The Sunday Call

My father calls me every Sunday and after pleasantries, the conversation inevitably moves to him asking if I went to church.

For a while I came up with excuses. Then I ran out of excuses and lied about going. Did that twice before I caught myself and remembered this is my father, I’m an adult, and he wasn’t going to beat me for telling the truth.

So for the last six months, when he calls, I just tell him I didn’t feel like going. Today, he called and after I told him my reason for not going was that I didn’t feel like going to church these days, he asked me to take that back. I laughed. The back and forth has always been a feature of our relationship; it’s where I got my habit of having a counter argument for everything. My boarding school proprietress once told me “Bashir, just say you’re sorry. You don’t have to argue everything.” I never listened to her either.

But this time I don’t want to argue. I want to actually understand what’s happening with me.

Because the truth is more complicated than “I don’t feel like it.”

I am going through a difficult season. Lost. Confused. Facing decisions I don’t know how to make and carrying weight I don’t know how to put down. And when I have dragged myself to church looking for something -anything — I leave the same way I arrived. Still lost. Still confused. Just dressed better.

I know how the service will go before it starts. I sit through sermons that don’t reach me. And if I’m being fully honest, I eventually stop listening altogether and distract myself looking at the gorgeous women in the congregation, mentally planning which one I might speak to after service. That’s where I end up. Not because I’m a bad person but because something in me has completely checked out.

Church started feeling like networking. Community bonding. Playing dress up on a Sunday.

And yet.

I believe in God. I’m certain of that. When life truly overwhelms me I find myself praying. not out of habit but out of desperation. And something in that quiets me. The relief is real.

But calm is not the same as direction. Prayer soothes me but I still wake up the next morning not knowing what to do. I am still searching for guidance. For someone or something to cut through the noise and tell me which way to go. That’s what I was hoping church would give me. That’s what it keeps not giving me.

So I’m not avoiding church because I’ve lost my faith or because as my father might fear, the devil has found a foothold. I’m avoiding it because the one place I was told would meet me in my searching keeps sending me home empty. And I haven’t figured out where else to look.

Has the church failed me or have I failed it? I genuinely don’t know. Maybe I haven’t found the right one. I’ve encountered preachers who understood culture and humanity beyond their own biases and I could sit for hours. But they’re rare. And I’ve grown too tired and too desperate to keep sifting through.

My father hasn’t loved me any less for not going. I suspect Jesus wouldn’t either. But somewhere between that grace and where I’m standing, I’m still a man looking for direction and not quite sure where to find it.

I’m sitting with that honestly for the first time.

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ps: Where do you go when you’re lost and religion isn’t giving you answers?