Old Testament Law and Slavery

Churches and Anti Intellectualism:  Dangerous

Anyone whose been involved with conservative churches is aware of the anti intellectual ideas that so often prevail.  The message is one of worship, conviction, devotion, etc.  But it is not one of education.  Let me be clear that those other things should take up more of the time than education.  But when the prevailing mood is anti intellectual, then there will be no education at all.

And so the message will be essentially moral or ethical.  This is a good thing.  For, in liberal churches, there is neither ethics nor learning.  But ethical teaching without education can only ever be a celebration of normal moral standards.  There will be no asking of the hard questions where the right thing to do isn't obvious.  And that type of ethical teaching is not teaching.  It is a form of entertainment.  It is no accident that movies have moral messages and make millions of dollars.  

While the morality provided at churches is good, it's nothing that people don't already live by.  Often it's so ambiguous as just simply "follow God closely" or something similar.  What comes of this is that people come to church to be entertained instead of to learn something.  This, in turn, creates a culture that emphasizes entertainment as "what church is about."  And so Churches come to revere christian celebrities as the respected gurus.  And celebrity worship is a cornerstone of narcissistic thinking.

But some people will seek out intellectual stimulation even if the church won't provide it.  These people will find it outside of church, and come to see religion as silly nonsense.

And there will be others who notice the lack of any moral standards that go beyond the surrounding culture.  Here the problem will be the desire to make up rules out of thin air.  Oh, they'll have some Bible passages they've horribly twisted.  They need to make you feel guilty for something that isn't remotely wrong.  And this type of person will soon point the finger at members of his own super righteous sect.

And of course pastors will have meetings where they complain that nobody really cares about God anymore.  But the underlying motivation in these meetings is church attendance and pastoral salary, not true devotion to God.  And so their all time favorite ethical teaching will be this.  Everybody should attend all the meetings!  Again, who is learning anything here?