Poor Little Rich Kids

Church is Youth Group grown up. We like to have our cliques, we like to have our entertainment, and we like to have our illusion of surprise.

How would the youth feel about having John the Baptizer as their youth leader in all his wilderness intensity, his weird smell, and dirty look, and honey in his beard? (And we recoil: How could this man possibly teach rowdy teenagers?)

We like to have the right amount of humour, the right inflection, the hand gestures, the relevant, the casual and the cool, reflected in any preacher. We actually feel entitled to this or they are not worth our time. Give someone two minutes and if they fail our first impression our brains automatically check out for the rest of it. If we can't opt for Jesus or John leading our youth groups, I think that says more about ourselves and our church than about our youth groups.

Perhaps, people would be more surprised listening to someone who doesn't look like themselves and sound like themselves and actually hear what they have to say. What if they had a super strong personality, or what if it was weak? What would it matter? I sometimes wonder that if people actually took the time to hear someone out without all the trappings of power point and pzazz, could they still decipher the word of God, and would they be able to recognize it even if it bit them in the ass?

"I Cannot possibly be Wrong, because I'm always Right."

I question any human institution that believes it is right on the basis that it is always above critique. Why is it that people put themselves into this category when they're on the outside looking into religion? They cannot accept criticism. They like to investigate the idea of a higher power, but get tweaked if they find themselves at odds against God. By the way, even many churches will constructively criticize themselves based on scripture. But what do most nonreligious use? They can't possibly be wrong because they're always right. They can't bear religion or else they'd have to admit their whole life is going the wrong way.

A lot of religions have been made to validate man's sins. When you find a god that doesn't challenge or humble you, perhaps you have fashioned your own god out of your own image. Or you have simply made a god out of yourself? I guess that is just two ways of saying the same thing. But I think this is exemplified in the common confession, "I am spiritual but not religious." Isn't this just another way of saying, "I believe in a higher truth but there isn't any standard of truth, except for myself?"

Where do people get these ideas? It's like this secret knowledge or gnosticism. Nobody wants to stand for truth or else they might offend someone. If you want to find truth, prepare to be offended. The world is bigger than yourself. Furthermore, God is bigger than yourself. So get over yourself.

End rant.

Of course this is a gross over generalization. But I find it true in many circumstances, even within myself. Sometimes you just gotta call people on it.