spacedOut

Ok, this has been bothering me all day so I have to vent.

I'm an agnostic (recently de-converted from Christianity) married to a weak Christian, and I still attend Sunday church services, mainly out of habit but for the social aspect as well. Most of the time I enjoy it, and I usually get something positive out of it (as long as I filter out all the supernatural crap).

So here is what happened at church today. It is the tradition of our church to have someone offer comments before the communion. Today these comments were offered by a new dad (who is also on the church staff). He walks up to the pulpit with his two-week old son in his arms and proceeds to draw the analogy between God sending Jesus and what it would take for him to "sacrifice" his newborn son for the world. He even took the first person of God as he talked to the baby, describing how he was going to have to send him to the world, and people would make fun of him, and eventually kill him. I mean it was really weird. The guy was crying. A lot of people in the audience were tearing up. If you got caught up in it I guess you came away feeling that God really had to sacrifice to send his son to save us here on earth. (No, I'm not going to bring up the fact that it was God's rule to require the sacrifice in the first place)

Ok, next the preacher is up and giving his lesson on the importance of honoring your father (with which I fully agree, if your father deserves honor - mine does). Anyway, during the sermon, the preacher brings up the Old Testament Law that any children caught disrespecting their parents were stoned to death. He didn't make any excuses for this practice, only to point out that our relationship with our parents is so important to God that in the olden days, kids were killed if they were disrespectful.

My problem: How do the Christians reconcile the image of God that the communion guy described (a tender, loving father who agonized over giving up his helpless son so we could all be by his side some day) with the God that the preacher described (a ruthless being that commanded death for kids that dishonored their parents)? At the end of the service, the guy doing announcements went on and on about how wonderful the service had been. Was I the only one that noticed the inconsistency here? Do these people even think?

I don't know. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it sure seemed a little "conflicted" to me...