If the title describes your feelings after you get home from Sunday services, you are not alone. More and more Americans are returning home after canned religious experiences feeling vaguely dissatisfied and “hungry” for a better experience. They have been saturated with “feel good” messages. Their eardrums are battered by loud music by super PA systems. It is as if the leaders innately “feel” that the audience is becoming progressively more and more deaf, so they are turning up the amplifiers. This feeling by the congregation is similar to that experienced by those in attendance at a dance where they find their table is right in front of the biggest PA speaker. The amp is hard wired to bass max. By the end of the evening, their ears are “tinned” and their livers are liquified jelly. The “good vibrations” flowing through the internal organs have drowned the simple message of goodness. Never mistake, large crowds are always going to be part of the religious scene. I attended my first Billy Graham “crusade” in Oklahoma City in 1956. I still remember the jam-packed stadium. Similar revivals, from “one tenters” to super domes, are expected and quite normal. They have their place in our religious lives. They can be a real joy in good weather once, or twice, a year. But every week? Despite some people’s ideas and slogans to the contrary, in church, the media is not the message. The “message” has been blurred from over polishing. The glare of the polished bits has become blinding and hard to see past. It is the sudden appearance from around the corner late at night of a huge truck with spotlights mounted on its front fenders. The leaders that have been ego, or cash flow, driven to build huge congregations that demand huge, echoing, super-domed caverns to hold them, have overlooked the axiom every TV used car salesman has graven across his heart. In the eye of the camera, too much polish does not look good. Too much sparkle turns away the buyer. He knows, instinctively, at the brain stem level that the “con” is on. Yes, the cars do need to be clean. They also need to be covered by a thin soapy film to appear to be real and reduce the glare. Religion, the message of religion, like cars and belief are intensely personal. Personal, in no way describes participation in a ten-thousand seat Sunday morning scripted religious play. Giant pageantry is awesome. It inspires awe. It can convey certain kinds of global, holistic ideas. That was the whole precept behind “shock and awe” . . . paralysis. From a religious viewpoint, paralysis cannot also be “personal” in a positive way. A huge pageant is hardly the place for intimate consideration of personal answers to intimate questions. The Catholic Church taught that lesson a long time ago with one person booths for “confessions”. The megachurches have become the Chinese dinners of modern American religion. The dishes are large, bright, colorful, flavorful, different and a half-hour later, you are strangely hungry again. People are hungry for connection. Hungry for a personal touch. Hungry for touch. Hungry for eye to eye contact. This is the background for a new phenomenon now being reported in the national press, the rapid growth and development of numerous breakaway micro-congregations. Mini-churches, bikini churches that cover the essentials of religion, often without formal leadership, or instruction. They are becoming the ultimate in self-help religiosity.
(c) Copyright 2006: George Wallace recently published a book on religion which lashes out at nearly all of the comfortable ideas about God, the trappings of organized religion, and the priesthood. His pithy comments and suggestions for a return to a God-centered personal religion will interest everyone. This article may be freely reprinted so long as all copyright attributions, and the full content of this resource box are included. www.OhGodIsThatYou.com
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