The God Who Was Not There
(Click here for Part 1, "Getting It Backwards")
“Everything started going to hell once we took prayer out of schools.” No, that was just another stop along the way. God had left the building long before that.
As much as I enjoy the mini-sermons and memes from the trads (traditionalist Christians/Catholics) on Facebook, it’s apparent they’ve forgotten what church was really like back in the day. It was something you did, not out of joy of service and praise to the Creator, but as a social obligation. You got into costume—your “Sunday best”—and took your place in the big room. You sang the special songs, said the magic words, and put money in the plate, either before or after pretending to pay attention to the gasbag-in-chief’s million-mile-long sermon. You sang another special song and filed out, maybe stopping for lunch on your way home. Once home, you were out of your Sunday clothes and back to Real Life for the rest of the week.
God wasn’t your Real Life. Church was a ritual chore you put up with because everyone else did. God and Jesus were on people’s lips but nowhere in their hearts. You “believed” in God because everyone else did, or at least said they did. Still, it was as if He was never there. Therefore, He wasn’t. Therefore, prayer in schools was already meaningless when it was banned. And so it came to pass that, when many of the children of my generation forced to dress up and go to church achieved their independence, they dropped the meaningless and entirely fruitless chore of attending services.
In reaction to the loss of cash flow, too many churches began “updating” and modernizing their messages. Lady preachers, rainbow flags, dedication to importing Third World “refugees,” all that smooth jazz.
It’s not at all hard to understand how we got to where we are today. There are numerous verses in the Bible that cover this, including the entire first chapter of Isaiah, for instance. Jesus Himself had things to say about those with His name on their lips and nowhere else. To me, it’s just common sense. Having had the privilege of living nearly six decades in this failing world, with the clarity of reflection that comes from the Holy Spirit, everything we see now is just the way it was going to end up.
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