The "Dude of Bigness"
To quote Elizabeth: "I had a little email exchange with Sister Steph about The Dude of Bigness and all His ambiguities" ... and I find my thoughts this morning constantly returning to her inability to believe in the "Christian God."
The thing of it is, I don't think Christ would believe in the "Christian God" any more than Elizabeth does.
Unfortunately, with folks like Michael Macavage, Fred Phelps, and Pat Robertson, it's very hard to find Christ's messages of love and forgiveness.
But they're not the only ones. I'm not too knowledgable about other denominations, but speaking at least for my own offical religious tradition -- we're not necessarily a whole heck of a lot better.
In Elizabeth's post about Pat Robertson's latest, she asks "But why don’t people buy into that idea [all-loving & all-merciful]? That’s the God everyone wants. Why is it so difficult to promote THAT God? ..... I do like knowing that other ministers buy into your idea of God but why can’t they be the vocal ones? Why is it that reasonable people are always the silent majority? I suppose I know the answer to that but nevertheless, I don’t like it."
She raises some incredibly on-the-mark questions. Anyone got any answers for her?
[And is it a Freudian slip if while typing the word "denomination" above I began accidentally typing "demonination"?]
Off to school, where I get to answer these very same questions with my kids, as they struggle to reconcile what I'm teaching them about Jesus with what they're hearing about Christianity and their church.
The thing of it is, I don't think Christ would believe in the "Christian God" any more than Elizabeth does.
Unfortunately, with folks like Michael Macavage, Fred Phelps, and Pat Robertson, it's very hard to find Christ's messages of love and forgiveness.
But they're not the only ones. I'm not too knowledgable about other denominations, but speaking at least for my own offical religious tradition -- we're not necessarily a whole heck of a lot better.
In Elizabeth's post about Pat Robertson's latest, she asks "But why don’t people buy into that idea [all-loving & all-merciful]? That’s the God everyone wants. Why is it so difficult to promote THAT God? ..... I do like knowing that other ministers buy into your idea of God but why can’t they be the vocal ones? Why is it that reasonable people are always the silent majority? I suppose I know the answer to that but nevertheless, I don’t like it."
She raises some incredibly on-the-mark questions. Anyone got any answers for her?
[And is it a Freudian slip if while typing the word "denomination" above I began accidentally typing "demonination"?]
Off to school, where I get to answer these very same questions with my kids, as they struggle to reconcile what I'm teaching them about Jesus with what they're hearing about Christianity and their church.
posted by Steph Youstra at 6:44 AM
3 Comments:
I sat with a woman in the hospital yesterday who assumed all churches thought the way Robertson does. When I presented a different way of trying to understand God, she said, "I wish I had known, so I could have gone to church." She is 53 and dying of pancreatic cancer, may never go home. I was so sad. A "friend" of hers had told her she could not go to heaven without praying certain words. I told her I could not believe that the greatness and goodness of God is that narrow.
Someone catch me up on this latest Pat Robertson flack, please? I caught the tail end of something on "Sunday Morning" on CBS yesterday (love love LOVE that show!), but I still haven't really gotten the whole story. The cool part about the Sunday Morning piece was the lady who did the editorial about it ended with something like, "If my God's listening to me, Pat Robertson, you better watch out!" or something cheeky like that. I so wish I had sat down and turned on the TV 5 minutes sooner....
Awwww, shucks. {sheepishly squirming}
Like I said, I'm all about dispelling nun-myths!
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