The World Is Laughing at Some of Us

I rarely visit YouTube since they cracked down on ad-blocking. When I did venture onto the site the other day, one of the suggested videos was this one:

As I watched the first few minutes, I was laughing. Then I realized that while these folks are laughable, what they are doing is not funny. It's just sad.

I have a friend who was never exposed to any type of religious worship until she was in her mid-30s. By then, she had a young son and was dealing with a lot of stress in her life. When a friend invited her to church, she was hopeful. She thought that maybe she would find something beautiful and meaningful there.  Unfortunately, the church she visited was similar to most "holy roller" type places. What she found there was frightening and confusing. The "preacher" was shouting and wailing throughout his "sermon" and when the worship music started, the congregants started wildly dancing around and "getting the holy ghost". My friend said that she had to leave not long into all that mayhem because her child was actually scared.

That is sad. That is depressing.

I grew up in a "holy roller" church. It was sheer silly entertainment. I did enjoy the music. My cousins and I got a kick out of washing this 'sister' or that 'brother' jumping and shouting. Sometimes, a wig would go askew or a shoe would go flying. Pure mayhem. None of us was ever taught (in that church) the actual gospel. It was years before I became a Christian. Only one of those 3 cousins ever did turn to God. To this day, one of them wants nothing to do with church or "religion" because of those childhood experiences. 

That is sad. That is depressing.

That video is just one of several. I watched probably 3 or 4 of them and they got worse and worse. In some of them, there were little kids "preaching". The little boys were doing perfect impressions of the shouting, wailing, pastors they obviously grew up watching. One of them kept wiping his forehead with a handkerchief as he flipped through a Bible during his "sermon". I felt like sobbing.

Like the little pastor-imitating children, the adults in these videos seem to be better at playing church than being Christians. They know how to be "churchy" but not how to be holy. They know how to shout and dance but not how to worship. They know how to bring the club into the church but not how to accept Christ into their hearts.

To the credit of whoever puts out these videos - or at least the ones I saw - they had a brief disclaimer that not all churches/churchgoers are like those shown. And that is true, of course. But which type of churchgoer probably comes first to the mind of the skeptic or general observer? 

Peace

--Free