This past Sunday I attended the college chapel service, exclusively
for the free dinner offered afterwards. Being a born and raised atheist
I've only even gone to church a couple times in my life when various
family members forced me. I entertained myself making fun of the
extensive editing/revising/translating of the Bible detailed in the
first several pages after the copyright information.
Today
however there were no bibles and the service was dominated by music
sung by our fantastic choir accompanied by the equally fantastic
pianist. I found the reading of prayers by the congregation a bit
uncomfortable, but they were brief interruptions of an otherwise
enjoyable night. The readings from the bible had an interesting
interpretation for non-believers.
Mark 4, 21-34: A Lamp
on a Stand sounds remarkably like political theory: the rich get richer
and the poor get poorer, desire for transparency, and Jesus speaking
rhetoric to the people and only speaking honestly behind closed doors.
And Proverbs 3, 1-17 which seems self contradictory at once advocating
learning and understanding and also ignoring your own understanding and
obeying orders. I found myself comparing religion to fringe science
where in both cases people found patterns and trends but lack the
understanding of the mechanism behind it thus are forced to say "It
works like that because it does! Just accept it!".
To close off the pianist played an amazingly complex piece that I
think was Beethoven (I was quite disappointed they didn't say what that
song was) which in itself is reason to go back next week in the hopes of an encore.
