Does this Church Make me Look Fat? Review & Giveaway
Sometimes, I really hate church. Don’t get me wrong. I love the fellowship and the friendships and the spirituality of church. But I don’t necessarily like sitting now, standing then, praying here, singing there. Sometimes, the oppression of the Sunday morning service just bothers me.
Often, I long for a church service that moves me. I want to be fulfilled spiritually – not feel like I’m just reciting something I’ve said every Sunday since I was able to memorize it. What, after all, am I really saying when I recite the Apostle’s Creed? And does anyone else in the congregation find their minds wandering when they are reciting The Lord’s Prayer?
Shocker, I know. None of this sounds like something a devout Christian and church-goer would admit. But, I’m also human. And, too often, I find myself finding an excuse to skip the actual church service so I can get something done around the house.
I’ve been to many types of religious services. I’ve been to Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Church of Christ, Baptist, Non-Denominational, and Presbyterian (my home church) services. I’ve attended Jewish weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and services in synagogues. In each type of service, I’ve taken something away whether it was simply knowledge of a different type of worship or a further understanding of a religion or denominations practices.
What I haven’t found is THE service or THE worship experience that feels to me like I’m “at home.”
In middle school, I had the honor of being part of a youth group we lovingly called The Heirforce (Romans 8:17 “Now if we are children, then we are heirs–heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”). Those years through middle and high school were the most fulfilling and spiritual years I’ve ever experienced. We sang. We worshiped. We found relationships with God. And then, somewhere along the way, it all sort of faltered.
Maybe it’s because I grew up? Maybe, when my family moved away from that church, I just never found a church family that felt the same?
A similar occurrence happened to Rhoda Janzen, author of the highly entertaining but poignant Does this Church Make me Look Fat? A former Mennonite (and author of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress), Janzen describes her life after leaving the Mennonite church and falling in love with a guy who is a very devout Pentecostal church member. As part of the scholarly world (she’s an English professor), Janzen finds herself questioning organized religion based on much of her education and reading through college and beyond.
What she learns, though, is that regardless of the choice of church affiliation, God is still God. When we have a relationship with Him, all the rest disappears. Who cares how we’re baptized in one church or how another denomination decides to pray? Janzen discusses the relationship aspect of religion.
Of course, her tongue-in-cheek anecdotes explaining how she found “home” with her husband in the Pentecostal church is what kept me wanting to read more of this book.
One of my favorite moments came when Janzen began searching for the ability to forgive others. She begins searching for any means possible to learn how to forgive, and for a while she was, “waiting tentatively for a magic moment from God.”
“Like most people when they first approach God, all I wanted was help. I was hoping God might swoop in and do the work for me. He didn’t do that. But he did show me how to do the work myself. One day something clicked into focus, as when you use binoculars to scan a wintery vista in which branches blur the landscape. Suddenly you lock on to a shape that under your very eyes gathers muscle and momentum — you see an enormous hawk, sitting in splendid indifference high above the shoreline. My hawk was the tardy epiphany that I had spent a lifetime blaming other people for my own stuff. The sheer force of this revelation took my breath away. It changed everything. All of a sudden I saw that holding a grudge was a way to avoid confronting my own stuff.”
How true is this? How often have we simply pushed the responsibility of our own issues onto someone else? And how often have I pushed my own laziness or unwillingness onto my annoyance with organized religion? Does any of that really matter if I’m seeking God?
As a hopeless romantic, I also loved reading about Janzen’s relationship with her husband, Mitch. Janzen resisted attending his church at first, but with his loving and kind guidance, she began to see the world in an entirely new light. She and Mitch are, as she explains, polar opposites. In fact, at one point, her step-son even asks how the two of them ended up together when they’re so vastly different. In a conversation about whether or not Jesus would have “stepped on a chipmunk’s head,” they moved on to whether or not Jesus would have allowed a raccoon into his house to eat up “all his wife’s food.”
“When you have a coon sneakin in and eatin your cat food, you need to man up. Jesus would not have let that critter eat all his wife’s cat food.”
“How do you know that the cat belonged to Jesus’ wife, and not to Jesus? Personally, I think Jesus was comfortable enough with his masculinity to own a cat.”
“Nah, honey. Jesus would have a dog.”
I loved discussions like this.
“What kind of a dog?”
“A shepherd,” he said seriously, as if there could be no other contenders.
“Jesus entered his shepherd in a dog show,” I said tentatively, “Jesus tied a smart red hanky around his dog’s neck.”
“Nah. None of that.”
I tried again. “Jesus carried a plastic bag when he walked his shepherd.”
Mitch was willing to consider this. It was one of the reasons I loved him.
Does this Church Make Me Look Fat is both fun and enlightening to read. I love that Janzen speaks about religion without tiptoeing around topics. She speaks from the heart and her story is just what this annoyed-with-organized-religion gal needed to hear.
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From the publisher:
What does it mean to give church a try when you haven’t really tried since you were twelve? At the end of her bestselling memoir Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, Rhoda Janzen had reconnected with her family and her roots, though her future felt uncertain. But when she starts dating a churchgoer, this skeptic begins a surprising journey to faith and love.
Rhoda doesn’t slide back into the dignified simplicity of the Mennonite church. Instead she finds herself hanging with the Pentecostals, who really know how to get down with sparkler pom-poms. Amid the hand waving and hallelujahs Rhoda finds a faith richly practical for life–just in time for some impressive lady problems, an unexpected romance, and a quirky new family.
Does This Church Make Me Look Fat? is for people who have a problem with organized religion, but can’t quite dismiss the notion of God, and for those who secretly sing hymns in their cars, but prefer a nice mimosa brunch to church. This is the story of what it means to find joy in love, comfort in prayer, and–incredibly, surprisingly–faith in a big-hearted God.
Rhoda Janzen is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Mennonite in a Little Black Dress and the poetry collection Babel’s Stair. She holds a Ph.D. from UCLA and teaches English and creative writing at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book to read and review. I was not otherwise compensated. All opinions are my own.
