Hello all my blog people, it's been too long! Things are nuts-o around here, in a good way. I've seen a couple movies and finished a couple books which I hope to "review"/share my thoughts on here. More on Sam Harris' stuff eventually as well.
So I was at the bank last week, depositing a check as our internet was down due to the power outages, so no direct deposit from the ol' Church. All this is to say that I normally don't go into the Bank, so I was a bit sheepish.
It wasn't to busy and I stepped right up to the teller, although I was greeted by the ...er...greeter and he asked "Hey, how's the youth group goin?" which I thought was cool. Anyways the teller and I get to talking and I presumed she noticed the check, or somehow we got to talking about the fact that I work at a church and she asked if I was Catholic. I replied no, and that I worked at the Methodist church down the street. To which she said: "So what to Methodists believe in?"
Me: *gasp* uh...you know...God...Jesus...really not too different from Catholics, some stuff sure, but basically the same stuff.
Her: (awkwardly) Oh, ok.
Me: (trying to muster a decent response) Well, the Methodists really emphasize grace alot.
Her: *blink**blink* ...like, grace before you eat?
Me: (feeling stupid/arrogant because I almost laughed) No, no, no, like...we're all really screwed up people but Jesus died for us and there's not much we can do to make up for that, but we try really hard anyway.
We somehow transitioned into scandals involving clergy and how destructive they are. Our conversation length was aided by the fact that the transaction I was trying to do was taking abnormally long.
But all this goes to show how insulated I am as a Christian, and a church staff person. Here you think that you can be all subvertive about the love of Christ and show people that in how you live, how you don't ever wanna be "in somebody's face" about relgiion/faith, whatever. Then next thing you know someone asks you a simple, honest question and you stand there dumbfounded! Ugh!
It also shows how "Christianeese" is not the vernacular of our time. What I meant by the deep, mysterious, theological contruct was taken for a much more practical ritual and they were both correct, but I assumed so much in my casual use of terminology. Whew. It was quite a trip.
1 comment:
Isn't that scary, when someone WANTS to know more about Methodism? I'm Free Methodist, and didn't even know all that much until I went to be a member of the church at the ripe old age of 18. I then figured out why we're called Free Methodist, how Calvinistic we are-and the fact that the Pastors wife is a National Karate Champion. (You know, she gave me a bloody nose once...but thats another story) But I was thinking about that this morning too, before I read this. I thought, if someone asked me how Free Methodist was different from the rest, what would I say?
The results were pathetic. I called my pastor.
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