Buddhist Joke

From Garrison Keillor's religious jokes: What did the Zen Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor? "Make me one with everything." Get it??

Are sin and guilt all bad?

For a long time I was very involved in one of those churches that doesn't believe in sin and guilt, heavily populated by escapees from churches that piled it on and made them feel lousy. I never quite bought deleting all reference to sin and guilt. Seems like a little guilt is good for you if it keeps you from making the same destructive mistakes over and over.

Religious Jokes

Mr. Keillor might have been replaced by David Sedaris as America's greatest humorist but the aging guy from Lake Wobegon with the face made for radio reigns as our finest religious humorist. He gets away with things on Public Radio that would get him kicked off of commercial media. I love it. From one of his early annual joke shows: What do you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness and a Unitarian? Someone who goes around knocking on doors for no particular reason." "As nervous as a Christian Scientist with appendicitis." I got in trouble when I quoted that one in my column in a local paper. A member of that body was not amused, said followers of Mrs. Eddy do not get nervous about things like that.

Church Words

I love church words. They give people with too much time on their hands something to fuss about. OK,let's say we take friend Dadderzvan's thought and just call each other brothers and sisters rather than some denominational label. Oops, did I just hear, "Wait a minute. 'Sisters' has to come first because the church has been so unfair to women." Here we go again.

More about the D Word

Maybe another reason why denominations have fallen into disfavor is the mistaken notion that they stand for narrow, exclusivist provincialism, a bad thing in today's interfaith world. Oh yeah, there's plenty of that. But most of the so called mainline churches were never like that. I grew up a Methodist, never heard a preacher say we had the only right answers, and we were one of the first to merge with other groups and become the United Methodist Church.

The Dreaded "D" Word

Denomination has become a dirty word. Everybody wants to go to a non-denominational church. A new one pops up every day, competing for customers. I guess that's because the "D" word equals tradition and that's not a popular word, either. Sounds too much like your grandfather's church. Which leaves old grandpappy with no place to go. I remember when we cherished the particular church group we "belonged" to. That's another dirty word. You don't join a church and become a committed member. You're a congregant, part of the audience. Sorry to sound like such an old fart. We are what we are.