Most importantly, I want to help. I mustn't, e.g., pick a fight.
So I wasn't looking for anything to go wrong when I went to church with my good friend this morning. My first voluntary attendance, ever: cool! — and so much did, indeed, go quite well. (My role is to listen; I am far too scrutinous to be converted to.. well anything except, like, a mess if shot or something).
But – eek – it did kind of seem like the pastor maybe misinterpreted the internets when he saw something he thought was the "God Wins Law"... so maybe that's how he got the inspiration to rhetorically employ, proudly and with a smile, Nazis and images of swastikas flying over the White House.
(Aw man, just hear yourself — what kind of god needs an agitator, anyway?)
I will try to schedule a warmly congenial lunch with him and his superior. I'm thinking I may forego all declarative (particularly imperative) statements, beyond those relating to the meal: I need to hear more, and asking questions and listening is easy.
While the pastor may have some good intentions and decent messages to share, some of the methods he employs cannot be anything but toxic. I'm surprised to find myself concerned that maybe the techniques of his which sow the seeds of a misery-generating hated/loved grandiosity in people may be worse in the long-run than his (perhaps unwittingly) corrosive, jingoistic hyperbolism.
Plenty-scary-enough, though: hearing "Oh, there is an enemy, oh yes there is!" —breathlessly uttered, from an otherwise quite lovely beaming woman afterwards. (And at a place one would generally describe as warm, friendly, musical, and terrifically popular.)
Surely that must still a heart, some.
I just smiled and patted her arm. Um, to love one's enemy is not to love having an enemy, dear — but she so clearly needed that enemy that I naturally left the happy couple to themselves.
—I know we can do better; I just need to learn more and keep at it (while I'm trying to start.. how many other projects?!? heh). Cheers —
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