Sunday Hockey

Hockey's a pretty big thing in Canada.  (now that's British-grade understatement.) It's not a terribly fun thing to watch it alone, though, I don't find, and I don't get a TV signal anyway.
  I have watched hockey before, but to enjoy it at all I really need to have people watching with me who actually deeply understand the game, or play it themselves, or are rabid hockey fans, so I can let them explain all the stuff they understand.  Who usually does what and what usually happens. If that is, in fact, what's happening now.  Who got hurt and is playing anyway. Stuff like that.  Usually there's a guy or girl who will love doing that.  But mostly, I'm just at home alone, and I don't "get" hockey alone.

   It's the Winter Olympics, and Canada's doing well. We have to put up with short summers and long, harsh winters here, so one consolation is that we tend to do well at events like these.  So of course Facebook is alive with endless hockey talk.  With Canadians acting more like Americans than we normally ever do.  You want to see us live up to American rather than Canadian stereotypes?  Now's your chance.  Sore winners, to a (wo)man.  Loud, brash bragging.  Gloating.  Preening.  Mocking.  You know?  The stuff Americans are famous for the world over.  Not like our usual, quiet, insecure, apologetic, slightly bashful way at all.  Never mind our elections or our military.  Hockey.  That's what we care about.

   Something happened this morning that gave me very conflicted thoughts and feelings.  My view is, as you may realize, that pastors are generally routinely, ritualistically emasculated.   Hired based on their cahones-less nature, regardless of their gender.  That they can't do their jobs anymore, really, because they can't say anything unpopular, or they'll lose their jobs.  So it's "speak unto us smooth/easy things."  Their job is to take that sugared, warm, gooey dough, and cram it into the ears of their congregations.  Tell people God loves them no matter what, and to keep doing what they're doing, and keep enjoying what they're enjoying.  Don't worry.  Keep on keeping on.  The Bobby McFerrin gospel.
    Sunday morning at most 21st century Christian churches, you're not going to hear that Jesus Christ suffered or died for our sin.  Not once.  Not at all.  That's not the job, anymore.  Now it's mostly about drinking coffee, eating sugary things and singing lots of songs about how we're sacrificing an hour of our sweet, precious lives to dutifully sing songs. Standing and singing about how we are standing and singing.  Mostly things like "God, You are awesome."  All without really saying how exactly He is "awesome," nor mentioning Christ in the Christianity very much at all.
   "Let's put the Christ back in Christmas"?  For the churches I've been visiting, it might be time to start mentioning/putting Christ back in Christianity, first.
    Only a very few churches are still into delivering anything that's not straight-up comforting and smugly soporific.  There aren't too many who can afford to be clearly disinterested in getting high on worship.  That's mostly gone away. Only a very few churches are still into delivering anything of the uncomforting and usually those churches have those creepy Christian S & M congregants who really like a bit of shame, a bit of death and suffering, with their morning coffee and muffins.

    But this morning, Facebook was clogged with stuff like the picture seen above, of Canadian churches with a large-screen TV, showing the hockey game, sitting in the pulpit, instead of doing most of the usual Sunday morning service.  It's like when I want to teach high school kids to read and write, and there's (!) a volleyball game in the gym, they think they have a God-given right to go watch that instead. Like getting an education in a school is disloyal to their school's team, and will surely make it lose its game.

   And then, right in the middle of all the hockey muddle, a pastor I know posted a very slightly reproachful Facebook status, musing over what it would be like if churchgoers spent the same kind of time, concern and energy on the poor, or doing good in the world.  Like it almost certainly should be his job to do.  It's Sunday, after all.  Sunday's a big day for church-going people. Time to remind all those Christians about Jesus, or failing that, let them sing about God being awesome. So he was reminding them about doing good.  Possibly a Christian activity? While they're watching hockey.

    My first response, though, was "But people love hockey.  We don't do good by stifling love. You don't need to stifle love to do good.  There's more to it than that."

   And then the pastor's wife immediately, before church had even started, made him take the status down.  She said there was a time to "be deep" and that this wasn't it.  So he took it right down (though he did post a status revealing that he was submitting to his wife's hijacking of his stewardship over his own Facebook statuses, if not his connection to his congregation itself.)  [this part edited out, given his response to this blog. What I'd put was speculation, and that is clearly trumped by the "from the pastor's mouth" info.]

   Then the pastor's sister in-law came on to say that "there is a time" for being thought-provoking and this (the Olympics) was not it.  Another reproach for what he'd done.  More judgment/exhortation to not diss the Hockey God.  And he was called a hypocrite, because of how much he liked golf, and was using hockey, rather than golf as an example.

   I think there is a time for provoking thought, alright.  And I think the pastor hit it dead on.  Did his job.  Shone a bit of light on something people don't want to see in the spotlight.  And got shut down by his wife and his sister in law, who wanted him to be more socially convenient.  Less embarrassing.  Less thought-provoking.  Wanted to tut-tut, shush, and quietly pat until the thought stopped being provoked, and went back to sleep.  And I think he then did exactly what he was told.
   But then everyone knows I'm a pretty negative bastard.  Church has seldom done anything for me besides stab me in the back and leave me in the ditch to Jericho, for dead.  The Samaritans in my life have always, consistently been atheists.  So I'm always the outsider, not getting, not approving, not relating to church stuff.

   Imagine if Jesus of Nazareth had tried to speak up or create some kind of spectacle that would have utterly ruined everyone's lovely Passover weekend, drawing attention to him, perhaps shouting and bleeding everywhere instead?  (oh wait... he did that)

A Facebook comment on this blog:
In the parts of America I'm familiar with, when it comes to telling people what they want to hear it is the same and different. You alluded to this when you said, "Only a very few churches are still into delivering anything of the uncomforting...[a]nd usually those churches have those creepy Christian S&M congregants who really like a bit of shame, a bit of death and suffering."

Loud (American) preaching of hell, fire, and brimstone is common everywhere in the States, and especially in the south. "I love you enough to tell you the truth" is the thinking.

But it is not so different then the emasculated preachers you mentioned. In both cases the congregation hires a pastor to tell it what it wants to hear. The Apostle Paul put it like this, "For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear." (I apologize for quoting scripture. I'm an Evangelical, it is what we do.)

The irony is that liberal and conservative congregations alike, placid Canadians and loud Americans, we all do it. And at the same time, we think it is only those others who do it. We speak the truth. Scripture alone (carefully selected, one passage modifying the other in the proper order) or Scripture enlightened (by standards that are sure to change, since every generation considers itself enlightened compared to the previous, only to be considered backward by the next generation.) Either way, I am right, you are wrong, and thank God I have a preacher who will tell me as much or she is out on her ass.

and the pastor himself weighs in:
I don't think my post gave you quite enough to go on. "My wife made me take it down" should have read, "My wife "made" me take it down". She was not concerned with the social, but that I was heaping guilt on folks(no one likes that) and that I might have a greater impact if I found another way to express the same truth. I think she is wise and I stand by MY decision to take down the post.

Your post belies a strange view of women. My wife is welcome to share her opinion in the relationship. She does so kindly and I have never felt emasculated in this relationship. I highly value her counsel.

She and my sister-in-law also highlighted my hypocrisy. I wouldn't have said anything if it was golf instead of hockey. I was unworthy of my own post. Integrity demanded that I take it down.

I'll find a more effective and honest way to inspire good in the world than snipey judgmental posts. 

Sunday morning reading: Hosea.  Nothing but "whores" this and "adultery" that, and "dry breasts" and "stripped bare" and stuff like that.  The Lord instructing a prophet of the Lord to repeatedly impregnate a whore/adulteress, and name the resultant children doomy, insulting names.  God being awesome?  And I'm listening to Gary's sermon, because he was chatting me on Facebook, and we were talking about our accents.  He's got a Northern Irish accent. This talk about how hard it is to have peace in the modern world, whether you're Whitney Houston, Saddam Husein, or a white-bread family trying to find peace in a good job, car, and home.