Church

This morning my mom and my sister were tired, so we didn't go to church. I was kind of relieved. It's not that I don't love God... but I haven't been back to my own church for anything other than the occasional service project or multicultural dinner for a while now, and I've come to resist it.

It's pretty, I'll give it that. Enormous and as ancient as any church this side of the Mississippi can claim to be. Rows of beautiful blonde children and american-blonde teenagers line the pews. We have a preschool choir, a kindergarten choir, an elementary school choir, a middle school choir, a high school choir, a purple choir, and three or four specialized choirs singing barbershop style or springing from the extensive Drama department. We have too many ministries to name - from Scrapbooking to Puppets, each with a healthy membership.

And there are good people in the church, don't get me wrong about that, either. But every clear voice seems drowned out by a cacophany of 'christians' yelling at their parents and sneaking out of Devotional to meet boys. It's not just the teenagers, quite often it's their parents as well. Backstabbing is rampant at church functions. There are cliques in the sunday schools. There are five fake smiles for every real one, like a glint of richly golden tinsel hidden under a mound of cheap yellow.

You forget about those, after a while. They're background noise. Almost white noise. You concentrate on the good. You must...

Until you start going to a little church, a little Arabic Baptist Church. And it's filled with ex-missionaries and refugees, and no one is left out. You're greeted by hugs and translated 'love you's' instead of fake smiles. The children don't look like ornate, fallen angels but like children.
The food is not mass produced spaghetti from an industrial sized kitchen but a miniature feast composed of a dish from each house. And the background noise is singing.

How can I go back? Is it any wonder I've begun to resist?