Another Open Letter to Pastor Pollard

     Thanks for a(nother) good sermon, Frank. "Thirst for Life" was how it
was titled, and the sense I got from it was that you took dead aim at eternity
and hit it dead center.

     "Great people don't spend their lives, they invest them" was the apt
phrase which resonated through your sermon.

     The only thing that really bothered me was the story about the lady
who wanted to sing in the choir of a church and the preacher asked if she was
a member. "I'm a member of that great invisible church," she replied, and the
preacher responded, "Why don't you go sing in that great invisible choir?"

     That one little story took away every bit of what I took to be the
exhortation to your congregation and television audience to not conform to this 
world contained in the rest of the message. Please don't forget how we love to
rationalize and feel good about ourselves. Remember self-esteem is (rightly, I
think) considered to be the major failing of public education in this country, i.e.,
teaching kids to value feeling good about themselves over accomplishment. I've no
doubt it is the major failing of organized religion as well. (Ever think about Marx
and his "religion is the opiate of the masses" or Isaiah's [sure you have] "priests
bear rule by their means and the people love to have it so"? Reminds me of my favorite
preacher preaching on "Be Ye Therefore Perfect"; great sermon for twenty minutes, then
he wraps it up by saying "But of course, we only practive relative perfection." Well,
that was certainly true, but what I keep going back to is that Jesus and God obviously
expect us to practice absolute perfection.

     Perhaps brother Stanley touched upon your dilemma when he talked about
the lady he had spoken with for two weeks in a row: your organization has as its
foundation a shared belief in a strong delusion. Harsh words, huh? Yeah. But in
this sermon at least I think you pushed the envelope, as it were, as much perhaps
in what you didn't say (about that delusion) as what you did say. Still, when you
said "high-return investments are high-risk" when talking about Barnabus backing
Saul in Acts, it made me think you might match me in this high-risk albeit low-
exposure web site by telling people the whole truth as you see it.  Do you see
things differently now? And yeah, I guess word-of-mouth is how it ought to be
done; but is anyone (reading this to start with and) as concerned about
this thing we call time as me?

     And yeah, sure, I know a journey of a thousand miles starts with a step,
so thanks for letting me think we could be on the same path today.

(2012:  more harsh words, but the tone might make one think i'm on my meds)

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