Unpopular Opinions 3: Church Edition

As if you thought I was done running my mouth or something. Shame on you for thinking of me as modest. There's too much work to do.





The 95 Reeses. Picture credit to r/dankchristianmemes. They're phenomenal.

I. The church will change its theology to meet its economic needs.

You can read the Bible and get anything you want out of it and it's been appropriated in such a manner ever since it was being passed around its early reading communities. It isn't going to change now a few thousand years removed from those early communities. If the church didn't primarily meet its economic needs from tithing and charity then maybe this grievance of mine wouldn't exist (I doubt it but run with the idea for a second). How do you think the church pays for its liabilities? If your answer is anything other than "I pay for them" then you need to fix that because it's plain wrong. Your tithes cover the church's operating costs. It makes the church a communal success and a communal failure if its congregants don't fund it, our money goes where our values go. Except people are people and perversely insist on being people at all times. We're petty, selfish, insecure, unstable, and think much too highly of ourselves. And our cash flows reflect our fears. People will get up and go church shopping to a church that "preaches the gospel". All churches preach the gospel. It may not preach the gospel you like but they all preach the gospel. They take their money with them. Pastors, being dependent on tithes and charity from the congregation to pay for salaries and cover church operating expenses and liabilities, will preach comfortable messages to keep wallets in the seats. And sometimes they get a bit on edge in the message, like the one time the pastor will say "damn" in a message and may go "Yeah I said it! I'll say it again!" and suddenly people like him "telling it like it is" (and it's usually a "him" in this case, no disrespect meant to the female ministers in the church of course, as my mother is one). This is why I'm convinced that churches have become LGBT tolerant. Not accepting. Tolerant. Why? Because that's where the money goes. Preach a message of diversity and being inclusive because it brings in more people that are seeking that message and then work the following messages to get their money. I have a hunch this is why a lot of the aging denominations seem to be moving towards accepting these sorts of people into their churches. The UMC is famous, or infamous depending on your angle, for "accepting" LGBT members. PCUSA made the move to allow same-sex marriages and now they have a waiting list to leave the denomination that lasts years. It belies the point that these churches, heavy with an aging demographic, are seeking for ways to extend their economic life cycles. They still have expenses and they'll find ways to read scripture differently to bring more people in, something that will continue to be done until the end of time.

Now I'm not against different readings of the Bible. That should be obvious by now. Read the Bible differently for the objectively right reasons. Not to seek more money to cover church expenses.

Also. This tithing thing. 10% is the floor, not the ceiling. You give that base amount and then give more. To missions hopefully. Those people need it.

II. The Biblical authors would've hated each other.

Paul hated Peter. Matthew and John would've hated Paul. Luke disagreed with Paul. Genesis and Isaiah would've disagreed with each other. Ecclesiastes doesn't care about any of the books around it. Job throws all our ideas of God out the window (when was the last time you listened to a sermon on Job or Ezekiel or Jeremiah or Numbers or Revelation?). And the disconnect is a feature, not a bug. Matthew and John are the most Jewish gospels ("I came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it"-Mathew 5:17-18, which is only said in Matthew by the way, John pegs Jesus into Jewish philosophy with John 1 echoing Philo, and John claiming Jesus to be the Jewish messiah they've long awaited). Paul says we don't need this legal Judaism anymore because Christ came and gave us the system of grace that we're currently under, overhauling the system that Paul was taught. Paul identifies as a Pharisee after all. Luke sees the baptism of Jesus as a pneumatological event, Paul sees the baptism of Jesus as a Christological event. Genesis talks of God as corporeal, walking through Eden, having a voice that Adam and Eve can understand, having human emotions that are easily expressed and readily understood. Isaiah encounters God as something completely other, the temple being filled with His robe, and Isaiah freaking out (Paul Tillich opened his courses on religion with Isaiah 6, the moment here being his idea of what religion really encompasses). These clear disconnects are supposed to be there. Luke traveled with Paul and still disagreed with him on areas of doctrine. Why? Luke is his own person and can disagree with Paul. Maybe he thought Paul talked out of his ass sometimes. All Christians do. These moments of disagreement matter. Don't ignore them. The Bible has contradictions in them. What do you expect from a book that is filled with writings that span centuries, life-worlds, perspectives, and authors that probably had zero clue any other book was being written? Much less that their own writings would survive for thousands of years after their death? The "contradictions", the disconnects, the clashing personalities in the Bible and implicit interbiblical disagreements, are all supposed to be there. Don't tame or undermine them.

III. Babylon Bee isn't that good.

It's The Onion but with conservative Christian elements. I never found The Onion all that funny to start. My sense of humor lies somewhere between George Carlin, Tom Segura, and Fool House Productions (look them up). When they're funny they're funny but nine times our of ten it's hit and miss. Satire is meant to be subversive so I expected a bit more from a site like theirs. But I will admit their article "Larry-Boy confirmed for Avengers: Infinity War" had me laughing pretty hard.

Short Story: Cinnamon and Sugar

There’s a few things that came out of New Jersey that are actually good. The Dillinger Escape Plan, Phil Grippaldi (silver olympic weightlifting medalist in 1968, 1972, 1976, and also should’ve been recently released from prison for selling crack), My Chemical Romance, and Meryl Streep. But they have Chris Christie so that cancels out having Meryl Streep. If you find yourself driving through New Jersey then you’ve messed up somewhere in your life. Especially when you find yourself driving in New Jersey traffic as an eight year old and you’ve been in the car for ten hours. Flying was never much of an option for us. My younger brothers and I never cared to behave ourselves and lord knows we wouldn’t have suddenly cared about proper behavior ten thousand feet in the air. We always traveled by car. Mom and dad didn’t want to spend the money but my youngest brother is special needs. His behavior was unstable on the ground let alone sitting behind an air marshal on a Delta flight. Even at eight years old we didn’t like New Jersey. There was always this one gas station that my dad would go to when the van needed filling up. We lived in Staten Island and we weren’t too far away from the bridge to take us into the one place we’d consistently go to in New Jersey. A BP gas station that he’d go to just to cheaply fill up the van. At the time New Jersey was the state with one of the lowest gas taxes so he’d drive just to fill up there and also get a Cuban sandwich from one of the local places. If you want a solid Cuban sandwich you go to a bodega run by a guy that always blasts the same reggaeton, has an uneven cut from the same barber for at least a few years, and has some random animal running around the store. The animal is also the assistant manager. They may barely pass sanitation requirements to serve food but dad still bought it and we haven’t died from some dirty bread. To be fair the “we haven’t died from it” bar is a low bar to try and meet but I’m convinced it’s the only bar that matters.

Cinnamon. Sugar.

It’s distinct. Seasonal for some, especially when you move to the south. We left the confines of the north to the south when mom and dad got tired of the cold in their bones. They said it was because they felt the move south was what needed to happen years ago. I’ll never agree. Cinnamon and sugar is a seasonal thing down here. Eggnog for sure has both and I grew up loving the stuff. Dad, of course. He has the sweet tooth in the family. Mom doesn’t really. She was never big on confectionaries. I was too big on them in college. They’ve given me dental issues but hey I’m here for a good time, not a long time. In New Jersey there’s these big stops that are a mass exodus of people at any given time. Rest stops in the north and the south are the stuff of legends. In the south it’s vending machines and parking spots, usually taken up mostly by tractor trailer drivers that need their rest. Bathrooms. Then you get back to moving. New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and New York all know what it means to have a rest stop. For Virginia, I consider Wawa not just a rest stop but a national treasure. New Jersey has this trend of naming service areas after people. Clara Barton and Woodrow Wilson. Cinnamon and sugar. It’s distinct. Gas station lines clogged with cars trying to get their fill. And the north, for those that don’t know, have people to pump their gas for you. Which is great in the winter but complete crap when you move south and don’t know how to pump your own gas. That was never the case with us. Growing up I always thought pumping your own gas was what adults do. Growing up means you realize that always paying for gas is what adults do, pumping it is a chore. At least it is when you’re at Valero.

I wish I had a specific story about visiting these places. The stops were meant for us to not die in the car on the way back to Staten Island from visiting family in North Carolina. Memorize the exits. Guess the distance between the exit and the border to the next state. When you’ve traveled in a car all of your formative years you quickly tire of road trips. In some way it’s against the millennial zeitgeist, lacking a love affair with the open road and traveling to far away places. To hell with that. Road trips are the bane of my existence. I’ve had enough time sitting in my car for one lifetime. I don’t like air travel all that much more (I work on planes so I don’t want to be on them anymore than I need to be). I might like trains. Aside from the MTA, which doesn’t strive to be the paradigm for railroad travel, I’ve never been on a train. After traveling on the road all my childhood I don’t want to remember much about it except what my brain won’t let me forget. Traveling home from grandma’s funeral. The sheer silence for half a day. Silence my parents prayed for when we were younger. Silence they got but not on the prayerful terms they requested. Driving through Manhattan because I’m a sucker for the city aesthetic. Yes I’m a child of my generation and I’ll fight for that until my dying breath. Driving to Atlanta with all my stuff when I moved out of their house. And getting hit by that drunk driver my senior year of college. I can’t forget that one.

It’d be cinnamon, sugar, and a bunch of people in line for coffee. We grew up around coffee being the adult drink of choice. Then you become an adult and learn the drink of choice is alcohol. They didn’t want us drinking coffee, fully persuaded of the lie that it would stunt your growth. There’s no proof of that but that belies the greater point of us being here only for a good time and not a long time. Dozens of people in line for milk and sugar to get them to the next place to pay another five dollars for another cup of milk and sugar. We only travel from coffee place to coffee place on the road. Staying at home just makes it a more prolonged excursion from coffee place to coffee place. Cinnamon and sugar weren't holiday moments for us elementary school nomads. It was a “we know why you’re here” capitalist thing. I’m sure my memory is morbidly obese because my memories of places are beholden to the slow death of fast food. When I moved to the south the trips back home grew scant. Sordid. Mom didn’t want to go back to New York when grandma lived. After the funeral all her meaningful reasons to go back left. I can’t say I blame her. Growing up means you understand why some doors, doors like that, may be better off closed.

I was around nine years old when I had cinnamon and sugar uppercut a Mike Tyson-esque punch in my sinus for the last time. Forest Avenue. You southerners knew nothing of Perkins. Right by a Shoprite plaza. Perkins was a place you’d go to eat but they also had their own in-house bakery so your nose would be slapped with the scent of freshly baked breads and rolls. A favorite smell for the person with an obese soul. That location closed earlier this year. If you drove by and easily gained weight, smelling those calories would pack them on you in a cholesterol laden heartbeat. Even at nine years old I knew those scents wouldn’t last forever. I haven’t found a place like that down in NC or GA yet but I’m not really looking. I want New York to stay  a place for food. Last week I found that cinnamon and sugar smell again down in Atlanta. Somewhere in Midtown. If I could find the person who made that smell again I’d shake his hand or marry her in a clogged heartbeat. I can’t remember where. From nine years old to twenty-four. Close your eyes. Have that stress-free moment to yourself. Nobody knows you’ll have that moment but yourself.

I found it again. What language shall I use to thank thee, cinnamon and sugar, memories, dear friend?