Never does the Bible say that meeting in churches on Sundays is something Christians have an obligation to do. Have you ever heard of this before? Unless you came to this conclusion on your own, I would doubt so. But not only is the idea that Christians must meet every Sunday an idea foreign to the Bible, but churches in America also have become practically useless, paralyzed by intellectual stupor, ignorance of the Bible, and petty shallowness. Does this mean that the Bible has nothing to say about Christians meeting with each other? No, but it does not say what many seem to assume.
Unfortunately I can recall hearing others talk like attending church regularly on Sundays is a staple of Christian morality, when the Bible says no such thing. Here is the closest thing to a passage mandating church that the Bible contains:
Hebrews 10:25--"Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another--and all the more as you see the Day approaching."
Does this verse prescribe that Christians meet together? Yes. Does it specify that this must occur on a weekly basis on Sunday mornings? Not at all! Why then would people speak and act as if the Bible demanded that they attend a church weekly on a specific day of the week, even claiming to experience guilt upon missing these sessions? The answer is simple: many people seem to know very little about what the Bible actually teaches and either read alien traditions into prescriptions in the text or they inherit baseless ideas from teachers who create or buy into non-obligatory traditions.
Beyond the fact that the Bible does not require Sunday church, there are other problems with many churches I've gone to since becoming a Christian. Most churches I have visited or attended have been little more than dens of irrationality, shallowness, error, hypocrisy, legalism, and tradition. Being in such an environment frustrates me more than anything else, although it does provide me a sense of appreciation for reason and sound theology, neither of which I would expect to find in many churches in any significant form.
In defense of Sunday church as an objective moral obligation some may say that one obtains benefits from meeting with other Christians. But these benefits can be received, and in some cases far more potently, through a non-traditional system of meeting with other Christians. Gathering with a handful of intelligent, committed Christians who are close friends can provide all of the alleged and actual general benefits of Sunday church and more. One can develop socially and spiritually in this way too, and people like me would not have to suffer the frustration of being in shallow church communities where the people hold to asinine, extra-Biblical, and irrational beliefs elevated via tradition and consensus. Some people dislike attending, much less regularly attending, gatherings of shallow people who engage in shallow theology and listen to shallow sermons. Is there any sin in this dislike? Anyone who would claim that a dislike of intentionally meeting with superficial and irrational people who cling to tradition over reason and Scripture is sinful is someone who believes an asinine and logically indefensible proposition.
I'm not the only person I know of who is deeply frustrated with the state of most churches I've been to. I have several friends who also have detected the fact that in American churches preaching without substance, sound logic, or a solid grasp of Scripture is not uncommon. A byproduct of this lackluster preaching is shallow congregations [1]. To demonstrate this, just go ask average churchgoers a few questions about what they claim to believe--not about what is true or verifiable, just what they think they believe. It amuses me how quickly one could bring down the flimsy walls of their worldviews.
When churches fail to represent Christian morality correctly (by setting aside moral commands that God has revealed and holding up imaginary moral "obligations" [2]), scarcely move beyond things that are agonizingly superficial (there is so much more to the Bible than just the concepts in John 3:16), teach highly erroneous theology (eternal conscious torment, Trinitarianism, complementarianism, sexual prudery, and so on), and generally foster and protect an environment of superficial community based on errors, the sole rational response is to recognize the uselessness of such structures. I have written posts, sometimes multiple posts, on these very issues, so feel free to locate them if you want more information on what I mean by these complaints. But these problems combined with the wholly extra-Biblical nature of Sunday church services to begin with mean that those who rise above the fallacies of the average churchgoer and the Biblical ignorance of the average professing Christian will likely not want to have much to do with most church congregations.
I did not say that all churches suffer from these problems, although almost every one I have visited has indeed displayed at least one or more of these significant problems. And just because someone attacks or points out the unnecessary nature of Sunday church does not mean that he or she rejects the Bible's command to meet with other believers! The actual Biblical command says nothing of Sunday morning gatherings and leaves the application of this instruction to be decided by individual Christians, meaning that if a Christian wanted to he or she could meet biweekly on Friday afternoons with as little as 1-3 other Christians and fulfill this in that way, perhaps even meeting with a few Christians one at a time throughout a week. Tradition does not determine truth. Misrepresentation of Christian morality is condemned by the Bible itself (Deuteronomy 4:2)--not that this ever stopped Christians, real or professed, from creating an onslaught of meaningless rules and norms with no objective authority or goodness whatsoever, including the belief that Christians must attend church on Sundays in the presence of shallow people.
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/my-people-are-destroyed-from-lack-of.html
[2]. A large part of my blog has been devoted to discussing instances of this and its stupidity. This occurs when Christians claim or imply that anything which God has not condemned is wrong (profanity, being alone with the opposite gender, masturbation, secular music, etc) and yet distance themselves from or deny the objectively good nature of what God has revealed (the contents of Mosaic Law, mostly).
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