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Dear Cory,
I was raised without benefit of religion and from a very tender age given to believe that not only was Santa Claus just a story, Jesus was not God's only begotten son, and that God didn't even exist!
Once, while walking near my home I heard rousing gospel music blasting from a church. The energy and enthusiasm pulled me in like God's own fish-hook. By the end of the evening I was holding hands with Christians, singing and beaming. No other experience has made me want to be Christian more. And yet I remained a heathen. I am writing to you because I have recently corresponded with good Christian people and it’s left me confused. Can you help me understand what went wrong?
Here's what I wrote and the return message:
To: Xxx
Subject: gospel music
Hello,
I'm coming to New York the week of March 10 and a friend tells me he's heard the best gospel music ever at your church. I would like to have this experience too. Is that possible during the week I'm in town?
Thanks for your time.
Yyy
Her response:
Dear Mr. Yyy
In response to your request, we are not a concert, performance, entertainment center to display gospel music.
We are a House of Worship that celebrates the God the Father of all, and His son, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. During the course of our Worship Services held on Sunday mornings at 9 and 11 a.m., we support our worship service with music of all types, styles and composers. From Bach, Handel to James Cleveland and the Blind Boys of Alabama -- we support our worship services with song and instruments.
If you are interested in an opportunity to WORSHIP with members of The ______ Baptist Church on Sunday morning at the 11 a.m. service, please let me know; and on which Sunday you are able to attend.
May God continue to bless you.
Xxx
Membership and Ministry Manager
"Ministry means ... to serve"
Ouch! Upon reading her response I felt the cold wind of shame. I felt dirty. Though I am not too familiar with Christianity I have heard crushing guilt is a common theme. Am I too sensitive? Is Ms Xxx being uncharitable?
Sensitive Traveler Affronted by Testy Evangelicals.
Dear STATE:
How have you managed to reach adulthood and yet maintain such delightful naivete and unworldliness? Of course Santa Claus exists! Were you a Bubble Boy unable to get to a mall? Cory prays that your awakening to the arbitrariness of the naughty and nice assessments of this world, which you have recently brushed against, will not be too brutal – just brutal enough to be fervid.
Ms. Xxx seems to have been having a bad day. She has seized on the poor encoding of your email, which fails to use the word “worship”, evidently some sort of key to the state of your soul and your general worth. The subtext of her message might be something like:
“I bet you’re a honkey who thinks of us as some sort of minstrel show for your patrician pleasure. This world isn’t about pleasure, it’s about denying pleasure to yourself in this life in the hope that a very jealous, controlling, narcissistic God will accept your constant worship of him – if you do it just right, with an appropriate music mix – and admit you to heaven.
God picks and chooses, and we’re pretty darn sure he’s chosen us. You, well, while not exactly hopeless, could contaminate our service and upset God. So, if you want to change your unbaptized attitude, you can come, I suppose.”
Cory isn’t expert on Christianity, but that has seldom stopped him from having an opinion and it certainly won’t now. Kindliness, service, patience, tolerance and love are at the heart of Jesus’s messages, surely: a way of being in this world that could bring the realization of interconnection and sacredness without resort to cramming for an afterlife. Cory can find no evidence of any of these five in Ms. Xxx’s communication. It is ironic that she includes the phrase “ministry means … to serve” in her closing. The only things she’s serving here are dollops of rudeness and presumption on a crisp bed of heresy. What Cory simply cannot forgive, though, is her misuse of a semi-colon.
Cory trusts that your enlightenment is developing satisfactorily through your current regimen of random musical wanderings, beaming, singing and hand-holding. Don't you think those activities would have brought an approving smile to Jesus’s face, a smile that would have faded quickly had Jesus been able to bring Ms. Xxx’s email up on his divine laptop? May “God’s own fish-hook” (thank you for that phrase) be firmly embedded in your cheek.
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