Pastor Shel is a Christian Missionary Alliance church planter here in Sioux Falls. Of late he's been teaching his people, from Scripture, about the dangers of selling the church out as a chaplaincy to one or another of our polarized political ideologies. That's where "broad" Anglicans/Episcopalians used to be: generally respectful of the culture but able to accommodate both critics and defenders of its various aspects. (For those in the vast majority who have no idea what an Episcopalian is, all of what I just said is irrelevant since the institutional Episcopal Church today is an uncritical chaplaincy that bases itself on the fortunes of one faction of one political party).
Shel's finding that many people, even Christians, are quite down with the ideologies, and that they don't flock to a different voice except in drive-bys of sarcasm.
He finds a good companion in the Prophet Jeremiah, who got so fed up with his role that he actually ripped God for choosing him - and had his harshest words written down for the ages:
O LORD, you have deceived me,
and I was deceived;
you are stronger than I,
and you have prevailed.
I have become a laughingstock all the day;
everyone mocks me.
Jeremiah 20:7
And Shel asks God,
"Why can’t I just be a shiny, veneer-producing, pop-religion spiel-meister?"
1 comment:
Every time I start to get the least bit "generally respectful of culture," something new comes around to keep me in my place.
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