Jump to content
Goodbye Jesus

NaturalMary's Ponderings

  • entries
    16
  • comments
    11
  • views
    20,865

Last Weekend, In Church


NaturalMary63

1,172 views

Last weekend, I was obligated to attend a church service. It was for my 6 month old grandson's dedication Sunday morning. We drove 12 hrs from Virginia to Indiana on Friday, stayed in a hotel, then drove back on Monday.

 

My son (my youngest child) and his wife live near Indianapolis where she grew up and all of her family still lives.

 

My husband thought I was kidding when I told him last week that I was going to listen to my audiobook on my iPhone during the service. I wasn't. And I did. Except for the portion devoted to my grandson. I was there for him and I paid attention during his dedication.

 

This church uses new-fangled technology: they have a projection screen behind the pulpit where they project the words of most of the songs. I'd actually seen that before, at the church my son attended here before he left home. But they also displayed bullet points from the sermon while the minister was speaking.

 

Before I tell you about that, though, I want to tell you about something else annoying. My husband is an atheist in that he doesn't believe that Jesus rose from the dead or any other supernatural stuff; but he never did all the studying that I did and doesn't have strong feelings about being non-religious. He was a preacher's son, though, and he grew up attending church every Sunday, and although we never go to church, he enjoys services when we end up going with extended family. He sings the songs, he says the creed, he acts the part. I'm a lonely rebel.

 

So anyway, I was listening to my audiobook, holding my grandson, and I occasionally happened to look up during the sermon and see that moment's bullet point.

 

We always blame everyone else.

 

Something is wrong with us.

 

We need God's help to fix us.

 

OMG! (pardon the expression)

 

I'm very glad I didn't listen to a speech about how I'm broken and need their imaginary friend to be ok.

 

I really like my daughter-in-law and her family is very nice. They are quite liberal, caring, and generous... considering they're Xians and middle-America and very stereotypical in a lot of ways. Their oldest daughter, in fact, married the preacher's son - the same preacher who was up there telling us we were inherently broken and needed God's fixing.

 

Another strange thing that happened, that I'd never seen before: The preacher announced a couple of birthdays and anniversaries. As the congregation sang "Happy Birthday" and "Happy Anniversary," the special people came up to the front and put a wad of cash in the plastic church-shaped box the preacher held out.

 

That was my weekend.

2 Comments


Recommended Comments

Wow messed up indeed. Way to go with listening to your audio book, I found that amusing - in a good way.

Link to comment

Good compromise. Go, but dont' listen to the sermon. I used to do that many years ago in church. I would tuck a book inside the hymnal! It helped. Some of those sermons are almost unbearable.

Link to comment
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.