If pride is the worst sin, why does every institution built in God’s name reek of it? I’ve got questions and the pulpit doesn’t like them.
The church I grew up in had a building program. Then a bigger building program. Then a branding refresh and a new logo and a pastor who did speaking tours and wrote books about humility. I’m not saying these things are sins. I’m saying the irony was load-bearing and nobody mentioned it once.
The Question They Won't Answer
If the worst sin is pride (the belief that you are the center of the universe, that your judgment supersedes God’s), then what do you call an institution that claims to speak for God? That decides which parts of scripture apply and which don’t? That wields the divine voice as a social control mechanism?
I’m not interested in whether God exists. That’s a separate conversation and honestly not the point right now. I’m interested in what gets done in God’s name by people who have decided they know exactly what God wants.
The pride of certainty is its own kind of violence. The certainty that you’re right is what makes you dangerous and the church has never been short of that particular kind of certainty.
I asked these questions at seventeen. I’m still asking them. the pulpit still doesn’t have an answer I find convincing.