Much unloved

Don't tell her I told you, but my wife prays with the cat in her lap, and sometimes I think she ought to be ashamed. After all, aren't closed hands and eyes part of the Sunday School directives about prayer? Good night, we're supposed to shut ourselves off to the world when we pray, not offer our laps.

And what would my grandpa say?--that's what I ask myself, a church elder who often took delight in shedding tears about the burden of his own sin. Is it really a prayer if your lap disappears beneath an 18-pound grey tabby, your fingers lost somewhere in the fur behind his ears?

We have yet to determine where exactly, but our cat shows up somewhere, we believe, on the autism spectrum because he's so powerfully driven by his own rituals. Every night after supper, he leaves whatever warm corner he's in when he hears me read scripture. He bounds into the kitchen, not so much to listen but to get his ears scratched by the guy who's reading. Okay, I suppose I'm no less a sinner than my wife: I itch, she offers her lap. When what I'm offering gets old, he takes a leap. There he is, and then we pray.

There's something less than devout about him being there, and yet, when I read the latest stats from the Barna Group, I'm thinking maybe more of us ought to make a practice of impiety, ought to laugh once in awhile, maybe even at ourselves.

Honestly, the stats are far worse than I would have guessed. Evangelicals--and I am one--aren't much loved, or respected, or admired--at least by those between 16 and 29. The vast majority of those young'uns--the kids I teach, churchgoers or not--tend to see evangelicals as people who spend far too much energy pointing fingers, beating chests, and trying to form their lips around a dozen new ways to say no. We aren't much loved.

The Bible isn't much help here. Jesus came to bring the sword, right? If people hate us, we're just doing what he did, wielding that weapon rightly. When Cotton Mather wanted his flock to understand the witchcraft horrors sweeping Salem, he pulled out a biblical warrant: the witches were a scourge sent by the Lord, who only punishes those he loves. I don't doubt for a moment that some evangelicals look at Barna's statistics and slam their fists down on the desk in triumph--"we shall not be moved."

But then there's I Corinthians 13. Last time I read it--and I admit it was in The Message--it wasn't about slammed fists. Then again, as I remember it, Jesus had something to say about sins and first stones; and there's always that scary parable about the sheep and the goats standing there dumbfounded at the judgment, telling Jesus they had no clue that he himself could have been there when they helped out--or didn't--the poor and the naked and the imprisoned.

The Bible cuts both ways. The stats don't.

Honestly, there's nothing pretty about the way people perceive us. Today, some claim that the word "evangelical" has more profound political meaning than religious or spiritual. But then, some might say that that's just exactly the way it should be.

I'm not in that bunch.

Here's what I'm thinking. Maybe more of us ought to pray with our cats in our laps.
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The stats box is on loan from the latest edition (Nov. 7) of World magazine.