I had this funny picture in my head of a freak-show barker shouting, "Come, See a Real Live Preacher".

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  Tuesday, February 04, 2003


What if

 

What if we suddenly saw the world with God’s eyes? What if the reality of good and evil exploded into our consciousness in a blinding flash of inspiration?

 

What if this happened right in the middle of church?

 

Would we fall out of our pews, bawling at our first glimpse of real beauty? Would there be a mad rush for the exits, everyone scrambling to enter the real cathedral? Would goodness burst our fragile hearts?

 

And if, in that same instant, the stark reality of evil became clear, what would happen to us? What if we saw the face of an abused child at the very apex of her suffering? What if we suddenly bore the knowledge of every child’s pain? What if we understood the exponential evil that grows from our sterile apathy?

 

Would we become like animals, howling our mourning instead of singing our hymns? Would our bibles, psalters, and hymnbooks become as dead wood in our hands? Would we throw them to the ground and tear across the face of creation, rushing to the rescue of one child in the name of all that is holy?

 

Would we then turn on our church buildings in a mad rage, tearing them to the ground like Ents ripping at Orthanc? Would our righteous anger and sorrow for years of misplaced energy prove to be an elemental force destroying every remnant of what we once called Church?

 

And what if the people of our world beheld such lunatics, possessed of an unspeakable Spirit?

 

What would they think?

 

But we are not that people. We are not able to bear that burden. We are not ready for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

 

We are only men and women, singing hymns, murmuring prayers, trying to cover our nakedness.

 



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