envoy for pointing out the obvious

I don't know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves, "Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment."
Kurt Vonnegut

Hahaha. That quote made me laugh.

Speaking of disorder, I got to spend tonight at one of my favorite youth groups in London. They’re actually more of a youth congregation, and they inexplicably tend to draw in a lot of street kids. Tonight a homeless man, a regular from what I gathered, joined this congregation of young people as we discussed the topic of dating and marriage. A questionnaire was handed out that was meant to make the point that we must not assume anything in a relationship, and that we must communicate. It hoped to make the point by asking what tasks people intended to perform in their marriage (such as tending the garden, changing fuses, doing laundry, etc.), and which tasks they expected their spouse to perform. So here we are, asking these questions, and filling out this survey, when this homeless man looks up and says, “Let me ask you a question, any of you people ever heard of equality.” Hahahaha. Nothing makes me happier than people in a church service who haven’t been taught “how to act” in a church service.

So I’m reading this book called The Gospel According to Moses; What my Jewish friends taught me about Jesus. It’s a good book and, only a chapter and a half into it, has already been pretty challenging to my safe little world.

One of the ideas this guy proposes is that God actually chose to limit himself through his creation and the laws of the universe that he set up and that, to this day, God is limited. So with that in mind, and according to the laws of the universe which he set up (including what we call “free will”), God cannot step in to keep things like the holocaust from happening because, to do it, He would have to end the universe as we know it. Thus he keeps the rules in place and allows us to choose to do right or wrong. He further suggests that it is “free will” that allows emotions to exist in the first place and that, without “free will”, there would be no emotions. In other words, if we had no choice over what we did, we would be more like machines or a droid, doing good simply because there is no other choice, no other option. I’m not sure that I’ve done a very good job of summing up this guy’s thoughts on the matter, but I have enjoyed the read so far and found this particular explanation of “free will” a really good way of putting it.

A friend of mine (and his family) were over for lunch Saturday. I won’t post his name, but he is a fellow blogger. He said several things that had me laughing, including his suggestion that our denomination needs a position entitled Envoy for Pointing out the Obvious. This position would exist simply to point out the obvious problems that nobody else was willing to admit. I got a good chuckle out of that one but also agreed that there is a deep, DEEP need for that in our denomination. Somebody simply to bring up the hot pink elephant in the room that nobody else was willing to acknowledge. Then again, all churches and denominations probably need one of those.