I went to church today. Thing is, Im not Christian.
Its a really long story as to why I went, but thats not what Im going to talk about right now. What Im going to talk about is how strange the experience was. You see I grew up in a Catholic school, so Christianity has never been a scary or even remotely foreign concept to me. I was forced to go the all school mass once a month for 12 years, but that was more a legal thing than a religious thing. My school couldnt legally let me go unsupervised, and since the whole school was at the mass, there was nowhere else to put me.
Because of my exposure to Catholicism, Ive cultivated an interest in Christianity. To me, its like studying Greek mythology, but its still an active and major religion. Interestingly enough, I never minded the sermons as long as they were interesting. A good interpretation and analogy is never boring. But today, I went to a Lutheran church of the Wisconsin synod. Its the more conservative of the three Lutheran synods, which means they take a literal interpretation of the bible. In the sermon, the pastor made really strange analogies, and his interpretations were taken a little out of context from the story in which they originated. What really peeved me was his use of Jobs story.
Job is just a regular Joe who gets crapped on over and over, but in the end, he remains faithful. Its said hes a minor prophet for his insistence on there being a one and only God, and hes from the Old Testament, so the only reference to Jesus would be a vague savior of some sort. The pastor used Job because Easter is all about faith in times of hardship and resurrection, but he said that Job cried out his faith in a savior resurrected. There is no way Job would have known about the resurrection. I tried to figure out if it was just the pastors version of the bible, but there were no bibles available there, only hymns books.
Ahh well, the pastor was really young, so maybe he just needs more time to figure out how to write sermons. But as it stands, his was probably the weakest Ive ever heard.
Another thing, the song lyrics and the rest of the sermon talked about God working through Jesus and Jesus was a man. Most of the praising was for Jesus though, and not very much praise of Lord or God. Only two references to Mary were made, but no praise. From these things, Im getting the impression that the church is worshipping a man whos just really close to God. Thats really peculiar to me, since Catholics believe Jesus was of the same essence as God (as in Jesus is a part of God and not actually a man). Bah! Christianity
Time for a Jefferson Quote!
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823.
Its a really long story as to why I went, but thats not what Im going to talk about right now. What Im going to talk about is how strange the experience was. You see I grew up in a Catholic school, so Christianity has never been a scary or even remotely foreign concept to me. I was forced to go the all school mass once a month for 12 years, but that was more a legal thing than a religious thing. My school couldnt legally let me go unsupervised, and since the whole school was at the mass, there was nowhere else to put me.
Because of my exposure to Catholicism, Ive cultivated an interest in Christianity. To me, its like studying Greek mythology, but its still an active and major religion. Interestingly enough, I never minded the sermons as long as they were interesting. A good interpretation and analogy is never boring. But today, I went to a Lutheran church of the Wisconsin synod. Its the more conservative of the three Lutheran synods, which means they take a literal interpretation of the bible. In the sermon, the pastor made really strange analogies, and his interpretations were taken a little out of context from the story in which they originated. What really peeved me was his use of Jobs story.
Job is just a regular Joe who gets crapped on over and over, but in the end, he remains faithful. Its said hes a minor prophet for his insistence on there being a one and only God, and hes from the Old Testament, so the only reference to Jesus would be a vague savior of some sort. The pastor used Job because Easter is all about faith in times of hardship and resurrection, but he said that Job cried out his faith in a savior resurrected. There is no way Job would have known about the resurrection. I tried to figure out if it was just the pastors version of the bible, but there were no bibles available there, only hymns books.
Ahh well, the pastor was really young, so maybe he just needs more time to figure out how to write sermons. But as it stands, his was probably the weakest Ive ever heard.
Another thing, the song lyrics and the rest of the sermon talked about God working through Jesus and Jesus was a man. Most of the praising was for Jesus though, and not very much praise of Lord or God. Only two references to Mary were made, but no praise. From these things, Im getting the impression that the church is worshipping a man whos just really close to God. Thats really peculiar to me, since Catholics believe Jesus was of the same essence as God (as in Jesus is a part of God and not actually a man). Bah! Christianity
Time for a Jefferson Quote!
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823.