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.
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#1 by Cameron at 9:02am on May 27th, 2009
This Christian happens to agree with you whole-heartedly. Great post.
#2 by Andrew at 4:14pm on August 8th, 2009
Great post. I thought about this quite a bit back when I was attending church (I was really going to play the drums, I’ve never been a real believer).
You have to consider the preacher’s reality – he believes that it is his duty to convince his audience of God’s message, and really, isn’t the truth a small sacrifice to make to achieve that goal?
And he isn’t really doing anything differently from anyone else. Every book you’ve ever read, every speaker you’ve heard, has in some way stretched the truth in order to convince you of the overall message. This isn’t malicious – it’s simply how people convince others (and just as often themselves) of their point. The trick is to see through the bullshit as much as possible and measure the message for what it is, not for how it’s delivered.
Sadly, in this case, the message claims even less truth than the preacher’s anecdote.
I apologize if I rant – this subject has been on my mind a lot lately.
#3 by Rufus von Balcone at 9:09am on September 3rd, 2009
A school I worked in had a chaplain who often used his anecdotes from the time he spent in Africa during his sermons. He had an endless list of adventures to relay – one for every occasion.
One day one of my pupils, apparently quite seriously, asked me, “Sir, what are the odds that two people could live exactly the same life and have exactly the same things happen to them?” I said that I thought the odds were slim but asked him to whom he was referring. “The Chaplain and Jesus, of course!” came the reply.