OK, dinner is done, I am full and the strains of lovely Mantovani music are wafting through the house providing much needed peace in the midst of a stressful weekend. I will continue the story of my FBC experience.

After singing the usual 7-11 praise songs (7 words repeated 11 times) until we were all worked up into a frenzy - clapping, hooting, shaking and generally abdicating any control of our bodies or emotions, it was time to introduce the sermon. Using the technological marvels that excel at this church, a portion of some R-rated movie was displayed on the overhead screens. A scene showing Satan (or some demon) trying to attack Christ was shown with graphic, vivid detail. The music was appropriately demonic to set the mood, the scene was dark and evil and the demonic creature took on various forms like a human skeleton (or something similar. It was dark and hard to see thankfully) and then finally a serpent which slithered around trying to attack Christ at the foot and finally being crushed by His foot. I'm not sure how much of this is Biblical, but it doesn't matter at FBC as long as the general message gets across.

In this case the general message was how Satan disguises in various forms to trick the human race, but ultimately will be (or rather I would think has been) defeated by Christ. My eyes went out to the young children in the audience since I was so shocked by the evil imagery I was concerned it would bother some of the younger children. But it seems they must have become used to this sort of thing in church (or hardened to it) and seemed to either enjoy the excitement or pay little attention. I can tell you that no child of mine would ever be permitted to see such scenes which destroy that tender, sweet innocence that allows a child to be a child and to mature and grow in God's timing, not being exposed to evil adult themes until God finds it necessary to help him or her learn to deal with them.

Finally the video was over and the sermon began with the usual mantra of Christian spiritual warfare which is, "we need to know everything we can about the enemy in order to fight him". The comparison to modern earthly warfare of gaining intelligence about the enemy in order to defeat them was given. I had to think about this for a moment because, although I truly believe it is not correct to learn more about Satan to defeat him, I acknowledge that is a great help in human war to know all about the enemy. Why didn't this analogy carry over then? Immediately I realized that God knows everything there is to know about Satan and his tactics. Only God will truly be capable of defeating this enemy and all the knowledge in the world about him will not help us to combat him in any way. Only as we put our trust in God to defend us against Satan and the attacks he brings our way will we be victorious. It is really as though we are helpless children out on the battle field and would be utterly wiped out except that we put ourselves under God's protection, and under the protection of the defensive armor He gives us. As soon as we get the notion that we are to go forth in battle pushing forward to the front lines to take on Satan we are headed for destruction. Only by God's mercy will we be saved then.

The service ended and the most unfriendly group of people started to make their way out the doors. Of course who could fellowship after 90 minutes of what we had gone through, but it struck me how cold and unhappy and disturbed these people were. Normally I would like to hang around and see if I can get in on a conversation or find someone I know, but I just wanted out of there in a hurry and back out into the fresh, clean goodness of the outdoors to rest my soul from this attack of evil that some would substitute for church.

I am looking forward to a hopefully much more positive time of fellowship tonight as I once again visit Manchester Community Church and hear the pastor speak on 1 Corinthians 7 once more. I will be leaving early in order to attend some sort of talent show that the Eddy children were excited for me to see. Sarah will be playing the harp, Andrew will be reciting something and others are going to be singing. Ahh, the dear, sweet, precious, tenderhearted goodness of children brought up in a Godly home and church.

Tags: church
Current Mood: content
Current Music: Mantovani - Autumn Leaves