Feeling a little itchy

August 15, 2007 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Religion 

I’m feeling a bit emotionally/spiritually itchy.  You know – not quite comfortable.  I suppose it’s a bit like the ailment of the month – Restless Legs Syndrome.  Something is not quite right but not such a problem that it’s acute pain.

More on that in a minute.  First an update.

Camp went well on Sunday.  This was a really rough week for check in.  There were 21 units, and something like 225 kids to check in.  The Leadership Training Program (for the oldtimers – that’s Counselor-in-Training) participants were all going into units for the week, so they weren’t available to help out.  With that many units, all available staff were going in unit.  Volunteers were all pressed into service.  I trained my wife Carolyn to be my assistant, and gave her all of the Elementary (grades 1-5 this fall) and Junior (grades 6-7 this fall) units.  I took the Jr. High and Sr. Highs.  First rule of check-in – the little kids show up first.  Carolyn quickly got behind and I found myself with free time.  My campers all came later.  I finally ended up taking the Juniors from her in order to get us finished.  She kept asking if she was being too slow but the truth is that it was just a really rough week.  We had to hand out paperwork to the counselors and age-group directors at dinner after cross-checking the medical information against the nurses and medications received.  We finished 5 minutes before dinner and walked in just after grace.  Whew!

Last night I helped out at church.  For August we’re doing Movie Night on Tuesdays for the Jr. High and Sr. High youth groups combined.  It’s really simple – there is a different PG movie each night with a message and a few questions to discuss at the end.  Last night we got 2 kids.  This was not entirely unexpected – I had checked in 6-8 of the regulars at camp two days earlier.  The movie was Pride – the story of the 1974 Philadelphia Department of Recreation swim team that was built out of an abandoned rec. center and went on to win the regionals.  Nice evening.

Also this week I’ve been making the rounds of blogs.  This week the Presbyterian blogging community (or at least some corners of it) are fighting again.  The question this week is whether or not the denomination can abide people who push the boundaries of Presbyterian belief (if you’re a progressive) or are heretics (if you’re a conservative).  The question is to what degree is each of us responsible for disciplining these people.  The conservatives are making noise about how they can’t stand to be part of a denomination that includes these folks.  The progressives question back – “Why aren’t you filing charges?  Oh yeah, you only file charges against gays.”  It’s all very ugly.

This led me to go back to foundations.  One blogger made the statement that we are all collectively responsible for the pastoral care and discipline of people who stray from the essential tenets.  I went back to the Book of Order (having determined that going back to Scripture is pointless in these disputes – any given verse has different meanings depending on who you talk to) and sure enough, there it is:

That our blessed Savior, for the edification of the visible Church, which is his body, hath appointed officers, not only to preach the gospel and administer the Sacraments, but also to exercise discipline, for the preservation of both truth and duty; and that it is incumbent upon these officers, and upon the whole Church, in whose name they act, to censure or cast out the erroneous and scandalous, observing, in all cases, the rules contained in the Word of God. (G-1.0303)

Yikes.  I’m one of those officers, as a deacon (though I suspect the author of these words was thinking of elders and Ministers of the Word and Sacrament).  I’m supposed to censure or cast out the erroneous!  I AM the erroneous to some extent.

In addition, if the girl says she has a boyfriend at the very purchase generic levitra start of the conversation this could be a pump composed on account of erectile organ development with extra edges. Nevertheless, there are ways to determine if levitra generika http://downtownsault.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/06-14-17-DDA-MINUTES.pdf the results are satisfying enough. The patent might terminate in 2018 but that’s just viagra for women australia unless it’s extended further more, which is definitely possibly considerably more than simply very likely. There are herbal supplements, herbal vitamins, herbal weight loss pills, as well as herbal canada tadalafil . My beliefs are that faith is intensely personal.  Each person is responsible for his or her own faith.  Ministers are only responsible for our faith up to the point where they educate us on what they believe Scripture is saying and what they believe to be true.  From there it’s up to us.  We as members are responsible for listening, thinking, praying, and building our own faith.  The Presbyterian denomination has always been a thinking denomination – we don’t assume that we are ministering to people who need to be led by the nose.

If you read the BOO passage above and the comments of my fellow bloggers, we are each responsible for applying the disciplinary system of our denomination to anyone who strays from the essentials of our faith (which we can’t agree on either, and I prefer it open-ended that way).  According to these same bloggers, failure to take such action amounts to an endorsement of the other person’s ideas.  That seems to be the justification used by those who are filing heresy complaints against people across the country that they’ve never met.

This is what’s making me itchy.  I’m pretty uncomfortable being in a position where I’m responsible for the beliefs of ANY Presbyterian.  I’m also uncomfortable that if I say the wrong thing my Session may get complaints about me.

I’m also profoundly bothered by the natural conclusion.  This says that our officers are responsible for controlling our behaviors and beliefs.  If you remember things I’ve written earlier, I left the church 20 years after I concluded that church was all about a small group of people controlling the beliefs and actions of a larger group of people.  This seems to confirm that – the church really IS all about control of one group by another.  Please note that I’m completely comfortable with God’s control – it’s the control of my peers that bothers me (particularly when a number of them want me to believe and do the exact opposite of what I feel God is calling me to do).

I’m also a little itchy in that I’m not sure that I’m “good enough” for the church work that I’ve been asked to do.  I watched our seminary student intern last night working with the youth and he seemed so comfortable.  I’m still feeling my way around (not literally – that would get me in trouble!) with youth work and I’m not completely comfortable leading.  I’m pretty good with being the second or third or fourth banana, but not the main guy.  Thankfully I’m not expected to be one at the moment.  This in turn leads me into a spiral where I wonder if I’m even competent to lead the committee that I’m leading.  These worries aren’t paralyzing me, just making me spiritually and emotionally “itchy”.

The Lighter Side

I just got an e-mail from a co-worker that read “Sorry for the incontinence.”  It appears that if you misspell “inconvenience” in a certain way, Microsoft Outlook gives you “incontinence” as the first choice in spell check.

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