The Difference God Makes in Our Lives Part 2

Today I bring you the second part of the series “The Difference God makes in your Life” Ray was an atheist friend of mine who was also one of the nicest, most generous people I knew. He didn't believe in God and, even if there was a God, Ray didn't see the reason for church, and religion. This conversation that I had with Ray brings up some very fundamental questions:

If religious belief and church attendance don't necessarily make you a good person, and nonattendance and rejection of religion don't necessarily make you a bad one, what is the point of being religious? What does the religious person get out of his or her faith that the nonreligious person has to do without? Is there something we would all be better off having, or something that only some people - the weak and the insecure, the spiritually inclined - need, and the rest of is can do without? For the religious mind and soul, there is no question about the existence of God, but the question, really for the atheist, agnostic, and Christian, is what difference does God and religion make in the way that we live our lives?

Last week I spoke about the moral guidance that God gives us. Grounding cur moral response to the decision we face in day to day life gives us confidence that there is something profoundly right and correct in what we do. Also, when we waver in our commitment, when we are on the verge of backing away from doing what we believe is good and right because it is hard, inconvenient, unpopular or expensive, we need to know that our path is also God's path.

Another gift that God and this church gives us is the gift of community. More than any other human problem, loneliness, the absence of meaningful human connection, drains the joy and the sense of purpose from our lives. It explains why people go to shopping malls who have no intention of shopping - they just need to be someplace where other people are. More and more people are suffering from this situation. The reasons for this are our culture and our attitudes. This is a result of individualism, independence, and competitiveness.

As for individualism, the family is no longer a unit in our society. It is a collection of people living under the same roof. We have men and women with two different careers, different shifts, different times and different demands. This ensures that they have very limited time with each other or their children. We have people eating at different times of the day as they dash off to different activities. The table no longer is the place of rest and conversation where our different lives intersect, it is the place people grab fuel as they pass through. When people are home together, they all have their can rooms, with their own televisions, telephones, DVD players and computers. What we have isn't really family; we have a series of people each with their separate working, sleeping, eating, and recreation schedules. With individualism being forced on us from our very birth, we grow up only thinking of ourselves and our own needs and become blind to the needs of others. Love and sex become areas of conflict and conquest rather than sharing and intimacy. As such, even those within a family can be very lonely.

As for independence, growing up as a Canadian we grow up believing that at a certain age, you leave the security of your family behind and set out in search of fame and fortune. Many of us send our children to university or trade school to become educated and then find that either can’t be employed in our town or village and end up leaving for the big city far from the place they knew as home. This has led to some impressive results, but it has also led to a rootless, lonely and detached society. We move away from our families and our support systems and then look for ways to fill the hole that has been left. We join Elks clubs, Rotary, dart teams, etc. But these are artificial bonds. We know that we can leave them behind any time we want and they don't fill what we have left behind. Further, when we mess up or make mistakes, or need something, we feel that we are on our own. We feel that to turn to others for help or understanding is to admit our lives are a failure. This is the isolation and loneliness that our independence has given us.

Another thing that our society does to leave us isolated and lonely is the competitiveness in which we live our lives. We have been taught to see life as a race in which prizes are given to people or teams, like the Montreal Canadiens, that finish first. As a result, we tend to see everyone around us as a potential rival, seeking to cheat us_e or take advantage of us somehow. Our gain means someone else's loss and vice versa. Look at the tendering system. Look at the way scholarships are given out. Look at the way we dole out love to our children. We hold up the ones that achieve but make excuses for or plain out hide the one who do not. "Why can't you be more like your brother?" Has anyone here heard that before? This causes us to see other people as adversaries to be beaten and obstacles to be overcome. This prevents us from seeking the contact that we need from people. If you have to worry about a husband, child, elderly parent, they may distract you just enough to let someone else win the rat race we are all in. Can you think of a more effective attitude for creating a nation full of lonely people?

In our word for today from Ephesians 2:21 "We who believe are carefully joined together becoming a holy temple for the Lord." Why did God choose a building as an illustration of what it means to be spiritually connected?  Why did He choose a building to demonstrate what the church is like?

Because in a building, all the connected parts support each other.  Beams support other beams.  Walls support other walls and the roof holds the walls together, the walls hold the roof up.  When the rain falls, when the lightning strikes, and when the winds blow, all the bricks and beams stay fast. They're all connected and they're all supporting. 

That is one of your deepest needs in life is  support. You need the support, like being a brick in a building. You need emotional support.  You need physical support sometimes.  You certainly need spiritual support.  Where are you going to get it if you're not connected?  Who's going to hold you up in the tough times? Your bowling team? The guys at the bar?

Fortunately God has designed a custom-made support network just for you.  That is called the church.  Church is not something you go to.  Church is not an event you attend.  Church is a family that God meant for you to be connected to, to be a part of.  He wants you to have relationships and connections and fellowship in the body of Christ, in the family of God. 

God and our church fights against this plague of loneliness. God calls us to love our neighbour. God calls on us to consider the thoughts, feelings, and the situations of those sitting next to us. God calls on us to love each other, not to use each other. By teaching us to treat our neighbours as ourselves we learn to focus on the needs of others and not just be focused on our own. The funny thing is that when we are not fixated on our own loneliness, but on the needs of others, that is when our loneliness is satisfied. God teaches us how to be a true friend, to be concerned with alleviating the loneliness of others, learning to hear their cry instead of wondering why no one hears ours.

What does God and our church offer that we lonely souls need? It offers community. Our place of worship offers us a refuge, an island of caring in the midst of a hostile, competitive world. In a society that segregates the old from the young, the rich from the poor, the successful from the struggling, the house of worship represents one place where the barriers fall and we stand equal before God. It promises to be the one place in society where my gain does not have to mean your loss. In the house of the Lord you are not black or white. You are not old or young. You are not rich or poor. In the house of the Lord, and only because of God, that we can approach each other as brothers and sisters, all equal in God's sight. You are not a nurse. You are not a lawyer. You are not a fisherman. You are not a social insurance recipient. You are my brother. You are my sister.

This is why I don't agree with people who say I believe in God but not in going to church. This is why I don't like televangelism that gives us an excuse to stay home. This is why we have church services at certain hours. It is not because God has office hours. It is because God doesn't just want to bring people to Him. God wants to bring people together with each other. This is a purpose of God. This is the function of religion. This is the work o the church. Any church that excludes people is not doing the work of God. It is doing the work of Satan.

I think it is blasphemous if a church's members spend all their time worrying about the heat, the lights and the sound system but no time about how they make people feel when they enter into their sanctuary.

My friends, it is through God and his church that we learn to relate to each other, and to belong to each other, in truly human ways. In the brightest of days or the darkest of nights God is always with us, and if we learn what our Saviour taught us we can be there for each other as well.

This is just one thing that the Christian gets out of their faith that the nonreligious person has to do without. This is just one difference that God has made in our lives.