It’s Sunday again in Paradise and the question arises for me again . . . “To go to church, or not?”
As some of you will know from reading previous blogs about Churchianity and my personal journey, I’m a non church-going conservative radical Christian – a reluctant Christian of sorts, having spent the best part of my adult life frequenting Christian churches of various flavours.
While predominanlty Protestant and most recently of the happy-clappy variety, some of my sojourns have been into that most ‘evil’ of beasts, the Catholic church . . . but only when nobody was looking, and through the back door if there was one, I hasten to add!
In Samoa attending church is a serious topic. Even my heathen friends WANT to go to church while they are here. One of our Web Ambassadors just itched to go to the Mormon church down the road. Only the best of the best are allowed into the actual temple here, but I’m sure the other LDS churches will let them in.
Even a lapsed Catholic spent three hours in a Samoan LDS church here in one of the villages listening to Samoan and singing in Samoan, I believe too! The poor guy had to dress up in a lavalava too – something he swore black and blue he would never do in public by the way.
What a crazy world it is when a lapsed Catholic wants to spend three hours in a Mormon church singing a language he doesn’t understand!
So what is this thing about going to church then? It seems like 98% of Samoa does it religiously.
My guests don’t have a lot of respect for the religion of Christianity over here when the same people who come out of church mock them as Palagi an hour later or wolf-whistle at them in the street (OK sure, they may have a miniskirt and display 400% more breast than the locals do, but a wolf-whistle is still a wolf-whistle).
A friend reported to me prior to my departure how the pastor in one church bawled out the boys who were downloading pawn in the church service. Not good!
And the physical violence where Pastors and their wives whack others around their head and shoulders willy-nilly! Having been the recipient of physical violence a little too often than I wanted in the past, this one really grates for me, and it happens all the time here. You see even the three year old girls whacking their little brothers. Sitting in the bus today I saw a girlfriend whacking her boyfriend. They say it’s good natured and just part of the culture and all cool. Maybe, but I’m yet to be convinced. I don’t think the Good Lord would have put up with it from the women around Him somehow.
My take on it is that a lot of Samoa is heathen inside a churchianity society. There are times I actually wonder if there are genuine Christians in the country, but of course I know there must be – I know some of them – but in New Zealand!
So back to this attending church thing . . . [and enough whinging about Samoa]
I chose to attend church – for 30 years. I believed that it was important, and I enjoyed many parts of it. I liked belonging, and commitment and all the things that the church preaches is good about attending the church. I even enjoyed the tithing. When you give more than 10% to “God” what’s the big deal about giving ‘only’ 10% to the church you attend anyway?
Tithing in Samoa is expected. It’s the default setting here. We took a photo of the giving sheet hanging on the pillar outside the Moamoa Catholic Church. Public display of giving. Extraordinary elsewhere. Ordinary here!
Tithing is certainly not biblical. Even a cursory glance at the subject raises more questions than answers.
So back to this attending church thing . . . [and enough whinging about Samoa]
I don’t earn anything over here anyway and am going backwards at a fast rate of knots! Tithing to keep the pastor (or Bishop) happy isn’t the reason I don’t attend church here.
I really just don’t like sitting in a fancy building for three hours listening to prayers and songs and preaching that I can’t understand!
But there’s a deeper thing about this church attendance thing, and I talk now more to Christians – at what point does one out-grow a pastor? And if our pastor has it wrong, or is shallow, or doesn’t get it, or has an agenda – then what? Can we not back ourselves to hear from God directly, or does the message have to be filtered? And how many times did the pastor say “Just what we were thinking” anyway? To my mind having been out a few years and my faith growing exponetially, there’s a lot of misinformation about the role of a Pastor in the mainstream church, but today is not dumping on Pastors day, fortunately.
For any pastor to see the outworking of Pastoral respect to its natural conclusion, please visit Samoa. You will see the flashest cars and houses all owned by the Pastors. They are honoured and respected and some would say worshiped. It will be very humbling and unsettling to the genuine Pastor asking real questions about their pastoral role.
So back to this attending church thing . . . [and enough whinging about Samoa]
The answer for me is “Nope!”
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