Inspired by LawDog

Those of you who have known me for a long time have heard me refer to myself as a recovering Church of Christ. Those of you who were raised in the particular Church I refer to and managed to escape know why I saw that.

Those of you who still go there and enjoy the sermons and attitudes will never understand and might as well leave now. You'll only get your feelings hurt. And you won't get the humor at all.

LawDog, in his own inimitable style, coined a new term, which I intend to co-op. In his blog from Monday, September 18, he talked about "Shi'a Baptists". If I'd had anything in my mouth at the time, it would have wound up on my 'puter screen. I told him I was gonna talk about "Shi'a Church of Christ" in my next blog. Fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a bumpy read. { I promise, no more plagiarism}

The type of Church goers I refer to are Christians in name only. They know very little of the Love of the Savior they claim to love and worship. They sit in pews twice on Sunday and on Wednesday nights and some on Wednesday mornings for study and worship. They read their Bibles and sing hymns and listen to preachers read from the King James version of the Bible and explain it to them. And they bow their heads in prayer and go home and are sure that the Baptists across the street and the Lutherans down the block, and the Catholics across town are going to Hell because they didn't worship the Heavenly Father the correct way.

How do I know this? Because I was raised in this church. Almost every member of my immediate family is/was a member of this church. I love these people. And except for this one area, they are decent, kind folks. But they are convinced they are the only ones going to Heaven.

They are convinced that they follow the exact word of the Bible. They don't allow drinking, or dancing, or instrumental music. When I was 5 years old, my Grandmother laid a tearful guilt trip on my Daddy. The result of which was that he made my Mother take me out of Ballet lessons. This was in 1960. Mother had not heard of Betty Friedan, heck, I don't even think, Betty had been published, yet.

When the Catholics were building their first big building in this small, Central Texas town, a storm came up and blew the roof off their church. My Great-Grandmother said, "See, if God wanted a Catholic church in K____, He wouldn't have blown the roof off their building!"

These things all happened a long time ago, and I thought things might have changed. I have managed to avoid going to services at that church for many years by visiting during the week, instead of on weekends. But they haven't.
I was talking to a family member recently. She had been invited to an anniversary celebration for an old, as in 40+ years, friend. It was their 50th anniversary. As is customary with these celebrations, the party was being hosted by their children. She and several other old friends from this church were considering boycotting the celebration because one of the children of the couple, not the couple, had committed a BIG no-no.
The Child had gotten a divorce. A Non-Biblical divorce. And then had the gall to re-marry. So in these peoples' minds this Child was Living in Sin, was committing ADULTERY. Since the Couple, the Child's parents still maintained contact with their sinful child, thus condoning this sinful conduct, that was reason enough to shun them after years of friendship.
And they call themselves Christians?
I should be used to this insanity after a lifetime of exposure, but I still just shake my head.
It was exactly this kind of hypocrisy that drove me away from religion and left me doubting the existence of a Supreme Being for many years. It took a lot of gentle, true Christians living their faith to show me what God's love in action really looks like.

When the Radical factions of Islam start their demonstrations, and burn effigies of the Pope, and threaten to spill Christian and jewish blood if the World doesn't convert... well that's another blog/rant.