With this recent tragedy it’s discouraging to see members of the religious right making fools of themselves. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell recently blamed the terrorist attack on all the sinners in America; the homosexuals, the abortionists, the ACLU, among others. Apparently their actions have caused God to remove his protective hand from us.

Maybe I have an older version of the Bible, but nowhere to do I see a verse that says God will protect America. Many of us (and this includes more than Robertson and Falwell) have this misguided notion that America is God’s chosen nation. Israel enjoys that distinction; we do not. Granted, we have been blessed by God. This nation has seen tremendous blessing. But have we been chosen by God in any special way? I doubt it.

How do atheists respond to a National Day of Prayer and Mourning? Working for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, that perspective isn’t something I run into every day. So perhaps I’m a bit naive.

But it seems like Lauren Sandler, the author of “Now More Than Ever: Witnessing hell has made me a born again atheist” on Salon.com, has jumped ship a little early. Now I admit that struggling with weighty theological questions is difficult. In the light of the terrorist attacks we can’t help but ask God why. And it’s a fair question to ask.

Of course you have to understand who you’re asking. Just because it’s a fair question to ask doesn’t mean you’re going to get an answer. Some people seem to think this is a startling, new question that makes belief in God laughable. But an entire book in the Bible is devoted to the subject of seemingly unjust suffering: Job.

The article also referred to a woman who said that God must not exist because God wouldn’t allow it to rain in New York, hampering the rescue efforts. That theology seems so half-baked to me. What kind of God do you believe in if he can allow such a tragic attack, and that’s okay, but if he pushes his divine luck and makes things a little worse, he’s out? Things are going to get worse, baby, you better figure what kind of a God you don’t believe in.

So many people seem to think God is something you keep in your back pocket and pull out at times like these. They seem to think God is a teddy bear that makes things all right when you’re hurting, and then you just put it away and forget about it. Some people seem to think God resides in their pocket and they somehow have control over God. They seem to have completely misunderstood the concept. Somehow they think God can only do certain things, they think that God is bound by our reasoning and our understanding. A God bound by our reasoning isn’t much of a God.

Who is Jesus? Watch this video made by Highway Communications to see what the average person on the street thinks.

I’ve noticed that liturgical worship is much more communal. The words and prayers are set out in the liturgy, allowing the congregation to participate as one. The congregation even confesses as one, reading the same generic prayer of confession. This is in stark contrast to my upbringing in the Baptist church, where everything is personal and private.

The differences abound. In the Episcopal church I’ve been attending I’ve found the liturgy refreshing. I take part in a mass confession, and actually confess my sins to God. The danger is that it will become meaningless through repetition; one day I may just mumble through the words and not realize what I’m saying. That’s what my Baptist self says. But my Baptist self was never put in a position where confession was a weekly ritual. My Baptist self was rarely given the opportunity to confess, thus it happened rarely.

It’s an interesting concept. Communal practices can easily become mere ritual. But the individualistic approach puts much more responsibility on the individual, and the result is often a lack of those very practices.

This leads me to believe that the Baptist approach to Christianity is more American. The Baptist denomination is about the individual. They are rarely confronted with the kinds of things liturgy brings every week through communal response. In my experience Baptists turn to the potluck for community.

Just a few completely biased and not fully thought-through ideas on denominations.

Sometimes it troubles me so much that the church doesn’t have a clue. Bono calls us squeakies. Sometimes we’re so self-righteous we forget about the basics. We’re so caught up in the fact that something is a sin that we forget all about the basic command to love.

But the greatest of these is love.

Certainly the sin is wrong. There’s no way around that, and I’m not suggesting there is. But love should be the order of the day. Not judgment. Not gossip. Unfortunately Christians often miss that point. The basic tenant of Christianity and we forget about it.

Sometimes I wonder if the frustration is compounded by our own feelings of self-righteousness. I am right, therefore your viewpoint is wrong. I think love is the better approach, therefore your approach is wrong. You think emphasizing the consequences of sin is important, therefore my approach is wrong. It’s a simplistic example, mixed with the sins, oversights, and just plain mishaps of humanity.

Sometimes I just wonder if God looks down on us and laughs, always thinking we have the right answer, always claiming that our answer is the way God really sees things. I wonder if God smiles as he sees how each one of takes a bit of God’s truth and calls it our own, then adds to it our own biases and preferences until it’s not simply God’s truth anymore. It’s become our truth, and it’s become tainted.

I think when we get to heaven we may find it very ironic when we figure out just who was right and who wasn’t. I also think that at that point it won’t matter to anyone.

Sometimes you think you know someone and you really don’t. You assume something about them, and you always end up wrong. I found out something about someone I work with today that I could have guessed but never really thought much about. It’s making me realize how much we take for granted and how important little things are, like lunch time conversations.

I work for a Christian organization, and it’s pretty well assumed that everyone is a Christian. But that’s not always true. A guy I’ve worked with for the past seven months isn’t really sure if he’s a Christian. I’m not that surprised. But I don’t think I’ve done much over the past seven months to help him be more sure of his faith.

It kind of makes you wonder just what I’m doing.

Some days I wonder if the church will ever be extinct. Today I walked into a church that was well on its way. The average age of the congregation was probably 55–and it’s only that low because of Abby and I and the lone two-year-old that waved her hands during the worship time.

The church had an enormous balcony that went around the entire church, a huge choir loft, and a huge floor area with two wings. The balcony was empty. The last five rows were corded off. There was a sign asking people to fill in the center pews. The side pews were mostly empty. The people attending could easily have fit in the empty choir loft.

The church was on the corner in a city neighborhood, a block from a major bus lines, and three blocks from a major free way. A college campus was only 5 blocks away. There could easily be 25,000 people within a half-mile of the church. Of course none of them are coming on Sunday morning. It’s the kind of church that won’t be around in ten years if things continue as they are.

There’s probably two dozen churches with in a half-mile of my apartment. I wonder how many of them are shrinking, failing to reach the community around them, failing to have an impact. And we wonder why modern American culture feels little impact from Christianity.

Sometimes I wonder what God expects from us. Does he really expect me to love my neighbor? Does he really expect me to follow him and get it all figured out? Or does he expect me to have some questions, to have some misgivings, to have some doubts?

Did God expect us to make such an organized hodge-podge of unorganized denominations out of his preferred way of life? Is this really what God expected?

Sometimes God confuses me. Sometimes all I can do is shrug my shoulders and walk on.

My youth pastor gave me one piece of advice before I left for college. He told me to find a church and get involved in it. I still haven’t followed that piece of advice.

I’ve attended over a dozen churches since coming to college. That’s probably normal. But I still haven’t really settled on one. Freshman year I went to an Evangelical Covenant church, which I think means they were non-denominational. The church was 25 minutes north of the cities, and that didn’t last long.

Sophomore year I had to attend a church of another culture for a class assignment, and I ended up attending a Native American church in downtown Minneapolis. It was only ten minutes away, and the service didn’t start until 11:00 a.m. Or 11:15, by the time people actually started showing up. When my class assignment was handed in and graded I kept coming, partially because I liked the church, partially because I didn’t want to hunt for another church, and partially because I liked proving that I wasn’t attending the church just because of a class.

But after many months I began to feel like an outsider in the congregation. The pastor was Native American and seemed to not like me. She didn’t help me with my class project, and only gave me a fake smile and handshake when it came time to give God’s peace. I don’t know why she gave me the cold shoulder. I wasn’t the only white person there, so I don’t think it had anything to do with that. I suspect it was because I came as part of a class requirement. But either way she didn’t like me. I also felt very little spiritual challenge at the church. The church was focused on reaching out to Native Americans, so the service was very spiritual in a general way. It was kind of odd.

At that point I broke down and started going to church with my roommates. They had been attending a Baptist church that was about 15 minutes away. They started going because one of my roommates’ father was the pastor. The pastor actually lead the college group, so everyone went as a way of actually knowing someone at the church. I started coming and it ended up being a college group of our own friends, not exactly a stretching experience.

I went to that church for a few years, eventually teaching Sunday School with my wife. But after a few years I felt very unnoticed at the church. I knew most people by face, but very few by name. As my wife and I moved into our apartment, I also felt the need to attend a church that didn’t require a freeway to get there. A church that had an impact in my own neighborhood.

So here I am, still looking for a church. I’m beginning to wonder what I’m even looking for. I remarked to my wife today that I could really care less about the music or the sermon anymore. I wonder how true that is. I guess I’m looking for a neighborhood church that actually feels vibrant and alive. I walk past three churches every day on the way to and from the bus stop, and I wonder what kind of impact they have on the community.

I guess I also want to attend a church where people know my name. That sounds kind of funny, like I expect everyone to bend over backwards to get to know me. I’m not a very social person. I actually met one of my neighbors the other day. We’ve lived in this apartment for six months and I’ve met very few, if any, of the people living in this building. Yet somehow I expect my church to be involved in the neighborhood?

I also want a diversified church. Racism seems to be a plague across the land today. Most people I know would disagree with that statement. Or if they did agree, they’d say that the racism is somewhere else, but not in their lives. I say they’re wrong. Racism today is much more subtle. It doesn’t manifest it self in burning crosses and dirty words. It manifests itself in the way people look at each other. In the way people avoid one another. In the way a mother squeezes her child’s hand when certain people pass by. In the way people tell off-color jokes and think it’s innocent. It manifests itself in a million subtle ways. One of the worst is Sunday morning. What does it say about Christians if we can’t overcome racism?

And so part of me wants to find a church full of diversity. In Minnesota you’re not exactly going to find a lot of diversity. The state is something like 95% Caucasian. However, in the cities that percentage isn’t quite as high. In the Midway, where I live, it’s probably much smaller. With that kind of a diversified population, I’d expect it to be reflected in the churches. So far I haven’t seen it. Of course that’s judging from one visit to a Sunday morning worship service, which doesn’t exactly say a lot.

So I’m still looking for a church. I don’t exactly know what I’m looking for, and I keep thinking I’ll know when I find it. Sometimes I wonder if I’m what’s wrong with the church today.