Extremely Lame

I don’t know if it’s a result of my being raised Catholic, my being raised in the Midwest, or that I was raised in a small, but non-rural city, but churches down here in Texas have a tendency to make me feel all kinds of uncomfortable. And it’s not entirely because I don’t find myself particularly religious anymore.

I had never seen churches advertise on billboards until I came down here, and never before had I seen a church so large they have to bus their patrons in from to and from the parking lot as if it’s Disneyland. These are pretty small potatoes to me now, the billboards in particular, since I see them all the time. My mail yesterday, however, provided something for me that I’d not been privy to up to this point.

Yesterday I got a junk mail insert from the Holy Covenant United Methodist Church inviting me to “DETOX [my] spiritual life.” I’ll get into entire DETOX thing later (hey, they’re the ones that put it in all caps). for now, I just want to who on earth there thinks that mass marketing would give them a good return on their investment. These are the same kinds of ads that the local Tire Barn sends out. The very same kinds of ads that my apartment complex has a trashcan next to the mailboxes filled with. I suspect these ads are as effective as e-mail spam. They’re probably effective to the exact same people as well.

Maybe I’m a bit testy, but there’s just something skeezy about getting getting spam from a church. Like it or not, I’m internally equating this church with people who want to sell me things to increase my penis size or re-finance my mortgage or apply for credit cards I don’t need.

If that weren’t bad enough, I think the actual content of the ad is almost as disturbing.

More and more people these days are undergoing a detox. Toxins from our food and our suburban “habitat” build up in our bodies over time and can make us feel sluggish and discontent. A detox can help us expel these toxins and restore our physical health and vitality. All of us are exposed to spiritual toxins as well—daily patterns, personal habits, past experiences, and cultural values that sap our spiritual strength and steal our joy. This sermon series will help you become aware of the toxins building up in your soul and give you tools for detoxing your spiritual life and restoring your spiritual health.

The amount of frou frou wankery in that paragraph is staggering. Note how they use the common tactic of pseudoscience, talking about things that cannot be accurately measured, like our feelings of sluggishness and discontent, and how a completely unexplained phenomenon, detox, can remove completely undefined bad things, toxins, and thus increase other things that cannot be accurately measured, like vitality. Mind you, that isn’t exactly uncharacteristic of the language often used in New Age non-scientific talk when people are trying to make something seem legitimate. So, in that sense, they’re honestly representing the Moonbeams and Skylars of the world. But then they take that very same non-specific feel good language and apply it to “spiritual detox.” You know what? There’s no need to take something that is already supernatural to begin with and then layer it with a sheen of nonsense about “toxins building up in your soul.” Using that kind of malleable language makes me think of you as either a used car salesman or Bill Clinton.

And don’t think I didn’t notice that line about “cultural values that sap our spiritual strength and steal our joy.” OH NOES! (Our fixating on) things that other people might do to themselves in the privacy of their own home is stealing, STEALING our joy, those gay happy thought-stealing bastards. Sure, it’s not explicitly stated that they’re talking about teh gays when they mention cultural values that rob them of mirth and well-being, but given my location, I’m willing to say that it’s a 75% chance they’re talking about homosexuals or one of the other evangelical bogeymen/scapegoats.