Christ Has Risen!...Who Cares?

When I was a campus pastor I taught a course in philosophy. One of my students, recently married, really enjoyed the class and knew I was a pastor as well. His wife had been raised in a fundamentalist church which she no longer held any affection for and he had been raised completely outside any religious tradition.

Intrigued by my religious background he came to visit me one day and asked if there were books I could recommend that could help him understand Christianity. I found that a bit of a challenge. Nevertheless, a list was compiled which he and his spouse read and more visits ensued. The upshot of all this was he and his wife joined a church and became active members in. God does move in mysterious ways.

This coming Sunday is Easter Sunday and all types of folk, who normally do not attend church on a regular basis will be in attendance and will hear all about the joy of the resurrection of Jesus. And then I think of my old student and how he might have attended such a service, before his study and may have wondered, “What the hell are they talking about?” I also wonder if regular members of the church also have the same feelings. I remember one congregant of mine, a very faithful attendee, active in the church, telling me he rarely understood a word I said. I was shocked to say the least because I thought I had always worked very hard to explain in plain clear language what I wish to get across.

I am also a lifelong student of the scriptures, of religions in general, philosophy, spirituality and the like. I also think I make a lot of assumptions about the knowledge base of those I talk to that my well be totally erroneous. My guess is that most of church members, let alone non church members, are basically biblically illiterate, and clueless about the majority of the stories of scripture. We also live in a post literate age, meaning folk get most of their information in a non written form. And our conversations are very brief, 140 on Twitter or 240 on Facebook. The idea of writing a page or pages of considered and related thought are hard for many to do. Ask college professors today about the quality of the writing of the students today.

And in the media we talk in sound bites, slogans, and in rather hateful combatative ways. The purpose of debate from my perspective is to discern truth; everyone brings their ideas to the table to be discussed so that a larger truth may emerge for the benefit of all. Debate today has degenerated into yelling matches where one supposedly seeks to win, but really just are flag wavers for folk who have similar view to their own. And we condemn to who have the audacity to change their views based upon new life experience as though they are now liars and flipfloppers.

And so folk will go to church on Easter or another Sunday and essentially feel about the risen Christ, “Who cares?” It won’t put any gas in my tank. Preaching in such conditions is very very difficult, much more difficult in comparison to the days of my youth we practically everybody had a wider religious based than they do not. Now folk may think we are speaking in a secret code of which they are not very interested in.