Let me begin, with a title like that, by saying this is a very serious post. The intent is to ask a very intentional question, not throw stones.
Over on Facebook, my friend Julie Clawson, author of the book Everyday Justice, said out loud…
It’s what I love about Julie. She’s not afraid to speak her mind. As someone who grew up an evangelical and had virtually no experience outside my own circles, let me just say that I’ve had the same thought. I didn’t understand what I had never experienced so it seemed foreign to me. Asking questions about it was a natural response to the unknown.
Over the last ten years I’ve been actively studying other forms of worship, and my family has even been participating in an Episcopal church from time to time. I found liturgy to be exhilarating. But Julie’s post set up what followed to be a great point. Another friend, David Henson grabbed my attention when he said:
“I was mostly being tongue in cheek, though the rhythms of divergent worship services feel awfully similar to me. They all move and build toward a moment of ecstasis. When I look at the form of a typical Pentecostal service and a typical liturgical service, I don’t see significant difference, personally. But tha’ts a more sociological take on worship.”
As someone who used to use drugs, I think David is on to something. If we look at the range of experiences from Pentecostal, Vineyard, Litrugical, and even big production mega church services, they all lead to creating moments of ecstasy. Ecstasy is a very powerful experience that creates a story of experience. And it is story that propels us into action. We end up going to church for the purpose of experiencing that story over and over again. It becomes entirely possible to continue seeking out not God but that experience of ecstasy.
In college I participated in the Vineyard movement, and the worship experiences were intoxicating. I went because I felt “the presence of God” as ecstasy. And I’m not doubting the movement of God in those experiences. I’ve had those same experiences in Pentecostal and liturgical services as well. Some of my friends would call it a mystical union with God.
But is it possible manufacture those experiences that create ecstasy? Can churches become like a drug that we manufacture to keep people coming back? It’s easy to see in the Pentecostal and liturgical churches, but even the Catholic experience treats communion in much the same way as administering a drug by placing the wafer on the tongue. The ritual serves as a physical experience. When does the point cease to become growth, but instead the experience of ecstasy? And once the experience ceases, its easy to move on to other churches seeking out the experience. Have you ever wondered this, or am I just on my own here?
The flip side of this is that much of the religious experience is ecstatic. Both communion and worship are rituals that can be intoxicating in a profound way for me. Jesus created a profound experience in the act of communion with the wine and bread. I can’t and don’t, and even won’t, deny the power of the Spirit in my life to create and experience that propels me into action. Looking back I think its why I used drugs. Drugs produce a manufactured experience that is very similar to the divine. I wanted that experience. But…it was manufactured.
I’m thinking out loud here so, what say you?
