What Church Is Really About

Sunday, February 15, 2026

Ran into an interesting article just this morning, “Americans rank clergy at record low in honesty and ethics ratings: Gallup.”  The poll cited does not delve much into the reasons, but it does note that the same is true for most institutions and those that work in them.  The piece also examined a Barna poll that was more revealing.  The polls were insufficient to say this as fact, but it did seem like the slip in perceived trustworthiness was as much about expectations as it was job performance.  What’s going on?

A couple of weeks ago, Arthur Brooks penned a column in The Free Press about how, “Therapy Won’t Make You Happier.”  Too many people think that it will and therefore think of psychology as quackery.  That’s about expectations, not the performance of the therapist.  People often confuse church and therapy and I think a lot of people expect church to make them happier too, but that is not the job of church.

A couple of days ago I wrote about the rollback of the EPA’s “endangerment finding” and wrote, “In an instant and with a piece of paper, they changed how humanity looks at itself – they changed us from the stewards of the planet to its pestilence.”  So many people do believe in some sense when they think about environmental matters that mankind really is a pestilence, but they refuse to think so when they go to church – and there lies the problem. People go to church to get happier, but the purpose of church is to make us better – from which happiness may, but not necessarily will, flow.  But to get better you have to know you need to be better, you have to admit your are not good.  People think church is supposed to tell them they are good, but they are not good.  The purpose of church is to help them on the road to good.  (Short break in the chain of thought here.  Mankind is not a pestilence on the planet, not by any means, but we are not good – there is a difference.  I don’t wish to interrupt the chain of thought any further to describe the difference, we’ll save that discussion for another time.)

Hence people’s disappointment in church.  They go to be told that are good only to be told the precise opposite.  That’s especially true this coming week.  Hard to believe but this coming Wednesday is Ash Wednesday – the beginning of Lent.  The ceremonies of Ash Wednesday are symbolic of penance – the price we pay for not being good.

This is the time of year we especially go to church not to be told we are good, but to remember we are not good.