A Gripe About Your Whine About A Critiscism

Let me tell you, first of all about this article or rather articleS that are causing a whole bunch of righteous indignation to pop out on Facebook. You can read them both right here, side by side if you haven't already. Go read them now and when you're done, you can come back and read what I have to say about them.

"We drove out to visit this church because we’d heard about its female members’ unusual hairstyles—women with extravagantly long hair pulled up into buns, for whom lipstick is an abomination. But these were not exactly the Old Believers we’d hoped to see." That's pathetic right there!! What on earth is wrong with us that they didn't find what they were looking for?! What's the deal? Do you agree with the person that tried telling Reece & I that that part in Corinthians doesn't apply to us, because it was written for the Corinthians and our culture is different from theirs? Let me spell something out for you. H.O.G.W.A.S.H. So being that you threw out that part, "cause it doesn't apply to you" I guess you gotta also throw out Galatians, and Romans and Ephesians and Philippians and while you're at it get rid of Revelations 'cause you don't attend one of the seven churches of Asia and oh yeah, remember that the whole front part is the 'Old Testament' and that doesn't apply to us either so there. You just threw out the whole Bible! Now what about the spot that says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and FOREVER?? Oh wait. Never mind, you just threw the whole thing out 'cause it wasn't written to *insert your name here*.

 "They might more accurately be described as New (or Newish) Believers, people with one foot in the Old Church and, if they are men, the other planted on the gas pedal of their Ford F-350 pickup, which they bought for utility and not status, but which will nevertheless bring a tear to their eyes when it gets its first scratch. That is, if they cried. Which they don’t." Are you telling me that you don't agree with THIS?! How often do you see our men crying?? Yes I know there are guys that cry. But you don't even try telling me that they aren't few and far between!! I married one of those dorks that though that 'real men don't cry'. And to him and every other one of you knuckleheads I'm gonna repeat myself: "What's the shortest verse in the Bible???? J.E.S.U.S. W.E.P.T. Ok?? Got that? So if you think that Jesus was a real man then you have one option. START CRYING!

"As well-behaved Lutherans, no one was sleeping of course, but no one seemed to be paying deep attention, either. My sense was that the congregation was simply waiting patiently for the sermon to end. They seemed to be in the sort of trance you enter while standing in an airport security line. They were in standby mode." and "The man is a human barbiturate, a preacher whose glacial pace and lengthy pauses are perfectly timed to induce slumber." Are you telling me that you haven't observed this yourself in any of our churches? I mean seriously, I know I'm Ron Kujala's daughter and all so I'm abnormal to begin with, but my word! We walk around and read our Bibles and quote it, reading the spots like; "HO everyone that thirsteth come ye to the waters." and "The joy of the Lord is our strength." and "Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice , ye righteous: and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart." and we sound like a robot that was programmed by a sleepwalker. I don't remember many sermons that my dad preached for some reason, but I do remember the beginning of one that he preached in Norden. It was Isaiah 55 and when he read it everyone in the congregation jumped out of their skin and he had their attention. He rambled on like they do for his prelude up to the text and the he got his Bible open and he started reading. He leaned into the mike and he said, "HO everyone that thirsteth!" He said it then and he'll say it again to you today if you wanna call him, 'we sit here and read all this stuff in a dead monotone like we're talking about rototilling the garden or examining a specimen of dirt and I doubt that that "HO" was said in a monotone.' If you're yelling at somebody walking by you and you want their attention do you mumble to them? Nope, I didn't think so. And we sit in the sermons like... all bored and thinking yada yada I've already heard all this stuff before and I wonder where we're gonna go eat after we get done here and oh my achin' back can you imagine how that person is dressed? Why would they come to church like that? Haven't they ever been taught better?  And then your kid or the kid somewhere around you distracts you and it happens over and over for the whole hour you sit there and then you leave the church and wonder what the preacher talked about. Or are you saying that I'm the only person on the face of the earth that that happens to?? And actually? No they probably haven't been taught any better than to dress how they do, 'cause how many people are there left that actually PREACH against sin anymore? I mean by name. As in MODEST clothing, LONG hair, TV being a sin and on and on. Oh but they DO preach against sin! Yeah? Oh yeah they do. They mention in passing "the sins of this world, like drinking" and then they rush on so they can cover all 79 of the verses from their text so they don't have to make anybody mad with their 'judging'. So then, if someone has or ever has had an issue with drinking, half the people in the church will still welcome them with open arms, and the other half shuns them like they're some odd looking offshoots from the Amish, who they think are all wrong in their doctrine and belief system, but yet they practice the same shunning practices for someone who did wrong. If the joy of the Lord is supposed to be our strength, and we hike about the nation like we're suckin' lemons, we must not be very strong eh? And 'Be GLAD in the Lord and REJOICE and SHOUT for JOY all ye that are upright in heart.' Hmmm. Does any of this go along with 'out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh'?? If you're joyful in your heart, why ain'tcha actin' like it? Why are you acting like someone just shot your favorite dog just before you sat down in your pew?? Don't get all pissed off at someone who comes along and aptly describes a congregation because they are 'atheists' for crying' out loud! Didja ever stop and think that perhaps they might be the stones crying out??

This guy is actually amazingly dead on in some of his descriptions. But why is it that if I would have said the same things, people would have laughed, but since he's not from our church and he's critiquing us, he's awful and wrong? Are you telling me that our men go to church every Sunday with clean hands and no grime under they're finger nails? Sheesh! If I've been helping Reece work on the truck MY hands and fingernails look just like his description. "...no amount of scouring will remove the dirt from under their fingernails or from within the dry cracks in their palms..."

"Pastor Holmgren’s sermon was couched in the din of gurgling, fidgeting, whispering and occasionally wailing children. It was a tapestry of schoolyard sounds, not unpleasant, really, as one squeal would cancel out a squawk on the other side of the hall until the net effect could be compared to the drone of New York City traffic." I apologize to all mankind, this made me laugh. Only they must have some quiet kids out there in Hockinson, 'cause here in Mills some days it sounds more like a bunch of logging trucks going down a hill for the noise level of the screaming kids. Apparently some people don't believe in taking their kids out when they hit their head on a bench and instead they turn them toward the mike so the sound gets amplified and spread around to the whole congregation in equal measure. I suppose I'm gonna get all kinds of wrath for that statement too since people suddenly lost all sense of humor when they read a 'bad rap' about our church.

"These are people who keep to themselves, who have learned over generations of small town life not to pry. They show personal interest only obliquely and always with an elliptical escape clause. After the service was over, several friendly members introduced themselves. “Do you live nearby, or…?” “Are you considering joining our church, or…?” “Do you have any children, or…?” “Or what?” I kept wanting to ask, but I can avoid intimacy like the best of them myself." Again I'm sorry, but I have to agree with him. It's an apt description of the way some of our people are. No, that's ain't how ALL of them are, but it seems that the ones who aren't like this are the ones that were being chickens and not being friendly. "To these Lutherans we were as foreign as Samaritans. That said, they are also Christians. If we’d asked, they would have given us a glass of water. They might even let us join their church. But it would have been a while before they accepted us as their own. Maybe 10 or 12 years, just to make sure. We were the Samaritan woman—exotic, foreign and tainted with worldly pagan-ness." You telling me that everything in that lil paragraph is wrong? Nope. He aptly described the way we operate, how we act, what we do when we see strangers, and worst of all, he under exaggerated the length of time it'd take before you will be accepted as one of our own. I know people that have been outcasts for over 20 years! That's pathetic! I was a new person at one of our churches once... I was there for several hours (remember that I'm Ron's daughter? Have you ever tried leaving church in a hurry when his mouth works? Ain't happening.) I was there for several hours and you wanna know how many people smiled at me or stopped to talk to me? One (1) person smiled at me. And the ones that came and talked to me were hauled over by dad so he could introduce me to them.

Now you can all sit here and glower madly at ME like I'm consorting with the ungodly for agreeing with so much of what this guy said. I gotta go to Fargo to get a speedometer for Reece's truck so I'll pick apart Amanda's post later. She's the one that has more for me to gripe about. This oughtta keep you hopping for a few hours anyway. My point in the whole thing if you haven't gotten it yet is this: MAYBE,, instead of sitting here and getting your feathers all ruffled with self righteous indignation and praying all loudly for these people, you should step back and take a long look at what's causing your feathers to ruffle in the first place. What's the matter? Did they hit too close to home for you? And you better start praying for yourself and our church if you think this was a bad description of us, 'cause unfortunately, a lot of it wasn't very far off!! I know that not a one of you have a problem taking jokes or misunderstanding humor, 'cause for cryin' out sawdust, if you didn't get humor and sarcasm you'd certainly never be reading MY blog! I think the thing that's making people mad is that this guy hit too many nails on the head and nobody wants to be hit in the head. So cheerio and fire away!