Thursday, July 14, 2005

Excluding People from Church Membership

Shane and the Methoblogosphere has been a-talkin' about a UMC pastor who has been suspended from his position for refusing to admit a homosexual as a member of his church.

Me? I'm all for excluding certain undesirable 'people' from the church. You know who I'm talking about -- zombies. Even when the altar candles are scented, I can barely get through a worship service if some decaying zombie stinking up the sanctuary. What, was the local United Church of Christ full? I tell you, the next time that I swallow my pride and shake a zombie's hand, only to have it fall off...well, let's just say that their kind ought to go back where they belong. Their whole 'I'm going to eat your brain' attitude is hardly conducive to Christian fellowship. Since they can't move too quickly, they've been preying on the elderly, who are the most consistent attenders, so our attendance numbers have had a net loss, in spite of the stupid "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors" to zombies thing.

Anyway, I can't believe that we're even debating this issue, as the Bible is awfully clear on the subject of the zombies. I mean, could Obaderemiah 4:8 be any more explicit? Sheesh. Oh, I'm sure that Joel Thomas is going to go off on one of his rants "why are you picking on the zombies? Why that sin in particular? You let ghouls, vampires, mummies, and even libertarians in -- why exclude only zombies?" For once, be reasonable, Joel. We all go through tough times in life -- divorce, adultery, greed, mummification. But zombies are different. What, are we supposed to let our children around these people?

Every four years at General Conference we have these stupid debates about zombieality. The Left is always pushing for defining undeadification down and making zombie conduct morally acceptable. Now there are even openly zombie pastors being fully ordained and rogue conferences are simply refusing to enforce the clear dictates of The Book of Discipline on the subject! What's next?

4 comments:

gavin richardson said...

i'm not going to say that i agree with everything here john, but sending 'zombies' back to cleveland cracked me up. very whitty, you must have stayed up late thinking about that one. &:~P

John said...

On a more serious note, I'm not sure what to think of what that pastor did. Certainly we have to insist that people repent of their sin, but as Joel Thomas pointed out, we seem to accept a lot of other sins while rejecting homosexuality as a litmus test.

But that's really an argument for purging those other sins out of our lives, rather than letting unrepentent homosexuals in.

Note that there is a difference between welcoming a homosexual into a church (good) and accepting that unrepentent homosexual into church membership (bad).

But zombies? Nah. Kick them out for good.

gavin richardson said...

k, zombies are out. i don't want someone slobbering over my brain anyway.

Unknown said...

Hilarious! Luckily we don't allow no zombies around these parts. But wait, don't I remember story of Jesus eating with a zombie?