Every once in a while you read something that strikes a nerve. In her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard has a convicting description of church.
On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power of we so blithely invoke? Or as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.
It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.
Now there is an idea. Give guests a crash helmet :)
On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power of we so blithely invoke? Or as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.
It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.
Now there is an idea. Give guests a crash helmet :)
3 Comments:
Our Sr. Pastor has mentioned the crash helmet quote a couple of times in the last year. Great quote.
dj
This reminds me of a book that I just read about looking at who Jesus really was and saying that he certainly bucked the religious conventions of his day. If he were around today, we would definately need crash helmets. I can't think of the name, but as soon as I find it, I'll post it here.
The book is "What Jesus Meant" by Garry Wills. I haven't read it yet (so this is not an endorsement), but it sounds very interesting and I mention it only because the Jesus that is presented in this book based on the reviews I have read, sound like we would need crash helmets.
Post a Comment
<< Home