Square-peg-in-round-hole
As I was sitting in church this Sunday morning I realized something. Listening to the sermon, which consisted of very little narrative analysis and huge chunks of square-peg-in-round-hole commentary, I realized that churches in the west, and specifically in the United States, do all the thinking for the people. There is rarely room for the listener to analyze the biblical material and independently draw conclusions. Instead, the sermons are ready to digest bites of theological conceptions, assumptions and presuppositions that are intended to be uncritically accepted. Sure, they may be true on occassion, but even if it is not entirely true or an outright fabrication the material is presented as a matter of fact. To be fair, the guest this morning, when he was about to make some creative conjectur, prefaced his statements with a clear disclaimer. I think many churches would be better of handing their congregants a jar of Gerber’s Baby Food. Of course, some may realize that I entirely side-stepped the issue of whether church should even be about biblical studies (which I’m beginning to think it isn’t), but if churches in the States are going to practice their religion in this I would think that they would want to prepare people by giving them the real, unadulterated information. Perhaps the powers-that-be feel people can’t handle the scandal, controversy, judgment, racial tensions and many other politically incorrect topics that the bible contains. And nevermind issues regarding authority, intent, authorship and other more pressing matters. With this new discovery I’ve realized that I will probably never find a church that meets this criteria. I guess this is another example of how broken things have become. Look at the effects of this game. Unqualified teachers speaking to miseducated adults about things that maybe they’ve emphasized in error or simply got wrong. And all of this the listener isn’t really in a position to question because they’ve never been properly trained or educated. Almost sounds subversive and intentional doesn’t it? It’s a sad day indeed.