God Makes Surprise Visit to Local Church
The Onion has a way of hitting me and making me laugh at the same time, kind of like when my big brother used to make me punch myself with my own hand and say “Why are you hitting yourself”? (No bruises or lasting trauma.)
This article felt halfway blasphemous to read out loud to Kenny (between howling laughter, gasping for breath and saying “ow, don’t squeeze my knee so hard!”), but I think it’s only because we often actually act this way. It immediately brought to mind a favorite passage of Annie Dillard. I wouldn’t be surprised if it inspired the article:
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” -Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk
