The Church needs Atheists

The last thing the church needs is more Christians. I have gotten a lot of time to reflect since cancer has left me disabled. I think there are more than enough people who are walking through doors the church who show up on Sunday but just shake their heads yes and don’t actively wrestle with their faith. Sitting in Church makes you as much a Christian as sitting in a garage makes you a car. Churches need Atheists who appreciate the Gospel story and will keep the faithful honest. Churches need people who see spirituality as more than a guilt trip. Churches need people who do ritual in new ways to brake people out of their complacency. The church needs non-Christians! 

In full disclosure even though I was a Christian Pastor I can no longer use that term Christian in good faith. I am a Universalist and a practicing Neo Pagan. I still practice my spirituality, but I can not get behind the exclusivism and dogma that the Christian name comes with. I’ve studied religion academically for most of my life and feel the only fair thing to do in myself is find the spiritual practices that work for me. So here I am a Trans Disabled solitary practitioner who still has so much love for ritual and practice that I need to keep writing about it.  

One of my biggest struggles with religion is the way it makes the beauty I see in spirit into a commodity. I was asked several times when I worked in churches what the point of churches working together was. I was left mouth open by this question. It is only by learning other ways of thinking we can grow. How can we grow if we all think that same? There has to be a better way to grow. 

If your faith doesn’t make you more caring for others, or make you grow in your personal life I don't know what the point is. If it is an escape hatch from this world it means you are not living this life. I think spirituality is not a way to rise above humanity but instead is a way to become as human as possible.  

The church needs people like me there and yet it doesn’t have much want for those who ask can we see this in a new way. There is no right way, our ancestors did the rituals, and we need to both honor them while making our own. We need each other to grow to become more aware of the world we live in. Otherwise, we live in our own blind spots.  

Religion needs to be about the journey that is human existence. In the end spirituality should be a journey and never be a guilt trip!