Be Happy: The American Refusal to Deal with Suffering
by Jude Acosta
in (yet again) American Thinker.
This would make a great sermon in any American church or synagogue. It addresses one of my great reservations about the shallowness of many American theologies.
A few short excerpts:
Where did we ever get the idea that we could petition God for happiness as if we were putting quarters into a candy-dispenser, that if you pray “just so” or tithe “just so” that God will reward you with a new job and a corner office? To my ears this sounds like a Christianity that has been co-opted by corporate interests or, worse, by Hollywood.
We know that suffering is real. We know that the world is filled with it. But we don’t want to deal with it. So we turn it into melodrama and fantasy. We objectify it, minimize it, and depersonalize it. I have seen the same person watch horror show after horror show, play violent video games, but refuse to help care for an elderly relative with incontinence because it was “gross.”
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