Church And The Little Dutch Boy

This morning I heard a smart man make a stupid "talking point". We have a great morning show in Mobile, and this guy and his "memos" are a tiny part of it. Sometimes he really nails it, and other days not so much. Today was about how our nation was founded on Judeo Christian principles, and that is why the ten commandments still hang in our Supreme Court. This is mostly true, though most of our founders were not religious.

This voice on the radio then began to spout statistics about how many Americans attend church. The figure was around 30%. There has been a steady decline in church attendance, and he sited secularism and materialism as the culprits. This may be true to a degree, but there is more to it. There are two basic reasons for this decline; boredom and irrelevance.

Boredom is born of habit. Any time we do something -other than biological functions and work- habitually, and the activity in itself is habitual, it becomes boring. If you buy your kid a Playstation and only one game, they will eventually tire of the game and abandon the Playstation. Adults are no different unless the activity is obligatory for some reason. Some preachers can keep people coming through guilt-laced pleas, while others are simply great salesmen. What about the social value? I have more fun listening to a band with my friends at a bar. The same chemicals are released in our brains regardless off the stimuli.

Becoming irrelevant is hard to swallow for any business or organization. The very nature of the modern church is irrelevant. If "Christians" read their instruction manual, you know, the book with the ten commandments in it, they might realize the problem. If you skip ahead to the new testament, it gives a very simple outline for what the church should be doing, and how to do it. Why read that huge book when a preacher can spin symbolic tales about it? It never says anywhere that one man should talk to the same group of people week in and week out. Look it up. If I owned a church, it would be called, "The First Church of the VHS".

Now, the little dutch boy. In his story, his little fingers were jammed into a dam to stop a devastating flood. When you apply that principle to the church, I have to wonder why they would try to stop the evolution of society, and what their book explicitly states about the end of the world. They have their little fingers jammed into a dam that will eventually break. Don't they stare at the sky, waiting for a white horse riding warlord to rescue them? Again, the new testament says that humanity will decline so far, that it will actually induce this selective savior to come and burn us sinners to the ground. It doesn't make sense, and is frankly a bit embarrassing. It has become the greatest tool for judgement and snobbery. You are not safer than me.

What can you do? First, pull your finger out of the dam. Next, go out and talk about the ridiculous things you are being taught. The dam will break soon enough, and no amount of prayer will save you from the torrent. Quit hiding within the walls of a church and experience life. We have enough governors; ditch your preacher. He wants money. There is no refuge or discrimination when societies fail. Otherwise, remain calm and useless and let the rest of us do the dirty work of connecting with humanity right where they are.

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