It’s enough to make a man or woman swear off religion. Priests sexually abusing little boys, and sometimes girls. Jihadists killing innocent people by the hundreds and thousands in the name, they say, of Allah. Evangelicals in high places frequenting prostitutes and swindling poor people out of what little money they have.
Bubba says, “Back home, ese people’d be put to sloppin’ hawgs fer a livin’, cause we know bad thangs can be done in God’s name jist as easy as in the Devil’s name. Don’t have nuthin to do with whut God wants. God don’t make no puppets. It’s whut man wants. An’at goes for the way men organize churches businesses’n everthang else. An’ what’s God doin? Don’t have to do anythang. Greed’n meanness kinda take care’a theyselves. Some people call it Karma, I jist say paybacks are automatic. You watch’n you see.”
But there’s something else we need to remember: hidden under the need of the modern news reporting mechanism to emphasize the sensational is the good done every minute of every day.
When there’s disaster, here come the little-known people who make the real mission of churches work. FEMA may fail, as in the Gulf hurricane disasters, but the common people of the churches are always there. Not preaching, but providing the tangibles needed to ride out the awful feeling of helplessness.
And as Nicholas Kristoff put it in the NYT, “when you read about the scandals, remember that the Vatican is not the same as the Catholic Church. Ordinary lepers, prostitutes and slum-dwellers may never see a cardinal, but they daily encounter a truly noble Catholic Church in the form of priests, nuns and lay workers toiling to make a difference. via Op-Ed Columnist – A Church Mary Can Love – NYTimes.com.
Time for Phil Osophy to do his quote thing: Ralph Waldo EMERSON: “A man is a god in ruins.” Nature (1836)
