Did Homer Simpson have a point when he told God that not being a 'bad guy' is more important than going to church?

There is a very funny episode of <em>The Simpsons</em> called “Homer the Heretic”, in which Homer Simpson decides, one wintry Sabbath, that he no longer wants to go to church, preferring to stay home in the warm and watch TV. As a consequence, he receives a visit from God. “Thou hast forsaken my church!” thunders the Almighty, but Homer defends himself: “I’m not a bad guy. I work hard and I love my kids. So why should I spend half my Sunday hearing about how I’m going to hell?” The rest of the episode explores this question; it is by turns irreverent, witty and insightful – and strikingly, by the end, Homer has resumed his attendance at the First Church of Springfield.&nbsp; It’s worth thinking about how we ourselves might respond to Homer’s self-justification. He may not have offered it in good faith but in real life many people do genuinely struggle to understand why Christian churches impose certain demands on their membership, above and beyond what you might call basic morality. For Catholics, the most obvious example is the Sunday Mass obligation. Evangelical congregations often strongly encourage tithing, such as setting aside 10 per cent of one’s income for charity or the support of the Church, or require some level of active regular engagement with worship or specific ministries.&nbsp; Even some Christians seem to regard such obligations as the kind of legalism that Jesus warned against, owing more to notions of social propriety than to the practice of a living faith. If we’re living lawfully, paying our taxes and giving to the poor and helping old ladies cross the road, does it really matter how and whether we say our prayers and show up on Sunday morning? For non-believers, the argument is extended still further: if you can be a good person without involvement in a Christian congregation, it casts doubt on the very philosophical premises of the faith. One tension here is between what the American priest-writer Fr Dwight Longenecker calls the “horizontal” and “vertical” dimensions of Christianity. His idea is that those with a more horizontal orientation are inclined to emphasise the communal aspects of the faith – charitable giving and community service – and to regard the liturgy as an opportunity for us to renew bonds of fellowship. Those with the more vertical mindset, meanwhile, tend to focus on our distinct obligations to God, on right doctrine and right worship, on maintaining moral boundaries and the structures of the Church. The two tendencies are complementary, of course, and both are necessary for the Church to function as God intended. They should and do work together for the greater benefit of the whole, just as there are many different types of religious and priestly life and many different lay vocations. The enclosed and contemplative monastic orders are no less necessary or authentic than the teaching orders or those which work among the poor. For any horizontally-minded Christian tempted to regard, say, the Carthusians as wasting their time, there is the story of Mary and Martha in Luke’s Gospel. Jesus explicitly commends Mary for sitting at His feet and listening to Him, saying that she has “taken the better part”, even in the face of Martha’s seemingly reasonable complaint that Mary has done nothing to help her with the practical work of hospitality. As with so much of the Gospels, the implications of this vignette become more and more unsettling the more closely you think about them. Our Lord’s point seems to be that the stipulation which we might call the Homer Simpson objection – the insistence that the spiritual life and moral discipline don’t really matter if we are doing good deeds and keeping our nose fairly clean – doesn’t actually work. This is because our most fundamental need in this life is for reconciliation with God, and without true worship, prayer and self-denial, this is not possible. Self-satisfaction is not an option for us as Christians. In the words of St Paul, alluding to the Psalms, “None is righteous, no, not one.” We are meant for spiritual transformation through grace, not mere respectability, or diligent rule-following, and we have been given particular channels for that grace. That is not to say that we are to despise the normal everyday virtues of politeness, neighbourliness, and hard work. Christians often make the mistake of disdaining these things, because they are not the whole of the moral life – but the fact that they are not enough on their own does not mean they have no value at all. It is good to love your family and work hard! But we are meant to expand our moral repertoire; to be merciful and forgiving as well as being conscientious workers and faithful spouses. We are meant to keep in mind the things of God as well as the needs of man. It is very noticeable in the Old Testament how God lays out specific requirements for the conduct and aesthetics of divine worship in the Temple, alongside the rigorous demands for social justice embedded in the Jewish law. The vertical and the horizontal go hand in hand.&nbsp; <em>Photo: 'The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening interacts with a projection of Homer Simpson during FOX's 'The Simpsons' panel during Comic-Con International 2014 at the San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, California, USA, 26 July 2014. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images.)</em> <strong><strong>This&nbsp;article appears in the September 2024 edition of the&nbsp;<em>Catholic Herald</em>. 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