CELEBRATION

Is there anyone who doesn't love a party? A chance to have some fun and look forward to all the good food and company?

I had this discussion once with this fellow believer who was of the view that if you could scream and yell and otherwise carry on at things like sports events then you should do the same in church. He was of the charismatic persuasion and decided that you couldn't be a Christian unless it involved all kinds of shouting and yelling.

I didn't agree with him. And most of the people I knew in that church didn't either. Not that being happy and feeling filled with joy was wrong.

It is just his way of making that an issue was to make it sound like you couldn't go to heaven unless you acted that way. Which is hardly biblical.

But he didn't see it that way and eventually the church did suffer from a great deal of friction over the whole issue. Nobody was having a good time.

Which was rather sad and ironic. All the effort to make Sundays fun feel apart from trying to force them into being fun.

I'm not sure that using the bible to beat on people quite cuts it in terms of making them happy. Sure didn't work in that situation.

Later of course I moved on from that church. And to one where some of the same people happen to be members that had been at the other church.

They had all left because of the attempt to make practice the same form of happiness. So they were not in the mind to smile just because somebody told them they had too.

Sadly they were not quite happy in their lack of having to be that way. Most of their time was other than about being happy.

It was more about spending most of the time complaining about what happen at the first church. This did not in any way make anyone happy.

So the party was more like a wake and all those in attendance more ready for a dirge than a song. But they said they were happy.

Just was a little hard to tell from their frowns. And it hardly impressed visitors either. Such was the reason in part why the church never grew.

However, I did find that a lesson. Mainly that God wants us to have joy, but with honesty.

Anything fakes just doesn't count.