Do Not Forsake the Assembling of Yourselves Together

do not forsake the assembling cartoon by nakedpastor david hayward

Description: A woman writes “Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together (unless they treat you like sh*t!)

DO NOT FORSAKE THE ASSEMBLING OF YOURSELVES TOGETHER

Some suggest Hebrews, where this verse is found, was written by a woman. So I entertained that idea in this cartoon.

It’s interesting to me that this one verse is the only one employed to demand that we should never stop attending church.

There are more scriptures telling us more clearly that we shouldn’t eat shrimp than there are telling us to keep going to church.

It’s also interesting to me, whether or not you use scriptures to inform your life, that they are chock full of stories of people who liberated themselves from oppressive, abusive, and undesirable situations. 

And these stories mean to inspire us to do the same.

There are other reasons to stop going to church, like abuse, boredom, bad theology, irrelevance, coercion, manipulation, control, awkwardness, or even just, “No particular reason. I just don’t want to go anymore.”

Even the verse in Luke where we’re told Jesus went to synagogue, as was his custom. Why’d Luke say that? Wasn’t that the custom of most Jews of his day? Maybe the emphasis is on “was”. Because later in his life we know, especially from the gospel of Mark, that Jesus avoided crowds and towns and preferred the wilderness where the crowds dwindled.

In any case, in my opinion,  you don’t need a good reason not to go to church. It could just be your preference or out of necessity. To me it doesn’t matter.

Church-centric people disagree. Of course. Because this snatches the Church’s power over your life out of its hands and into yours.

Where it should be.

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1 comment

The Bible does advise us not to give up meeting. It doesn’t say that those meetings have to be at a formal church service. Seems to me that what matters is that you are interacting with other Christians. Mutual support makes things so much easier.

Dax

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