While in Indianapolis this week I had a conversation with a guy who said that last Sunday the pastor of his church showed a clip of the planes flying into the Twin Towers 10 years ago. It was an illustration about the depravity of man and how Jesus is the only hope for the world.
This is not the first time I heard someone say that a video of the Sept. 11th tragedy was shown during a worship service this past weekend. At first I was just puzzled by this. But after hearing three different people voice strong emotions toward this I got thinking further, and wondered why this does not seem right.
I am most distraught about this video being shown in churches because:
* The event was so traumatizing to so many people, and watching the video again and again only re-traumatizes;
* I suppose that a preacher can move from those scenes of destruction to the grace of God in a sermon, but it is a LONG way to travel;
* One person said they thought the preacher was trying to be "cutting edge" or "outside the box." Considering that a whole bunch of preachers did the same thing last Sunday I sort of doubt it was outside the box too far;
* I think you can verbalize about depravity and sin without showing the video and people will formulate images from their own memory. Basically the clips are not necessary.
I am a preacher too. I have had good days and bad days preaching sermons. Sometimes I have thought sermons are way more important and spiritually forming than I believe they are (that's another blog post).
I am sure of this: We can do better than showing planes flying into towers as illustrations of depravity. God is certainly better than that.
We didn't show any videos at our church's worship gathering on Sunday -- but I have to admit that I did feel some awkwardness with trying to deal with the fact that the 10th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks happened to fall on a Sunday. There was so much imagery and so much story-telling going on throughout the day, in personal conversations and in the media (even way over here in Europe), it would have seemed odd to NOT mention the event and connect it to the bigger themes of life and death and faith and hope -- don't you think?
ReplyDeleteI still agree with your premise that using actual video footage might have been taking things a bit too far. But still, I can understand where those pastors might have been coming from.