I finally began to work on the articles I had collected for my big paper, and this quote stuck out at me as important.
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.
It is attributed to Annie Dillard, but not referenced. The imagery is a trifle overwrought, but after thinking about it, I think I agree. We don’t respect the Bible nearly enough. We say it is the Word of God so casually and blithely that we don’t even think about what that really means.
After reading this, I got to thinking, if and when we really do plant a church, I think my first sermon will be on the Bible – what it is and how it came to us, and what that means to have such a treasure collecting dust on the mantlepiece, or tossed into some forgotten box from the time we moved out of our parents’ house and into our own place.
Tags: bible, church planting, sermon subject
1) It’s not hard in the age of Google to search out a reference. Why not find the book so you can fix the error of attibution?
2) If you read the entire book rather than one quote from it, perhaps you would not call the imagery “a trifle overwrought.” (Was Jesus’ imagery a trifle overwrought?)
3) The power referenced here is not the Bible, but God.
I attributed it to the author without citing the source – I wasn’t claiming it as my own or assigning it to anyone else. I wish I had time to search out every jot and tittle, I really do.
I did say that ultimately I agree with Annie. I am not sure what you’re getting at.