Even though I am no longer a believer, I often tune into one of the local religious radio stations while I’m in the car.  I usually prefer talk radio to music, and I’d rather listen to a religious program than one of the insufferable right-wing windbags that seem to be on every other station I tune to.

As I was driving home this evening, I was listening to one of those preachers who cracks a joke every other sentence as he relates his half-hour home-spun homily.  He had the congregation rolling in the aisles he expertly related some hilarious hijinks from his youth.

But as often happens when I’m listening to this type of anecdotal sermon, I began to wonder how much of the story he was telling actually happened?  I’m sure that in many cases, this type of comedic retelling is based on a kernel of truth, but it must be very rare that events unfold in people’s lives as ready-made hilarious anecdotes. 

We all embellish to some extent—I certainly find myself embellishing an experience to give it a little polish from time to time—and there really is little harm in it.  But it beggars belief that a pastor can have so many funny things happening in his life that he can use them to make a living telling jocular sermons week in and week out.  Certainly, once you begin to listen with a skeptical ear to this type of sermon, it’s pretty easy to tell which parts of it are likely made up or greatly embellished.

Does it matter if the preacher is spinning tall tales from the pulpit?  It doesn’t seem to matter to their congregation, who are usually having a whale of a time, but I think it does.  Pastors and priests are automatically seen as virtuous people (until they fail in some obvious way) and church tradition accords them great deference when it comes to what they say in the pulpit.  But with that deference comes responsibility, and if you make up stuff just to get a laugh from your audience, it’s taking advantage of their unquestioning goodwill and respect.

For me, although it wasn’t the deciding factor when I was wrestling over what I believed, the notion that the content of many of the sermons I had been listening to was untrustworthy certainly helped to clear away some of the religious clutter from my mind.