021.

I made myself go to church today, to the closest church I could think of that isn't the cool-kids Lutheran church down the hill, which is a church that is really heavy on the modern evangelism and love but light on the heavy theology and meaningful music. So it really isn't my style. The sermons are usually pretty relevant, though.

Anyway, I have a point. At one point in the sermon, the pastor made was talking about an Old Testament king, and said that we all need to be kings in our own lives. As in, we need to be like Josiah, and also take control over our environments to the extent we can. This immediately rubbed me the wrong way, because the pastor is the type of man that I would expect preaching a sermon about having to give over the kingship of our own lives to God because we should give all control over to Him*. And this, directly from the Stphenie Meyer school of world building**, is why I have a problem with so many modern churches. Because in their quest to dumb down messages for the masses, they reach for the easiest metaphor/analogy possible without thinking about how it fits into the grand scheme of things. If you're going to use a king metaphor for more than one concept, at least qualify it, so people don't get confused as to whether you're talking about selfishness or authority.

* The "You should let God drive the car and just sit in the passenger seat" school of Christianity is inane. As a Christian, you shouldn't be that passive. You are the one living your life, not God. God has set up reality, God gave you your journey, God will help you, but you have to live your own life. Therefore, God is the navigator, telling you where it would be helpful to turn, but it is your job to take the wheel and turn the car.

** See the ever-wonderful condensed version here at Fandom Wank if you're confused. Basically, Smeyer contradicts herself in the Twilightverse and obviously hasn't thought about it very much. I think it goes something like "Oh, I didn't plan for that did I? Well, I'll just slip it in anyway, no one's bound to notice. It's just a tiny detail, those don't matter."