Check out my t-shirts HERE. I’m growing my inventory all the time. And check out my contemplative art here.
Contributions to nakedpastor are greatly appreciated.
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David Hayward is a pastor artistically stripping to the essential.
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Check out my t-shirts HERE. I’m growing my inventory all the time. And check out my contemplative art here.
Contributions to nakedpastor are greatly appreciated. David Hayward is a pastor artistically stripping to the essential.
That’s the best thing that could happen to you if you ever found yourself in a church like that.
I started early – was kicked out of Sunday School. Have also been kicked out of a housechurch and a meditation group!
Tiggy – proud to be a heretic.
Whew! …and you’re right Steve…they’d definitely be doing you a favor.
Yeah, getting kicked out of a church like that may ultimately be a good thing, but it is so very painful in the short term.
I imagine it’s a bit like chemotherapy. You just want to puke your guts out and lay in a heap and quit life. And then one day you get some kind of confirmation that your tumor is gone. But, by then and after everything you’ve endure, a part of you still can’t quite believe that.
I mean, the “cancer” might just show up in a different place, and you never really look at things the same again. Your life is defined in two segments: Pre-C and Post-C.
Hmm, I found it more of a relief really – in the long run. I was actually physically traumatised by what happened with the meditation group, but that was because of the degree of betrayal. Scapegoating is very scary.
My friend got chucked out of her church because she was a lesbian. I wonder if they’d have let her stay if she’d said she was bisexual? At least in a workplace you kind of know what’s acceptable – in churches you could trip up at any time.
This site really seems hostile to “the church.” i’ve been in some good ones and some bad ones…just like people – i’ve met some good ones and some bad ones.
Tim…do you think that perhaps np has given people a forum to express some of the horrors they’ve experienced…perhaps they’ve kept quiet, feeling shamed, because after all it was the church…there must be something the matter with Me. Just the opportunity to express pain, frustration, anger etc. is the beginning of healing. No-one needs healing from a good church experience…no-one has to rebuke the many, many, loving kind and Godly pastors…but…the pharisees are still with us, and many of us have experienced their wrath…it is this people who are writing. I don’t think they are hostile to “the” church at large or they wouldn’t be on this site…I think its some place safe, sort of a spiritual emergency room where someone can express that they got their butt whipped and suffered from it, and where they do not have to fear criticism or ostracism because they expressed it.
Hey NP,
You know it is not good to be negative constantly.
How about a positive slant of the Church?
fishon
What would be a positive slant?
I was walking through my local downtown the other day. Passed the Episcopal Church with its prominent signs for AA meeting and the food closet. Passed the United Methodist Church with its fluttering rainbow banner and a noticeboard indicating the times for the Tongan services. Then there is the university church where we discuss the sermon after the service and where we are free to question it, the preacher or each other (not surprising since several of us aren’t Christian and even the Christians range from conservative to liberal theologically). The Quakers with their very different way of doing things (waiting in silence for 60 minutes is an unusual experience) and the Unitarian Universalists who shelter a group of Humanists among others.
This kinda happened to me today. I asked what I thought was a legitimate question. At least it’s one I’ve always had…and ended up basically being told, in not so many words, that it was just stupid to ask.
Pretty much embarrassing as a bunch of other people saw the response. Some day I’m gonna learn to just shut the hell up and quit freaking asking questions.
Laura, I’m curious to know what the question was….care to share?
Tim, I wrote some positive things about my local churches on this blog just the other day under the recycling cartoon. But you know, cartoons tend to be satirical in nature.
FiF- basically the gist was…how do we know that when Jesus told him mom in Jn. 2 to leave him alone cause it wasn’t his time, that he didn’t mean it wasn’t his wedding and so it wasn’t his business to take care of making sure there was enough wine.
People always say he meant that it wasn’t his time to start being miraculous….but how do we know that?
Makes more sense to me that a guy would tell his mom to let the groom take care of the grooms business, he didn’t want to be involved, than it does to spiritualize the thing….
But, who know…maybe it is a stupid question.
And to be fair….my friend did not say the word “stupid”…..exactly
Still ticked off
What surprises me more is that after saying that, he then went on and did it. Also, extrremely surprised at the vast amounts of wine created, especially as the guests had already drunk all the wine that was there. I mean I know they probably had big weddings, but even so the volume Jesus created was excessive. I know they diluted the wine in those days, but that makes the amount even huger. I suppose it’s like the loaves and fishes though, when there were tons of leftovers. I quite like the idea of abundance, though Jesus could be accused of encouraging binge-drinking!
Laura…that seems like a legitimate question, but not one I wd ask .
Laura…first of all, no honest question is stupid and your question seemed to be an honest one. Some of us look at things differently and therefore our questions aren’t the usual ones and some teachers get rattled when they are asked a question thats off the beaten path. I think the answer is that we know from the usage of language at that time and in the whole context of the ministry of Jesus from his baptism forward.
FiF- the thing is mate, it’s exactly one I would ask. LOL!
Thanks preacherlady…I was ticked off last night when I wrote that…the guy’s my friend and to be fair, he did not say it was a stupid question. He just ticked me off because of his response which made me feel stupid for asking.
The point I think of the cartoon and how I felt last night was that even when people are gifted teachers, which my friend is, they still don’t really want questions. Or at least not questions that come from as you say “looking at things differently” I’m just not sold on the idea that just cause people say it’s how a certain passage is interpreted, that makes it so….
We have all this hindsight now about Jesus’ life and we put our interpretation on it based on how we know the story “ends”. But at that time…I just can’t help thinking that may not have been what he meant…
I dunno….
Laura said…”We have all this hindsight now about Jesus’ life and we put our interpretation on it based on how we know the story “ends”. But at that time…I just can’t help thinking that may not have been what he meant”
Haven’t you just described the gospels? Are they not a mixture of tradition(memory?) and interpretation; the fourth gospel being the most theolgical and apparently, the least historical. It’s likely that Jesus never did ask the question, the story was propably written to convey the author’s idea of who Jesus is.
‘Some of us look at things differently and therefore our questions aren’t the usual ones and some teachers get rattled when they are asked a question thats off the beaten path. ‘
Sadly, sometimes academics have the same response and even at the highest levels.
FiF- I don’t know…but I suppose so.
part of me thinks that exactly the case…so if we consider ourselves followers of Jesus, as we’ve been taught about him, or read about him, we’re not even following the “real” person anyway so we’re just living a lie basically…
On the other hand…I wonder how significant his exact wording really is anyway. I mean, I can tell you about encounters with friends and you can understand their “essence” by what I tell you they said, even if it’s not their exact words…
It’s those kinds of things I ponder though and why it ticked me off when I got the ‘tude I got when I asked the question.
Still irked
I don’t think I’ve ever been kicked out of church but that pat “all-knowing” smile that is meant to put questions in their place haunts me to this day. I didn’t want to see that patronizing smile ever again so all there was left to do was drive to the lake, yell at God, and throw beer cans at Him!!
I agree with Steve Martin – getting kicked out is the best thing that can happen to you if you end up in a church like that.
Wonderful cartoon!
I wish you’d punched him, the guy who gave the patronising smile. That would have been great.
Tiggy Sagar said, on August 3rd, 2009 at 5:55 pm
I wish you’d punched him, the guy who gave the patronising smile. That would have been great.
——-Only problem with that is, you’d be doing a lot of punching during your life.
And why let a know-it-all get you that upset?
fishon
Laura….just because someone might believe that the Jesus that the fourth gospel portrays is more theological and less historical than the synoptics, is not to say that they’re believing a lie.I think it’s a matter of honestly dealing with those documents and how the ‘Jesus narrative ‘ developed. Most believer’s ‘talk of Jesus’ suggest an Orthodox Jesus, the Jesus of the later creeds, closer to the fourth gospel and Paul, but further away from the synoptics. This process lasted not decades, but centuries.
The quest for the “historical Jesus” is an attempt to re-construct the man behind the later development, a difficult and ardous task given that the subject didn’t leave any of his own writings and the best sources are dated to the last third of the first century with little or no evidence that the author’s were eye witnesses, and much less disinterested historians. It has been said that the gospels were written by believers to believers to promote belief.
Despite our culture’s pre-occupation with objective truth and fact , we shld not be surprised that Iron Age religion reveals an imagination that uses history, myth and legend in it’s stories. I think it was C. S. Lewis that first drew my attention to the mythopoeic qualities in religion, our own included.
I wouldn’t feel upset if I punched someone. I’d enjoy the look of shock on their face. I had a powerful moment where someone was smoking on a train and I walked over to them in my glamourous fake fur coat and wearing dark red lipstick (my Cruella Deville look) and crushed their hand with the cigarette in it. Their mouth hung open – it was brilliant! Once I’d sait down I heard him say, ‘What a bitch!’ but he said it in an admiring tone.
Tiggy Sagar –
I was angry at the idea the patronizing smile upheld, not the person who wore it. Punching the person would have been misplaced anger. It was much more effective to get angry with the idea itself. We tend to blame our brothers and sisters for what is really in the hands of God/Reality. Isn’t that ultimately why Cain killed Abel? We have a tendency to blame our brother rather than show our anger toward the Father, where it really belongs. Even Job had to get angry with God, to the great dismay and horror of his friends, before he could fully accept the reality of his situation.
Yeah that’s the trouble with God – you can’t punch Him. At least Jacob got to have a good physical wrestle, even if he did get wounded in the testicles.
By the way, I don’t go around punching people – I’d break my nails…
Tiggy…..what about handling snakes and drinkin’ poison?
Okay, Sunday at my place!
PS. What’s your ‘poison’?
What’s yr snake oil?
?? Are we talking lubricants?
Theologically, I’m quite liberal, but when it comes to lubricants, I’m very conservative…I always use Quaker State ;P
Hmm, all power to your engine!