Da Bulls:. Da Bears:. Da Vinci:.
So I'm going to see Da Vinci tonight with my buddy Jimmy. (anyone else want to come?)
So I was mowing on Friday and had a thought. I always think when I mow. Suburban American Monastocism. It's the closest thing I'm going to come to to cleaning the stairs in the Monastary and as I've said before there is something spiritual about working with your hands.
There are "these people" out there who are concerned that the church has lied to them and that the Da Vinci Code has somehow uncovered some lost truth.
There are "these churches" who say we haven't lied. Dan Brown is a liar.
So I was mowing and thinking. Then I had a this thought.
Maybe we did lie. In fact, I think we did in fact lie.
Not about Da Vinci, or Jesus, or about these gnostic gospels etc.
But about something more important than that.
Our lie is a lie of omission. We have been so concerned with other things, building churches, doing funerals, planning services, writing our pop culture sermons that we have failed to help our communities understand the history of the scripture and orthodoxy.
To be certain, HOW we have done church has led to this as much as what we have said when people arrive.
We have lied. People believe what we tell them and that is how they understand orthodoxy. The expert, professional pastor says what is or is not orthodox. Our communities believe us. They tell us not to watch a movie and we listen. But mostly they don't tell us not to watch movies, because frankly they will loose us if they said something like that. We wouldn't listen. We might stop coming. Is orthodoxy becoming a supply and demand venture? Is orthodoxy whatever the market demands?
How else may we have lied to our communities?
So I'm going to see Da Vinci tonight with my buddy Jimmy. (anyone else want to come?)
So I was mowing on Friday and had a thought. I always think when I mow. Suburban American Monastocism. It's the closest thing I'm going to come to to cleaning the stairs in the Monastary and as I've said before there is something spiritual about working with your hands.
There are "these people" out there who are concerned that the church has lied to them and that the Da Vinci Code has somehow uncovered some lost truth.
There are "these churches" who say we haven't lied. Dan Brown is a liar.
So I was mowing and thinking. Then I had a this thought.
Maybe we did lie. In fact, I think we did in fact lie.
Not about Da Vinci, or Jesus, or about these gnostic gospels etc.
But about something more important than that.
Our lie is a lie of omission. We have been so concerned with other things, building churches, doing funerals, planning services, writing our pop culture sermons that we have failed to help our communities understand the history of the scripture and orthodoxy.
To be certain, HOW we have done church has led to this as much as what we have said when people arrive.
We have lied. People believe what we tell them and that is how they understand orthodoxy. The expert, professional pastor says what is or is not orthodox. Our communities believe us. They tell us not to watch a movie and we listen. But mostly they don't tell us not to watch movies, because frankly they will loose us if they said something like that. We wouldn't listen. We might stop coming. Is orthodoxy becoming a supply and demand venture? Is orthodoxy whatever the market demands?
How else may we have lied to our communities?
posted by mark at
11:47 AM
2 Comments:
I think we have lied by telling them that a movie, of all things, is something to get worked up about. Why not expend all of that energy fighting something that matters? Like poverty, homelessness, AIDS, etc. Then no one would have to feel like they were lied to or being lied about. Agruing the truth or not truth of the DaVinci code doesn't solve anything or improve anything.
We saw the movie. Certainly not worth getting worked up with. Probably Hank's flattest performance, incredibly average story as 'treasure hunts' go...
I appreciate what Ben's after here. We get worked up about things that we can get worked up about - political agendas, fanatical sporting loyalties, and what someone else ought to about their children. There's just something inheritly self-serving about most of the stuff I see people getting fired up about. In fact, it has to something 'near and dear' to my heart in order for me to care at all.
In other words, as Ben suggets, we don't put a ton of energy into fighting poverty, rethinking economical systems that oppress or such things because they don't matter to us, not really.
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