Questions.

I attended the one-year-anniversary of the local youth church, The Light.

The pastor--a sort of guest pastor, actually, who runs the "father" church, Grace Life--spoke about Psalm 23, you know, "The Lord is my shepherd, etc." That was all well and good--he actually said something really interesting about the "shadow of death": if there's a shadow, somewhere there is a light. But he said something about the shadow being nothing to worry about--being not real, you know, a shadow can't hurt you. But I think it's more accurate to describe the shadow as a threat. After all, even if there is a light, there's also an object casting the shadow and blocking the light. There's a real thing that has volume there, it's not just the shadow as the being.

But anyway.

He transitioned into talking about death, and subsequently Heaven. He'll ask God if he reached all the people God meant him to, and God will say 'Yes'. Which is fine, until he started talking about recieving golden keys to his Heavenly mansion, stuffed with all the electronics he couldn't afford in life. He would tour the place for 1000 years, then put a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door (he admitted that he's introverted and doesn't like being around people a lot), and taking a 2000-year-long nap. THEN, he would see his younger peers (with smaller mansions, because they spent less time on earth and therefore had less time to build their mansions), and they would all go to the big banquet celebration and eat all this exotic food they'd never seen before and interview the characters of the Bible like Moses and Jonah for about 400 years.

What. The. Fuck.

Is it just me, or does that sound like self-indulgent, materialistic crap? Everyone I talked to about it made me sound like I was being too finicky, they told me that it was a metaphor, he was just trying to be funny, putting all these words into his mouth. But it wasn't funny to me. It missed the mark so completely. One girl I spoke with even told me that THE WORDS DIDN'T MATTER AS LONG AS THE SPIRIT WAS PRESENT.

I'M SORRY. WHAT?

So, if that's the case, I could just stand up front, recite "Mary Had A Little Lamb", and because the SPIRIT was present, I'll have inspired someone? Remember that part before the sermon where the pastor says, "God, guide my WORDS that they may glorify You and Your plan"? Why would we even have pastors at all if that were the case?

This is the bullshit I can't stand about some Christians. They know that sermons are supposed to be inspired by God, so they forget that the pastor is a MAN (as in a human, not just a male), and take everything they say as divine.

And not only that, because I do believe that God was speaking through that man in the beginning of his sermon. BUT, remember those little things called 'brains' that God gave us, too? Right, well, they're there so we can USE them to DISCERN the Godly from the Earthly.

In fact, Discernment is a particular Biblical Spiritual/Charismatic Gift that some people display at a higher level than others. (See 1 Corinthians for the list.) It isn't taken lightly by God that we question our religious leaders. Look at Jesus and the Pharisees, after all.

This behavior doesn't shake my faith in God, not in the least. It's just a disappointment to me that I feel like I get it and I'm alone in that. Maybe I'm just being vain, or egotistical. Does it sound like that? Am I being a know-it-all? That's the last thing I want.

Love you guys,

Alyssa