In attempting to make any sense of what Obama and Congress are trying to say when they aren’t busy “explaining” what they are not trying to say I’m reminded of too many preachers I have known that fall into the same category.
Not long ago, I was in conversation with an old friend of nearly thirty years. We are good enough friends to love each other “warts and all.” I shared with him my concern that preaching, since we both are “men of the cloth,” does not meet the needs of people.
Grandad was an imminently practical man. It was practicality more than anything else that “ruined” me as a “professional educator” and preacher. In education, having earned an honest living as a machinist and mechanic for years before becoming a teacher, I faced the “fairy-tale” world of make believe that is inhabited by “Ivory tower” citizens, those without the haziest idea of the requirements of the real world and “teach” accordingly.
By far my most disillusioning experience in education was trying to teach a class of graduate students who were prospective teachers. They were incapable of writing a proper paper and had come through the “system” to graduate status, fresh B. A.’s in hand, and unable to do even adequate, undergraduate writing tasks. But their respective colleges had told them they were “well educated.” I shudder when I think of it.
But seminaries have not done any better in preparing those that “heed the call” to “divine service.” Is there life after Hebrew, Greek, Hermeneutics, systematic, and dogmatic theology? I’m afraid not in most cases.
The Bible is very practical. Much of it is in the category of “If you touch the stove, you will get burned!” variety. But the flowery obfuscation of erudition will cover a multitude of sins according to modern “exhorters.” No matter how thin you slice it, it still comes out “baloney.” Without application to real life, without the merit of real teaching (I am appalled by what even well-intentioned men have the nerve to call “teaching”) these so-called sermons are too often nothing but attempts to earn a paycheck at best and ego-inflators at worst.
“You know,” my brother told me on one occasion, “Stealing is wrong!” To fully appreciate this remarkable revelation of my brother’s you have to understand that it came to him at fully thirty years of age. I could hardly fault the soundness of his theology and had to agree with him.
Now my brother and I had been taught that stealing was wrong but it took events in our lives to take the “abstraction” and move it to where dear old J. Vernon McGee would say, “The rubber meets the road.” It does seem at times “abstraction” is what preachers, as with politicians, major in. But God deals in absolutes. We are supposed to teach our children not to steal. If they do steal, we are supposed to punish them. If they are obedient and do well, we are to reward them. Simple ethics. But somewhere along the line, sermons became “professional.” The minister pours over “notes and outlines,” reviews his commentaries on various “proof texts,” inserts his favorite “humorous story” and “current events” and he is ready to “minister to the flock.”
The fact that such “sermonizing” has little or no effect in the lives of either the preacher or congregation does not seem to faze the “professional soldier of the cross.” He is at his best when he can take today’s headlines and, with feeling and “Scripture,” convince his audience that they have done battle with the “powers of darkness” and learned something of value. What that “something” is, none can tell specifically. But the best of these “pulpiteers” leave the people feeling that something of worth, intangible as it may be, transpired.
My particular prejudice is that the professionals have never considered how God feels about all this. He is, after all, supposed to be the “Boss.” Maybe, it is as simple as most of them not really caring about how He feels about it.
I do believe that most people, the “leadership” included, have a completely erroneous concept about the very nature of God. The “party line” is that God is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. This is simply, by His own Word, The Bible, not true.
In sharing this with some people a while ago, I met the “party line.” In good, orthodox “religionese,” these people made the record quite clear; they have a solid church and school background and expect someone to accept a few, well chosen, religious terms to be accepted as explanation of a position when all that has been said is a parroting of meaningless gibberish, albeit perfectly acceptable gibberish unless an explanation is insisted upon, by the faithful.
The tragedy of this was the fact that they really believed they had actually “explained” something when, in fact, had said nothing. Now I love these folks but their egos would never allow of a “pagan” like me to contribute anything of substantive value that might disabuse them of their own cherished prejudices.
The “rightness” of their own “orthodox answers” to my “heterodoxy,” carefully cultivated by adhering to the party line, lo these many years, does not insist on answers to the really tough questions about the nature of God; much safer (and, seemingly, more intellectual) to parrot the “professionals” whether you really see the inconsistency in their apologetics or not.
Unhappily, the party line does not answer the really tough questions of life. Nor does it answer to the needs of people. And here is where the professionals fail. People need help; not religious platitudes, pious phrases and sanctimonious “holier than thou” pretense.
Perhaps it is my serious concern for children and young people that led me to some “unthinkable” conclusions about the nature of God. My grandparent’s little church in East Bakersfield was a happy place. It took organized religion and the “professionals” to teach me that God didn’t know how to have fun or appreciate a good joke. But after my years of being a good, orthodox “professional,” The Lord was kind enough to make a few things clear to me. Among these “new” lessons was the fact that He would like us to be able to include Him in our laughter and enjoyment of life.
Walt Kelly was one of my early teachers in political and religious humor. Being a “Pogo” aficionado, I am reminded, when I think of those “sober brows” that try to rob us of enjoying our relationship with The Lord, of a keen observation by “Seminole Sam.” He said: “Wonder what language the Romans used for the old 14 karat bamboozle?” This as a reaction to Owl’s use of Latin to attempt a “scam.”
In religious circles, the languages are Hebrew and Greek. But, too often, as in Law, the bamboozle is the same baloney. Of course, it helps, as Elmer Gantry learned, to use some of those 16 cylinder words like Eschatology and Supralapsarianism, etc. to accomplish the purpose.
No one who knows me would accuse me of denigrating the hard, honest work of God’s scholars. I consider them among the “Gifts” to His Church. I am speaking of the abuse of learning and scholarship by those that willingly or ignorantly, “twist” God’s clear intent.
It was a simple matter for me, as a shop teacher, to teach young people the value of being able to use a lathe or mill, of being able to overhaul an engine or build a radio. But they could see such skills as desirable things to acquire; these “Learnings” had relevancy.
The abstractions of math and language were more difficult. They are also more difficult to assess in terms of immediate benefit. As adults, we know how very badly such skills are needed for survival in a technological society; but how to make them as desirable as learning to do a valve or brake job? When the skills lack the incentive of easily seen desirability and relevancy, you are left with having your students accept yours and a society’s assessment of their value.
Preachers fail miserably in both cases. They not only fail to teach the necessary skills for living, they try to “bamboozle” people by religious clichés and “spiritual” nonsense.
But, these “colleagues” seem determined to “explain” things by religiosity and “mumbo-jumbo” that makes no sense to poor benighted souls like me. I suppose Walt Kelly could *** the balloons of these pompous asses without rancor but I have the disadvantage of having to have worked with too many of them personally, both in the churches and the schools.
As religious leaders have failed to impart real knowledge, have failed to call sin what it is, have failed to provide real, moral leadership and substituted situational ethics, Hollywood entertainment, their own peculiar theologies for the clear Word of God, they have led an entire nation to judgment.
