Assume that you came to Earth last year (you were a visitor from another planet). Assume that on the first morning you spent on Earth, I showed you how to make toast. I showed you how to put the bread in the toaster and how to turn the toaster on. I taught you how to wait for the toast to pop up, and then I showed you how to spread some butter on the toast after the toast popped up.
Assume that a week later, I took you downstairs and told you I was going to show you how to make toast. Once again, I instructed you to put bread in the toaster, to turn the toaster on, to wait for the toaster and then to put butter on the toast.
Assume that I tried to give you the same lesson one more week later. You would likely stop me at this point and tell me that I had already told you how to make toast. You might say, “You told me twice, in fact. The steps were simple and I truly listened. There’s no need for you to tell me yet again how to make toast.”
This imaginary story came to mind while I was listening to a Christian radio show on the way home from work today. The preacher was telling the people in a large audience that Jesus was sent to Earth by God, that Jesus worked miracles, that Jesus loved us, and that Jesus was sacrificed to save us. He then told the audience that the only way to get to heaven is to believe in Jesus Christ, and to accept him as their Lord and Savior.
As I heard these basic Christian claims repeated several times during a 20-minute sermon, I wondered why it was that any half-intelligent Christian would find the sermon interesting. After all, any adult Christian would’ve heard these sorts of claims hundreds or thousands of times already. Enough is enough, right? Wouldn’t somebody be tempted to stand up in the middle of the sermon to state something like this:
Excuse me, but this is all basic stuff that we’ve all heard thousands of times. You are treating us like we’ve never heard these things before. This is annoying, because any one of us could get up there at the pulpit and recite by heart all of these things that you are now telling us. You treat us as though we were children who had never before heard these things. We assure you that we’ve heard these claims that God sent Jesus to die for our sins and that we need to believe in Jesus to be saved. Can we move on and learn something new this week and next week and next week?”
I do wonder what Christians think while they are subjected to these basic lectures again and again, Sunday after Sunday? Why is it that they are not insulted? How is it that they are willing to sit there and listen to something that they’ve already heard more times than they can count? How is it that they keep coming back to church Sunday after Sunday? Is it that they believe these claims a little more each time they hear them? I seriously doubt it.
Religious sermons sound and look like academic lectures, except that no one is taking notes and no one is listening critically. If the congregation brought pads of paper to church to write it all down one time, there might not be any need to come back and hear it again. Ever.
If the congregation members actually believed the things that were being told to them, I suspect they would not have the patience to keep coming back week after week. They would vote with their feet and sleep in on Sunday. Why would anyone need to be reminded of the most basic beliefs of the church, over and over? It’s not like everyone in every congregation has Alzheimer’s disease.
[1]I suspect that members of religious congregations, by and large, do not believe the most basic Christian claims, even though they claim that they believe these things. This disbelief is the only reason they can tolerate listening to the same claims, Sunday after Sunday. I suspect that their intellects reject these religious claims, but that the preachers are tapping into the existential angst of the members of the congregation. Church-goers cling to their church services because no one else in town is offering any simple remedies to their deep fears regarding death. But neither do they believe the claims they are hearing. The net result is that they flutter around churches like moths around a hot light. Week after week. The fear drives them in, but their intellects repel them.
I hereby put this observation in my Top Ten list of evidence demonstrating that people who claim to be religious don’t really believe the most basic articles of faith of their own religions. And how else could you explain the lack of knowledge that people have regarding their own religions? [2]
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