Gym Replace Church?

There has been a significant decline in the number of people attending sunday service over the years along with a significant up tick in the number of people signing up for gym memberships. What's more, the direction in which gym's are going with their format is changing. Gym's are no longer a large room with weights and machines with individual's aimlessly passing by one another. With the new emphasis on the classroom setting, it is becoming a community. Should these patterns continue we may very well see the gym developing into a societal institution that rivals the church.

The idea that such a thing could occur might seem quite unimaginable. The church has existed as a major institution since the conceptual development of a society. Gyms are only a recent phenomenon of the last couple hundred years or so. But so much of the defining aspects of the church are now being seen in the gym. In both the idea of self-restain and discipline, these are tempered with the idea of some tremendous reward down the road and internal well-being; suffer now, perfection later. The church aims to purify its followers of sin; the gym purifies of toxins. At the head of the room there is an instructer/priest, who through his intense training and study has reached a level beyond the parishioners and devoted himself to leading them towards a similar level, although they will likely never achieve it.

With all of these new programs, Yoga, Zumba, Kosama, Crossfit, you hear practioners speak of it as not just being a workout, but "a lifestyle." They may go so far as to even calling it "a religion," and they do attend it religiously. Many of these exercises, though, claim to actually be founded in some, usually Eastern-based religious. In fact, with many Eastern religions, more specifically the various Budhist disciplines, a form of exercise was used to compliment religious study; training both the body and mind.

What does this mean. While the gym is able to substitute much of the superficial aspects of the church, it lacks the deeper offerings. The promise of Jesus abs, is not the same as Jesus's eternal love. However, at the same time, many are no longer finding truth in those deeper promises. The church can offer something more than any other earthly institution can, but does it always? There is no denying that the church has failed its members many times throughout history. The idea of some higher reward that can never be had or seen or known while on this plane can be terribly frustating. There is comfort in seeing the tangible rewards of exercise, but once that perfect body has been achieved, what do you have? Are you necessarily any happier once you have achieved that physical peak? Perhaps there is something to have a goal that is forever just beyond your reach; room to always grow and move beyond.