A huge part of church life, at least at the church I attend, involves singing. Every service or meeting we have involves some form of “worship”. Singing songs, usually with an acoustic guitar, about or to God. I used to love this, worship used to be my favourite thing to do. The songs filled my iPod, I played the drums in the band most weeks, and when I wasn’t I was in the front row of church with my hands raised high. Worship was a way I connected with God in a really intimate way, I loved it.
More and more, however, worship is becoming an increasingly uncomfortable experience for me. I struggle to sing the songs without questioning whether or not I really believe what I’m singing. I struggle to raise my hands and sing joyfully about a God I’m not even certain exists most of the time. As I’ve deconstructed my faith I’m questioning everything that’s put in front of me, I’m thinking more and more about the words that I’m singing week to week.
These days I find that time and time again I’m unable to join in the worship at church with integrity. I’m unable to stand up and sing songs that talk about a faith that is so far removed from where I am right now. So many of the songs feel like they’re less about God and more about me; like they’re written from the top of a mountain. Songs that talk about how much I love God, about how God is the only thing I desire, and that I don’t want to be anywhere else. However, most of the time that’s not what I’m thinking or feeling in myself, times when I can think of a hundred places I’d rather be than standing in Church. Times when I’m not really desiring God, I’m desiring a burger, the girl I like, the new season of Jessica Jones on Netflix. Or times, when I don’t want to be singing about how much I love God because if I’m honest I’m rather angry at God for ignoring my prayers, or for answering my menial prayers to not miss my train while ignoring the injustices of the world.
I’ve often heard people say that they go to Church to ‘set myself up for the week ahead’. As if somehow going into a building to sing songs and listen to a talk will somehow make a difficult week somehow more bearable. I’ve no doubt that works sometimes; that being around other people, praying and encouraging one another in community can be a great help. But I think there’s a danger of treating church like some kind of ecstasy pill that we can take to forget about the troubles of the week. We go to church, sing some songs telling ourselves how ‘on fire’ for God we are, hear a positive message, and leave feeling like we can do anything because ‘God is on our side’. But when the drug wears off, when we get back to normal life, we’re hit by all the struggles and doubts that life throws at us day after day.
I’m not saying that church shouldn’t be a positive place, or that it’s wrong to want to go to church to give yourself the necessary spiritual recharge in order to start the week in the best possible way. But if it’s not being done with integrity then what’s the point? So many of the Psalms are crying out to God from places of brokenness, pain, and suffering. Cries of ‘God where are you?’, they’re deep, honest, and come from a real place of struggle.
So many of my prayers over the last few months have had a lot more in common with the Psalms than with the songs I sing in church. I find myself, like the Script, ‘praying to a God I don’t believe in’, or crying out for some kind of encounter with God. The Psalms are littered with this, songs and prayer from places of brokenness and pain, asking the deep questions of ‘God, where are you?’, and ‘how dare you let these things happen?’.
I’m trying to challenge myself to be more transparent and honest about where I am. To be honest about my doubts and questions, to refuse to ignore the struggles I face in my faith, and to not just go with the flow and live out my faith on autopilot. That can make church an extremely difficult place, which is part of the reason I haven’t been much over the last few months. I don’t want to settle for easy answers or an easy faith that ignores my questions and doubts. I don’t want to sing a song unless I can do so without feeling like the words coming from my lips are a lie. I’m desperate to try to live out my faith authentically, whatever that means, and not just say the right things so I can impress people with my ‘holiness’.
I’ll leave you with the words of a Psalm that I’ve come back to time and time again during this journey. A song of desperation and longing for a God that seems so far away. A song that cries out in hope that, despite our circumstance, God is still out there somewhere.
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“As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
I say to God, my rock:
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning
because of the oppression of the enemy?”
As with a deadly wound in my bones,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.”
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Amazing! Bold, Brave and inspiring
This is well said Gordon. I think many of us feel this way. The heartfelt prayer of the psalmist is more true to my life than many of our fashionable church services