Church: Why Bother? (Growing Deeper)

by Philip Yancey

For spirituality has to do with life, lived life.

All the “vital signs” of botany, biology, and physiology combined hardly begin to account for life; if it doesn’t also extend into matters far more complex than our circulatory and respiratory systems—namely, matters of joy and love, faith and hope, truth and beauty, meaning and value

The generic name for this way of going about things—trying to put together a life of meaning and security out of God-sanctioned stories and routines, salted with weekends of diversion and occasional erotic interludes, without dealing firsthand, believingly and obediently, with God—is “religion.”

At a deep level I sense that church contains something I desperately need. Whenever I abandon church for a time, I find that I am the one who suffers.

We should leave a worship service asking ourselves not “What did I get out of it?” but rather “Was God pleased with what happened?” Now I try to look up in a worship service, to direct my gaze beyond the platform, toward God.

when I attend church, I try to focus on that internal spirit rather than sitting back in my pew, like a theater critic, making esthetic judgments.

In a paradox of faith, the one who shares love comes away enriched, not impoverished.