It’s Sunday, and I am fighting off one of those lovely autumnal bugs that float around. I was feeling scratchy on Friday, worse on Saturday and worse again today. So going to church today is not an option. There are older people there, and sharing this is not a merciful thing to do.

So I am starting this post with a nice quote from the ladies at TC. (I do need to add that Mary the mother of God was a faithful wife, so her dying a virgin… not certain).

There’s nothing more freakish than founding all of your opinions upon the wishes of an invisible sky spirit and hopes of spending eternity chilling on clouds playing harps with your deceased loved ones and a woman who gave birth and died a virgin.

So, what are you afraid of? That people won’t like you? Here’s some news: If they like you now, it’s probably because they think you don’t really believe all of that Bible stuff. They don’t like you because you’re a Christian, they like you because they think you’re just posing as a Christian. You’re enlightened. You’re nice. You’re not really like that. You read the Good Book, but you don’t let it get to your head and change your mind about the things that matter to polite society.

You’re a moderate. You’re a Respectable Christian. They can invite you over and you won’t embarrass them in front of the better class of people by saying something awkward.

But religious moderation is what has brought us to where we are. We need to be extremists. The whole world has gone crazy and we’re the only truly sane people around. When sane people talk to crazy people, the crazy people will sometimes think they’re insane. If you can express your deeply-held political opinions in mixed company without people occasionally spitting out their tea, storming out of the room, or at least laughing uncomfortably and looking around to see if other people have just heard what they’ve heard, then you’re not doing it right. What you’re saying is not of God.

Now back into the bible.

Romans 8:14-17

¹⁴For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. ¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!”¹⁶it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ-if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

1 Corinthians 2:1-13

¹When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. ²For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. ³And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. ⁴My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

⁶Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. ⁷But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. ⁸None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. ⁹But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him” —
¹⁰  these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. ¹¹For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. ¹²Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. ¹³And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.

Let’s be clear here. If you are a serious Christian, polite society is going to think you are nuts. On so many levels. Your hesitancy to sleep with your girlfriend will be interpreted as weakness. Your political stances will not fit into the broad discourse of the left or the right.

The idea that you care about the afterlife will be seen as idiotic, and anything that happens in the church will be filtered through both the political ideology of the day and a kind of false politeness in case what we say is offensive.

But today is Pentecost. And if Pentecost tells us one thing, it is that God can intervene in the church. The spirit can take a few dozen men, hiding in an upper room, and make them bold, confrontational, learned. It can confound the critics. It can redeem the lost.

And it can allow us to understand the mind of God in these times. As Vanessa said, this means we are the sane ones when everyone else is delusional. We are the watchmen, and the people are blind.

And we should not allow them to either blindfold us, nor gag us. For societies can destroy themselves in a generation, and when that happens, the suffering is great.