So today was the first of many excursions into the lion's den, and I'd like to share with you a brief rebuttal of the sermon given this morning.
To begin with, everyone at church was creepy as fuck, which was weird cause I'm used to church people just being assholes to each other. But these weren't Methodists. After a brief session of announcements having to do with a completely misinformed interpretation of Halloween and something about a soup kitchen involving the luring of unsuspecting hobos into a trap, the preacher started talking about worship.
I was surprised to discover that his entymology of the word worship was actually correct - being derived from worth, and ship, as in the state being, like friendship. The word worship basically just means the worth-ship, or proclaiming the worthiness of a thing. When he then declared that we should worship God, my initial reaction was of course, "Why?" Why is God worthy of worship? This question kept reoccurring throughout the service and was never satisfactorily answered. Even if He is the Creator and what-not, none of that justifies submission and worship. The closest he came was saying something about God's compassion and mercy. Compassion and mercy? Obviously he couldn't have been talking about the God of the Bible. This begs another question; if we are supposed to worship God, which God, but that's a whole different bag of worms. First you still need to justify the worship of any God.
He then called upon his audience to go forth and prosyletize to the heathen masses, actually using the phrase "Because I know what's best for you." I found his presumption of knowledge about God and fate quite offensive and fascinating. Fuck you too, guy.
The next subject was that of hearing and listening to God. My main problem with this part was how to discern what is a genuinely divine revelation from hallucinations and voices in your head. He offered no suggestion. This begs the question also of the authenticity of Isaiah's visions, and the other prophets of the Bible and of other religions. Any nut can claim they've heard to voice of God telling them to do any manner of things. What are the criteria for determining who has recieved a genuine revelation. Complete submission and subservience were mentioned, and I could not help but expose the parallel to Islam. He somehow wrapped this up into some lesson about how God is trying to reach us and cares about us even if we're not listening.
Then there was a bit with a douchebag and his guitar who sounded like every other douchebag with a guitar. This led into his tired rant about how we have to approach God. Again, my initial reaction was that contradicted what he just said about God always trying to reach us, and now we have to seek him out. And we must seek with great expectation, no less, although he just instructed us not to expect anything of God, but just listen to his word and submit. But he went forth with the necessity of approaching God, again calling up Isaiah, and my mind was drawn to the story of the Tower of Babel, when God struck down those attempting humbly to approach Him, and punished them by creating many languages and tongues among them so they couldn't communicate with each other. Clearly these accounts contradict, if one is a God we must approach and another one we cannot approach.
He briefly mentioned angels, and how the angels are always seen in visions and thereafter depicted as in submission, and singing praises to God. Two problems here: of course they're seen that way, that's how Christendom has been taught to see them, so that's how they're going to be in your dreams. Secondly, according to the mythology, angels have no free will. God created them for that purpose an they have no choice because God's an asshole; it still offers no justification for why we, who have free will, should worship such a God. It has been said that the most virtuous men can be is as angels, but with free will. Well, the angels who were powerful enough to earn free will -- they rebelled.
The last main point of the sermon had to do with sin, naturally. But even here, he contradicts himself. At the beginning of this section, he claimed that entering the presence of God will reveal our sins and our lowly nature before him, but he concluded by declaring that we must repent of all sin and be cleansed of it before even entering the presence of God. That's like saying you can go into this room and it will show all the dirt on you, but you have to wash off all the dirt before you can go into the room. Get your story straight, preacher.
Between each little bit there were a couple little songs where we had to stand up and look at the power point and the douchebags up front put their hands up in the air like a couple of knobs.
At the end, just before he dismissed the audience, he told a little story about a guy who went to the church for a few months before revealing that he had not been moved by the worship, and did in fact worship Satan and was possessed. I laughed. Hard.
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