I thought I knew why I was supposed to go to church, but now I’m not so sure.

Years ago I stopped attending church services regularly because instead of getting me closer to God and making me feel peaceful and enlightened, it made me feel isolated and angry. Recently I started going to church again and it has been mostly good.  A couple weeks ago I even went to Sunday School for the first time since I was a teenager.  It was okay, but it made me realize how much I didn’t fit in with the other people in the room.  The experience was unnerving.

The second time I went to Sunday School, it was a disaster.  Maybe it was just that it had been a particularly awful week.  Maybe I was tired and cranky. Or maybe some demon was jerking my chain.  Whatever it was, that day Sunday School irritated me more and more each second.  I barely heard anything the pastor said.  I drummed my fingers.  I fidgeted.  I fantasized about running out of there before class was dismissed.  Every moment found me more agitated than the last.  When it was finally over, I left as quickly as possible and headed home without a word to anyone, completely skipping the Worship Service I had planned to attend.

I told my husband that I might not go back to church because it wasn’t getting me any closer to God.  He said that you don’t go to church to get closer to God, you go to get closer to God’s people.  I replied that then I definitely wasn’t going back.

After I settled down and thought about it, I wondered if maybe I was wrong about why I should go to church.  Maybe it isn’t supposed to be good for me.  Maybe it’s not meant to be helpful or make me feel peaceful and sure.  Maybe all that is just me being selfish.

I figure part of why we are supposed to go to church is to pay our respects to God.  I can live with that.  But if going to church has such a detrimental effect on me then maybe there are better ways for me to glorify God.

The vain part of my mind suggested that maybe me going to this church was not about what I could learn from them but what they could learn from me.  I batted the idea away, embarrassed by the arrogance in it.  But it flitted back later in the more palatable form of maybe I wasn’t there to receive help so much as give it, that maybe my differences are why I was there, to bring something new to the table.

I searched the index of my Bible for references about why we should attend worship services regularly.  It wasn’t much help.  One reference seemed promising until I read it and all it said was that Jesus went to services.  I guess the implication is that if Jesus did it, we should to.  Somewhere else it said that we should go to church to receive encouragement and support from our fellow Christians, but that seemed too much like the plan I started with: going to church for what spiritual sustenance I could get out of it.

I am still not sure why we are supposed to go to church regularly.  But I may give it another try.  At the very least, I think it must please God.  Even if it’s a struggle for me, perhaps especially if it’s a struggle, I think it must bring a little smile to his face.  And that seems the least I can do.