Can Christians Gather?

Can Christians Gather? March 10, 2011

If you didn’t believe me as a pastor, will you believe me now as one who is not?

  1. Now, most of what I do with my time is dictated by others. The rest is taken up with the incessant demands of everyday life, including sleep. This is just normalcy for most people. This is why we enjoy our weekends so much. This is why Sunday mornings are so extravagantly wonderful. There is nothing to do but relax. In a few hours unusually free of applied pressures, no one can even tell us to go buy something, because where I live all stores are closed on Sunday mornings. No one is telling me what to do or what to believe.
  2. All week long, in the our work lives and on the news and all around us, we are inundated with agenda. Agenda agenda agenda. Purpose purpose purpose. Goals goals goals. Vision vision vision. Passion passion passion. It’s so thick in the air we breathe that we could cut it with a knife. Sometimes we don’t even realize how pervasive and assumed it is. But Sunday mornings are remarkably free of that. Especially if I keep the TV off and stay away from other popular media.
  3. Throughout the week on the car radio and on the television and in the papers billboards and magazines we are plastered with the ridiculous ideologies of others. We watch silly people flash their stupid beliefs with such childish pride that we squirm in embarrassment for them. We have to watch and listen to perfectly grown men and women make fools of themselves with their ludicrous ideas attended with uncontrolled emotion. It’s humiliating to the human race. We honestly do wonder where the sense of reason has escaped to.

So the last thing I want is to go to church for more of the same: to be dictated to, pressured with an agenda, and subjected to childish beliefs.

Can Christians gather without being dictated to? Can Christians gather without a vision being thrust upon them? Can Christians gather to seriously question, explore, examine and discover intellectually?


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