Voices of Experience

My long time Internet friend, Kristen commented under my last post.

She said:

"Wow. This brings back so many memories. This is just the way the church leaders acted, in the group I once belonged to.

Sometimes it's hard, when sitting under the preaching of an overwhelming arrogance like this, to see what "stardom Christianity" is really all about. You're dazzled-- because that's what you're meant to be. It's all about a man on a platform, showing off to look good. Sometimes it takes getting burned by it to see it for what it is.

I suspect that's where the young people in this guy's church are right now. Dazzled. But they'll learn. It's sad, but they will."

And I responded:

"Yeah, and it is really hard for those of us to watch what these young people are going through.

You wish that they would listen to you, that they would realize that we aren't speaking against this because we are jealous of Driscoll's popularity or coolness or great communication or teaching ability (puke icon here).

We've see this before. We've been through this kind of train wreck and everything that leads up to it. There is nothing but a horrible end in store for this situation. And we can't stop it.

And neither will we be able to say, "I told you so," on the other side because the spiritual carnage will be so overwhelming.

So we try to do what we can now to get as many as possible to jump off. And so many of them just laugh at us as they barrel on to their doom..."

Perhaps this explains my obsession with this. I can see what is coming and I can't look away just like people couldn't look away from the images from 911 of the towers being struck and collapsing. We see disaster coming. It gets more and more obvious as time moves on. And those who can't see it, those who are still on the train protecting the derelict engineer, they have to work harder to protect the reputation of the engineer and to pretend that all is well and that they are not ignoring the "Bridge out" signs along the way.

It's horrible. And I won't be able to say, "I told you so." All that I will be able to do is to look through the wreckage and search for survivors.