For those who are spiritual, if you attend church (or other religious services) on a regular basis, what motivates you and why?

I do not attend any formal religious services.

I am more a proponant of the eastern philosophies.

Nature is my temple and I am ‘blessed’ with living on 5 beautiful acres in the low mountains.

I need only to still my mind in nature to experience the connection with source.

‘Be still and know that I ‘am’...( God ) A parallel bit of wisdom from both east & west. ;-)

Worship is my gift back to God.

@CyanoticWasp

‘We’ ?
Um..no. Not ‘we’.

Speak for yourself and try not to get strung out on semantics.

I prefer to say ‘commune’...but ‘fellowship’ is just a word, no more, no less.

i’m an atheist who wishes he had a church to go representative of my beliefs. obviously, i don’t feel the need to go to church ever. the reason i would like to go, is because i dig the idea. it seems like an enjoyable experience to me whereas dungeons and dragons, golf, and pottery classes do not.

@ninjacolin

You don’t have to ‘be’, believe anything to enjoy the connection with nature. :-)

@CyanoticWasp – oh sweet, dear CyanoticWasp, honey, I purposely chose the phrase “to fellowship,” not because I want to display poor grammar, but because it’s a very Christianese word and I wanted to acknowledge it.

I think the question is for people who BELIEVE in go to church not for philosophers of atheist.

@El_Perseguidor – this question is open to everyone. I think it’s possible to be an atheist and to be spiritual. I don’t think being spiritual is contingent upon believing in the existence of a Supreme God.

@prolificus

Well said.

I’d also add, perhaps…the feeling of interconnectedness, recognition of the great mystery sans ideology, and a beautiful mystery it is! ;-)

@prolificus I didn’t call it out as poor grammar, really. I’m one of the primary verbers of nouns on this site, and I seldom question my own grammatical skills. I do that verbing purposely—that is, I re-purpose nouns as verbs. (And I bow to whoever came up with re-purpose, too… since before then I didn’t even know we could purpose.)

No, I just had to note the verbification of a double noun. That is, “fellow” is a noun and “fellowship” is a re-nouning: “a company of fellows”—and you verbed that. It’s like… like… trying to salesmanship a whole new class of verbs.

I’ll be eyeing this morely.

@prolificus I’m sorry, but since the question states “If you go to church or other religious services” it doesn’t sound to me like it was intended for atheist or non religious people. I can’t imagine atheist people gathering for a service or what would motivate them. I understand there are other forms of spirituality like Nietzche mentioned in his books but since you are asking what motivates people to go to church or other services I thought that the core of your question is reasons for going to a service not reasons for not going.

I grew up in the Baptist church. I learned so much that I am grateful to know, but at the age of 18 I left the church of my own accord. So many of the churches I attended had a social club mentality, and was a dog and pony show amongst the “haves”, while the “have nots” were snubbed. I can remember countless incidences of the “have nots” being smiled to and spoken to, but the smiles were insincere and the words had a hollow ring to them. I watched those same people sit in church, acting pious every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening, while the rest of thier lives never changed…..ever. We’re talking years, here.

To me, this is NOT what your relationship with God is about. It’s as far from God as you can get. I wanted to be around people who understood and practiced humility before their Maker. I wanted to fully understand what that was about. I needed models of how I felt inside, but didn’t know how to show. I wanted to see people get down on thier knees and truly sacrifice thier lives to God’s will in as many ways as possible, because that’s how I felt, and still do. I couldn’t attend a church where they took religion to the extreme, because that didn’t make any sense, either.

Eventually, I DID figure those things out, but it wasn’t in church. I ended up learning how to do it by myself by taking the behaviors and attitudes I saw in church, and doing the opposite. I learned how to fully open myself up to God. I became a stronger Christian than I ever was while attending a church, because I could be away from those behaviors and and expose myself more fully to God. To me, the people in a church corrupted everything religion meant to me, rendering the church nothing more than a building. I still feel a sense of sadness when I think about that, even today.

I have done a few things with this group: http://www.ethicalhuman.org/

The intention of this group is to develop community not worship. My purpose in participating with this particular group is to engage with thoughtful people interested in critically thinking about ethics and supporting humanity.

Phillis said it well for me also, although I still attend church. My first experience in prayer was to see someone totally and completely restored. A miracle. So that’s how God shows up for me. But at the same time, I spent about 25 years being sidelined and mistreated because God didn’t show up for them the same way he showed up for me. So I also am very disillusioned by the Christian church, but I know what it’s supposed to look like. Now I go to pray for THEM.

I beleive in god, but don attend any chuch. if the bible is correct, God is everywhere. I can stay at my own home to worship.

@slick44

Zing!

That IS the whole premise of ‘spirituality.’

We are god and god is us and god and us are all in everything!

No separation. It is the little ‘me’, the false self that creates separation when there is none.

This is the fundemental difference between religion and ‘spirtuality’, the eastern philosophies.
Christianity still worships a ‘God’ of separation.

A ‘separate’ God that dwells without, not within.

@prolificus I am thinking that you are going to get a few more direct answers once people get home from church.

Sorry, @Columa, that’s not the Christianity I have ever heard taught or that I believe, and I’ve been a Christian for 40 years. Paul was talking about similar things to the men of Athens in Acts 17: starting at verse 24:

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

God is not the one who separates us, it is our sin that separates us from God. That is why we need Christ. But let’s not turn this into an argument, please. I am saying this just for purposes of clarification.

@liminal – probably. I was hoping to catch some who stayed home from church like me today.

@snowberry

I understand.

I accept the clarification and became aware that may sound a bit too biased.

Okay..I get what your saying, I guess I would say that I see ego as the separating factor, not sin.

I don’t think we are born with sin that needs to be purged.

In my theological and spiritual wanderings I see ego as the ‘sinner.’

The root cause of separation..indentified with the mind and it’s desires instead of the heart and it’s truth. If that makes sense.

So I would substitute ‘sin’ with ego.

I could write pages about this. Here’s maybe a good summary I recently read in a great book:

“Attending church and other religious services as well as engaging in religious discussions helps me explore and develop my spirituality, which is rooted in biblical wisdom and in a faith tradition that crosses the centuries, helps make sense of the universe, gives meaning to my life, opens us to the transcendent, connects us in supportive communities, provides a mandate for morality and selflessness, and offers hope in the face of adversity and death. It allows me to glimpse ultimate reality as in a dim mirror, constrained by our cognitive limits. I like to draw wisdom from both skepticism and spirituality by anchoring my life in a rationality and humility that restrains spirituality with critical analysis and in a spirituality that nurtures purpose, love, joy, and hope.” (inspired by David G. Myers)

God is never within a mob mindset.
The church is a mob mindset, they justify themselves among themselves and exclude all else.

That would be fine if all are equally convince by Truth that each individual know for certain by themselves and not the “truth” the group/mob/church/ say it is.

I mean that if Church truly is teaching people to know God,
Then they would do so without all the unnecessary mandatory obligations they heap upon their converts, conforming them into a “mobmindset” instead of autonomous individuals.

These disciples would then be able to live freely the Godly lifestyle as individual within the society.

Though they say truly the kingdom of God is within, in many of their doctrines/ laws they deny it.

I left church when I realize that the true “Christ” is found within all who seeks, but if any find that Christ, then the church would declare that one as false, for the doctrine of the Christ is foreign to church.

I am not Christian. But I do go to spiritual Ceremonies. One Ceremony in particular lasts a week long and is held annually. The following is the reasons I attend that ceremony. I hope this answers your question.

I first started going to connect with my cultural roots and because it was important to my husband (he shared same beliefs as me so it wasn’t a hard step, i probably would have always went if I would have known about it). Then I kept going because the community there was wonderful and strong and like-minded. But not only that it is rooted in culture and spirituality. The energy there certainly vibrates with warmth and goodness. It is a place I can practice my spirituality and culture in ways that are not available on an everyday basis. Also when we leave we feel cleansed, refreshed, renewed. There are smaller ceremonies in which their primary purposes is to cleanse you and it does so physically and mentally/emotionally. The Ceremony itself connects me with my culture, my ancestors, my community, and with Creator through all of these things and through the very ceremony itself and it’s connection to the Earth and Sacrifice.

Then people who went there started getting umm.. childish and not following certain guidelines and it affected me. Now I am even debating if I want to go this year. Either I decided not to be affected by those people or I decide that they aren’t taking it seriously and that affects all the reasons I come in the first place (community, place to practice culture and spirituality in a warm setting, etc..).

I go because as Keith Green said “Jesus rose from the dead, and you…You can’t even get out of bed”. I see it as that God doesn’t need us. He wants us and we need him. The least I can do is go to a place where I can fellowship with other believers. If I feel like doing something else, I have to remind myself that materials and even experiences don’t last, but God’s love does. So even if I might miss out on something that may be fun, I know I’m honoring God by choosing Him. Sometimes I get bored with church too. But then I pray that I want to feel his presence, because without it, I’m hollow and feel guilty that I’ve not honored God above all things.

@liminal thanks for the link, Alex and I will check out a local ‘church’

I wake up, and I think “Man oh man, I don’t feel like going to church today.” but someone special to me gently whispers in my ear: “Downward Spiral”.

Having understood the statement I get up, and prepare. Nothing formal, God particuarly does not care for that sort of thing if it is not preparing for him.

Get in my car, go to church, come out happy, refreshed, and real. “Thanks” I tell that special someone.

I would say to answer your question that, apart from many things it is obedience, desire (sometimes) to go, and a wish to fellowship with other people I appreciate and help me along with my life, even if they help in ways neither of us would expect.

All I really have to say.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Please, let me know what you two think!

@liminal you got it! – we’re going to go next Sunday the topic is perfect for us