The Preacher's First Entry
Yes, I am a real, live preacher. Some will doubt at first but gradually come to believe. I'm the pastor of a church in Texas.
I hate being called “preacher”, but folks say that. Whaddya gonna do?
You gotta be asking, “What is a pastor doing with a blog? I mean, doesn’t he have a sermon to preach or sick people to visit?”
Honestly, I’m not sure myself. I’ve got some things I want to say. I have a kind of love/hate relationship with the church and I’d like to air some things out. I’m intrigued at the idea of folks with a different worldview engaging me in some way.
I know this – it can get lonely in the pulpit. Folks in church expect a lot of things from their pastor. Gut-level honesty is NOT one of them. Don’t get me wrong, the folks in my church are as nice as they come, but let’s face it, they don’t want to hear the pastor’s deepest doubts and fears.
Maybe this will be like therapy for me. Sorry to lean on you this way, but, what the hell.
Speaking of hell, let me go on the record and say that I like using that word for emphasis and not as a potential destination. "What the hell" is a whole lot nicer than "You're going to hell."
Find me one instance in the New Testament where Jesus or any church leader used hell to scare people into believing in God. Trust me, you won’t find even one example. Jesus talked a lot about hell, but only when speaking to or about religious people.
I use colorful language quite a bit by the way. Not to hurt people, but to express myself. Let’s face it, most of the off-color words are very expressive.
I find no scriptures that say there is anything wrong with saying shit when shit happens.
True Story: Did you know that Peter and Paul both cursed in the New Testament? Sure did. Peter in the book of Acts and Paul in Galatians. They were righteously pissed off and let fly with the naughty words.
Don’t bother trying to find it. You’ll need to be able to read the original language to enjoy it. Sadly, most of the bullshit English translations clean up the text so as not offend church people. Remember, it’s church people that buy bibles. Translation committees know this and will not offend their best customers.
There are a couple of great New Testament translations that leave the cussing in. (Phillips for one) You’ve never heard of these translations because nobody buys them. They aren’t marketed well and are not offered in regular Christian bookstores.
I’ll tell you what... In a day or two, I’ll give you the exact location of these two “colorful” verses and a literal translation from the Greek. Yeah, I had to learn Greek in seminary. It comes in handy every once in awhile.
How cool will it be to drop those two verses on the next Christian who gives you a hard time when you express yourself in, shall we say, a colorful manner? Nothing shuts up religious people quite like quoting from their own book!
See, this is going to be great. I get to let off steam and you get great ammo for dealing with religious zealots.
We’re gonna have some fun!
6:07:32 PM 
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