

So, really. Where is God?

O, another thing we care so much about is the 'relationship' with God. I don't know if I have put it right. Shall I put it as 'relationship with' or 'relationship'. There is a big difference between the two, and it being that are we talking about the 'relationship' itself or the 'relationship with' the living God. I guess we are usually talking about the 'relationship', and it is usually referred to a state of feeling good. Like many Chinese idol worships, we tend to think that God needs our worship and prayer to be pleased. In the end, we are just worshiping our own ego and our feelings of security. The formula goes this way:

1. Say that worship in the church building is important and biblical

2. Come worship and give yourself to God (subtext being: God is in the church building or ON Sunday) and leave the world behind

3. You would get energized and is ready for the week

4. Build your relationship with God by doing your devo...

5. Go to 1

So, God is locked either in a building or locked on a day. Of course, it is our own consciousness that creates the problem rather than we have the ability to lock God up or turn him ON on Sundays.

So, really. Where is God?

I suggest we consider the possibilities:

1. God is in his world, I mean everywhere possible

2. God is with prayerful people, I mean the sincere prayerful gathering and Jesus promised to be with them

3. God is in the Church, when the Holy Spirit dwells with people who submit to him, the Church becomes the Body of Christ. We cannot just call any believing community the body of Christ except when that body obey the head and has the Spirit inside it.

4. God is with those who practice Jesus' way, Jesus promised to be with his disciples only when they follow his commandment by making disciples of all nations. Matt 28: 19-20 is a way of making sure Jesus with us and that is by helping people to become disciples.

5. God is with the poor, Matt 25.

So, 'relationship with' is more important than just 'relationship'.

To answer where Jesus is entails to know who Jesus is. And it is interesting that the Bible never tells us to read the Bible and do devotion so that we get a better relationship with God. I suggest we follow the question of WHERE is God so that we know where to find Jesus, then we could have a better 'relationship with' God.