Coke Bear said:
J.B.Katz said:
I've been happier since I stopped believing in God.
...
I chose my current church because it offers lots of service opportunities and it challenges people to live in a community that extends beyond the church walls, the denomination and political beliefs. Those are hard challenges, and I fail everyday. But getting up every day and trying to do better is my form of faith. It is the ethic I learned in church as a child.
Serious question... Why waste your time at a church if you don't believe in God?
What is the point in doing good? What does it matter if at the end of life we just die with no afterlife?
Why not maximize your money, power, material items?
First, I don't consider my church a waste of time. I have never considered church a waste of time. Anyone who is attending a church that's a waste of time should find another church. pronto.
I am frequently humbled by the sermons our pastor preaches. I go to church to learn and serve.
Second, your question implies that the only reason someone would want to do good in this lifetime is to earn a reward in the afterlife. I'm very uncomfortable with that motiviation for following whatever religious rules you believe are essential.
I am also very uncomfortable with telling people they need to be saved to avoid going to hell. If avoiding hell is all people want as the desired outcome and the main reason why they "accept Jesus," then their faith is self-serving and fear-motivated. I think love and service are healthier motivations.
You don't need to believe in God to want to serve others.
Or to cherish a strong belief that all of us are lucky to be here, and that we should strive to leave the campsite better than we found it so our children and grandchildren have better prospects for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Or at least as good as ours.
My heart is broken because I do not believe this is the case for my children and their chldren.
I chose a church that is committed not just to preaching, but to actively living the gospel of Jesus Christ. I believe Jesus was a real person and a holy person, and that his perspective was so radically and profoundly different that books were written about him at a time when almost no one was literate.
Whether I believe in God as a supernatural being I will meet in the afterlife is irrelevant to my strong belief in the basic principle underlying the Christian faith: that we must live in community for everyone to thrive, and that doing the right thing is its own reward.
My problem with lots of churches is they do not want to live in community. They refer contemptuously to nonbelievers and those of other faiths as "the world" and hold themselves apart as possessed of superior morals and knowledge. One thing the Bible preaches loudly about is being humble. A church that claims to have the only right answer, and that vigorously, viciously rejects everyone outside its congregants, is not humble. The good Samaritan parable has something to say about that-and about the fact that people who don't share your faith, ethnicity and traditions can do the right thing and be good people.
I worry that religions that promise rewards after death for following the church rules (and not for doing the right thing--the Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholic priesthood have shown us that religeous leaders are much more concerned with gaining members and treasure for their institutions than they are about the physicial and mental health and safety of the women and children in their congregations, whose abuse was ignored for decades), especially churches that preach that all you have to do to gain those rewards is ask God for forgiveness right before you die, send a message that you can live a life like Donald Trump's, full of adultery, sexual sin, financial shenanigans, cheating, lying, self-dealing,bullying and rejecting the rule of law, and be amply rewarded for it as long as you're a man (see: Beth Moore) with lots of money or influence.
P.S. I realized I forgot to answer your question about material goods. My spouse & I started with nothing but our college educations at Baylor and parents who could loan us the downpayment on our first house (which we repaid), and we both made a good living but we will both work past retirement age to make sure both of our children own a house outright, because that's a concrete thing we can do to make their lives easier in what I believe are hard times coming. We have material comfort and are financially secure. Our income places us above the 90th percentile of American incomes. But we don't consider ourselves wealthy, we're not members of a country club (much less a club like Mar A Lago)--and we feel fortunate we have done as well as we have and that we can contribute to our children's comfort and security and to our church and community. Living a Mar A Lago life was never an aspiration. Because then you have to deal with the kind of people for whom that's the only aspiration.
