{"id":96,"date":"2010-12-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-01T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fearofwhales\/2010\/12\/uproar.html"},"modified":"2011-05-16T16:23:08","modified_gmt":"2011-05-16T20:23:08","slug":"uproar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/12\/uproar.html","title":{"rendered":"Uproar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\u201cWe could play \u2018Uproar\u2019 She said\u201d<\/p>\n

I cringed. I had no idea what kind of game \u201cUproar\u201d was going to be. But I was sure it was going to be some squeaky clean mixer game like Charades, or Pictionary, that I had played one too many of, only more christiany.<\/p>\n

Jill continued \u201cIt\u2019s like a mix between Charades, Taboo, and Pictionary\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026CRAP\u2026<\/p>\n

Jill is one of the most stereotypical Christian girls I know of. She\u2019s\u00a0 reasonably attractive, but very plain, engaged (of course) to a immaculate Christian Security Guard. She herself? she\u2019s a teacher. She avoids R-rated movies, plays poker only when the chips have no cash value and we share them if someone runs out and speaks in a particular christian-girl cadence that gets higher near the end of a sentence, making everything sound like it\u2019s a question. And boy does she love mixer games! Especially the \u201crules\u201d part of mixer games, this girl loves rules!
\nAnd in case you can\u2019t tell, I can\u2019t stand her<\/p>\n

Which is odd, It\u2019s odd for two reasons, One for me and one for her.
\nIt\u2019s odd for me because I don\u2019t have trouble getting along with most people. I spend time with debaters, unicyclers, philosophers, artists, athletes, Asians, anteaters\u2026 the list goes on. It\u2019s unusual for me to be put off by a people group.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s odd for Jill because she\u2019s there\u2019s nothing exactly wrong with her. It\u2019s not like she\u2019s some kind of hypocrite (not any more than average) she\u2019s a good person, she\u2019s polite, I\u2019m sure she\u2019s nice to her neighbors, she probably votes, and she\u2019s actively involved in making the word a better place by building up special needs children\u2026 I didn\u2019t mention that did I? I said teacher, yeah, she\u2019s a special-ed teacher.<\/p>\n

See I often have problems getting along with really Christian Christians, but usually I can find some reason. Usually they are stupid, or useless, or dogmatic, or judgmental. Jill is none of those things. She\u2019s just flipping annoying.<\/p>\n

And so she\u2019s a proof of concept for me that I don\u2019t just dislike certain things common to Christians. I actually Dislike Christians. The personality traits that for me represent someone I\u2019d like to spend time with, and the personality traits that I see expressed in a typical Christian, are worlds apart.<\/p>\n

And this all makes me wonder \u201cwhy?\u201d Why should Christians be like this? Why does the average christian young person play Apples to Apples more often than he takes communion?<\/p>\n

How did there get to be a standard christian dress code?<\/p>\n

When did Jesus add the admonition to the Lords Prayer that the names of God needed to be spoken more often in any prayer than all the other words combined
\n
\n\u201cLord, we just ask Lord That Lord You Lord would act Lord God, and God Lord Jesus join us Lord in Lord Our Lord Worship Lord God Jehova Jirah Jesus God El Shaddai Lord my aunts cancer, Eloheim Lord Logos God Holy Spirit Lord Lord\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And when\u2026 When the HELL did the community surrounding the BIBLE be the same community that\u2019s perpetually preoccupied with simple answers, black and white thinking, and comprehensive lists of rules? How in the world did they get this from that?<\/p>\n

God gave us 10, Jesus reduced it to 2. Now I have more than 100 just governing what I have to do before a first date! Where did that come from?
\nThe answer is I don\u2019t know. But my friend “MB” has a theory. MB is a blogger and Christian leader from Iowa. Her blog can be found here<\/a>. She and I<\/p>\n

have been discussing our own theologies for a few weeks by e-mail and this issue came up.<\/p>\n

Here is my understanding of MB\u2019s theory (my own words):<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all about power structures. From very early on in church history Christianity was discovered to be a powerful tool for gaining political power and it still is. These power people then govern the church in a way that encourages the things they like (power, rules, simplicity, submission, tradition) and discourages the Christ-like things they don\u2019t like (Sacrifice, authentic humility, ambiguity, complexity, rebelliousness, vulnerability) until such things begin to permeate the culture.<\/p>\n

Now Sunday school teachers are not actively and consciously trying to gain tremendous power and influence, but might make it a point to be the only one with the keys to the craft closet, because she likes being indispensable, and the next generation being raised up in that Sunday School will get along more easily with their teacher and their peers if they jump in the bandwagon and act like everyone else, so the cycle repeats and perpetuates.
\nUntil now, people begin to feel out of place even around powerless churchgoers, simply because power structures have imprinted these unwritten rules on our collective unconscious.<\/p>\n

\u2026Like I said I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s it, but it\u2019s certainly the closest think I\u2019ve ever heard to an explanation that makes sense, and it\u2019s certainly an idea that\u2019s going to haunt me…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe could play \u2018Uproar\u2019 She said\u201d I cringed. I had no idea what kind of game \u201cUproar\u201d was going to be. But I was sure it was going to be some squeaky clean mixer game like Charades, or Pictionary, that I had played one too many of, only more christiany. Jill continued \u201cIt\u2019s like a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,40,11,311],"tags":[317,318,316,271],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ace-posts","category-christian-culture","category-conversation-starters","category-my-life","tag-annoyed","tag-christian-subculture","tag-games","tag-rules"],"yoast_head":"\nUproar - A Fear of Whales<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2010\/12\/uproar.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Uproar - A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cWe could play \u2018Uproar\u2019 She said\u201d I cringed. 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