Sprkus

Tiffany and I went to Easter service yesterday along with my uncle, aunt and two cousins. We hadn’t seen them in a little while so when they invited us over for church and brunch, we took them up on the deal.

Hanging with Tom, Tina, Abby and Ali was fun, as always. Picking on the girls and beating them at Nintendo Wii is enjoyable any day.

Because of the upcoming marriage, which is still 15 months away, Tiffany and I have been trying to attend church as often as possible. We have to show up enough to get them to wed us crazy kids. Or we can not go at all and pay them a $1,000 fee.

Since it appears Tiffany and I will be paying for most of the wedding ourselves, we’ll make sure to be there often enough.

And as churches go, I like the one we’ve picked out so far — a point confirmed even more after seeing an alternative yesterday.

The church was so big, there were multiple rooms, each with its own service and rotating start time. It was essentially three separate churches inside one big building. The place was like a movie theater with three screens showing the same movie. When we arrived, people were lined up in the hallway waiting for a service to let out so the next one to go in.

I honestly felt like I needed to buy a ticket and heavily buttered popcorn.

The service started with a video projected on the wall of dramatic white block letters of scripture over black shadows. The shadows gave way to clouds and thunderclaps mixed with hammering and nails and screams as Jesus was pinned to the cross. It was quite a production.

If I were a lesser man, I may have peed myself a little.

The video then shifted gears with the opening of the empty tomb and Jesus being gone and sunlight and alleluias which gave way to a real life choir singing “He Has Risen.”

A preacher later in the service opened his sermon by saying, “He is risen! He is risen! He is risen!” only to have the audience repeat the phrase after each utterance.

It was about the third song that I realized that the songs were so repetitive, it was like those singing were trying to convince themselves of what they were supposed to believe at every note.

“He died for our sins! He died for our sins! He died for our sins! God is light! God is light! God is light!”

See for yourself:

It’s like a bad children’s show. Seriously, it’s worse than Barney. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe they’re trying to keep the fundamentals ground in the head of the attendees so they’ll keep coming back and giving money so they can complete the fourth and fifth separate altars.

Speaking of children, they gathered all the children down in the front of the service and spent 15 minutes teaching them about how a butterfly comes from a cocoon which comes from a caterpillar and weakly comparing that to accepting the power of God into your life and how it transforms you. This wasn’t off in some side room, this was right in front of the adults’ worship. Almost like it’s an excuse to talk to the adults themselves like children without them catching on the the dupe.

Later, a different preacher tried to hammer that same point home by telling the adults about a business man that was full of stress. God visited the man and asked him to hand over to God all his stress, which the man did. Later that exact same night, the man had solved all 22 of his problems! Never mind that there was no mention of who this man was or where this story came from or the significance of 22 individual problems.

Oh and the best part, this same preacher said if a person isn’t raised with God in his life he or she will grow up to be an abusive parent.

No joke.

He used an analogy of a scientific study on chimp babies and the effects of not having a nurturing parent. One chimp was put in a room with a fake chimp mother made of wire and hair and a tube which fed the baby milk. The baby chimp was raised using the fake parent all the way through adulthood and upon the birth of the chimp’s own baby, scientists discovered that the now adult chimp was abusive and negligent with its offspring.

The preacher used that study, which if anything proves that animals are influenced behaviorally by their environment as opposed to God, to show that if people do not have God in their life, they will grow into an abusive parent, just like that monkey.

Pay no attention to the fact there was nothing linking the study about the monkey and a life without God.

The study about the chimp just as easily proves that Jeses himself is made of metal wiring and fur.

“The chimp has risen! The chimp has risen! The chimp has risen!”