It's what brings us together

I've noticed something about attendance at church. When we have a potluck, there are usually more people. Usually, chairs have to be set up in the back just because of the potluck. I think this really says something about people, probably people in general not just church people.

Food is a necessity. Without it, we would die.  Food is such an essential aspect of life that Jesus compared himself to food when he said that he was the bread of life. People come to church to learn about Jesus and how he is the bread of life so that they can live forever. And they come to fellowship. But what I'm wondering is whether the perishable food is more important to some people than the bread of life.

 It's kind of funny. I remember a man who use to go to our church on occasion, and he had a daughter who was always trying to get him to go to church. I think I remember him telling her that he would come to the potluck Sunday. This was a while ago, so I can't vouch for exactly how accurate that memory is. But I can definitely remember that the guy ended up coming to church mostly for the potluck Sunday.

I think his attitude towards church was just an amplified version of the attitude that many church people have. Why else would attendance jump for the potluck Sunday? It's impossible to say what their real motivation is, but I strongly think food is a major motivation for coming to church.

Food shouldn't be a major church attraction. If people are coming for the food, there is a major problem. The motivation for coming to church should be meeting with the body of believers for mutual support and encouragement and all that. Remove food from my church, and the attendance would probably drop. That's not good.

An Abnormal Trinity

I find it odd that there are three pastors at my church of between three and four hundred people. Although the retired pastor shouldn't count, he carries the most weight of the three of them. Then, there's the staff pastor. I view his ministry as the most effective of the ministries of the three pastors. He visits the sick, acts as a mediator between parties at the church, and handles the cleaning and up keep of the church. Then, of course, there's the primary pastor, the one who does the preaching. I don't know what else he does. Then, there's retired pastor. I'm still confused about what exactly his role is. To me, it seems like he's there to make sure everything measures up to his standards.

                                                                                                                                                                    I think this arrangement is unhealthy. If all three pastors were equal, they would be able to hold each other accountable. They are not equal. The retired pastor has control of almost everything that goes on at church. He lets others do things for him, like preach, but he still has control. He was very careful to select someone who will do what he wants. And he's there in church every Sunday to make the sermons measure up to his standards. 

                                                                                                                                                                    Our former pastor has been close to the staff pastor for many years, tutoring him. At one point, I think he planned on making this guy the preacher. It didn't work out though because people didn't really like his voice or his teaching. And so the pastor had to find someone who did a good job preaching. His first protege idea didn't work out so he found a second protege, a good speaker.

                                                                                                                                                                But I believe the way they went about finding a new pastor was wrong. The whole search for the new pastor was dictated by the old pastor. Obviously, he was looking for a copy of himself or something pretty close. The problem with this is too much inbreeding. Many Universities don't let their graduates return as teachers for this reason. They want fresh, new people who will diversify the teaching and introduce new perspectives.

Our new pastor does have a different opinion about our church than he expresses. But I think he's too weak to stand up against the old pastor and let him know that things need to change. I guess that means the old pastor wins. He picked someone who will carry on his legacy, someone who will almost be his clone.

Hail Awana

Growing up, I can remember liking Awana. What's there not to like about games, singing, listening to stories, reciting Bible verses, and buying cheap toys with Awana dollars? I really did enjoy it as a kid because Awana is designed to appeal to kids, to what kids want. Its professed purpose is to "reach boys and girls with the gospel of Christ and train them to serve Him." I just think they go about it in an ineffective way.

The rewards system operates like this: you take the book they give you, learn the verses, recite the verses to your leader, and collect points which translate into Awana dollars which you can spend on stuff at the Awana store which happens two or three times a year. I think this method of positive reinforcement undermines the goal of Awana. Kids are taught that if they learn verses they will receive a reward. Obviously for a kid the real goal is to get the reward. If they have to learn the verses to do so, they will. This system makes the Bible verses second priority.

And that's not all. I've noticed that kids hardly remember the Bible verses anyway. I set records when it came to who could recite the most verses in one sitting. But I can't tell you what those verses were about. I was too fixated on the material reward to the extent that I didn't really learn the verses. I read them to myself and then tried to regurgitate them back at the listener. And in regurgitating the Bible verses, I didn't end up learning them.

It also ended up being a competition, almost, to see who could say the most verses. Extrinsic motivation is good, but not when it comes to learning verses. There shouldn't be a competition to see who can say the most verses because that distracts from the goal as well. Recently, I was watching how the leader of Awana at my church was introducing the teams and the number of points each had. It was very clear that the teams who got the most points were cheered on more.

The way the Awana song goes also seems to indicate that the purpose of Awana is not what it claims. Part of the song goes, "Hail Awana on the march for youth. Hail Awana holding forth the truth." so I guess it's Awana that is teaching the truth not Christ. Well he is mentioned in the passage of the song that says "our Savior following with steps unfaltering." The grammatical structure of the song and the way it's sung originally led me to believe that our Savior was following us (I was just a little kid). If you look at that entire sentence of the song, you can see that we are following our Savior, but that wasn't especially clear to me growing up. I don't really know what the real purpose of Awana really is or what the effect is. It didn't do much for me. To me, it seems like Awana is too focused on the Awana program and not the goal of that program.

A Deadly Vaccine

I think many couples at my church pride themselves on how well they've raised their children. I remained confused, however, when it comes to seeing what makes their kids better than others. Okay, so they know a few Bible verses. They've been trained in the art of repeating arguments for Biblical creation. They claim to be Christians. The problem is this: these kids have been  drowned in Christian propaganda and not given much of a chance to think for themselves. I believe this inundation with Christian material is the primary reason so many kids are leaving the church when they get to college. At some point they realize that what they've been told their whole lives doesn't make sense. They realize this because they never really had to think about it; they were simply told what to believe. This form of teaching kids is counterproductive for several reasons.

My question to parents who do this to their children is this: why do you primarily present only one view, the view of Christianity, to your children? It makes no sense to bolster only one side of an argument. Children should be very familiar with the major religions in the world in addition to atheism and agnosticism. The value of knowing both sides of an argument is that you can better defend your position and better understand those who disagree with you.

If these parents are afraid of making their children unbelievers, they shouldn't be. If they truly believe their position is the strongest, they shouldn't have to worry about there kids exploring the different sides of an argument. If they believe the Bible holds together under careful scrutiny, they shouldn't have to worry about their kids trying to poke holes in the logic of the Bible.

When children are given a comfortable environment to learn the Bible, they don't feel as great a need for salvation. They've had such great exposure to the Bible that it doesn't hold as much interest for them. They may have ingrained habits of reading it and studying it, but they can't always look at it from the prospective of someone who feels the true need to repent. They are already living like Christians, to all appearance. They don't drink, smoke, do drugs, or engage in promiscuity. In some ways, this is worse than if they had done those things.

When Jesus' disciples were complaining that he let a whore near Him, he explained things to them. They disdained her, no doubt. They viewed her as the scum of society, but Jesus viewed her as someone who had repented of her sin with a full realization of her guilt. He explained to His disciples that she loved Him more because she was forgiven more. Thus, it would almost be better for everyone to go through a time in their lives when they engage in things they believe are wrong so that they can feel like they have something they need to repent of.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not recommending that people sin so that they can be forgiven more. Ideally, each person should realize the magnitude of his sins without having to add on to them. It is just easier for people to see their sin if they sin more or engage in worse sins.

By creating artificial Christians, these parents are really inoculating their kids against Christianity. The thing is (for the purposes of this metaphor), Christianity is the disease and constant inundation with Christian propaganda is the vaccine. In effect, parents are exposing their kids to enough of the gospel that they are becoming immune to it. 

This is worse than atheism. At least with atheism the atheist acknowledges that there is no God, and thus, arguably, he can be convinced that there is one. With fake Christians, one can't know to try to convince them and they can't know how badly off they are.

Like I said above, parents should really expose their children to all kinds of teaching, with, of course, a healthy dose of Christianity. They should even ask their children why they believe what they believe, not simply tell them the reasons to believe something.

Now, I realize that this doesn't apply to all parents or all children. I have no doubt that there are true believers who were raised with a one sided view of Christianity. I also have no doubt that there are many bad people who stay bad throughout their lives and are never converted to Christianity. All I'm doing is promoting thought and a thorough investigation of all aspects of an argument.

Shunning

I've been going to my church for seventeen years. That's a long time. In that time, I made a few friends here and there but no lasting connections. At first I thought it was just me, and I'll admit, it could be partially me. Then I realized I wasn't the only one. The church, consciously or not, picks and chooses exactly who it will accept. I didn't make the cut.

Just last week, an elderly gentlemen from my church died. While he was alive, I noticed him a few times and he seemed really lonely. At meals, people didn't really sit by him unless it was necessary. He seemed like a fairly nice guy. He traveled from a different city each week to help with Bible clubs when they were going on. He came to speak to groups of kids at the church to explain things about creation. Apparently, though, nobody cared enough to sit by him at meals and get to know him.

I understand that people like being in their comfort zones. I am human. But this guy traveled from a distant city and rented a hotel room for the weekend several weeks in a row just so he could help with Bible clubs. The least people could have done was thank him and at least try to get to know him. I realize that I'm as guilty as anyone else, but our church as a whole has done this before, probably long before I came around.

In my experience, I had a hard time connecting because I wasn't into football like the other guys. Yes, that's pretty much the sum total of their conversations with only occasional deviations. Trying to sit by them was pointless and awkward. On occasion, they felt the need to talk to me about other things. I always got the feeling, though, that they were intimidated by me. I have no earthly reason why.

I'm not a difficult person to talk to. Perhaps I'm not the most loquacious person, but it seems like I always have felt shunned at church, whether because of me I don't know. I guess it has to be me to some extent. I think the big thing is that my personality just doesn't lend itself to talking mostly of football and studying the Bible academically. I wish to do something more meaningful than simply going to church and trying to learn all I can. Learning is good, but it isn't an end in and of itself. I honestly can't and don't wish to talk sports. Maybe the whole situation is my fault. Maybe I need to become an expert on sports so I can socialize at church.

Avoidance

If you're like most normal humans, then you've probably experienced being taken advantage of at some time or other. It's not fun. Not only is it inconvenient in the short term, but also it can be inconvenient in the long term if you allow the person taking advantage of you to continue. It's frustrating too when you finally figure out what's going on. This is how it went for me:

I seemingly nice lady named Matilda Shuttlesworth joined my church fairly recently. Matilda made a big splash the first year by asking the church to announce that she needed help on her property. She was a widow and we're supposed to help orphans and widows. Now, as you know, my church isn't the best. They did, however, decide to help this women.

Thus, as a large group of about thirty people, we went out to her house to help her. She wanted people to basically clean up the wreckage of a house that had been demolished so she could build herself a house there. She knew she would need people with that capability, so she targeted three contractors with the equipment to accomplish this. It took three Saturdays with this devoted group to finish the job. When everyone was done, it was kind of awkward because she thanked people but not in a very heartfelt way. I mean, we worked three whole days just to do this for her.

Being the compassionate person that I am, I tried to look for ways to justify this somewhat cold thanks. I decided she had just moved here. She wasn't settled. She was new. She didn't have a job yet. Thus, it was fine for her to be rude. That may not have been my conscious thought process, but I think that's how I justified it.

Anyway, Matilda diligently came to church and seemed to make a few friends. In the course of socializing, she began to repeat her sob story of how her husband died in a car wreck. At that point, everyone wanted to help her. Her spell was cast. Now all she had to do was move in for the kill.

Being an innocuous person, I was surprised to find myself talking to her, the woman who became an overnight superstar because her husband died in car crash. In the course of the conversation, she mentioned how she was planning on building a shed. And I was thinking, "what an odd conversation." And then she mentioned not having time to do it herself because she had just moved here and was still living in an apartment while her house was being built. By that time, I was able to take the hint and offer to help her even though I was busy at the time.

Once again, she took advantage of one of the contractors at church to head it up. Suffice to say that the shed was big. "Perhaps not paying for labor made it more accessible for her to get", I thought. I though she was visibly impressed with my diligence and I was happy to be done with that job and get back to my life.

She had other plans. After her house was built, I got stuck in another one-sided conversation with her in which she started talking about how dirty her house was and how it needed to be cleaned before she moved in and how it was just her and her five-year old son. I knew what she wanted. So much for that Saturday. Yes, I cleaned her house, and I promised myself this was the last time.                                                                                       
I found out later that this woman had a half-million dollar life insurance policy from  her husband's death in additions to a nice car and a house where she used to live. There are few people at church who are in better condition than her as far as finances go. It also occurred to me that she hadn't done anything that I could tell since she had come to my church. She may have helped with a few things here and there but she hadn't done anything noticeable. She made no contribution. She took so much. I avoided her from then on.

Now, in narrating these events, you probably saw everything coming. I didn't when they were happening, and that's the big point. When you're a victim of one of these manipulators, it's much harder for you to notice. When she talked about me cleaning her house, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. When she announced that she needed help clearing rubble, it seemed like such a great outreach.


Don't get me wrong here. Helping people is good, even if they don't ever do anything for you. What's wrong is asking a church for help when you can afford to pay someone to help and probably not feel it. What's wrong is taking advantage, receiving but not giving. Good relationships consist of mutual benefit. If you don't find that in a relationship, then discontinue that relationship. If you must go to church with this person, avoid them as much as possible. If you must talk to them, don't let them con you into helping again. Don't let them direct the conversation; you do that. If they do manage to bring up helping them, make sure you have some important excuses memorized that don't have a short shelf life.

Most importantly, try to be nice about it. It may help to think of it as a game. You don't want to let them dominate the conversation. You want to have back-up strategies if they do. You also should feel sorry for these people. How can they establish real relationships based on only themselves and their needs? It seems like an unhealthy dynamic that not many people would put up with. Remember that these people are people just like you and me. They have problems, and they need help just like us. 

A Modest Proposal part 1

Although I can't present as flawless an argument as Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, I hope to present a view of modesty that many in the homeschool group have perhaps missed. You see, there are people who believe that girls must wear floor length dresses as a show of modesty. The central idea of dressing modestly is to not attract attention. By definition, modesty is the quality or state of being unassuming or moderate. In dressing this way, these people have missed the point of modesty.

Look at a floor length dress. Does the word moderate come to mind? A floor length dress is anything but moderate. On a scale of mini skirts to floor length dress, the floor length dress is an extreme.


When you're shopping at Walmart and you see a woman in a floor length dress, what do you usually think? I can almost guarantee that you will take notice of this woman. In doing so, you are negating her goal in dressing modestly, if her goal is to be modest. But somehow, I have a feeling her real goal is not modesty. Sweeping along in a magnificently long dress, she intends to draw attention to how modest she is.


These people argue that dressing otherwise is dressing like the world. Well, is there anything especially wrong with the way the world dresses? There are people who dress like whores, but they certainly aren't a majority. Most people manage to dress in a way that doesn't draw any special attention to them, but these homeschoolers have missed that. They falsely believe that modesty requires long dresses. Thus, they parade in those anachronistic relics of regime long past with the narrow-minded belief that dressing otherwise is wrong. 


I think that one argument in particular says that dressing in modern clothes draws to much attention to the body. Here's the problem with that: dressing in a huge, showy dresses attracts much more attention than dressing in jeans and a tee shirt. And if you have more attention, you also have more attention directed at your body. Once again, the intention of dressing modestly is compromised.


Another argument is being an example to the world of how to dress. This is overtly immodest. I don't know how many people think this, but it's a thoroughly self-defeating idea. Rather than quietly going about their modest lives, these people have decided to parade the way they dress before the world in an attempt to convert people. How they manage to miss the hypocrisy of this amazes me. Trying to get attention is not modest. Trying to get attention to convince people to be modest like you is hypocritical.