Alan Dido, pastor of the Encounters Christ Church of Albermarle, North Carolina, seems to be on a jihad of sorts, a holy war, against what he terms Satanism, and drug addiction. I’ll give the good pastor credit for one thing-he has a clue as to one truth of pagan religions-it’s not like
In fact, Dido is not too happy with the status of Christianity as of now, he seems to think they aren’t truly living the life of Christians, they are present in body, you might say, but not in spirit. But his main problem with the church seems to be mainly that it isn’t A Church. He sees the predominence of the many different denominations as evidence of Satans work to divide the faithful.
Well, it’s not. The only thing it is evidence of is that people are too diverse and naturally independent to all be satisfied with any one faith, let alone any particular one expression of that one faith. If the good reverend was truly out to learn and teach the truth, he would realize that and at least accept it for the fact that it is, if not actually appreciate it, which would be even more preferable.
I will give him credit for one other thing though. He understands that Satnanists-which seems to unfortunately be his term for any pagan type religion-aren’t all the knifewielding psycopathic monsters engaging in ritual sacrifice and sexual orgies that people tend to imagine. He even goes so far as to give them credit for actually, for the most part, being law abiding citizens, possibly even of high moral character.
Unfortunately, he goes on from there to assert that this, too, is some kind of diabolical plot to infiltrate the body of Christ-the Church-from within, and so further the corrupting influence that has divided the church into all these varius divisions that seem to spring up, in his words, on every street corner.
So, in other words, Reverend Dido is chasing after imaginary monsters that exist within the dark recesses of his mind, while failing to appreciate the fact that he can’t seem to walk from one street to another without seeing evidience of the predominence of Christianity.
The road to heaven, Reverend, begins at the intersection of the body, the heart, the mind, and the soul-as does hell.
