The Shadow-gloom and Weight of the Sacred

Here's the funny thing: I"m really not a cynic and I'm really not a person who feels negatively about church. I am impressed, however, with how effectively church members can ignore the obvious, even becoming angry when the obvious is highlighted with an eye of critique. The critique is not blind criticism or patterned cynicism but an honest desire for reconciliation. I am depressed by the motions. I used to be able to pretend, too, but pretending just makes me angry now.

Because church and Christianity is an academic exercise, all we have to do is think the right thing. Churches are, essentially, competing academic institution espousing a particular reading of Scripture who, ulimately, are almost identical. The goal is to convert not simply the unbeliever, but also to convert a believer away from a competing academy. This is done through argument. Each Sunday, it is the pious duty of the believer to sit in a lecture hall and recieve the propaganda of a given institutions curriculum and be reassured that they are right. Not the Baptists (unless you're Baptist, naturally), not the Catholics (unless you're Catholic), not the Methodists, and so on. We're right. Now, go out and ask your friends if they'd like to be right, too.

There's no discernible difference between a believer and an unbeliever. Their houses are the same. Their cars are the same. Their jobs are the same. Their investment portfolios are the same. Their families are the same. Whatever differences there may be are negligible: one will go to church on Sunday the other will not. So, what does it matter? The neighborhood of believers looks no different than the neighborhood of unbelievers.

I don't know if I'm being unnecessarily judgmental. I can't tell. Sometimes, I think I am. It's hard to tell.

I am Jack's middle child of history.