Chapter Five — Reasons That Are Not Yet Reasons (1 of 2)

Written for a church that is safe. If yours is not, go to Chapter Two.

Drawn from What Isn't in Your Bible and Why

Some reasons for leaving are real feelings that have not yet become real reasons.

They are named gently here, because they are the most common, and they are the easiest to act on without noticing.

Style. The music is too loud, or too old. The service runs long, or feels thin. The building is cold. The liturgy is unfamiliar, or too familiar.

These things matter to people, and they are allowed to matter.

But style is where a church's way of worship meets your habits, and habits are mostly what we are used to. Something unfamiliar is not wrong for you because it is unfamiliar. Something familiar is not right because it is familiar.

Many believers who grew up with an organ have learned to worship with a band. Many who grew up with a band have learned to love an ancient liturgy.

What changed was not the music. It was the worshiper.

A program. The youth group is small. There is no ministry for your stage of life. The church down the road has more for your children.

Programs matter. A parent's care for what his children become is a serious thing, and Chapter Six takes it up.

But a program is not a family. A church may have few programs and many people who know your children by name. That church may be forming them better than one with a full calendar.

Bigger, nearer, newer. A larger church has more energy. A nearer church is easier on a Sunday morning. A new church plant feels alive.

Each of these can be a fair reason in its season. Distance most of all. It matters more than people admit.

But each can also be a way of saying, "I want church to cost me less." A disciple should be able to tell which one he is saying.

Boredom and restlessness. Sometimes nothing is wrong. The sermons are faithful, the people are kind, and it has all gone flat.

A church can go dry. So can a soul.

The risen Christ had a word for the church that had left its first love, and His counsel was not to find a more exciting church. It was to "remember from what high state you have fallen and repent! Do the deeds you did at the first" (Revelation 2:5, NET).

Sometimes the dryness is in the congregation. Often it is in us. And if it is in us, a new church will not cure it. Only going back to Him will.

Curiosity. Sometimes the pull is not that anything is wrong here. It is that you want to know what is there.

A friend loves her liturgy. A neighbor's church prays for the sick by name. You read something from another tradition and cannot stop thinking about it.

Curiosity is not a sin. It is how the first disciples came.

Two men began walking after Jesus, and when He asked them what they wanted, they asked where He was staying. "Jesus answered, 'Come and you will see.' So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day." (John 1:39, NET.)

The Bereans were called "more open-minded" because they examined the scriptures "carefully every day to see if these things were so" (Acts 17:11, NET).

So do not put your curiosity away. But know three things about it.

First, curiosity is not yet a reason to leave. It is a reason to look, and you can look without leaving.

Many believers visit other churches now and then. Some of the counting is at the back.

Go to a friend's service. Read what another tradition says about itself, in its own words; Chapter Four is a place to start. Ask good questions.

If you are Catholic or Orthodox, ask your priest first what it means for you to attend, and to receive Communion, in another church. Your Church has teaching on both.

Second, keep it in the light. Curiosity kept secret tends to grow into a quiet leaving. Curiosity spoken to your pastor or priest, and to your spouse, stays where it can be talked about and prayed over.

Third, watch where it leads.

Sometimes curiosity is only restlessness, and it passes.

Sometimes it leads you to a conviction you did not have before. If that happens, it is no longer curiosity. It is a difference on a must, or a question about crossing from one tradition to another, and Chapters Six and Ten are for it.

And sometimes it sends you home grateful, having seen how other brothers and sisters love the same Lord. That is a good end too.

In John's telling, the first curiosity ended where all of it should end: they stayed with Him that day.

Wherever your looking takes you, let it take you nearer to Him.

A hurt not yet spoken. Someone said something. Someone did not call when you were in the hospital. You were passed over for a role. A friend chose a side.

These are real wounds, and some of them are deep.

If the hurt is abuse, none of what follows is for you. Go to Chapter Two.

But an ordinary hurt between brothers and sisters that has never been spoken has not yet become a reason to leave. Jesus put the first duty on the one who caused the hurt:

"So then, if you bring your gift to the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother and then come and present your gift."

— Matthew 5:23–24 (NET)

He was speaking to the one who did the wrong. If you have hurt someone, go.

If you are the one who was hurt and the other has not come, it may still be yours to go, because Jesus also said to go to a brother who sins (Matthew 18:15).

Families hurt each other. Most ordinary hurts can be healed with one honest conversation. That conversation is love doing its work.

"The church hid this from you." Some people do not leave over anything that happened in their church. They leave over something they watched.

A video says the church hid the Book of Enoch, or cut books out of the Bible, or buried the real story of Jesus. It comes with dramatic music and the promise of secrets.

Here is what is true. The church did not hide these writings. It read them, named them, and weighed them in the open.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, one of the oldest churches in the world, keeps 1 Enoch and Jubilees in its Bible. The letter of Jude, in every Bible, mentions Enoch by name and quotes his prophecy (Jude 14–15). The other churches knew these books and judged that they were not to be read as Scripture.

A companion volume, What Isn't in Your Bible and Why, tells that story book by book. Its finding is plain: what was buried "was not a suppressed truth. It was a body of writing the church had already read, named, and answered in full view of history."