That's terrible.
I broke up with Church because what once was sweet became sour. Heartfelt worship and times of repentence became times of prescribed motion.
What felt organic has become what I can only describe as religious theatre. Sunday morning church became a play in 3 acts. David Mamet has tought me how to dissect drama in our lives. If you havn't read "3 Uses of the Knife" you should. Mamet demonstrates how we create drama where there may not be any and why we do it.
I'm going to take a stab (terrible terrible pun) at using the Knife on the Church.
Act I
We praise God. We make noise, we put ourselves in a place where we act boldly. We are the hero protagonists of our own faith drama. Either collectively (this is happening to us) or individually (I come before God) we begin by singing not true praises to God, but about ourselves in context to God. We exalt God. We are the champions.
Act II
But wait, there may be a problem. The music changes to a minor key, slows down in tempo, and a soloist sings about her short comings and inability to be worthy to praise God. She is singing to God, but she is singing for us. We sing along, she is our vehicle and stirs up shame and remorse about our weaknesses in light of the greatness we've spent Act I proclaiming.
Act II continues seemlessly into the sermon. The sermon itself is a play in 3 acts. It tells of a common man (act I) who faces difficulty (act II) and is saved by faith (act III). If the pastor is really good he'll tell a story. He will put us in the story. We will see ourselves in the tale of the man who fell and was lifted up again. If he's really slick, he won't tell us the third act of the story.
Act III
He'll suspend the story - a spiritual cliffhanger - and we will have to Do Something to resolve the third act. He will shine a light on our shortcomings, we will identify and weep and long for a last minute dramatic solution to come from an unseen source. We want the second string quarterback to throw us a hail mary. The pastor has told us that we have forced God into the position of underdog (undergod?). We've benched our only salvation in favor of winning the game on our own, which we can't do. So now, in the last quarter, the darkest moment of the third act, the pastor invites us to send in the underdog. And what does the underdog do? Something that was cleverly hinted at in the first act. He behaves in a way that is worthy of the praises we sang about him earlier on. He delivers. The music swells, we rise from our knees to our feet (or go from our seats to our knees) and celebrate victory. Act III concludes and we're better than we were when arrived because we encountered drama and emerged, Hero Protagonist Victorious, ready to face another week in light of what took place Sunday morning.
It works. Man it works.
I can't do it anymore. I cannot contribute, in the face of real fears and dissonance, to the Theatre of Suburban MegaChurch.
It's okay in art. It's not okay in my life. I can't have my heart broken vicariously through the pastor's 3 act play.
But, I do miss communion. Holy Communion and communing with others in the drama are part of something bigger than me. I long to be part of something bigger than me.
But the church is that ex-girlfriend that with some distance, you only remember the good times. Go see her and it'll be nice again, for a little while. But eventually, she's gonna start up the same old crap again.
If I go out and try a new church, they'll sell the drama, and now that I know, I can't unsee the machine. I can't buy in. Tyler Durden couldn't cry with another faker in the room. I can't invest in religious theatre and call it worship.
This post has no Third Act. I remain unresolved, but hopeful of a third act hail mary pass.
I'm open. I'm wide open.
Peace,
Caulfield
