Tag Archives: obligation

95: Obligated Church Attendance?

In this episode John and Gregg discuss a blog post entitled “The Sin of Forsaking Fellowship,” by Dan Dailey, first raised in the Untangling Christianity private Facebook group. John wonders about a comment that Gregg left on the blog post.

Gregg explains that he was struck by what he saw as a crucial contradiction at the beginning of the post. For example, the author both appears to be writing from a personal perspective and has made a rather drastic choice for a Christian (to “quit going to church . . . permanently”), yet the author claims that his reasons for making this decision are not relevant to the post. Gregg explains that he finds this misleading (because his reasons for leaving church surely are relevant to the post!) and so wanted the author to know that this approach created distrust for Gregg.

So Gregg underscores that knowing why someone holds a particular perspective, especially where it appears to deviate radically from accepted norms, is essential to understanding the perspective (and perhaps, being persuaded by it). Particularly, the idea of being a Christian but permanently leaving the church is extremely uncommon and so Gregg wants to have information about why this decision was made and why this might be a good decision for others (which Gregg believes the post is advocating).

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7: Responding to God–Guilt, Experience, or Understanding?

Today we talk about love and being loved by God.  Should we think that “Jesus died for me, so the least I can do for Jesus is love and obey him”?  Gregg suggests that we compare this view with someone what might be a realistic response if you believed that someone had saved your life or the life of your child: Would you respond by loving and obeying that person?  John proposes something different.

The discussion moves on to consider the goodness of God relative to the typical Christian understanding that those who reject God merit eternal punishment.  How can we see God as good if we embrace this view?

Next, with reference to Francis Chan’s Crazy Love,  Gregg focuses on the nature of love. What does it mean to ‘understand’ love?  Gregg suggests that love is foremost a relational reality to be experienced versus an idea to be grasped.

We end by considering why John does not experience God’s love.