I am always surprised at the number of people that think that a relationship with God is a purely personal experience that needs no one else in order to be functional. Often those who posit this approach to God also end up inevitably saying that their opinion of how to relate to God is all that matters. They consider themselves to be the best arbiter of truth, though they might not phrase it that way.
But, I see the same attitude in the church. And I see it in two ways. One type of attitude is a willingness to discard any Church teaching with which you personally do not agree. I am not talking about personal theological opinions (theologoumena). I am talking about areas about which the Church has made a pronouncement or Holy Tradition has established it. If the Church has not made a pronouncement, and if it is not something that has achieved the status of Holy Tradition, then I probably have no issue with you holding that opinion. But, I do not guarantee that I will think much of that opinion. I do ask that you do your research and be logical and understandable when you share your opinion. If it is an opinion merely because you feel that way, your opinion is not forbidden per se but it will lack a certain weight.
The other type of attitude masquerades as obedience to the Church but is actually another form of holding a personal opinion that supersedes both Church pronouncements and Holy Tradition. And these are those who believe that they know better than the hierarchs how a canon should be interpreted. Several years ago I pointed out on this blog that a canon (kanon) is not a law (nomos). It is a regulation that the bishops expect that you will follow but may be suspended or changed by a later synod or council, or temporarily modified by a local bishop and/or other clergies. These are the people who are convinced that every jot and tittle of every canon must be upheld and kept in the way in which they interpret that canon. They do not allow for economia or changes by the bishop(s) insisting that only an Ecumenical Council can change even the most minor of the canons promulgated by an Ecumenical Council. They will fight to the bitter end for their truth, to the point of fomenting schism.
Among churches which are not hierarchical or use a canonical structure, these will be the people who will say that it has never been done that way before. Or, they will talk about how their congregation was founded back when to operate in a certain way and that nothing can be changed from that original start.
What it boils down to is that whether one is a person who does not go to church but professes a personal religion, or one goes to church but reserves the right to not believe what that church declares, or one goes to church but reserves the right to impose their interpretation of their church’s rules on everyone else, that person has come to believe that their way of looking at theology, doctrine, and practice is the correct way. If you think about it, there is little logic in that way of looking at the church, unless one is the Son of God come again.
There is one final type of person. I am not really dealing with that type of person in this post. And that is the type of person who talks about many ways to get to Heaven, and many doctrines, and–as an old saying went–gets so open-minded that their brain falls out. It is simply another way of saying that we really do not know God, and that when we speak about God, we are making our best guesses, so I really could be totally wrong, but somehow God will not care.
This post is about going to Church. Yes, Scripture, Holy Tradition, and the canons say that it is vital for the Christian life as there is no life outside the Body of Christ. And, yes, the vast majority of Christian groups would say that this means a physical congregation, not simply some spiritualized Body of Christ. This post is also about obedience to the Church, which does mean striving to learn the beliefs and practices, and being willing to live under them. Finally, it also means deciding to not be the arbiter of the correct interpretation of Scripture, Holy Tradition, canons, etc.
Finally, everyone loves to cite prophets and reformers, claiming that they are an example worth following. Let me point out that real prophets and real reformers are so incredibly rare that your chances of being one of them is close to zilch. So, please quit using prophets and reformers as though they were a template for how you ought to behave toward the Church.
Having said that, there is still plenty of room to appropriately disagree with Church practices, and to appropriately call for even hierarchs to change, but that is a subject for another post.
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