To Each Their Own

My grandparents attend church faithfully every Sunday, sitting patiently in their seats for two hours, not fidgeting at all (so much self-control!). They sit still, so very, very still. Occasionally they look around to see who else is there that they know, who brought their daughter or nephew this week, who's missing, etc. I rarely hear them talking about the sermon itself, at least in front of me, and I don't know how much it matters to them.
Their church is their social club and community. Two of their children attend, with their spouses and families, and all of them have been attending together for nearly fifteen years now. They have seen the leadership of the church change hands many times, many spats and transitions and changes to the format and message. Still they faithfully attend, like clockwork, every week. They have a place there, a sense of belonging.
My mother has not attended church in years, mostly because she can't find one that pleases her. She wonders, where is one that is powerful but not emotional, that preaches "The Word" but doesn't take the exclusionary parts too seriously? She would rather go to no church at all than to one that is unsatisfactory to her.
I don't think that she has ever completely agreed with a pastor about everything, or simply taken his word for anything. The message or style of preaching is usually what turns her off about a given church. She has been fond of the word "discernment."
 Whereas for most of our family it seems so easy to be Christian, for my mother (and for me) it has never come easily. What did God mean by this, why does it say this here, what if it's not true...?
While my grandparents' beliefs have stayed pretty much the same, hers have evolved over time. They still believe in the Rapture; she now believes that Christians have got it wrong. They still believe in hell; she thinks that Jesus was referring to the garbage dumps, occasionally set on fire, outside of Jerusalem. They talk about sin, while she says that love is love.
She is fiercely independent in her thinking, and I am fortunate to have been raised by her and to have turned out, I think, much like her, though I take it a step further and now consider myself an atheist.
I don't believe in a "true" style of Christianity, but I respect one that evolves over time, that stresses love more than "purity," that encourages people to think for themselves. I also believe that this style, ironically, produces more atheists in the end. I know that it has at least produced one.

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