"Come to my church!" Several friends have said to me on different occasions. "It's really fun! It's not like your typical church." I would always kindly decline, not because I don't want to see it for myself, it's just that I'm not interested in going to any church regardless of how entertaining the sermon is or how fun the people are. But with more and more teenagers and young adults raving about their church, I wonder whether they're in it for the free entertainment or for their God.
Let's get to it:
The Catholic church upholds archaic rituals and liturgy in every church and parish around the world. The sermon on any given Sunday is the same anywhere in the world. The term Catholic was derived from Greek and Latin roots meaning universal, and so it is. Catholics pride themselves in being united with not only the present churches, but the churches in the past. The traditional, long-winded Eucharist we perform every week connects us with ceremonies centuries ago. The Catholic church isn't about growing together with society's modern tendencies but about bringing us back to the core of the religion and tackling contemporary issues with age-old teachings.
So it's no wonder that on Sundays, the church walls reverberate with gloomy Latin hymns and the slow footsteps of the clergy. We kneel, stand, sit, bow down, and raise our hands in prayer like clockwork. We softly strike our hearts as we beg forgiveness to the virgin Mary, the angels, and our brothers and sisters. We quietly line up to receive the flesh of Jesus Christ and are only permitted to leave Church grounds once the priest himself has left the altar. Us Catholics have undergone first communion and confirmation lessons to truly prove to our community and God that we have dedicated our lives to Him. Looking back, it was all a bunch of tedious activities that I did because everyone else expected me to do so. I was never interested, I skipped most lessons, and I was always jealous of my Christian friends who seemed to have their faith validated by the world without all the hoopla.
So when I was 12, I went to my first Christian church. It was an English service targeted towards teenagers, and they made sure everyone there had the time of their lives. With an electric guitar, a drum set, a bass player, and a few singers jumping up and down on stage, it was hard to believe they all gathered here for the sole purpose of God. Soon, I realized they weren't.
The church sang songs by Christian rock bands, provided snacks before and after the sermon, and played games during the homily. That day I did something that I never did back in my own church; I listened. Their sermons were relevant to me. They knew how I felt and the issues that most teenagers face, and they tailored their service towards that. I not only felt entertained, I felt enlightened. It was the first time that going to church made me happy. I went there of my own volition, and I wanted to go again. I wanted to meet all these new people who seemed to enjoy going to Sunday mass as much as I did.
Through the years, my Christian friends would often rave on about their church. I would go with them on several occasions and experience, yet again, another entertaining sermon. But after awhile it seems that the point of going to church for most of my friends is simply to reunite with their friends and to satiate their guilty conscience. If their friends all go, they must go to save face. It feels like the concept of worship has been buried under the glitz and glamour used to attract the youth in the first place.
Even though I find the Catholic church extremely dull, I respect the way it pulls in the faithful without the promise of entertainment. Many Catholics would spend hours in a humid Cathedral with no one but strangers around them. The young adults attend for the sole purpose of spending quality time with God. They would show up at confession for the sake of their sins. The teenagers who willingly go to church have no hidden motive, no rock bands to sing to, no snacks to bookend the sermon, and no laughter during the homily.
The dedication of the older generation for their God is something that I respect very much, but that devotion is lost amongst the youth. Which is why the Christian church establish numerous services specifically for these fidgety teenagers. They attempt to appeal to these kids, to lure them into the excitement of the modern cool church. They put these kids together to make them build a friendship strong enough to pull them back together every Sunday. They use entertainment as hook, line and sinker; as long as they're here, that's all that matters.
But if you take away the humor from the Christian pastor, the friendly faces, the air conditioned buildings, the upbeat Hillsong tunes, then I will bet you that the teenagers would rather find another way to entertain themselves on Sunday afternoons. If you push their Sunday mass to an early 6:30AM the way my church does, watch the teenagers refuse to get out of bed. Let these Christian teenagers face church; stripped, raw, as bare as it could be, and see if they would attend every week for two hours, the way the Catholics do here.
I'm not assuming that every single teenage Christian out there goes to church for the wrong reasons, but I know a handful of them do. I believe that the plainness of the Catholic church only solidifies the faith of those in it, while the embellishment of Christianity only serves to trick the youth. I support anyone who goes to church, but I despise those who go simply because they want to meet their friends and treat God as an afterthought. I want to see how many of the Christian youth (without the interference of their parents) once stripped away from the glamour of the church, will come back to hear the words of God hours after dawn.
couldn't agree more :)
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