“It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.” - Sir William Osler






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Bugger. Off.

Let me tell you about my New Year's resolution... whether you want to hear about it or not. (Warning, if you are not religiously minded, you may not be all that interested.)

I have not blogged about this, really, because it seemed too personal, but I have thought about it a lot. The recent sudden and unexpected death of one of my partners (in the traditional sense - one of my professional partners in my medical group) seems to have spurred me on to take action and to write about it as well.

I will do my best to condense this... after many years of not being interested in organized Christianity, I was encouraged to come to church by a dear friend of mine. "You have to come here, you will love it," he said, and he was right. The church in question was this one, an Episcopal church (for the technically minded, a member in good standing of the ECUSA). I was happy with the beautiful music and services, struck by the formality of Episcopalianism (brought up as what they call a 'low Protestant', this was completely new to me), and in general welcomed into the family. I felt happy there... for a while. I joined that church in 1997.

But about three years ago, after GenCon 2003 (the greatest collection of highminded bullshit ever seen on God's Earth, second only to GenCon 2006) and after the loss of some dear friends and fellow church members to cancer and suicide, I began to hear this voice in my head. (No exaggeration, I did.) You have to move on, the voice said.

I don't want to, I said.

I tried arguing with the voice. I tried ignoring it. I tried shouting it down. Nothing worked. I gradually began to realize that I could not stay with ECUSA. This realization was, shall we say, made easier by online revelations of the stupidities of my chosen denomination which appears to be irrevocably wedded to the cause of Political Correctness over and above the ideal of Christianity. I mean, there's nothing wrong with nicey-nicey goodspeak, it's just that it has nothing to do with Jesus Christ and the Gospel He wanted to spread.

Whenever I hear or read about this stuff it reminds me of this group of atheists I see every year doing the Los Angeles AIDS walk -- no kidding, they have T shirts and everything. They want to do good for their fellow man (and woman), and that's great. They want to make life better on this planet for other people, and that's wonderful. But if you raised the question of whether God had something to do with their mission they would no doubt have a fit. That is, I think, where the Episcopal Church is today... so far from the basic tenets of Christianity that they would blush in embarrassment if you asked whether they believe the Nicean Creed that we recite by rote every week. If you think I'm kidding, read this. Yes, a canon in the church writing about the joys of taking a good dump, going on to compare it to sex (personally, I think he needs to get out more), then continuing from there to speculate whether Jesus had sex with some of his 'women admirers'. This is what my denomination, with a long and respected history in the US and other countries, has come to.

So can you guess my resolution for 2007? Oh, you have? That I will shake the dust of this Godforsaken--literally--denomination off my feet and go to find another one ASAP? How sharp of you.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Labels: Episcopaliana

posted by Dr. Alice at #