I like to believe that through years of confirmation and embarrassment with church culture my relationship with God has never really suffered. God has been a patient, steadfast, loyal friend often against His better judgment, I’m sure. My relationship with the church, however, has been akin to the dysfunctional tug-of-war one might have with his in-laws. There is a will to love but with absolutely no natural proclivity. But isn’t this one of the insurmountable conundrums of our faith? To yield ourselves enthusiastically to a belief system that requires participation in a community, the church, a fellowship of believers - often rotten, nasty people.. woefully misled, gossipy, snooty, condescending, weird, wild, culturally inane people; and I am one of them. But there you are worshipping beside each other, regardless of whether or not you love each other. The level we are called to for the body of Christ is unbearably hard not only because of the strangeness of the people who live in that body but also the ways in which the church has assimilated particular cultural characteristics I find unlikeable, uncomfortable, uncool and/or totally un-Christian.