The following paragraphs are from this great article by Franky Schaeffer.

Distorted echoes of a now-pacified Christianity ring out in an electronic clarion call to middle America. These churches are the elevator music of religion, the counseling rooms in which the latest psycho-babble is used to assuage the anxieties of the pre-and-post-mid-life crises menopausal congregation. They provide childcare facilities to assist families in staying apart. In Christian bookstores, greeting cards and wall plaques decorated with pious sayings compete for space with the latest cassette tape wisdom of the local Protestant "pope" of the superchurch ministry outreach, worldwide international evangelism, counseling/suicide prevention hotline, daycare, elementary school, high school, senior citizen center, Bible school, fund raising, youth center, parking lot ghetto. If these churches were food, they would have a shelf life of one hundred years — all sugar an preservatives, the two basic evangelical fundamentalist intellectual food groups. They are giant cash registers in which sham pearls are fed to the enlightened who in turn excrete money to feed the machine. Here, the artist has as much chance of thriving as the plastic plants do in the artificial light of the "sanctuary."

"...Only by giving the Bible a devotional spin when we read it, by taking isolated verses out of context and ignoring the raw whole, by filtering and interpreting, do we "civilize" it. Civilized, the Bible has become a devotional prop of middle-class values instead of being the rude challenge to false propriety it actually is. The Bible is 'a dangerous, uncivilized, abrasive, raw, complicated, aggressive, scandalous, and offensive book. The Bible is the literature of God, and literature — as every book burner knows — is dangerous. The Bible is the drama of God; it is God's Hamlet, Canterbury Tales, and Wuthering Heights. The Bible is, among other things, about God, men, women, sex, lies, truth, sin, goodness, fornication, adultery, murder, childbearing, virgins, whores, blasphemy, prayer, wine, food, history, nature, poetry, rape, love, salvation, damnation, temptation, and angels. Today the Bible is widely studied but rarely read. If the Bible were a film, it would be R-rated in some parts, X-rated in others. The Bible is not middle class. The Bible is not "nice." The Bible's tone is closer to that of the- late Lenny Bruce than to that of the hushed piety of some ministers.

In some centuries, the church did not allow the common people to read the Bible. Now by spiritualizing it and taming it through devotional and theological interpretations, the church once again muzzles the book in a “damage control” exercise. We now study the Bible but through a filter of piety that castrates its virility."
posted by Jimmy at 7:57 PM | |

 
okay...so i'm teaching 7th grade bible today. it's like bouncing marshmallows off a brick wall. i'm saying words, we're reading scripture, and i get the definite feeling that no one has a clue to the meaning of what's being said and what's being read. here's the conversation:

me: "John came as a witness to the light....who is this, John who?"
Students: "uh...John the apostle" "john the disciple" "john the baptist" .....

Now, it's not that 7th grade students should know which john we're talking about necessarily...or even know that john the apostle and john the disciple are the same guy. But I live in tulsa...the Jerusalem of God's New Promised Land. I ask:

"okay...hey...can i ask a question? how many of you have gone to church all your lives?"
all 15 students raise their hands
"okay...how many of you are currently regularly going to church or youth group?"
13 of 15 raise their hand

"can I ask you another question? What have you learned in church?"

student1: "I've learned that Jesus rose from the dead."
me: "that's good...that's a great thing to learn. what else?"
student2: "we sing songs and hear a talk and then eat."
student3: "yeah..same here. our church has really good coffee. i go to [EveryChurch]."
student2: "[EveryChurch]? You do? So do I."
student3: "yeah....we've got good coffee and hot chocolate."
me: "okay...so what have you learned at [EveryChurch]?"
student3: "well, we did a thing last week where we raised our hands like this....then we brought them down.....[to student2] what was that about?"
student2: "i don't know...that was weird. something about creation."
me: "okay...what did you learn about creation?"
student2: "i don't really remember. it was weird."
me: "okay...so back to the question, what have you learned?"
student2: "lots of stuff. we hear talks every week."
me: "okay...cool, so like what?"
Silence.....
student3: "we have good talks every week. our youth pastor is funny. and the hot chocolate is really, really good."

should i be depressed?
posted by Jimmy at 8:54 PM | |

 
Here's Another

"the church by and large has a poor record of encouraging freedom,. She has spent so much time inculcating in us fear of making mistakes, that she has made us like ill taught piano students; we play our songs, but we never really hear them becasue our main concern is not to make music but to avoid some flub that will get us in dutch" -- Robert Capon
posted by Jimmy at 4:41 PM | |

 
"Prayer, as the first monks interpreted it, was not in the first place a prayer for healing. Many pray to God to free them quickly and painlessly from their diseases and aching symptoms such as fear, depression and anxiety. People use God for their own advantages. It is demanded and expected of Him that He uses His skills as a great physician and magician to heal them without any effort on the petitioner's behalf.

But firstly prayer means that I present my life to God. I can't pray to God without facing my own reality. While praying, I come face to face with my dark side, my repressed anger, my disapointments, my pain, my fears, my discontent, my sorrow, my loneliness. To me praying means that I show God my real identity."
-- Anselm Grün

Read the whole article here: http://www.nouwen.org/en/grun_en.php3
posted by Jimmy at 4:24 PM | |

 
It all started one day when mark was young.
posted by riddle at 2:05 PM | |