Why Do People Lose Their Religion?

[Selene]

Well aspen, I think we have the let that discussion be because I still think Catholicism operates with a large umbrella not all that different than Protestantism. I just see the semantics being a little more well done to make it seem that everyone is towing the proper line.

Selene, reading the Bible sacramentally means that we read the Bible with God's active participation just as the other sacraments are done. It would be akin to your practice, Lectio Divina. Most Protestants are not just looking for the head knowledge of facts and figures, but believe that the Holy Spirit is illuminating the reading of Scripture. It links up with the idea of the perspicuity of Holy Scripture, but it goes a step further in saying that the Spirit is at work in our hearts through the reading.

Wow! You're the first non-Catholic I've seen who used the Latin word for the way religious people read the Bible. Usually, it's the religious people who practice Lectio Divina. Most lay Catholics don't even read the Bible, but listen to the scriptures being read in Church. Most of them have their own devotions; however, lay Catholics who become members of an Order or movement have used this discipline.

 

[aspen]

Well aspen, I think we have the let that discussion be because I still think Catholicism operates with a large umbrella not all that different than Protestantism. I just see the semantics being a little more well done to make it seem that everyone is towing the proper line.

I actually agree with you on this point. Catholicism is a collection of people who have just as many opinions about doctrine as Protestants. The only difference is that we have agreed to worship together in unity. We come together as one to receive Christ's Blood and his Body, which is our binding belief. As far as the image of unity portrayed to the world, well; it is more like an agreement to unify beyond our beliefs.

I think it might be helpful for Protestants to agree to be unified beyond their opinions and beliefs as well; perhaps you guys could focus church around 5 minutes of silent prayer - unifying the Body with Christ, without room for disagreement - instead of focusing on the sermon, which invites disagreement.

 

[This Vale Of Tears]

Wow! You're the first non-Catholic I've seen who used the Latin word for the way religious people read the Bible. Usually, it's the religious people who practice Lectio Divina. Most lay Catholics don't even read the Bible, but listen to the scriptures being read in Church. Most of them have their own devotions; however, lay Catholics who become members of an Order or movement have used this discipline.

Catholics not reading the Bible is inexcusable, especially when the late John Paul specifically exhorted all the faithful to be immersed in holy Scripture and the Catechism in their private devotions. It's a source of frustration that I'm one of the few Catholics as familiar with scripture as any Protestant. We all should be.

 

[Dodo_David]

I actually agree with you on this point. Catholicism is a collection of people who have just as many opinions about doctrine as Protestants. The only difference is that we have agreed to worship together in unity. We come together as one to receive Christ's Blood and his Body, which is our binding belief. As far as the image of unity portrayed to the world, well; it is more like an agreement to unify beyond our beliefs.

I think it might be helpful for Protestants to agree to be unified beyond their opinions and beliefs as well; perhaps you guys could focus church around 5 minutes of silent prayer - unifying the Body with Christ, without room for disagreement - instead of focusing on the sermon, which invites disagreement.

Protestants also come together to receive communion, which represents the Messiah's broken body and blood.

 

[aspen]

Protestants also come together to receive communion, which represents the Messiah's broken body and blood.

Agreed. However, it is not the focus of meeting together. In fact, many Protestant churches have moved the practice to 1 a month.

 

[This Vale Of Tears]

Agreed. However, it is not the focus of meeting together. In fact, many Protestant churches have moved the practice to 1 a month.

Not only that, but they pass out these tiny plastic prepackaged communion cups, about the size of a thimble, with a wafer the size of a dime and sealed on top of the seal that contains the grape juice. It looks like this:

Yes. Look what the precious body and blood of Christ has been reduced to for Protestants!

 

[HammerStone]

Hey, if you can get Roman indulgences for Twitter follows, then why not instant jello Protestant communion? (For the record, we don't use these at our Baptist church.)

If the Catholic laity fail at Bible reading, then the Protestants fail at communion. I reject transubstantiation, but we do not regard the (we're not debating the merits of that for or against here) Eucharist highly enough in broad Protestantism.

Agreed. However, it is not the focus of meeting together. In fact, many Protestant churches have moved the practice to 1 a month.

Unfortunately, many churches struggle to do it quarterly.

I take your criticism of broader Protestantism's unity and agree with you. We're splintering way too hard too fast. I think Catholicism is splintered moreso below the surface, but at least you do come together in at least some sense.

Catholics not reading the Bible is inexcusable, especially when the late John Paul specifically exhorted all the faithful to be immersed in holy Scripture and the Catechism in their private devotions. It's a source of frustration that I'm one of the few Catholics as familiar with scripture as any Protestant. We all should be.

This can become a bit subjective, as there are many Protestants who are failing to read. There really is no excuse when you have all the helpful tools, apps, and excellent translations out there.

Wow! You're the first non-Catholic I've seen who used the Latin word for the way religious people read the Bible. Usually, it's the religious people who practice Lectio Divina. Most lay Catholics don't even read the Bible, but listen to the scriptures being read in Church. Most of them have their own devotions; however, lay Catholics who become members of an Order or movement have used this discipline.

Selene, I know a little about both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. It's just enough to be dangerous and just enough to rattle some fundamentalist feathers in Protestant circles. I think we are missing out on some of ways to meditate on God that aren't "new agey" or anything like that.

Truth be told, I somewhat admire the Jesuits. We Protestants don't have a tradition like that, and I take issue that we've basically wholesale abandoned any sort of intellectual ramparts. Even though I have nowhere near the mind, I long for a Carl F. Henry type of Protestantism tradition. In regards to the mystic side of things, I think one must tread quite carefully, but I would allow that meditating on Jesus and the Bible is something we should look into. I'm sure I'll get some hate mail because I say this, but so be it.

 

[This Vale Of Tears]

Truth be told, I somewhat admire the Jesuits. We Protestants don't have a tradition like that, and I take issue that we've basically wholesale abandoned any sort of intellectual ramparts. Even though I have nowhere near the mind, I long for a Carl F. Henry type of Protestantism tradition. In regards to the mystic side of things, I think one must tread quite carefully, but I would allow that meditating on Jesus and the Bible is something we should look into. I'm sure I'll get some hate mail because I say this, but so be it.

But you do have a tradition like that. I have much admiration for the Mennonites, not just the Amish, but the various other disciplines I see practicing all over the country. All throughout Christian history, there have been special orders set apart for particular holiness and detachment from this world, to be a blazing torch in the darkness. We're not all called to the level of devotion that these Christians exhibit, so it's all the more precious to me that they exist, both Catholic and Protestant, as an example to the rest of us. Like John the Baptist, their austere lifestyle gives their message more force and people listen. But it's not just the Mennonites but also special orders of the Anglican Church such as the Brotherhood of St. Gregory and the Melanesian Sisters that are the Protestant version of the Jesuits, Benedictans, and other orders of the Catholic Church.

God bless them all!

 

[Dodo_David]

Not only that, but they pass out these tiny plastic prepackaged communion cups, about the size of a thimble, with a wafer the size of a dime and sealed on top of the seal that contains the grape juice. It looks like this:

Yes. Look what the precious body and blood of Christ has been reduced to for Protestants!

I have never seen a communion wafer that came in such a packaging.

Besides, does the Bible tell us that we are to consume a certain minimum quantity of bread and fruit of the vine?

Anyway, the bread and drink represent the broken body and shed blood of the Messiah, which is what we are supposed to remember when we take communion.

 

[Selene]

Catholics not reading the Bible is inexcusable, especially when the late John Paul specifically exhorted all the faithful to be immersed in holy Scripture and the Catechism in their private devotions. It's a source of frustration that I'm one of the few Catholics as familiar with scripture as any Protestant. We all should be.

I agree. All Catholics should read the Holy Bible as well as the Catechisms. I'm also one of the few who reads Scripture and the Catechisms.

 

[day]

One advantage of liturgical chruches (Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican) is the Lectionary which gives set scriptures for each week on a 3 year cycle that covers the whole Bible. On any given Sunday, all members of that denomination are receiving the same Biblical teachings. There is a sense of universitality and belonging in being able to participate with the whole church in worship even when you cannot be physically present.

Having set scriptures and a requirement that the sermon must be preached form at least one of the (usually 4) texts assures that the sermons are Biblically based. I have been in Protestant churches where a "I'm OK, You're OK" self-help type book formed the basis of the sermon, with a couple scripture verses thrown in to dress it up for Sunday church. The people are starving for the Word of God!

Also, people are not taught how to live a Christian life. When have you seen classes offered on types of prayer, meditative reading of Scripture, or the spiritual disciplines of silence, solitude, fasting, submission, service, etc., or the moral disciplines of modesty or self-control. In many churches the OSAS doctrine has become - "Come as you are, stay as you are". Requiring a person to change is considered discriminatory and not user friendly. Is it any wonder that people are leaving for Islam and Buddism that have standards of behavior and spiritual rituals?

 

[This Vale Of Tears]

I have never seen a communion wafer that came in such a packaging.

Besides, does the Bible tell us that we are to consume a certain minimum quantity of bread and fruit of the vine?

Anyway, the bread and drink represent the broken body and shed blood of the Messiah, which is what we are supposed to remember when we take communion.

It's the attitude that it merely represents Christ's body and blood that makes such a cheapening of communion elements possible. These pre-packaged deals are meant for large congregations. They're cheap and come in boxes by the hundreds. And as to your question on quantity, St. Paul indicates the amount the original Christians consumed by chastising them for coming to church hungry so they could gorge on bread and wine. He told them to eat at home. The original bread and wine was comparable to the Last Supper, and it was called supper for a reason. It was the Last Supper that started the tradition, so you can bet the amount of bread and wine was just short of a meal.

But imagine coming from this from a Catholic point of view. Jesus said "this IS my body" and "this IS my blood" and so Catholics, Anglicans, and Orthodox Christians maintain the scriptural view that the elements of the Mass don't represent Christ, they become Christ through the miracle of transubstantiation. It's because of this that cheap prepackaged communion cups are appalling and even irreverent to us.

It should be to you too.

One advantage of liturgical chruches (Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican) is the Lectionary which gives set scriptures for each week on a 3 year cycle that covers the whole Bible. On any given Sunday, all members of that denomination are receiving the same Biblical teachings. There is a sense of universitality and belonging in being able to participate with the whole church in worship even when you cannot be physically present.

Having set scriptures and a requirement that the sermon must be preached form at least one of the (usually 4) texts assures that the sermons are Biblically based. I have been in Protestant churches where a "I'm OK, You're OK" self-help type book formed the basis of the sermon, with a couple scripture verses thrown in to dress it up for Sunday church. The people are starving for the Word of God!

Also, people are not taught how to live a Christian life. When have you seen classes offered on types of prayer, meditative reading of Scripture, or the spiritual disciplines of silence, solitude, fasting, submission, service, etc., or the moral disciplines of modesty or self-control. In many churches the OSAS doctrine has become - "Come as you are, stay as you are". Requiring a person to change is considered discriminatory and not user friendly. Is it any wonder that people are leaving for Islam and Buddism that have standards of behavior and spiritual rituals?

A lot of focus is given to how much scripture is being read in Catholic masses and it misses the larger issue. If I could in one sentence explain the difference between Protestant and Catholic services, it's that Protestant services are centered around the sermon and Catholic holy Mass is centered around the Eucharist. There have been books written, one good one by Scott Hahn, about how every detail of the holy Mass is lifted from the pages of scripture. But the main event in the Mass is the miracle when the common host items of wafer and wine become nothing less than the physical body and blood of Christ. Protestants care about how charismatic and encouraging the pastor is. I could go to any Catholic Parish, have an abbreviated homily by a crabby priest, and still leave uplifted, fulfilled, and equipped and strengthened for the coming week because I took Jesus physically into my being. By comparison, nothing else really matters.

On your point about OSAS, I think you hit on something that few people understand, that ultimately salvation is cheapened and the gospel undermined when we start throwing in guarantees and telling people they can't be lost to perdition no matter what they choose to do in the future. The Catholic is suspended between presumption of salvation and despair of salvation, both of which we consider sinful. To presume salvation is to dismiss the dreaded anticipation that we will one day stand before a holy God and give an account of our lives. The Bible doesn't say we're forever saved, it says we are "scarcely saved" and to work out our salvation "with fear and trembling". To despair salvation is to be like the stiff-necked Israelites at the banks of the Red Sea as the Egyptian armies approached. They cursed Moses and concluded that the mighty hand of God that delivered them from bondage was now impotent to defend them against Pharaoh's armies.

OSAS doesn't sync with people because on an intrinsic level, as expressed in every world religion in the history of man, how we live in the afterlife is predicated on the choices we made in this life. Even people who can't articulate their disagreement with OSAS have an unsettling sense that it's a corrupted philosophy. It doesn't ring true. On the opposite side, the great 19th century evangelical preachers such as George Whitfield and Charles Spurgeon went all over England and America preaching heaven and hell, mostly hell, for those who don't live right, and people came to Christianity by the thousands and great revivals took hold. Their message was effective because it wasn't seeker-friendly, it was truth, and people connect with truth.

 

[aspen]

Yeah, mystic prayer can certainly be abused. New public revelation needs to be guarded against. It really does need instruction because without it people can move off into all kinds of crazy, drunken laughter or tongues; people tend to generate their own experience if they are not constantly reminded to simply wait upon God.

 

[Eltanin]

I can speak from my experience...
I am 33 years old. I was raised Christian. I went to a Christian school. I took part in every ministry that our church had to offer. I invested every bit of the first 18 years of my life into the church. I didn't even date, I was so busy volunteering, and going to and hosting Bible studies, fundraising for missions, and so forth. I can honestly say that I was on fire for the Lord.

I invested, and I enjoyed it. I didn't have anything better to do, and I say that without sarcasm. I really did enjoy devoting and investing in my church.

About the time I was preparing to graduate, I got caught up into some church drama and politics. The founding pastor of our church was stepping down, and he had thought he had left the church in the hand of a man who would continue the vision the Spirit had guided him in. I was the last graduate of our Christian school, and my mother was one of the heads of the school. I couldn't help but see the struggle and heartbreak as one man nearly single-handedly undone 16 years of hard work and ministry.

I saw schisms first hand and was affected deeply by it. I saw how many Christians will turn against their brethren for mere politic. I saw how some would ostracize and judge when they don't agree with you. I saw the people who had been sitting on their butts for my entire teenage existence start vying for spotlight positions, and a few who got them, immediately running their new spot into the ground. I saw others who would just go to church as though nothing had changed, and do nothing, like always, perfectly happy that they could come in and clock their 2 hours, and go home for their Sunday nap... Content that they didn't have to invest anymore than that for the rest of the week.

I saw more than that. I started understanding splits and schisms in the past. I started seeing how flawed and base the church had always been. I started realizing why some people had disappeared, and why some felt uncomfortable around Christians when they used to be proud to be one...

You see... My undoing was when I took my eyes off of Christ, and started looking around at what everyone else was doing and how they were acting. Some distractions are more than a little annoyance though. Having my school close, and seeing the hurt it caused so many people was a slap in the face and a kidney punch. It was impossible for me to not see it, but I allowed it to distract me from what I was supposed to be doing... And having many ministries that I had invested and devoted myself to be shut down without a second thought left me with allot of free time to see more of what was wrong. THEN... being deliberately excluded from ministries that had actually survived the anarchy and ostracized form any new ones... Well, for me that was a final straw.

It took me awhile to come to terms with things. I didn't want a new church, I had invested so much in MY church. I didn't really understand what the Church was; What THE REAL CHURCH was... I had been part of what the REAL CHURCH was supposed to look like, but my understanding was a bit lacking.

I spent a couple years struggling to find a niche for myself in the church that had changed to the point of being unrecognizable to me, and it was a near physical blow on the day I realized I couldn't do it anymore. I was nearing my mid-twenties, and I even started asking myself if I had wasted my youth. I spent a couple years after that avoiding church altogether.

I was ashamed to be associated with other Christians. Please don't confuse that of being ashamed of Christ, because that was never the case. There just was not a church congregation that I was not embarrassed for.

In a way though, I myself am better for having to have had to step back. I had to evaluate why I had been a part of all the programs and activities I had always been a part of. I was able to come to the conclusion that I truly loved serving, and I didn't just do it for brownie points as many of my brethren had accused. I was able to go out and find new places to minister, and have more of an influence in the world because I was meeting new people and ministering in more than just one town. I don't just volunteer with churches now.

It took awhile, but one day very suddenly, I had the revelation of what THE Church was all about. I was confronted by some old friends of mine who I had went to church and to school with. They had become a part of a new church and they were trying to convince me to join. They gave me the spiel of how 'real Christians' need fellowship, and that was when I realized that I had found fellowship in my everyday life with other Christians in all of the places that I invested myself in. I may not have a church membership card, but now I am a part of a body that is not defined by four walls, a denomination (or a non-denomination), and a name. I am a part of THE Church. My brethren are from every denomination (or non), culture, and nationality, and they are found all over the world.