The Church of Christ and Its Top 5 Sermons

 I had a long chat with a friend who is a Catholic priest the other day, and he said one of the hardest parts of his job is coming up with a homily every week. He said that there are basically only 3 homily templates: God loves you, you should love God, and we should love each other. I laughed and told him that many years ago, my sister and I came up with a list of the top 5 sermon topics for COC preachers.

1. Everything Fun Is Sinful 

    It's pretty self-explanatory: no drinking, dancing, smoking, gambling, wearing of shorts or swimsuits, cursing, or sex allowed. They would also prefer it if you didn't play card games, watch movies or TV, or listen to secular music. If it's enjoyable, it's wrong. Life is supposed to be a vale of tears and suffering until we get to go home to be with Jesus.

2. Here's Why We Are Right and Every Other Church Is Wrong and They Are All Going to Hell

    I truly wish I had a dollar for every sermon I endured on why the Baptists are wrong about this and the Catholics are wrong about that and don't even get them started on the Mormons. As I said in a previous post years ago, people in the COC believe that the Bible is a cosmic puzzle and they are the only ones who have solved it successfully and, therefore, the only ones with correct doctrine that will get you into heaven.

3. You're All Horrible Sinners and God Hates You and Will Send You to Hell

    COC preachers love their fire-and-brimstone sermons designed to scare people into being baptized or coming forward to confess their sins. Sure, they might mention God's love in passing once in a while, but they really prefer to focus on God's vengeance and wrath against sinners. And since everything we do is sinful and we're all sinning all the time, there really is no hope of salvation. Is it any wonder that I spent years dealing with crippling anxiety and perfectionism because of my terror of making a single tiny mistake and spending eternity in a lake of fire as a result? Frankly, such sermons constitute mental abuse and it's no wonder most of the people I knew growing up in that church were head cases (including myself).

4. Let's Study One Word From One Verse in the Bible Until We All Pass Out From Boredom

    I have never encountered this type of sermon in any other church, but boy do some COC preachers enjoy word studies, especially for the Sunday night sermon when there will be no visitors. It can literally take them an entire year to get through one of Paul's letters, which was more time than it took Paul to travel his entire preaching circuit. They will go through a book verse by verse, word by word, picking it apart and talking about what the original Greek meant, and trying to concoct doctrine from that. Meanwhile, they are missing the overall themes of the book, let alone the socioeconomic and political context in which it was written. This is how you end up with "Christians" who don't believe in helping the poor and oppressed, despite that being the entire thesis of Jesus' ministry.

5. Women Were Put on Earth to Make Dinner, Make Babies, and Keep Their Mouths Shut

    Truly, this is the topic where COC preachers shine. Of course, all the preachers are men, since women are not allowed to have leadership roles in the church, and they spend an inordinate amount of time hammering home why God put them in charge and not us women. They drag out every verse in the Bible that has anything negative to say about women and put them all together to prove that women are not fit for leadership and that their only correct, God-given trajectory in life is marriage, children, and obedience to the men in their lives. These were the sermons that bothered me the most, even as a small child, because I could see with my own eyes that the men in that church were not superior to the women and, in fact, were quite inferior in some cases. There were many women who were smarter, wiser, more gifted speakers and teachers, and more morally upright than some of those men, but I was supposed to believe that just by virtual of their genitalia God had given them power over me? Nope. Never. Even as a child I did not accept those limitations on my life, so I suppose it was inevitable that I would leave eventually. 

I can't think of a clever way to conclude this post except to say that I wish people in the COC could get out and visit other churches and maybe hear one of those sermons like my friend's, about how God loves them, as an antidote to all the negativity they're hearing from the COC pulpits. It would do them a world of good.