Why do religious people get so upset when other people start connecting with God? I’ve seen times when God was obviously present–people made commitments, the music was rocking everyone was happy, but someone, or two, start looking for stuff to complain about.
I had a sociologist explain it to me like this: When a church starts growing, new people start showing up and it creates a social disequilibrium at an almost preconscious level. The new faces are a little threatening but since everyone knows you should be happy when new people come to church, you can’t just come right out and say, “I don’t like all these new people in my church.”
It’s a dilemma. So instead of accepting the fact that having new people around is uncomfortable, the uncomfortable person has to look for something more ’spiritual’ to blame. “The service it too long; there’s not enough Scripture, there’s too much Bible reading, the music’s too loud, the sermon’s too vague….”
That way we can maintain the illusion of self-righteousness while ’sanctifying’ our selfish preferences. It’s a convenient way to keep ourselves as the center of the universe while convincing others that we have legitimate ‘concerns.’
Maybe he’s right. Maybe that’s all it is. But it seems like it might be more–it feel like evil to me.
Peace.
Perhaps people need to be told (in some form) that it is our desire for Christ that should order everything else… otherwise people start putting their own selfish desires above even the rightful desire to rejoice at the fellowship of newborn Christians. It’s not about us; it’s God’s story, not ours, and we are called to participate in it, not quip about people that don’t look or act like ‘I’ do.
Peace,
Eric
Absolutely.
But such is the creative capacity of the human mind that we often find it very easy to mask our selfishness in religious terms and somehow elevate selfcenteredness to divine status.