Few things have left me feeling more frustrated than a recent visit to a well respected evangelical church. [No names no packdrill].  The joy of anonymity afforded me a nauseating vantage point from which to participate in the meeting.  It was the Pastor talk that irked me so.  For thirty-four incredulous minutes I listened to him wax satirically from a book dubiously self-explanatory title No I am not joking!  It was like one of those What s wrong with this picture? captions.

However, out of deference to our friends and respect for the Pastor whose church we were attending I endured the 34 perplexing minutes with the help of some rigorous self-management; although I dare say had the Pastor caught my eye he would have though from my facial expression that I was trying to warn him that the zipper on his trousers was undone. 

The only positive thing to come out of it was that I thought to myself that if this is at all typical at least the Pharaoh s won t be able to threaten the slaves with the prospect of making bricks without straw, if the slaves insist on following Moses into the wilderness to worship God and find their freedom, because that is what they are already trying to do.   As is evidenced by the offending self-help book which I understand was written to instruct us how to live the Ten Commandments.

Evidently it is well-intentioned and deadly serious. Well deadly and serious certainly.  Anyway quite apart from the fairly obvious point about not being under the law etc etc, what really alarmed me was that the pastor man managed to talk for 34 minutes on the tenth commandment [thou shalt not covet] even managing to provided us with a few tips on how not to covet without once making reference to Jesus.  Bricks without straw me thinks.   What made matters all the more egregious was that it seemed that nobody barring Hayley and I seemed to spot the deliberate mistake.  Judging by the purring approval from the congregation and the queue for the after service CD they liked it.  

Oh well, don t suppose that I will get an invitation to speak at St Shawshank s anytime soon but boy if I did I sure know what I would be speaking: Redemption!  For Christ has indeed redeemed us from the curse of the law. 

Among the myriad of seminal lines in that movie the Shawshank Redemption [and Jon I enjoyed your blog by the way] is the line When you come in here you hate these walls, but after a while you come to depend on them.   I guess that s what bothered me about the visit to that church the dear folk were so utterly institutionalised. Well my prayer is that the spirit of Andy De Cane may rise up in all such church going folk and even if they do have to tunnel through a mile of rancid smelling sewage to breath the rarefied air of freedom its worth it believe me.  May we all follow the pathway of grace from self-recognition to self-regulation, and discover that the Ten Commandments were a prophecy not an injunction: God said: You shall not because , not d better not or else!

 Agape

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