Once, in a classroom setting in a room that was used by a contemporary service on sundays, I had a fellow classmate rebuke me and others for snacking during class because the classroom was “God’s Sanctuary.”

This got me to thinking. There are several negative implications to this type of legalistic thinking. When faith becomes a set of rules which are followed without reason or relationship then the experience of God suffers, and one’s belief in the person of God is degraded.

This legalistic thinking limits the presence of God to a building. A dichotemy of thought is created between the spiritual and the non-spiritual. God is present in a sanctuary, but not any where else. I have to be holy on sunday, but I can do what I want on every other day of the week. Perhaps even more extreme, I only have to be holy when I am in a “sacntuary,” but as soon as I step out of the door I am free to live as I wish.

An inconsistency is created in what makes a “sanctuary.” If we cant snack in a class room because it is used on sundays by a contemporary sevice that intentionally does not meet in a church in order to give a more comfortable environment to people who are interested in Jesus but wary of church institution, then anywhere God is worshipped becomes a sanctuary where food is not allowed. Do you pray in your home? Would that make your home a sanctuary where food is no longer allowed?

One might say, a sanctuary is a place where people specifically serve and worship God. But doesnt scripture tell us to do all things as unto the Lord? Are we not serving and worshipping God when we take care of our responsibilities to provide for our family, cook dinner for our family, build caring relationships with our coworkers, being a light to the world? If such is true and we are to worship in all aspects of our life, then there is no place that is not a sanctuary.

Is God not the creator of heaven and earth? Is the Lord not omnipresent, and omnipotent? The earth is His and there is no place he is not present. If such is true, is not the whole earth his sanctuary?

We are to worship God in every aspect of our lives no matter where we go by honoring him, living righteously before him and living justly with our fellow man bearing love and compassion. When we limit and structure our life, the experience of God, and the nature of God in our own understanding, creating pockets of spirituality within our life where we rigidly worship God  by defining “the Church” as a building rather than as the Christian body of believers, we create a legalistic religion of rules focused on pleasing the standards of men, rather than honoring the God of the heavens and earth with whom we can have a wonderfully intimate relationship.

Church is not about a building or a system of legalistic rules.

Church is wherever God’s people are, and its a life lived in the presence of God, and in community with others.

(Out of respect and sensitivity for this person I did put away the snack so as not to be a stumbling block to him by provoking bitterness or anger in his heart.)