Why do I have to go to Church? by Fr Yanni

Asking, “Why do I have to go to church?” is like asking, “Why do I have to go to family gatherings?” In the life of the church, going to church in and of itself is not the focus in sacramental Christianity. Church attendance by itself does not make you a Christian. That is how secular things work: you sign up for something and go to the meetings, and that’s what it means to be a member of that thing. But to be sacramental is not simply a matter of attendance, nor is it simply about thinking in a certain way or performing certain ritual actions; it is a lifestyle. This is the case with all worldviews, if taken seriously, they turn into lifestyles. In the case if sacramental Christianity
(which Orthodoxy is), going to church and participating in the sacraments is about living out the idea that the physical and the spiritual are bound together, and that you encounter them together through participation—not just in church, but in everything you do and are.

Everything in life is like this. You don’t become a member of a family by going to a specific number of family gatherings at a certain frequency, and then, once you’ve fulfilled your quota, you qualify as a member of that family. That would be a weird way to think about it. Rather, you become a member of a family because that’s who you are — that’s the life in which you are an active participant. Similarly you don’t automatically achieve the status of “healthy” by going to the gym a certain number of times. What makes you a healthy person is that you’ve built up an entire lifestyle of being healthy. You can’t become healthy by sitting at home and reading a lot of articles about health. You don’t become a member of a family by skipping family gatherings in order to sit at home looking at pictures of past family events. If you want to be a part of some- thing, you have to live it.

Asking, “Why do I have to go to church?” is life asking, “Why do I have to go to family gatherings?” Of course, the answer is that you don’t have to do anything. But if you want to become something, you have to participate in it. And in sacramental Christianity, in the life of the Orthodox Church, the thing you’re participating in is the higher spirituality of God Himself.

A good book to delve deeper into understanding these distinctions between worldviews, and how we are called, what we are called to, and why we are called, get yourself a copy of Journey to Reality, Sacramental Life in a Secular Age by Zachary Porcu!

With Love and Respect,

+Fr. Yanni Michaeldis