The tweaking of your magnets

Alright, so a little experiment has come upon us, and it incorporates magnets and chapels.

We’ll start with the question with which we’ll be dealing: of what value is a physical, set-apart-place in the life of the Christian?

If you answered ‘none whatsoever,’ or even your favorite denominationally flavored equivalent, I’d ask you to reconsider.

Perhaps if I phrase it differently, in even blunter terms, we can move on: where is God best experienced?

The danger, of course, in my having phrased it this bluntly is that gravity and philosophical magnets come into play without fail and frustrate whatever kind of new thinking might happen, so please begin paying them extra diligence until you close this window. (Don’t worry, I’ll remind you.)

Please consider a few extremes within recent American Christianity:

• The school where I teach holds its weekly chapel service in our all-purpose gathering area, where things as varied as lunch, study hall, large parent meetings and cheerleader practice all happen on any given day. My roommate’s school, on the other hand, has chapel every single day in a physical building set aside as a chapel.
• As a function of his interpretation of the teachings of the Catholic Church, Mel Gibson had his own church/chapel built right on his property in Southern California.
• The church in which I came up took great pride in the fact that the building in which it met was formerly a strip club. (The building now houses an RV and boat dealership.)
• The renowned theologian/pastor A.W. Tozer is said to have had his deepest, most profound experiences of worship alone and astretch on his office floor.
• Just this past spring a good friend from college had his wedding in an outdoor chapel at one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.

All of this then frames the obvious question that I’m guessing you were hoping I wouldn’t bring up: where is the most proper place to worship God? (Keep an eye on those magnets, okay?)

I know the fundamentals of my own personal journey as a Christian aren’t all that different from most American Protestants’, so I don’t feel like I’m taking all that big a risk in saying that yours are probably similar too.

I’m thinkin’ that we (if you’re still with us, you hereby assent to include yourself in ‘we’) need to recover some of the majesty, the separate-ness of church/chapel and how we interact with God.

I am afraid that we as Americans have become (I wish there were a bigger ‘I’ in ‘we’) a bit too inoculated to the unsearchable things of God by their sheer commonness.¹

One of the proudest aspects of Christianity, especially post-Reformation Christianity, is its idea that God is everywhere, at all times and with(in) all believers via the Holy Spirit. Pretty amazing, huh?

Imagine this scenario, though, and you tell me which one seems more conducive to a more profound interaction with God the Holy Spirit: sitting in traffic on the Tollway, pondering the day in the middle of a few hundred other vehicles, or in the quiet of the Chapel at church. Or take this one: sitting quietly, however reverently, in my apartment one morning, mind wandering toward work, or at the park, quietly watching the sunset (or sunrise). (Magnet check here again. Thanks.)

As I’ve been thinking on this, it has just become more and more clear in my mind that the Biblical idea of God interacting with us is in God being unlike us. Because of that, oftentimes He comes (and certainly demands) that we interact with Him in different and even separate ways, live separate lives, have separate allegiances, have a separate hope, and so on.

Doesn’t it seem to sort of short circuit a lot of important aspects of our religion, then, for us to neglect this part of how our God seems to interact with so many of as recorded in our Scriptures and in our history? (Cue one more philosophical gravity check here.)

During this past academic year, some of the best times of refreshment I found were in prayer in the chapel at work (you know, the room set aside over and against everything else going on in the church) or at the park deliberately watching the setting of the sun.

Not in the midst of a worship service at work, surrounded by students.

Not while sitting on my couch with ten minutes before time to head somewhere.

And certainly not in the car at 6:15 on a Thursday evening.

By now I’m hoping that your magnets, the parts that hold together the ways you organize your world, are a little bit tweaked and maybe even agitated.

Now go deal with it somewhere else besides the Internet.

1 By the way, if you find yourself interested still, take a look here at something similar I wrote ’round about this time last year.